Soul Without Heart

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34.


Lidia

I watched Thorne move eastward, speeding away from me.

Finally, some breathing room.

I tried to contemplate my next move. Run and hide? Tough it out and keep lying through my teeth? Confess? I sighed, realizing any situation would end badly for me. Thorne was probably being ordered to arrest me now anyway.

I prayed Nameless wasn't here in this city, that she could get away. If it came to it and she and Ben were captured, I'd already resolved that I'd have no problem throwing Ben under the bus to keep us both safe. He was the one who started all this, it should end with him. Nameless' only crime was being too compassionate.

"Theron," Pyralis popped into my mind in that way that always felt like a violation, "The Brownsville resting ground is not too far from here, we shall head East towards there. There is suspicion that Nameless and the creature might be amongst the spirits that may still be hiding in that area."

"Understood," I responded.

So no arrest? Was my rues still holding up? Was there really any suspicion of her being east, or could this be a possible ambush planned against me?

Where was Artemis? She was supposed to be my mentor, she was supposedly watching over me. What did I have to do to get a little guidance here? Wave a red flag while dancing the polka?

I flew in my appointed direction, trying to somehow channel Artemis. It was so like a God, to never be there when you really needed them...

I reached out to my Level instead and connected with Hali, wondering if she or the others had picked up anything on Nameless yet. "Update," I spoke curtly.

"No signs of Nameless or the creature," she answered promptly. "Whereabouts are you? You've broken away quite a bit."

They were told nothing so far. I decided to keep them out of it as well. Safer for them and less bodies for me to fight if this exploded in my face. And I really couldn't stand fighting any of my team.

"Thorne and Pyralis have joined the search with our Level," I explained, "I'm with them."

"Why have they joined our Level?"

I fought the urge to tell her to quit her interrogation, but instead in a less suspicious manner repeated the phony reason Pyralis had given to me. "Lord Cyril was concerned that we were too inexperienced to carry out such an important mission on our own."

"That's...odd." She sounded skeptical, causing the nerves in my stomach to bunch up. I wish she'd just quit trying to figure everything out.

"You're telling me. Keep on your course and send me an update if you find anything," I said, trying to end the conversation.

"Understood Master." It sounded as if she had used the title lightly. Hali was too smart.

I cut the connection, left with my own dreary thoughts.

I was in this alone. There would be nobody to fight for me when things went sour except for myself. But hey, I was used to being alone by now, wasn't I? Afterall, my differences in opinion were never really celebrated by the others anyway. A part of me knew that although I was an excellent Seeker, I didn't belong with them.

It seemed a good idea at first, a quick fix to getting the heck out of Purgatory early, to have a chance to step back onto Earth once more to maybe find him again and settle the score, but I hadn't been banking on how cruel the job of a Seeker actually was. There was no grey area when you were a Seeker, things were simply black and white.

Your husband was beating you black and blue everyday, and one day you became so scared you blew his brains out? You should have just taken the beating that would probably have killed you, that would be a much better escape.

You and your friends were goofing off on some boat when you both fell overboard, and you didn't let them drag you to the bottom with them because they couldn't swim and you couldn't hold your breath any longer? You should have died with them.

Your mother's knelt in front of you, blood pouring out of her eyes, down her cheeks, from the strain, her arms twisted so terribly that bones come jutting out of her skin, while she's begging you – her twelve year old daughter who is shaking so badly and sobbing so wildly that you can barely keep hold of the blade – to please kill her before that thing can take her over again and kill you like it killed your siblings. And you do it. God help you, you do it. Then it's to Purgatory with you.

To hell with that.

Truth is, I couldn't be so good that I was heartless like all of the others eventually became. Because that's what being a Seeker was, sacrificing your heart, compassion, and sympathy for the greater good – a means to an end . To become righteous. And maybe I could have done that, had I not met Nameless, who changed my whole perspective on the Between. Who reminded me that I still had a heart, no matter how damaged and broken it was from the day of my death.

Simply put, I was too human to be a Seeker. I belonged out in the lands of Purgatory, staring vacantly into the sky with the rest of the Between, because that's what I was...between the need for clemency and the erroneous desire for revenge. Good and evil, as all humans were. Death could not releive my burns, nor could all the time I had been biding serve to stifle what was ignited in me that night. Burnt to dust, I rose up from myself, a renewed kind of creature, one with a singular, grisley agenda. Could forgivness really be granted to such strife?

Despite this realization, I could not loose my anger enough to renounce my decision to avenge my family, but I was no Seeker, and certainly I was no Goddess.This little charade was coming to an end, and where I would end up I didn't know, but I couldn't help feeling a little sense of pride in myself. I never lost my heart throughout this journey, unlike a true Seeker. I was just as human then as the day my twelve year old self found Purgatory.

With that sense of pride stirring up a new fire within me, I launched forward even faster, eager to get to the graveyard to meet my fate. I wasn't scared of Oblivion, and if it was to Oblivion I must go, I'd take as many of them as I could with me.

A true being cannot exist without a heart; their soulswere already gone anyway    

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