A Tale of Traitors

Willow: Sunflowers

     The woods ended about two hundred yards from the massive base where my friends were being held and probably tortured. By the time Adresin had led me to the edge of the woods where we were concealed by bushes and trees, the suns frozen on the horizon. He had insisted we move slowly and cautiously so that we could be fully aware of our surroundings, which made our trek twice as long as it had to be. I couldn't help but be grateful for someone else out here. Anyone else. At least it wasn't just me against all of the guards inside. I'm sure it's confusing why I trusted him so quickly; the truth is, I had no other options. It was fight alone, with this stranger pursuing me, or work with him. Keep your enemies closer, right? I didn't think he was my enemy, though. Maybe I didn't know who he was, but at some point in my life I had known and trusted him. My gut told me to stick with him, at least for now.
"How's your head?" He asked quietly as we crept through the bushes.
"Huh?" I responded, pushing dark, thorny branches away from my face.
"I'm not sure where the spirits are... If one was close it would probably be calling to you. The fight inside might feel like your head is about to explode." He responded calmly.
"Oh. It feels normal."
He glanced briefly in my direction before putting all of his focus on the building.
"What's going to be the best way to get in?" I asked nervously, eyeing the frozen blue sun.
"Depends." He answered.
"Good talk."
"Willow, what're you hoping to find here?"
"My friends."
"No, I mean here in the realm. There has to be a good reason you guys came and stayed."
"Let's just get my friends first."
"If what you're doing here is more important than them, we can come back later."
"Are you serious?" I exclaimed louder than I'd wanted to.
"Yes, I'm serious." He focused those empty, dark eyes on mine. "I know you don't want to remember the past right now, but a few days before you were taken you told me that you had a solid plan to kill the king. You carried around this key card like it was more precious than your own life, and you hid it from everyone but me. You said if anything happened to you that I needed to retrieve the card, but no matter how hard I pressed you, you wouldn't tell me exactly what was on it. The night you... left... you made sure you crushed the card into a billion pieces. I found it shattered against the base of a tree. No one knows what was on it but you. Do you remember?"
"No."
He barely scanned my face before responding, "There's no use lying. If I'd wanted you dead, you would be, and if I wanted to turn us both in right now I could do so. You have no other option but to trust me."
"Fine."
"Did you tell anyone else about the key card?" He spoke quickly.
"Everyone who is captured right now."
"When I caught up to you guys, you were running from the wreck of Pirate Moonlight, right?"
"How'd you know?" I asked in annoyed surprise.
"Lucky guess. Did you take something from it?"
"Yeah—" My heart seemed to stop. Where was the box? I tore into my pockets, panic flooding through me until I dug through my backpack and my fingers scraped the hard outside of the treasure chest. I exhaled deeply and sat on a large boulder. "Yeah, I did."
"What is it?"
"I haven't looked inside."
"The spirit chasing you seemed almost desperate for that chest. I've never seen the spirits act like that before."
"They probably just wanted me."
He sighed. "You've forgotten how to lie. What aren't you telling me?"
I thought long and hard before I decided to tell him about Helena Magdalena, the witch, who came to me in a dream and restored my memory, and the list of places throughout the realms that concealed the pieces of a master weapon. I spared most of the details. "I remembered a list of places where these pieces are supposedly hidden. No other details. I don't know what to expect or what to look for. I just know it's important. Helena said something about her forces moving in two weeks... Do you know anything about that?"
He paused, maybe to process the information. Maybe to see if I was lying. "Helena is a very mysterious woman. I'm not sure that anyone can make sense of most of what she says. But, if I were you, I'd try to find all of these pieces as soon as possible. How long has it been since she said that?"
"I don't know... maybe a week? Time's been a little weird." My head ached with stress.
"Okay. That's not great news. Is this the second piece you have located?"
"Yeah. It should be in some place called Lux Mundi."
"So you know nothing about the place, where it is, or what it is?"
"Unfortunately, yeah."
"Lux Mundi is a castle in the clouds."
"What?" I nearly laughed at him. It would be pretty hard to get to a castle in the sky.
"It's a castle in the clouds, abandoned a few centuries ago when Tormod split up the realms. If my memory is correct, fairies used Lux Mundi as a base to capture and train baby dragons. Tormod's guards forced the fairies into another realm. It's safe to assume they booby-trapped the castle before leaving."
"I thought fairies were kind."
"They are, but that doesn't mean they don't want pets. Or traps." He shrugged. "I know the way. I can take you there, just be careful."
"And my friends?"
He went silent and bit the inside of his cheek, an old habit when he was thinking hard. Wait... was I actually remembering him?
"I'm not leaving unless I know they're safe or I can save them." I crossed my arms stubbornly.
"Okay," he grinned, which annoyed me. "How about I take you to Lux Mundi and then I come back and free them?"
My eyes narrowed.
"Unless you have a surprise ally you're not telling me about, you don't have another option."
"Right..."
"I guess this has to work then."
I nodded slowly.
"Are you going to open the box?" He nodded to the black chest in my hands. I had forgotten all about it.
"Oh. Yeah." I felt the rusty lock on the front that kept the small chest closed, took the hilt of the sword Syrnaffin had given me, and slammed it down on the lock, which broke right off. Something felt too easy about retrieving what was inside. I hesitated to open it. Taking a deep breath, I opened the box.
     A spell spat out of the box and straight into the air, projecting red and black spray at our faces and churning out a mechanical, evil laugh that rang through my head. No spells came to my memory—I could do nothing to stop it as it swirled through my hair and took my feet off the ground and prepared to engulf me. Black and red tornadoes swam through my vision, churning through my stomach, spinning me upside down. In a split second, a spell echoed in the distance, and I was instantly dropped flat on my back into the grass. The sky was peacefully silent, the world spinning in my dazed eyes. The nausea sank in and I barely had time to roll over before throwing up. The trees were spinning in circles over my head, around and around, moving closer and farther from my eyes. Every muscle in my body ached, colors changing in my vision, everything focusing and shifting and blending like a kaleidoscope. 


