Innocence be gone

Chapter 3; Truth or question

"So can you just go over this one more time?" I ask Syrelin as she guides me to my new room. "Why, I've gone over it three times already!" she responds as rude as I remember her. "I just want to make sure it's real and I'm not just having some hallucination!" I say, trying to gather my thoughts. "Fair enough, you did just wake up from I think possibly the longest nap on earth!" she jokes, holding open an old wooden door. "Ha ha! Hilarious!" I say sarcastically. The door opens to a small hall with a dried grass door that I push aside. Through the grass is a huge room with an enormous bed! "Okay, so a while after I lost you I managed to find this place which, back then, was just a sunken castle, believe it or not this used to be the palace of Versailles! But it was so sunken we only got a few rooms out of It." she says as I stroll around the room, I pop my head in to what I think is a bathroom but it's just a cupboard. "They didn't have toilets in those days though, do you guys just hold it in?" I ask. She bursts into hysterics. "Some of the rooms have been updated so we use those!" she says wiping tears from her eyes. "So, back to the story. When I first got here I was 11 and an army was forming under here. We made a plan to get one of each demon, to dissect them, learn their weaknesses and maybe end the war, which we did!" she says, pride shining on her face. "We finished off every demon species except for the Terachi, because whenever we caught them we had nowhere to put them because all our cells are metal and, as you know, they turn to dust when they touch metal so we could never find out anything from them! We did find out that if you kill a Terachi with a wooden blade it turns into a ball of light that never runs out, well at least it hasn't died on us yet! And if you pull off their wings before killing them it gives the killer eternal life whether they like it or not." She says on a down note. "Who figured that out?" I ask before thinking. "The first one was when a Terachi managed to get inside the main hall and someone threw a wooden chair leg at it. The second one, was me, it was an accident. You know I'd never kill anything on purpose!" she says, a not-so-happy tear running down her cheek. "Sweety, it's okay!" I say, I know she wouldn't kill anything, even if she had the hand-eye coordination to kill anything! I grab her shoulders and stare deep into her aged eyes. "It was a demon! You did the right thing and the human race will forever thank you for it!" I say, her eyes tell me stories that her mouth will never say. "But, the rumours." She says staring into the distance, getting lost in her thoughts. "What, what rumours?" I ask, this is something she hasn't mentioned. "Huh? No nothing! I'm just being silly!" she says wiping her tears. "I know you're lying but I'm going to leave it, I don't know why but I know for some reason you need to lie to me. That's okay." I say, letting her sentence float its way into the past. "Anyway." Syrelin breaks the silence. "I still can't figure out how you're not only alive but still mentally and physically 15! It just doesn't make sense!" she says pacing the room. "Yes, you're the one that's going to live forever and I'm the one that doesn't make sense!" I joke. She laughs, now that's something I've missed, laughter.

"Syrelin?" I ask after a supper of fruits and vegetables that looked more grey than edible! "What's up?' she asks heading down the hall towards my room. I have a feeling I'm going to get lost in here one day! "I was wondering what your room looks like. I mean, the queen of the only humans left on Earth! That's pretty special so technically your room should match!" I say, slightly irritated about our height difference, I'm six years older than her so why am I so much shorter than her? "You don't want to spend your first night alone?" she says picking up what I'm hiding under my words. "Yeah." I say shyly. "It's okay! When I first came here I only slept in my own place a month after I arrived!" she says making a u-turn to get to her room.

When we get there it's beautiful! Flowers everywhere and this is the only place I've seen with hint of natural light, not counting the re-incarnate demon in the main hall. A huge window near the centre of the ceiling gives light to the flowers, Syrelin has always been a very hippie type of person, I'm actually surprised the room hasn't been painted pink! "So what's on the agenda for tomorrow?" I ask once I've settled into the enormous bed! I swear seven people could fit comfortably in this thing! "Well, first day for new comers is the test." She says, brushing out knots of curly hair, never have I been happier that my hair is naturally straight as an arrow! "Why?" I groan, covering my face with a pillow. That was the one up-side of the world ending; school was kind of cancelled, permanently. "To see what your strengths so we can enhance them. That way we don't have wanna-be soldiers and make-shift nurses. We have people with skills." She says proud of the infrastructure she's made. "Fair enough, as long as it's not algebra." I say a bit more relaxed.

I lie in bed next to Syrelin, I can't sleep and I don't think I want to. The last time I did I woke up a hundred and twelve years later, alone and about to be eaten by Terachi. A chill goes up my spine at the memory of it. The window casts an eerie shadow over the room, barely light enough for me to see shapes. "Alice?" I jump when I hear my name only to remember I'm not alone. "Yeah?" I respond to Syrelin. "Do you remember that lullaby mom used to sing to us?" she asks, a bit of her childishness coming through. "How could I forget it?" I respond, wondering where this is going. "Co-could you sing it to me?" she asks shyly. I hesitate, that lullaby was rather depressing, I'm not sure it's the best thing right now but hey, she's my sister how could I say no? I hum the intro "Hush child, the darkness will rise from the deep and carry you down to sleep. Child, the darkness will rise from the deep and carry you down into sleep. Guileless son, I'll shape your belief and you'll always know that your fathers a thief and you won't understand the cause of your grief but you'll always follow the voices beneath. Loyalty, loyalty, loyalty, loyalty, loyalty, loyalty, loyalty only to me." I end at the chorus, not wanting to say the following lines, it's just too personal. I look to see Syrelin fast asleep

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Hi all,if you want to listen to the lullaby just go search on youtube for Mordreds lullaby.