Reaching You

Chapter Eleven - The Demon Prince

"Someone's here," I whispered as the eerie face dissolved into thin air. I felt my entire body begin to tense as goosebumps aroused my arms and legs.

"What did you say?" Vincenzino wondered, interrupting his conversation with Alia. They both looked at me with curious eyes.

"I-I just saw a face in the chairs and it was surrounded by corpses. I think it was a guy... a guy that I've met before..." my voice began to trail off as my mind searched for that face in my memory. The more I thought about it, the more familiar that face became. Usually my mind was quick in responding to things but it felt as if my mind was purposefully slowing down.

"You're probably tired, Hikari. Let's go down to the green room below," Alia said, indicating towards the space in the black tiled floor.

Alia walked behind me and patted my shoulder which caused my legs to start moving towards the square in the floor. Though my body was doing one thing, my mind was struggling to find that face. I never was so intrigued by a person's face before. Well, more of scared than intrigued. His face was surrounded by corpses which sent cold shivers down my spine. I wasn't used to this feeling.

In Donalone, I was used to being emotionless most of the time. I was never scared to fight the Rebels or even Adam. You were born to fight. Nothing else. Maybe a few are lucky to reproduce but other than that, you were to fight. There was no such word as 'Mercy' or 'Pity' in our language. It was cruel and harsh. Which was why I always secretly longed to go on Earth. Bright blue skies and crisp emerald grass, it was an oasis to our disgusting world.

We had two suns and three moons that basked in gray skies. The only nice thing that I remembered about Donalone was when the sky turned from a blan gray to a breath-taking purple. I always enjoyed staring at the skies when no one was watching. Those were the few moments when I could forget all the nasty things that went on in the world and thought about the great ones.

"Be careful, Hikari. People have tendencies to lose their grip on the bars..." Alia's voiced warned in the distance. My head snapped out of the brief recap of my life. My eyesight was at it's lowest so I set it to average then began to lower myself down into the small green room.

The room wasn't actually small. It was rather large with stone walls that had different polygon shaped holes. In the center of the room was two long white couches that faced each other. In between the couches was a pitch black coffee table with a odd shaped case on top of it. Vincenzino hovered over the case and slowly placed his violin in it. Next, he snapped in his bow and zipped the case closed.

"This is where ancient instruments lay. Instruments back from the late 1700s and some from the 1500s. It's tough trying to keep them in great condition considering the fact that music is like a foreign thing in Helios.I do my best and now they're probably the world's finest instruments," Alia said proudly. She walked along the walls and peeked through each hole of the stone wall.

I plopped down onto the smooth couch cushion and watched the two people move through the room as if it were their home, which for Alia, it was. A jolt of sudden curiosity struck me as the room became awkwardly silent. "How did you meet Alia, Vincenzino?" I asked as he took a seat on the couch across me.

He glanced at me, as if I held the answer to my own question. Then he said, "Alia and I are childhood friends. I met her when I was on my journey when we were around thirteen. I was going to make a trade for some information on their enemy village. She reminded me of a girl from a neighboring village. In the distance, I saw Alia frolicking around the busy market street in this bright yellow dress."

Alia smiled then continued for Vincenzino, "It was my last day at an orphanage and I was about to be picked up by my new parents. I was so happy that I couldn't contain myself inside the orphanage so I ran away for an hour. I frolicked through the busy market street without a care in the world consequently  I bumped into a cart and kept getting yelled at. Thankfully, Vincenzino distracted that man long enough for me to get away from the market street. And that's basically how our weird friendship started."