Prisoner of Chaos (Redemption Book #4)

Chapter 21

Kyla

For the first minute after Ash disappears I can't breath.

A knot in my stomach forms and I cough vomit over the side of the balcony till my gut hurts, but this fit of nausea is not from morning sickness.

I'm now knowledgable to two horrible things:

First, in a terrible future where the Dark Lord ends the world, Rift and I have a beautiful, brave son named Ash, but the child in my womb now isn't Ash. Ash doesn't exist in a future where Rift dies with the Dark Lord because, second, that is the only future were the world won't end.

The sound of my own heartbeat clanging in my ears drowns out my thoughts. A drakon-like roar of utter agony erupts from my human throat after I'm done emptying my stomach.

My Rift must die in order to prevent the end of the world.

Life is brutal, unforgiving, and merciless.

Perhaps I am truly Cursed in every way. Not just in the damned drakon wings coming from my back, but in my fate. Are all of the Cursed doomed to suffer? Ash had said I'd told him to think of himself as a Drakon Blood. My poor child, you are indeed Cursed as I.

My brow furrows and tears fall over the balcony into the icy wind of Erlund.

I step onto the balcony ledge and roar again. This time I allow my bones to shift, ripping the dress Rift created for me down the front savagely. I embrace the pain of the transformation. I let it tear through my body as my skin stretches and bones crack and reform.

The beast I become perches on the rail of the balcony, but the stone fails my larger frame, cracking beneath me. I don't care what happens to King Lionel's castle. I raise my wings and launch myself off into the skies, emitting an ear-splitting shriek in my anguish. By the time I turn my monster head back at the balcony a group of bystanders are watching me with frightened gazes. I hiss back at them and shake the remains of my dress from the spikes coming from my back. The fabric falls, bedraggled into the winter wind, symbolic of my soul.

There is nothing left to take away from me.

I fly up into the mountains of Erlund and land in the snow, snapping my wicked jaws at the snowflakes as they fall.

A painful, restricting shudder runs through my beast's lower abdomen. Am I having morning sickness as a monster too? I pace on the cliff's ledge and another painful constriction hits. My beast wails in the pain. My body shakes, wings and claws rattling.

Arlite, this hurts so bad! What in Axus is this?

The instinctual animal part of me speaks to my mind, Leave this cold nightmare. Find a safe, warm place.

"There has never been a recorded female Cursed before you. All normal blooded women who carry a Cursed die."

I recall these words as another tightening circles through me.

Ugh, there it is again! My lower abdomen, pulsing tighter, and tighter until I feel as if my insides are crushed.

I'm having labor contractions, but it doesn't make any sense. A normal gestational period for a human is nine months, not a month! Am I miscarrying?

Find a safe, warm place. Make a nest.

I raise my wings and take to the air once more, rising above the clouds to quicken my travel time.

My body is telling me I'm going to have this baby. While in my monster form. All by myself.

Is this what Ash spoke of when he'd said I needed to nest and have Raia?

Raia. What a nice name. I like it.

I fly over the mountains of Erlund. On and on I fly. Hours go by, the torturous contractions continue, but my beast seems to know the way.

The Dark Lord did this to me and he should die a slow death. This didn't come from my love for Rift, but from a cruel trick performed by the master of evil.

If it wasn't enough that one fleetingly cruel and pleasurable moment for him resulted in an endless bout of vomit and dry heaving for me, now I'm bearing through the agonizing sensation of my body attempting to turn itself inside out!

My nostrils pick up the scent of greenery and saltwater. I descend upon a thick layer of clouds. The lower I get the warmer the air around me.

It's raining under the clouds, but I can see the vast spread of grey-blue ocean beneath me. A scattering of lush tropical mountainous islands greets my gaze.

Beautiful. Warm. Quiet. Safe. Nest here, my beast tells me.

I inhale through a contraction and swoop lower.

My monster claws rasp against the slippery edge of a mountain as I attempt to a grip like a cave bat onto the rocky crags.

A contraction shudders through me once more, this time lower in my abdomen, placing an even greater unbearable pressure in my core.

The need to push.

I clamber into a nook within the mountain side, covered from the pouring rain. With my front claws I dig into the rock, then I use my muzzle to nudge the loosened rocks about until I've a place to rest. Nest.

So much work for a miscarriage, I think begrudgingly.

My body takes over the rest of the work as I lay there. Occasionally moaning loudly. I close my eyes. my moans turn to a cry into the wind as my contractions intensify. I picture standing on the edge of my cavern, a lean, masculine human figure with eyes glowing amber at me, the rain dripping over him as he watches as I endure. As the pain wracks through me I imagine a self-satisfied smile spreading across his face. Suffer, bitch.

I wish I wasn't alone. I wish someone where here to hold me and tell me I'm going to be fine. Comfort me through my battle. My mother, Helle, even Lila.

But here I am, isolated from the rest of humanity, with no one to empathize or love me. All I have is a haunting image of Rift as the Dark Lord, mocking my anguish and despair.

Story of my life.

Arlite, it can't last longer than this! This is unrelenting, unimaginable pain. Is there an end to it or will I hang in this place of horror forever? The exhaustion is worse than anything I've experienced. Will my body just give up already? It's obviously not going to happen...

But then I shudder with what seems like one last attempt, my beast gives a long, thunderous roar and I'm sure anyone within a hundred miles can hear it.

Then my body quiets and a wonderful wave of relief washes over me.

Silence follows.

No sound of a wailing baby.

Miscarriage, just as I suspected.

I shakily rise from the nest I've made and turn, ready to see whatever nightmare of a dead child I've given birth to, but instead I find a round, glossy, black egg with white speckles almost the size of my head resting in the rock.

I stare at it in disbelief.

If I wasn't freaky enough, now I've given birth to a giant, Cursed-beast-sized egg in the middle of nowhere.

I'm cut off from the rest of my race by this.

Sylphs lay eggs, birds lay eggs, drakon's lay eggs, snakes lay eggs... but humans NEVER lay eggs.

This can't be right.

And then a horrifying thought hits: what if the baby inside this egg isn't human at all?