Defiance: Perfect by Nature

Chapter Six: Silver Rage

Chapter Six: Silver Rage

The brilliant golden yellow sun that was hanging high above beat down brutally on the barren landscape of the Sahara Desert, and showed no sign of weakening as the day went on. Anna sat in the deep brownish orange sand with her knees pulled up to her chest and her eyes closed as she tried to get back to feeling normal again. Her entire body hurt and she was starting to get a crippling migraine, and whenever she tried to hold sand in her hands they shook so bad it was all gone in a matter of seconds. Whatever Gabriella did to her had taken a hefty toll, and she felt a little bit like she was mortal once again; only she wasn’t hungry or thirsty and the sun and heat wasn’t dehydrating her.

She knew for a fact that she had been impaled by Gabriella’s weapon, she had felt it slicing through her organs like a knife through butter; and she could feel her blood pooling beneath her as she was put on the ground gently by her. There was no wound, scar, or even scratch to prove it had ever happened though, and that troubled her a lot more than anything else. Immortals were able to heal their bodies at incredible rates when they were wounded, but only if it was nonfatal. The greater the wound the longer it took to heal. During a sparring session with Samantha, Anna had taken a sword through the shoulder when she was too slow to react, and it had taken nearly a week to heal up fully and leave no scar behind. The wound she had received from Gabriella should have taken a few weeks to heal, if not outright killed her.

Over the hours she had spent stuck there with Gabriella, Anna had asked her about that very thing, but would only get a shy smile in response to the question. After a dozen or so attempts she finally gave up and walled herself up in her own mind as she tried to unravel the truth about what had happened. There was no mistaking that Gabriella was now a full immortal, but there was still something very different about her. While the others were clad in golden armour and wielded golden weapons Gabriella used silver, and not just any type of silver. It was almost like mercury, a liquid silver substance that was able to change its form when she willed it, and Anna had never seen anything like it before. At first she wondered if Ares had done something to her, corrupted her in some way to achieve this, but the more she thought about it the more she realized just how ridiculous it was. She had heard the stories about the disfigured and corrupted immortals James and Amy had fought the last time, and all their weapons had been black and their eyes red, not silver. There was no dark magic in what Gabriella was.

That didn’t leave very many options left over, and Anna was at a loss to explain it. She had never really paid attention to the lectures and stories James and Erin had given her when she had ascended and now she wished she had. It might have been able to explain what was going on with Gabriella; but then again probably not. She was completely unique, and in the long history of time and creation there had never been a person like her before. And probably never would be again.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Gabriella spoke for the first time in hours, her tone playful, “How did a girl like me end up in a place like this, right?”

“At least you still have your sense of humour,” Anna responded dryly, not even looking up from the sand at her feet as it shifted about under her weight.

Anna could feel Gabriella’s smile on her, but again she resisted the urge to look up at her. Too many things were going through her mind right now and she couldn’t make any sense of it all. When they had found Gabriella in their old house she had been a completely different person, a darker version of the shy innocent girl she had once known. And Gabby had almost killed her before moving on to Erin. Yet here she sat now, oblivious to the fact that she had just killed someone she considered her aunt and making jokes like nothing was going on at all. Anna was starting to get the feeling that Gabriella had lost her mind.