Death Was But the Beginning: A Dark Fantasy Series by April O'Malley

Author:April O'Malley [O'Malley, April]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Microsoft
Published: 2019-11-25T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 5: A Song of the Blood-stained Roses

Deep within the lonesome darkness of her mind, Numiria often sat atop a driftwood raft that floated down a ghastly grey river. On the banks were faces – children and aged – each of them familiar, each of them watching her in silence as the raft took her further down the river, where far more faces awaited her – watching idly by the shadows, in places she could not reach them. Deeper and deeper the river would take her, until at last she’d find herself at a great lake. And at the center of that lake lay a small island; awaiting her on that island was a man. She knew not his face – for she’d never seen it before – but she knew his voice, and she knew the warmth in each word he spoke to her. But then the raft would take a sudden turn away from the island, into another channel where the torrents ran rapid and wild. And when she’d turn over her shoulder, Numiria would see the man – still waiting for her in that island, fading into the distance.

With each sleep, the mage apprentice grew ever restless as her own twisted dreams haunted her. With each sleep, Numiria grew to hate sleep ever more.

A dream of shadows, a dream of sorrows in the night, a dream of tears that fell unseen; in these dreams, Numiria would relive the past she wished had never happened – to forget the dark deeds she’d once performed in service to a lord, who now lay dead and buried beneath the earth, nameless and forgotten, by her own hands no less. Even now, she could still feel that bloated fool squirming and writhing in pain and fear as she closed her hands around his neck and wrung the life from them until his bones snapped and blood gurgled out of his nose and mouth. That had been the first and only kill she personally enjoyed. And when the boss promised her that she no longer needed to kill anyone if she’d join his side in the budding syndicate, Numiria had no second thoughts and leapt into his arms. Though she’d never taken another life just as the boss had promised her, the smell of blood never left her clothes; it was always there, the blood of the undeserving and the innocent – forever staining her soul red, forever reminding her of the damnation she’d bathed herself in. When Numiria closed her eyes, she still saw the faces of the children she murdered, and the babies still sleeping in their cribs – their eyes locked with her own, asking the untold question even she hadn’t the answer to: why?

Why did you murder us?

Why did you kill me?

What did I do to deserve death?

She screamed into the sweat-stained pillows and pushed herself off the bed, tossing away her blankets and plushes as she clutched her head and sat by the window, where the cold

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