Vomit burning my nostrils.

Color blinding my vision.

My own feet moving without me.


"What's... going..." I attempted speaking before nausea struck me again, nasty liquid spilling all over my clothes.
"It was dark magic," Adresin said in a panicky voice, running as fast as he could while dragging my puking self along. "It affected you because you opened the chest. I used a spell to counter it, but this is the best I could do. How're you feeling?"
"Like I got hit by--a--truck."
"The spell shouldn't affect you too seriously," he said as we tore through the jungle. "At worst you might throw up a few more times. It's not fatal taken in small doses." He slashed some vines that got in our way, mumbling spells I'd never heard. They concealed our footsteps after our shoes left marks in the mud and dirt. I didn't bother asking where he'd learned to do that or where we were headed. We were in the opposite direction of the mountain—running from it—and there was nothing around that we could use to fly right up to a mysterious castle. Instead, we were headed to lower ground away from my friends and into the heart of a dark land that was foreign to me. We were most likely running from Exterminators and possibly spirits. Perfect. 
"Watch your step when we get to the sandier parts," Adresin sidestepped a sandy patch as he spoke. "It could be quicksand."
"That's on Earth, too, right?" My cheeks burned with the idiocy of the question.
"Earth got it from here," he smirked. "You sure you don't want your old brain back?"
"You mean my memories?"
"Yes."
"I do. Just not now, when I'm about to infiltrate a castle in the clouds and you're going to free my friends from where they're being tortured by Exterminators. There are better times to go through an identity crisis."
He went silent.
"Is there something specific you want me to remember?" I finally asked, annoyed by his silence.
"It would just help you if you knew who you were." He stopped running and we speed-walked instead. I could tell he was hiding something, but I didn't press him. I'd figure out his motives later. First, I had to spill my stomach contents all over the ground.
"Do you want to take a break?" He asked quietly.
"Nope." I wiped my mouth and continued slower, on my own, straining to see the world as it was.
     We carried on for about another hour in silence until we got to an open field of enormous sunflowers that towered over me. He motioned for me not to say anything, as if the field had eyes and ears of its own. It was hard not to be distracted by the quiet dignity of the gorgeous flowers as they allowed the sun's rays to bounce off their enormous yellow petals. For a minute, it was peaceful and quiet, and this short minute made it seem as if everything was alright, as if the world was as free and proud and gorgeous as these flowers. But the flowers and their brilliance were merely a mask to hide a deeper secret, one that had been long since buried. Still, it definitely felt wrong trekking into this lovely field with my weapons and a box containing a dark spell. I wanted to come back some other time in a dress with my hair braided and my teeth brushed so I couldn't taste the vomit. I wanted to come back with my books and read, maybe even dance here, and never leave. I love sunflowers. Always have, always will. I barely noticed Adresin landing on his hands and knees and scouring the ground for something until he tapped my foot for me to do the same.
"What am I looking for?" I whispered as quietly as possible.
"A white flower. When you see it, tear it out of the ground." He seemed to debate whether or not to say more. "I don't know what you're going to see up there. Just... trust your instincts. Nothing else."
"Thanks for your help. I wouldn't have gotten this far without you."
"Sure thing." He paused. "Be careful. I'll come back."
"So... just stay hidden up in the air in a castle that could be super dangerous?"
"Yeah, exactly. As long as you can." He caught my look of annoyance. "Trusting me is your only option."
"I understand." I nodded, and my eyes locked on a white flower. "I think I found it!"
"Pull," he said, his smile reflecting my excited tone.
Don't be nervous, I tried to calm myself down, as I had no idea what to expect. Just pull.
     My fingers closed around the thorny stem and bled onto the white petals, and suddenly blood was all I saw. Blood purged my vision and pain clouded my senses and suddenly I felt like I was shot higher than I'd ever been before and my adrenaline soared and then there was the sweet release of freedom. I tried to blink the red out of my eyes, striving to see clearly as I reached my hands out for something to feel. The red faded into black, but all I grasped was air and clouds. Darkness was closing in on me and closing in fast, and I began to panic more than I ever had in my life.

No, wait...

There had been one other time...