Tragic Innocence

Chapter 45: Tragic Innocence

            Time marched on slowly as Crow and Zolata shifted as they gazed at one another.  Pentulla had remained still for the entire duration, eyes wide without so much as a blink.  They were both rendered quiet with a dark awe to what she had freshly exposed.

            “It all makes sense, now, my dreams.”  The two elves looked up at Pentulla, unsure that it had been she who has spoken.

            “Yes,” her voice had lost all vitality and all that was left was the rotting core of a once desirous fruit.  “The snatches of recollections that have been haunting me all make sense…  The voices, the weeping--all of it!”  Pentulla’s voice rose into a hoarse strain as she slowly straightened her back to face them fully.  Then she continued moving until her head bowed deeply into her cupping hands before her chest.

            “I have lost so much, so much…  He had been watching me and I had not known it.  I had not known it!”  A sob made ragged her speech and her slumped shoulders shook.

            “I was but a child when he came and took me away from my own home!  The last thing I remember was looking back and finding the cottage alive with licking flames--” her voice halted abruptly and she began to cough with violent fits.  “They never had a chance…  I lost them all in a sharp turn of an instant and they were all gone.  He whisked me into his dreaded fortress and bound me to the wall with these heavy shackles--” Pentulla lifted her tear-drenched face that was barely visible through the parting curtains of her hair,

“--in an alcove that overlooked a chamber suited for a queen.  And there, across the bed, was a window too lovely for what horror I was being faced with!  It was a mockery for him to have such beauty there!  I did not want any of it!”       Pentulla gazed at Zolata whose face was ravaged with struggling disbelief and a strained heart and enunciated, “It was he who forced me into acquiescing into his bidding desires.”

            Zolata nodded and blinked several times as tears clung like glistening dew upon her lashes of russet color.

            “He kept me bound in that alcove for very long time.  I can not recall their number for he had then created a magical barrier, keeping me from watching the sunlight’s ascent through the rose window.  He had thought that keeping me in the darkness would somehow make me pliable and fit for his commands.  It only made me stronger in my resolve against his cruelty.  He tried so hard to break my spirit, but I would not bend.”  Pentulla dared a flicker of a glimpse to Crow, but then kept her vision fixed ferociously upon Zolata.

            “Then one horrible day, after I was ravished for the wont of food and water, he entered and presented a drink rising with noxious fumes.”  Pentulla’s eyes glistened and burned with a throbbing light as she pressed on, her voice wild with emotion, “I refused to partake, which only angered him further.  He began to laugh so loud and deep, that it alarmed me greatly.  He smiled his oily smile and said just as greasily ‘I will break you.’”  Pentulla shuddered so hard that Zolata gasped.  Crow jumped from his chair, his hands out, ready to catch her.

            Pentulla glared at him.  “After that, he set a spell upon me and I drank deeply of the potion.  I was not myself hence and he called me by a name repulsive to me--”

            “Elondra,” Zolata dared ever so softly to speak the forbidden name.

            Pentulla’s eyes widened momentarily and she nodded vigorously as she pointed to her.  “Yes!  That’s it!  It was awful--his hands hurt,” she gingerly rubbed her shoulders and arms as she rocked back and forth, recalling Rolac’s viciousness upon her tender flesh.  “He forced me physically to drink his elixir, the elixir which ultimately erased any precious memory I had of my beloved family.  The elixir in which would utterly destroy my soul so that he could take command of my empty vessel.