The Forgotten Light

11. Ritael

Monster. She was a monster.

She survived nineteen years convinced that she was human. After all, nothing had ever made her think otherwise; she had no superhuman abilities. For nineteen years she was simple human. The most ordinary human being who bleeds when hurt, who is bruised when falls, who laughs or cries when feels.

No. It turns out that she knew nothing about herself. She lived in ignorance.

She was a monster, and there was no place for such in this world.

Ritael had been walking ahead toward the west for two days, as if she wanted to catch up with the sun and beg it to turn back its wandering, which would enable her to go back in time. She would do anything not to die that night and learn the truth.

What was she supposed to do with herself now?

She couldn't go back to Florence. How would she look into Usain's anguished, disappointed eyes when she alone appeared at his door? How would she explain her failure to prevent the abduction of her friends, or that she was probably the only one to survive?

She hadn't eaten or drank for two days, and yet she felt nothing but an overpowering emptiness. She lost herself, walking aimlessly along for so long, until finally she almost fell asleep standing up and collapsed exhausted on the ground. She didn't care if she was spotted and caught. She took only two daggers with her from the hut; she had nothing else, anyway. She didn't find the Jeep where they had left it earlier, but she didn't have any strength left to guess what might have happened.

In the end, she was left alone, and it was probably a good thing that it happened. What would Fairlight say if she saw her now? After all, her friend had seen her die with her own eyes. Ritael wouldn't have been able to handle the rejection.

As she entered Salome, dark clouds came behind the setting sun and the area was engulfed in darkness. She sat exhausted behind a large flat stone, wondering when she would die again and if she would be reborn again. Maybe she had something in common with cats that had nine lives? Maybe with her final death she would finally turn into a cat herself?

"Crazy. You are a crazy lunatic," she said in a hoarse voice to herself.

She took out one of the long daggers from behind the belt of her stained jeans and began to play with it.

"Maybe this was the fate I was destined for." She flipped the blade from her right hand to her left. "Nineteen is probably even a good age to go crazy. I bet there are somewhere younger, and whackier than me."

She threw the words out at full volume, as if she wanted to confess to the silence around her. Finally, she stabbed the dagger into the sand beside her and wrapped her arms around her still sore belly. With a sigh, she leaned her head against a hard stone, looking at the star-spangled sky and intending to continue her depressing monologue until she fell asleep.

"Maybe I deserved it. I doubt I could call all this a second chance. Such a thing is not handed out like candy. I am cursed. Maybe I should get over it, because after all, that's how it is now..."

"Or maybe you should shut up before the remnants of the city or other monsters hear you?"

She jumped to her feet, at the same time snatching the dagger from the ground, when a tall figure leaped right over her. Ritael's heart froze when she thought it was Invicta - he wore a wide hood on his head, under which long, probably white, hair was surely hidden. Ritael noticed with surprise that his sword was missing.

All the easier for her.

She was overwhelmed with rage. It was surely one of the Invicta who had attacked her and her friends up the hill.