The Mirrored Souls

23.

Days later

Haunting screams and noises wake Leon as he's trapped in a realm his father placed him in for betraying his trust and loyalty. Exhausted from fighting off whatever was placed inside with him, Vega and Charles try to find Oriana to have her help and to help them as they keep turning opaque. "Alright father!" Leon bellows out holding his side as his flesh is exposed and oozing with some type of poison from the creature's claw mark. Edur show's himself from the shadows with his hands behind his back observing his disheveled son. "Ready to get back to the original plan?" Leon bites down on his bottom lip in pain, nodding as the poison spreads faster. "Good," Edur places his hand over Leon's wound, healing it and helping him back home.

"Find her and kill her no matter the obstacle."

Edur says handing Leon what he needs to take Oriana's power, leaving her lifeless and powerless at the same time.

"Once you inject her with this place your hand on the small nape of her chest where her heart is located. If you can't try her shoulder or collar bone, understood?"

Leon involuntarily takes the needle, placing it in his back pocket.

Being handed a small projectoral orb finding the location of Oriana, a woman clouds the image as Leon gets close to seeing where she's hiding.

"What's happening?" He asks his father as it does it again but melting in his hand.

Edur scoffs in annoyance knowing someone else is interfering, protecting Oriana.

"Here just follow these realms and she should be in one of them," Edur says angrily, placing a map in Leon's hands.

Leon looks down to it, hating it's the way to kill Oriana and not saving her.

****

Neriah dries his hair from taking a shower as I'm sitting on the floor sketching a mirrored soul I saw in my dream I had last night.

Taking a few steps behind me, he crouches down arms length and inches away from my face analyzing the thin fine lines that curved to make a grizzly bear looking face with horns on its head.

"Who is that?" He asks pointing.

I shrugged, "It appeared to me while I was dreaming, it didn't say much but the words sacred and damnation."

Almost spooked by the words, he stands going to the kitchen.

"I can try and make you something to eat if you're hungry," He says, opening a few cabinet doors grabbing cans of beans and a small pouch of rice hidden in the back of the dishes stored inside.

"Not really...hungry."

I focused more on the face looking back at me getting the urge to touch it and only feel its energy, like I tried to do in the dream.

"Oriana, I do have a question," Neriah says walking back out to the living room where I am but stops seeing I'm trying to narrow on the energy the picture is giving me.

A few more minutes...a few more minutes and I was standing in the hottest place in the Specter.

The walls were sizzling with a crackle sound as if bacon was being placed on them and cooked.

I kept walking, taking in the place, but when I saw an inch of the floor covered in black ooze I froze.

"This is the future," A deep and menacing voice says from the end of the floor, creeping up like a funny house clown would do before scaring whoever is inside.

"Who are you? You're not a regular mirrored soul."

Wicked laughter fills my eardrums causing them to bleed, my nose is next then my mouth as I drop down to the oozing floor.

Violently coughing, Neriah grabs hold of my shoulders, bringing me out of the trance I was in.

"Breathe," He calmly says, rubbing my back.

Grabbing onto his shirt to bring him lower, he looks to me on edge of what might happen.

"Something got through the Specter....it's made its way through to our realm."

Symptoms of an acute heart attack begin to surface until Neriah takes hold of me, embracing me entirely having the symptoms fizzle out like last time.

Looking up to him, I say, "Why did my mom really choose you to help me?"

Unable to really answer that he just says what he's been told this whole entire time, "To help you reach your highest power to gain all the abilities your mother achieved and to rescue her from the darkest, deepest, part of the Specter," He keeps holding me, "Why?" I reached up to touch his face seeing the gleam in his eyes that showed the innocence in him. "There's more to it," I say honestly, getting a gut feeling he's a key to something as well to everything that's transpire.

While still being in his arms and letting emotions climb out of me and out into the moment I'm in, I lean up and kiss Neriah not regretting the action but feeling the sense of passion unleashed and fireworks erupt in my stomach, having my heart also flutter with nervousness to how he might react.

Taking me more into his arms, sitting me up more, he kisses me in rhythm of softness and just overall taking his time until the shack's door opens revealing Leon.

Both Neriah and I look surprised but not as surprised as Leon to find us the way that we were, almost like the memory I had with Darce and Odette, except it wasn't Neriah that caught us in the act but Leon.

"Oriana," Leon longingly says not being able to fathom the sight of her kissing Neriah the way that she was.

The rational reasoning to why he couldn't kill her goes to shreds as soon as his heart did when watching her let Neriah slobber her down, or what looked like he did in Leon's mind.

"Leon I-" I get up to talk to him and see how'd he find me but he steps back.

"I was worried-I-" His chest rises and falls with hurt, shaking his head with  disbelief.

Reaching out for his hand he flinches back looking at me with what seemed like betrayal...just like Neriah did in Odette's memory.