Folks Of Fury (#1; Tales Of Elysia [COMPLETED])

twenty-six.

                                Ezra.

Five brothers journeyed to Hell to rescue their beloved sister from the afterlife that awaited her. They traveled the treacherous Road of Bones and waded through the tempestuous Lake of Blood.
The Lake of Blood was indeed tempestuous. I'm going to drown in a raging sea of blood.
Senoy was insane, I realized not for the first time. Brilliant, beautiful and wicked, but insane.
And perhaps the greatest, most unremorseful liar I'd ever encountered. And it was only now that I was thankful for it.
He'd almost had us fooled, taking that mad Fey's side. But now he's alone in this hell dimension.
A tremendous burst of lightning illuminated the sky, briefly turning night into day yet I raised a hand to shield my eyes from the slicing sleet storm.
In the distant I heard the cries of rage and bloodlust, battle screams and sword clashing against sword- ricocheting almost in rhythm of the thunder,
I didn't know how far I had followed the ley lines into this desolate and dark world, my mind was occupied with only the thought of getting to Senoy.
"He would be in grave danger. No creature was ever deemed to have such great powers and it will eat away at his soul the longer he stays with Liothan."
Those last words of Sophie St. Ours returned with better clarity now. This was what she had foreseen and had tried to warn me about.
A storm of the manic voices of damned shades and depressed souls trapped in this limbo descended through spaces betwixt.
When Senoy had told the Tale of Saints, I had honestly still seen it as what I had from the first time my mother had sang the story to me- a forgotten legend, nothing better than a bedtime story.
Nothing more. Yet here I was, walking along a winding road made of bones and skulls, polished to a shiny pearlescent glow, stretching for miles and miles into the shadowy distant.
This was no doubt the Road of Bones which the Saints had once walked.
There was so many pain and anguish here. So much confluence of magic that infected the blood of any creature trespassing. Even now I struggled to keep myself from Changing involuntarily.
The very air was pungent with turbulent energies that strengthened as well as poisoned.
My lungs were heavy and strained. I fell a couple times, hands clenched over marrow bones as I coughed hysterically, my sight was blurring from human to Hound.
If I felt this way, how could Senoy survive with his hybrid nature.
I walked on, towards the sounds of battle and screams. It might've been minutes, hours or years. I didn't know; Ether twisted time even worse than Faery.
On the way I was met with more of those shadow beasts. At least my incoherent Hound form was helpful enough to defend myself.
Spirits of dead whispered their warnings and I grappled to escape their nightmarish memories and scenes of their past lives.
I meandered away, keeping to the path of the Road of Bones lest I become a shade like those poor suckers.
But then after a while since I had ripped the last shadow beast apart, I came to a stop before a hooded woman sitting in a rocking chair, humming what I recognized as the Dog and Moon song but in eloquent French.
It was the stark familiar tones and cadence of her voice that had me staggering closer to the chair where she sat.
Her arms curved into a cradle as she smiled lovingly down at the bundle of blue she carried.
"Mama?" My voice cracked unbelievably, I stretched out my hand to touch her shoulders.
But I froze my movement. My mother.
It was definitely her, sitting in that rocking chair that Dad had stored away in the cabin he had had her locked up in years ago.
My eyes misted with unshed tears as I heard her speak to the child- me.
"Ezra... oh my Ezra... your life will be so hard... so, so hard. She told me my firstborn would have long hard future. A hero's life- a tragic love story filled with pain, happiness, adventure. She told me you could have a different story if I didn't marry Eleazar. She told me that my love for him would not only cause me pain but also curse your future... but I wanted him, there was no one who would complete me."
Her words faded into sobs, tears like liquid starlight dropping onto my baby self. Is this my memory or is her shade really here?
"I'm sorry, my cub. I'm so, so sorry for doing this to you." She wept and wept, and I realized that my own tears had breached and fell down my cheeks.
"It isn't a curse to love, Mama. A life without Senoy, even a happy one would be empty. There isn't a harsher curse to live with." And I turned and walked on down the road.