Eodem: A Rifle and Sword Adventure (Complete)

Chapter 36: Open your Eyes Aliathra

'She has a Heart of Stone!' the Neneth Oathtaker condemned with an equally denunciatory finger that pierces her soul.

No! my heart remains pure!

'Did they promise you with Power? Money? Immortality?' her old friend Lyndis beseeched in disbelief. Her sorrowful overture shared with everyone else in that cold Vercourt barracks on that fateful day.

They showed me another world! Another way!

'You will die here Demon!' Eriande convicted her for the Abyss with her sword raised in her 'dutiful' act of purgation of all threats to the Ethuilen People as sworn by a Rainbow Helm.

Stop this madness! I am still Aliathra Lareththor, Royal Princess of House Lareththor.

'Our Daughter...' She can here the collected voice of her parents. King Aslan and Queen Elisven

'Dear Sister of mine...' then followed by her older brother and sister, Valorion and Ithiel who spoke in unison.

'For Shame! For Shame on you! Oh, woeful travesty of the esteemed Lareththor lineage. You, Aliathra Lareththor, supposed pure maiden of our sacred bloodline. Now corrupted, tainted beyond redemption in your mind, body and soul!' Her entire family renounced her.

No! This cannot be! I remain ecclesiast to Neneth, Goddess of Life. I did not wish nor desire too...

'You are not good enough!'

Please...

'Our Aliathra is dead. You were never a Warrior nor a Cleric. You will NEVER be good enough!' she can hear her Family banish her.

"NO!" Aliathra opened her eyes, and let out a great shriek.

A loud crash from a metal tray unbalanced Doctor Lee Haneul causing the Elf's ears to reverberate violently as Aliathra's breathing quickened.

"Oh dear, please calm down." Dr. Lee Haneul consoled her whilst she picked up her tray of medical tools. "But hey, at least you are awake." She smiled sweetly.

"What happened to me? I remember a fire, blood and..." Aliathra rasped but she felt the soft warmth of Dr. Lee Haneul's hand placed behind her.

Examining closely her surroundings, Aliathra noticed that the same monotonous white walls and the scent of chemical medicine bubbling around her that she was again inside New Albany's Military Hospital under the tender care of Dr. Lee Haneul, a Physician of repute that the Elven Princess has come to deeply respect for her healing abilities without the aid of Magic or Arcane instruments.

"You are back in New Albany now Miss Lareththor. You are safe herd with me." the doctor's lithe voice comforted the elf's ears.

"But... I remember... the fire... my eyes... they were seared by Eriande's... Fire Magicks. W-wha--- am I...all right?" Aliathra sobbed.

"About that..." Dr. Lee Haneul stammered.

"Is... it..." Aliathra equally stumbled in her speech.

Her heart feared the very worst, yet a part of her wishes the pain she saw, felt and inflicted upon herself, her people and her family were all just a dream. But it was for not, as the baby-faced Doctor of Korean descent presented to the Elf a transparent container, a glass jar filled with a transparent preservative liquid, retained securely within a pair pinkish-white jellies with a crimson rope linked to the said blobs. By the end of the crimson rope, was faint stains of blood coating the colorless preservation liquid in rose. It wasn't rope, to Aliathra's horror, they were blood veins. Even her Arcane-sensitive Elven physiology can detect the faint traces of Magic left behind in that macabre model. She felt the Gui of both Eriande's Fire Magicks and her own Restoration magic still left innate by those two slime blobs that were once her immaculate azure eyes.