Vanished (I LUV U.) - Abide With Me Book 1

Chapter 12 - Gate To Death

Yesterday was a really wonderful day because Lalalats finally read this thing again and Eiaia03 started reading the novel! :))))) I'm updating too fast right now, I need to use the remaining day to update the thirteenth chapter.

So, introduction: This is what actually happened to Anita when she "died".

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Chapter Twelve - GATE TO DEATH

June 6, 1499

Anita trudged along the Pyramus River. Her tears gushed with strength like the powerful flow of water to her right. With a cracked spine, she walked on her willpower alone.

Today’s cloudy afternoon was very cold, rather strange for a near-summer day. Anita’s exposed shins shivered in the biting breeze. Her eyelids twitched with horrifying memories. The only thing keeping her warm was an itchy tartan blanket wrapped around her body.

After two hours of painful trudging, she spotted a lone tepee watching the waves. It was the coldest and most haunting beach anyone will ever see. This place was where the Pyramus tribes’ warriors defeated the Extremin conquering fleet. Though the win was theirs, the loss on their side was staggering. Its name was fitting for its history: Gate to Death. Some say the dead could still be heard if you listen to the waves. If a man from the Extremin tribes stepped on this beach, he would be pulled into the sea and drowned… Anita didn’t believe such stories.

In abrupt rage, Anita screamed to the Great Gnomon, “Why did you have to do this to me!!!???” The princess collapsed on her knees and wept until the grey sky got darker and darker. Soon, from her emotional state, she lost consciousness.

***

June 5, 1499

The light from eight candles placed on a circle illuminated a grotesque sight. Inside a dark tepee, bound by chains above a pool of boiling wax was a body crudely wrapped in layers upon layers of bands. It reeked of onion and gum. 

There was a faint, though nearly impossible-to-detect, rising and falling of its chest. Aside from that, it was still.

Steam rose from the crude bandages. Every day, someone would come and wrap it in another layer of cloth bathed in boiling hot liquid. Every day, its screams would be heard. Every day and every other time, it would be silent, silent like dead.

“A pleasant morning,” Anita said, parting the tepee flaps.

The bandaged body’s head twitched to life. It stared at her with only one huge bloodshot eye peering through the gaps of the cloth. Through its blurred vision, Anita was only a bright blob in an otherwise dark background.

Anita had grown two inches taller. But she was no different than who she was two years ago. Now thirteen, she gripped her Pyramus knives with her clammy hands. Her eyelids were twitching. Her mouth was beginning to dry.

“How is your Constriction Test going, Inigo?” she asked.

Inigo didn’t answer. He just stared at her with his one great right eye.

“Your devotion to the Great Gnomon is very…impressive,” Anita commented, pacing around the room with her knives on the ready. Who knows if those chains will hold him for long? “It is only a few days before the summer solstice. Do you still remember what I asked you to do two years ago?”

Again, Inigo was silent, only staring.

Anita gripped her knives breathed intensely. Deep inside, there was still enough of that innocent young girl she used to be to convince her not to drive her weapons into Inigo’s chest.