Daughter of Gods and Shadows (2 page)

Mkombozi bent at the waist to look directly into Eden's face. “
Thennnnnn—bringgggg—meeeeee—mmmmyyyyyyy—Omensssssss,
” she said sternly.

Eden became small again, and afraid. “I … can't,” she murmured, fearfully.

Mkombozi stood up.
“Thennnnnnn—diiiiiieeeeeee!”

She drew back her long shackled arm.

“You need me!” Eden blurted out in her panic.

Mkombozi paused, looked down her nose at Eden, and curled one corner of her mouth in a half smile.
“IIIIIII—doubt—that!”

Eden would never forget the sound Mkombozi's shackle made as it whipped through the air and landed against the side of Eden's head. She heard the sound of splitting wood, felt her body travel across sand, time, and space. Eden was beyond pain now, and thirst, and fear. It was over. She was over—finally. As her eyes began to close, a dark shadow cast over her—a bird, a man. The darkness cloaked her and held her.

“
Beloved,
” he whispered.

Eden tried to take a breath, but she was suffocating.

*   *   *

“Eden!”

Rose couldn't believe what she was seeing. She stood in the doorway of Eden's bedroom, clutching the inside door frame with both hands to keep from being thrown backward and out into the hallway. The force pushing against her was overwhelming, hot, and stifling. Rose could barely breathe against the air swirling in that room.

Eden hovered six feet above her bed, her arms and legs dangling, her back arched and her face raised toward the ceiling. Eden's eyes were wide, her mouth gaped open, her clothes drenched. Eden's body suddenly convulsed violently in midair, until finally she went limp and fell onto the bed again.

Rose rushed over to her. “Eden!” she gasped desperately, lifting one of her arms and both legs back onto the bed.

The nightmares were getting worse. They were getting so much worse.

Rose cried and cradled Eden's head in her lap. “Oh, sweetheart.”

A normal mother would've called an ambulance to rush her daughter to the hospital; maybe she'd have called a priest. But there was nothing normal about the kind of mother Rose was. And there was nothing normal about Eden. Rose just held her. She held her until the sun came up, and waited.

*   *   *

Eden had spent most of the following two days in her room. Rose understood that she needed time to sort through the nightmares after they happened. Eden needed to sort through so many things happening to her now.

“You should eat,” Rose said, setting a plate down in front of Eden, who had finally come out of her room and sat at the kitchen table and stared out of the window.

Eden wrapped her robe tightly around her. She hadn't looked at Rose or even acknowledged that she was in the same room with her, as if she somehow blamed Rose for how her life was unfolding.

Rose sat across from her. “It's important that you keep up your strength, Eden,” she said helplessly.

Eden drew her robe even tighter around her and ran her hand through her locks.

“I'm just trying to help,” Rose said.

“Help with what, Rose?” Eden finally asked, turning to look at her.

Dark half-moon circles cradled her eyes. Eden tried to cover the bruises around her neck with the collar of her robe.

“You gonna tell me more stories about Theia? Mkombozi and the Omens? About how she used them to save their world or how they used her to destroy it?”

Eden was a lonely and frightened young woman, and it broke Rose's heart.

“No,” Rose said, forcing a smile. “I suppose not.”

Eden pushed her plate away, stood up, and left Rose sitting in the kitchen. Rose was so tired. Tired from not being able to sleep for the last two nights, and tired of not knowing what was going to happen next to Eden. She had tried to prepare her from such a young age, mostly by telling Eden stories, but there were no stories that could've prepared anyone for the fate that awaited this young woman. There were no stories to prepare her for the things that were happening to her now or that would happen.

“She'll resist,” Khale n
é
e Khale had told Rose years ago, when Eden was a toddler. “I can tell you now that she will not embrace her fate, but will fight it.”

“Maybe she won't, Khale,” Rose had said, sensing the dread that Khale felt. “Maybe she will welcome it.”

