Era of Wrath (Chrim Chronicles #2)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

God's eye

From every corner of the world, girls and women who merely tended their own lives suddenly shut their eyes and collapsed on the floor. Some of them walked on the streets when it hit them, others were at home or at work. They were witches, each and every one of them, though most remained unaware of their nature as they were not yet awakened. Most of them lived the life of a mere human up until Leodis raised the dead and sucked millions of witches into the past.

In India, a girl dressed in a red-and-gold sari embedded with stones, her head veiled and adorned with jewelry, watched the guests of her wedding as she fainted on the floor. In Kenya, a woman stood in front of a class teaching children dressed in white and black uniforms when she fell. In Iceland, a woman lay panting in a hospital bed, her hair and forehead covered in sweat, and stretched her arms to embrace her newborn daughter for the first time when the dark spell seized her. All around the world millions of witches blacked out at the exact same minute of twenty-one past three.

In Chrim, hundreds of witches fell with deep gasps and drifted to another world in a far past era. A past that desperately wanted itself to be known. No witch was spared from the bloodshed they were about to witness, even little witches as young as five could not be saved from the slaughter that was about to laid upon them.

CHRIM, YEAR 1634: THE FYNCE CLEANSING

They ran in masses, men and women carried and dragged along their children and banged on doors, crying for help as men holding spears and swords hunted them down through the cobbled streets. People they had once deemed friends and kin locked their doors and turned their heads from the Fynce bloodline.

They slit the throats of children and babies, coloring the streets red. A woman inside one of the homes spread her arms to shield the sobbing toddler crawling behind her, and the spear pierced right through her body inside her child's. The older ones, teenagers and adults, were thrown upon a burning pyre they could not escape from. Thick smoke emerged as they were all burned alive. Everyone watched. Some through windows, others from the streets or their balcony, each and every resident of Chrim watched the slaughter and did nothing.

The witches who blacked out began to sob and scream in their sleep as they watched hundreds be butchered and burned. They were there; they heard their screams and felt their fear and smelled the burning flesh and saw the slit throats of children and infants as they lay in motionless heaps scattered around the red streets; the millions of witches were forced to witness what none ever wanted to see and admit.

The past made sure that no one could ever deny the Fynce cleansing again. Because of the necromancer, the past made sure it would forever be scarred into their memory from this day on. When the witches awoke, they could not stop crying and trembling. Even if they knew nothing of their supernatural nature, one thing they all knew for sure was that what they had just witnessed was real. 

    Back in Chrim, Farren scrambled herself up and looked up at the figure staring down at her. A familiar face met her, with an unfamiliar darkness in her eyes. Blood shimmered inside the cut of her throat. Her blond hair was tangled, and her face smudged in filth. A smile appeared on Farren's face and a tear of joy rolled down her cheek as she stood face to face with her aunt Poppy. A loud smack echoed through the caves as Poppy's palm struck her niece's 's cheek. With shock, Farren rubbed her red-glowing cheek and looked with wide, fearful eyes at her aunt. Then sadness washed over her. Farren swallowed and looked down in shame as she finally understood why her aunt hit her.