A Witch's Life: Great Discoveries (Journey to Destiny series #1)

CHAPTER 4: Battles with the Dead

I'M not sure if this is right but I think that I might be...sleeping. I am not just sleeping either but I am dreaming, well to be accurate I am having a nightmare. Maybe my head got hit at the party and I'm starting to imagine things while I'm blacked out but I swear that I am sleeping. Just naturally sleeping like other people do. My nightmare is not blurry, it is vivid and I feel wide awake within.

The vision goes from black to grey in a mist of smoke. My nightmare seems to be in black and white and it is silent, epically silent. Then my mother appears from a cloud and she is looking at me with these soft grey eyes which I know to be blue but I can't change it. It stays in the shades from black to white. Suddenly her eyes aren't motherly and warm any more, they are cold and full of rage. She lunges at me but I dodge her. What is going on?

"You were a mistake!"

"I never loved you."

"You were an abomination!"

"It was meant to be me, not you. You stole it from me."

"May darkness ruin you."

"You are nothing."

"You shall curse the world!"

"You are destruction."

Her voice bounced around and the comments of hatred never stopped. I was spinning in a circle in the middle of it, crying. I had put my hands over my ears trying to block out the hurt but it just got louder and more forceful.

"My life was perfect until you appeared."

"If it weren't for her I would have killed you the first chance I had gotten."

"I was never meant to be this way."

"It was all your fault."

Then the epic silence began and she was in front of me with those warm eyes again. She held my hands in hers, soothing my sobs. "Baby girl," she began, her voice calm and back to normal, "you were my ruining," she finished with a harsh cackle. She dispersed into the air around her and I stood there hugging myself, letting the leftover tears slide down my cheeks.

I was in a room, sitting on a chair. I had been here before. This wasn't just a nightmare, it was a memory. The room was dark a part from the spotlight that shined down on me. I assumed that the room was empty but I would never know. He burst into the room, his black locks bounced as he entered the light. His shaggy hair looked freshly cleaned and his icy blue eyes read into my soul. He was my doom and yet I was not afraid. He was my reckoning and yet I didn't cry or regret. I only felt anger towards him that wasn't even strong enough to be called hate.

This was different however. As if I never properly watched it before. As if I had been blinded by it all to never properly see the scene for what it was. When he knelt down his eyes were tearing up and he couldn't look me in the eye. "I'm sorry," he finally met my eyes. "I have to do it and it's going to hurt but it is for your own good. You will understand later," the needle-like knife shook in his hands with guilt and nothing had happened yet. He then stabbed it into my arm and I screamed. I remembered the screaming, I couldn't quite remember the pain, I just remember the screaming that used to echo through my head for years after, and sometimes still today. He was making his mark of torture, notam tormenta. That was the day that Auguem was born, the ink diving under my skin, permanent. First he was small, almost miniscule. Now he was as long as my stomach. He often rested his head on my chest and wrapped the tip of his tail around my belly button.

I noticed something even more peculiar about this scene, alien to its original version. Amorson was crying at my pain. An expression of utter destruction on his face as if this act of affliction on me was hurting him more than I. In previous readings I had learnt that special marking can affect the giver of the pain also but never as much as the victim. I didn't understand what was wrong with him? I didn't know why my mind is showing me something that didn't happen. In real life he laughed at me and applied more pressure and more pain.