We Are: Waking The Fallen

3: The Children With No Hearts

"Oh, wake up... wake up!" A gloomy eyed boy begged to sleeping girl. Both of them had short, messy and matted blond hair. His voice slowly penetrated her deep, dreamless sleep and her gloomy blue eyes inched open slowly, her delicate features marred by that of stitches and scars. Her hair was short and matted, much like her tiwn brother. "Praise the gods!" He cried hoarsely, "Gem..." He stared sadly at his sister. She gazed back, her expression emotionless.

"Irvy." Gem responded to her worried looking brother. "I told you to never wake me up!" She yawned and rose to her feet, the edges of her vision going fuzzy and her her head started spinning. A sharp throbbing pulsated through her forehead, piecing her skull with each movement, each breath that she took. Every sound that her brother made threatened to explode her eardrums. "Gods... how much did I drink last night?" Reflecting on this, Gem was confused- her head was pulsating and she looked terrible- she was only a ten year old girl, who had never seen a drop of alcohol in her life.

"Irvine." Gem's brother corrected. "Anyway.. Where are we?"Irvine looked around. 

"It looks like the field next to our village." Gem stated, folding her arms and looking around slowly/ Her brother did the same and sighed, murder for hi twin sister's ears. "We should get back.."

"No!" Irvine yelled, causing Gem to flinch and cover her ears. "Sorry," He said, quietly this time. "but we can't. It's too dangerous," Irvine muttered, a terrible dread filling his youthful, unbroken voice. "Don't you remember, Gem?" This earned a blank stare for the dirt covered girl. "We died." 

"....Oh." There was no flash of recognition in her dull gloomy eyes.

"Our hearts were ripped out of our chests," there was still no sign of remembrance. "And eaten while we died, by the Gallows, remember?" Gem opened her mouth slowly, like a fish, before closing it, frowning an repeating the process. The prickly grass stabbed into the bottom of her bare, discoloured feet and mud coated her arms and face from where she had Awoken in the field. She felt every clumped strand of hair on her small head and every reconstructed muscle in her Undead body.

"Aaaaaaah." She breathed. "i remember." As soon as she said this, a suffocating breathlessness took hold of the pair of them and they staggered, before falling to their knees. Breath forced it's way out of their marred lungs but never returned. Ichor-like blood stopped pumping around their heartless bodies,  before they fell back, into the river that fed the fields, thick with mud and waste, and deep enough to allow the Undead to sink bellow their heads twice. They gasped and struggled, thrashing weakly, surmounting into tiny twitches as they tried to swim to the surface. The water dragged them down, filling their lungs and rendering them even more useless to breathe. They sunk to the bottom of the river, hair and clothes slick with mud and waste and everything in between. 

Gem hit the bottom first, her vision completely filled with water and her mouth open,trying to gulp in air, but all she swallowed was bits of plant and human waste. Irvine followed shortly after, his eyes squeezed shut and mouth clothed tightly, but bubble rose from his nose as he inhaled the polluted waters. 

This was when a pair of strong hands gripped each of them and pulled the children out from the river. Water spilled from their mouths and noses as the suffocating darkness receded, and Gem started vomiting, water flowing from her filled lungs. Irvine just spat and writhed, gurgling softly. Then the cocking of a gun filled their water-logged ears, as two men and two horses rose up before them, each pointed a shotgun at each of the twins' heads. Gem looked at Irvine and gulped.

"The Undead have no right to stay alive." The tallest of the two men stated.

"Go back to what ever pit you crawled from!" The shorter one cried and aimed his gun. There was a crack as the two men shot,, but the pain the twins expected never came. A woman, tall and elegant with skin paler than snow and hair blacker than coal stood before them, holding two bullets between her perfect slender fingers. 

"No one hurts my children." Her voice hissed out, cruel and tainted, the opposite of her outstanding beauty, 

The twins gawped and paled, and the men with the guns screamed as the woman threw the bullets back at them, with the same speed and power as there would have been if it was fired from a rifle at point blank. 

The twins were the first of all of the Undead in history to meet the Dark Lady face to face as she acted to protect someone. She is a woman of shadows, but... more on that later. Five Undead have been Risen and far more are to come. Perhaps you should care to listen to me some more, as I tell you the tale of our grand heroes fight against the power that restrains all of the Undead- The Living.

Are you prepared to continue children?

~Spiral- your king, your queen and the all powerful ruler whom you'll never see.