Resonance - Witches tale

Chapter 13

"From the beginning," I reply immediately, then pour myself a glass of water and settle comfortably in the chair.

"The whole story begins with a witch named Aradia. Actually, your bloodline comes from her. She was an incredibly rare and powerful witch. She was born an Empath, the first person to ever have such abilities. Even as a young girl, she was able to master her power perfectly. She could look into anyone's heart and feel their emotions. She could manipulate those emotions at will, so she basically controlled the people around her. She could make anyone do anything. If she wanted someone to kill, that person would kill." He takes a sip from his glass. "I don't think I need to explain how dangerous such a power could be. The other ability she had was healing. She could heal almost any physical or mental pain and cure even fatal diseases." I'm left speechless at his words. "But these powers came with a price. In order to heal someone's pain or disease, she had to transfer it into her own body, and from there, she had to defeat it. However, she was able to overcome these afflictions much faster than anyone else because her healing abilities were extraordinary. Let me give you two examples: if she wanted to heal a wound, it would appear on her body exactly where the original wound was. But she didn't have to wait for weeks for the wound to heal-over time, as her power grew, it became easier and easier. The second example: take smallpox, for instance. She could even heal someone with a terminal illness. She would absorb the illness into her own body and defeat it."

"This is unbelievable..." A chill runs through my body. "I can also heal and manipulate other people's emotions, though I've never used my power for bad. I've healed animals in the forest and calmed them down."

"Believe me, you could do the same as she did, if you focused on your power."

"I don't want to use my power for bad. Grandma didn't even like me using it. She was always afraid someone would see. Especially when I was a child, she would hide me from others when my ability was all over the place and I couldn't control it. It was hard to learn how not to feel everyone's emotions around me. It was horrible-I couldn't separate them. I felt them all at once, and I thought I was going to lose my mind."

"Yes, I can't even imagine how awful that must have been. Sometimes my own emotions are enough to unravel me-what would it be like to feel everyone else's too..." he says with a laugh. It's the first time I've seen him laugh.

"Please, go on," I urge him, my curiosity practically consuming me. I can hardly wait to hear more of the story.

"Oh, of course," he begins, picking up the thread of the story. "She helped so many people that word of her power spread quickly. I suppose you can imagine what that meant-evil people became interested in Aradia's abilities as well.

Back then, during the reign of King Thaldrak, there were endless problems-wars, bloodshed, people killing each other for just about any reason you could think of. At the time, magic users and non-magic users still lived together. The king himself didn't have rith in his body and couldn't perform even basic spells. His closest advisor, Morthan, was a warlock of immense power. At first, he wasn't evil, but magic intoxicated him, and he started craving more and more of it. He grew disdainful of those without rith, eventually even resenting the king. How could a mere mortal rule the land? It was an insult to him. Morthan began plotting treason, slowly gathering followers. He wanted the kingdom for himself and planned to wipe out all non-magic users. The king, however, commanded a massive army, and while his soldiers couldn't wield magic, they could have easily overpowered Morthan's forces, who were few in number. So, Morthan waited until he could gather a larger army for himself, but he did all of this in such a way that the king wouldn't suspect a thing. " He takes a few sips of water and continues.