But there was a knowing in Khale's eyes that warned Rose otherwise. “Teach her, Rose. Tell her those things that will help her to understand and to accept.”

“You know I will,” Rose said, anxiously. “You can trust me, Khale.”

“It's not
you
that I don't trust.” Khale turned to her and smiled. “It's her fear that I distrust. It runs deep inside her. I see it when she looks at me.”

“It'll be easier as she grows,” Rose tried assuring her, but once again, Khale knew better.

“Fear is her greatest enemy,” Khale said, staring admiringly at the child as she slept. “But the will of the Ancient inside her is determined, Rose. The fear and the Ancient will war until one wins, and Eden will pay the ultimate price,” she said, sadly.

Eden's nightmares were becoming more and more violent as she grew older. Rose worried that if she weren't diligent, if she didn't watch over Eden to assure her safety, that one of them might actually kill her. Wars were waged in Eden's dreams, wars that transversed the laws of physics, time, and space. She'd wake from them bruised, exhausted, and once she'd even fractured her wrist.

But the other night had taught Rose a valuable lesson. It had taught her that she was helpless to save Eden from herself now. And that if Eden didn't step up and accept her fate, and save herself, she would ultimately be responsible for her own destruction.

 

SAKARABRU

As Sakarabru gradually became aware of his surroundings, confusion and disorientation overwhelmed him. Was he standing? Was he lying down? He could not get his bearings. Shadows crossed in front of his eyes, fleeting and haunting. Smoke and haze distorted his vision. Where was he? What was this place? He fixed his gaze on an image, a form across the room from him. Familiar? Yes—vaguely. He knew it! He remembered that face, the face of the Djinn, Kifo.

“W-where am I?” He peered at Kifo demanding answers.

Sakarabru reached for Kifo, but his hand—what should have been his hand—passed through air. The Demon drew his hand to his face and stared into it, through it, almost as if it were not there, but he felt it!

“Kifo!” He stumbled toward the Djinn. “What have you done to me?” he yelled, terrified.

“I've done as I've promised, Sakarabru,” Kifo said unemotionally. “I've brought you back.”

He held his hands up to his face and looked down at the gray smoke that was his body. “As what? A ghost?” he asked, terrified.

The Demon saw a mirror on the wall across the room, made his way over to it, and stared at his reflection.

Sakarabru's body was shadow. He tried to clasp his hands together, but they would not touch. He attempted to sweep long strands of hair from his face, but his fingers passed through it.

Frightened and confused green eyes stared back at him through cascading strands of stark white hair. His hair and eyes were solid, but his body was liquid smoke, holding together in the shape of what used to be his physical body.

He turned again to the Djinn in a rage. “What have you done to me?” his voice bellowed as he looked down at Kifo, suddenly realizing how small the mystic appeared to be.

This was a trick. This one had the face of Sakarabru's loyal mystic, Kifo, but he was too small to have been him. His head was clean-shaven, his skin as dark as a night, but his clothes were different, strange and something otherworldly.

Sakarabru reached again for this imposter, but again, he could not touch him. “What have you done with my mystic?” he asked, suspiciously.

This imposter smiled. It was Kifo's smile. “You should sit.” He held out his hand and motioned toward a large chair that seemed to have appeared out of thin air. The Demon was weary. He needed to sit, and so reluctantly he lumbered over to the chair and hovered slightly above it.

Kifo, or whoever this being was, strolled casually to the center of the room, his hands clasped behind his back. He had Kifo's eyes, dark and unreadable. And the strange garment he wore was in Kifo's signature white color. If his intention was to torture the Demon, then Sakarabru would be too weak to stop him.

“Your condition is only temporary, Sakarabru,” Kifo said, matter-of-factly. “You have to understand that the amount of power, time, and energy it has taken me to bring you back is immeasurable. You have been gone for a very long time, but I didn't forget my promise.”

“Promise? What promise?”

