Children of Chaos

Chapter 7

I open my eyes to intense darkness. Whispers and shadows emanate from the corners of the room, but I can't make them out. I'm no longer in the trailer home, but I don't know where I am. It seems familiar, but not in the comfortable way that home does.

Footsteps click across stone towards me, but I don't dare lift my head from my knees.

"She has to pay," whispers a dark voice to another. They're not speaking English, but I can understand them just the same. "She has to pay for what she did!" The voice rises in fury.

Another one hushes him and the footsteps stop. I stay where I am.

"Cabren, what she did was heinous, but the Protectors' teachings say to have mercy."

"Mercy?" Cabren asks. "After what she did at the Site of the Gift?"

"Yes. Besides," the other lowers his voice even further, "the Seers' writings indicate that she may be one of those who will give birth to the first reincarnation of the Protectors."

"She may be one of the prophesized Mothers, but her child is not guaranteed to be a Protector! You know the true prophecy, of the Dark One, the-"

"Destroyer. Yes, I know," the other cuts off Cabren. My breath catches in my throat. The Destroyer?

"We took her under our care, and she has done nothing but destroy and spread chaos in our community! She tries to run away, harm our leaders, defame our monuments-"

"And the Protectors teach we should have mercy still-"

"No! Mercy must be put aside, until there is order again in our community! How are we to preach about the Coming of the Protectors and warn the people against the Destroyer if we are ripped apart from the inside out?" Heavy footsteps click forward again, and I flinch as a rough hand rips my arm away from my body.

"Get up, you're coming with me," Cabren says. I lash out instinctively as he puts his hands around my body, and an animal cry erupts from my throat as my hands frantically pound at his grip.

"Stop this, pitxcha!" Cabren strikes at my face with much stronger force than my own, and he sends me to the ground. "See!" he shouts at his companion as I cower on the ground. "She's already corrupted! Not a Child of the Protectors at all, her instincts no better than a human!" He spits the last worst at me like curse.

My hands sparkle with what look like tiny lightning bolts, and I am suddenly aware of the rushing wind around us. I didn't realize it before, but we're outside, and the sky above forms with swirling clouds, deep green and purple and brown. Colors of darkness, which this monster says I am. Destroyer.

He drags me from the floor by the wall to face what I did around the corner. I stare at four stone pillars of equal height, inlaid with a colored crystal at the top of each, standing solemnly in front of a quiet pool of water and a stone altar.

Except the pool isn't quiet. It's rippling with the wind, its water murky. My captor throws me face first into the dirt in front of the pool. I look up and notice dark stains splattered and smeared against each of the rocks, and when I look down, I nearly gasp at my reflection.

I'm not me, but a monster, with enormous eyes, blue skin, and long, roped protrusions emerging like thick clumps of hair all over my head.

Then I realize this isn't me.

This is my mother. I'm reliving another one of her memories, fed to me through her necklace. I'm stuck in my mother's body, and my eyes gaze past her reflection to the murky pool when she does. My thoughts and emotions mix with hers, shame and fear.