Sakarabru's mind was still shrouded in darkness. He recalled images, glimpses of things, of moments that had been his life, but there was no single continuous stream of thought; no clear perspective of time or place would form to help him understand what was happening to him now.

“Why am I like this?” he asked, glaring at the imposter.

“You are literally a shadow of your former self now, Lord Sakarabru,” he explained. “But as you grow stronger, your form will solidify, and soon you will fully regain everything you lost in that battle against the Redeemer.”

“The Redeemer?” The mention of her name shed some light on his memory, a moment—a horrendous and painful incident that could not have possibly been real.

“The war,” Sakarabru murmured absently. He closed his eyes and listened to the echoes of screams rising up from the surface meeting him in the air. Beyond the echoes he could hear the song of the Troll Seers, a chorus of lamenting and sorrow. Sakarabru had been fighting too long and hard to get to that one moment that would solidify his place as the ultimate ruler of Theia.

He slowly opened his eyes and looked at the small version of the Djinn. “I was to rule them. All of them,” he stated quietly.

Kifo nodded.

Sakarabru and his Brood Army had all but destroyed Khale's Ancient forces. The Great Shifter had lost her territories to Sakarabru. She had been the most powerful Ancient in their world and the most determined. Khale shifted into her most dangerous form, that of a dragon with wings as expansive as the horizon, but she was still weak.

“Give up, Shifter! It is not necessary for you to die!”

She had been his once, only once for an evening. Khale n
é
e Khale had let herself be taken by him, seduced and loved by him, the Demon. She could be his again.

He had never felt more in control, more formidable than he was in that moment. Sakarabru controlled the most destructive army that had ever existed. Her forces were depleted until there was only a handful of them left. She had lost.

“It is over, Khale! You have nothing left!”

He surveyed the debris of wounded and dead bodies that littered the ground around him.

“If you want what's left of my territories,” Khale shouted, “you'll have to kill me for them!”

It was a shame. “So be it, Shifter!”

“It's been more than four thousand of this world's years since that battle, Demon,” the imposter continued. “Theia was lost that night with you. Those of us who survived have come to live in this new world.”

These things that Kifo was saying confused Sakarabru. What was he talking about? Four thousand years? This world? Panic began to overwhelm the Demon, and he tried to stand but he was too weak.

“This world? What are you telling me? The battle with the Redeemer was just…”

“Four thousand years ago, Sakarabru. And Theia is no more.”

If this was an imposter, then he was an imposter who took liberties with Sakarabru's patience. “Lies! You lie to me. You deceive me.”

Again, his memories sprung to life.

He looked at the imposter. “She was legend. A child's fairy tale. A myth.”

The imposter stared back at him but said nothing.

Sakarabru had been wrong. The Redeemer, Mkombozi, was no character from a child's story.

Thick tresses of black hair swirled in a twisted, chaotic mass around her head, hiding her face from him. She ran toward him, her chest lowered with her arms stretched behind her, fingers splayed wide on one hand, and in the other, she held her weapon, the
kpinga,
his weapon of choice. She had taken it from him. Strange markings shined on her arms and chest.

The symbols glowed a fiery blue bursting from her body. There were three of them, one on each arm, and one in the center of her chest, just above her heart. The symbol on her left arm was of a starburst with a small circle in the center. The second, on her right arm, was reversed, consisting of a circle with a small starburst at its core. The last symbol was a starburst surrounded by a circle, with a bolt of lightning crossing through it from top to bottom.

She wasn't like the other soldiers. This Redeemer rushed at him without fear or hesitation, and as she drew closer, she let out a yell, powerful enough to shake the ground, and swung the weapon through the air at his throat, missing him by a hair.

“The Redeemer! She is here!” Someone shouted from the survivors. “Mkombozi will save us! She will destroy the Demon!”

Their words infuriated Sakarabru, and he reared back, lowered his head with its massive horns, charged toward the Redeemer, Mkombozi, and impaled her through her stomach. Mkombozi, she did not scream, and she did not die. Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!

The Guardian was heard before he was seen.