Immortal Betrayed
the sequel to breath of the immortal
Chapter 17
"Garridan, this discussion is not over, but right now I need you to help us get everyone and everything safely to shore," Didier said to him, with Pattin standing beside them.
"Sigh. I guess I have no choice but to do as I'm told," Garridan didn't want to admit.
"Wise decision," Didier smiled. "Pattin, escort our friend Garridan here on deck and allow him to help get everyone ashore."
"Aye, Captain!" Pattin exclaimed leading Garridan out of the room. Didier stroked his chin in deep thought as he watched them depart.
What luck he had had that his stowaway would be the very same man he had been trying to get rid of before they arrived on the ship! He wondered how much trouble Garridan would cause once he saw Tiana. As soon as he thought of her name, his mind's thoughts went directly to her and the child she carried—his child. There was no doubting that no matter what happened, she needed to remain alive at all costs.
"You were thinking of me again, weren't you?" a meek voice interrupted his thoughts from the doorway.
"How do you know what was on my mind, least of all you!" he commented back at her.
"Because you always stroke your chin when you are deep in thought," she mused. Immediately, Didier scowled at her.
"I see your sarcasm has returned," he commented, keeping her gaze fixed.
"You really think falling overboard would have gotten rid of it? Didier, you should know by now that nothing will stop me from making the remainder of your eternity a living hell!"
Unable to control himself and wanting nothing more than to shut her mouth, he had his arm around her waste faster than she had a chance to react. He leaned down and kissed her, passionately and with such fervor that it left her breathless, and surprisingly wanting more. He trailed kisses across her cheek to her ear and after nibbling gently, he whispered into it.
"You can't give me a life of hell when I've already lived it. From now on we either live out this eternal life together or you can find a way to live it alone!" he breathed and began to kiss her neck.
"I hate you!" she breathed.
He brought his lips back up to hers and stared into her eyes while they were inches away from his, before kissing her again. "No you don't," he proudly stated in between the kisses. "And the child you carry is proof that no matter what words you say, your heart knows the truth!"
She quickly turned her face away from his lips, not wanting him to continue. He pulled back and looked down at her eyes. His eyes followed the curve of her body and finally rested on her stomach. Taking a step back and surveying her body, he smiled, and gestured toward her.
"May I?" he asked before placing a hand on her stomach. She simply nodded, knowing there was no way to tell him no. As soon as he felt the child move, he smiled, but not the type of smile she had been used to seeing. This time he smiled as if he was truly happy instead of smiling to spite her.
For the first time since she had met him, she saw him as a genuine person, rather than a hypocrite or a monster or a selfish and revengeful man. He touched her stomach, knowing the child that they created together was something more than just leverage for an argument. That child was the one thing that bonded them together; that bonded her bloodline to him. It was the child that her great-great-great grandmother could not give to him to continue his bloodline nearly two centuries ago.
* * * * *
That night and early into the next morning, Lel spent awake and by fire light, reading over the words to the rituals he had discovered. He wished he knew what they all meant but nothing he was reading made sense. After awhile the words started to blend together and he could hardly focus his eyes. Rubbing them continuously, the words remained blurry and he knew he was very sleep deprived.
A silhouette in the doorway made him look up suddenly from his blurred reading. Patia stood there, her frail body shadowed from the candle that burned next to where he sat. As soon as she took one step into the room, his eyes lit up and a soft smile formed on his lips. She took another step closer and smiled back down at him in return. He signaled with his hand for her to sit beside him and he quickly shut the book and pushed it aside as she snuggled up next to him.
Wrapping his arm around her and pulling her closer, he gently kissed the top of her head. She looked up at him through amorous eyes and he instinctively leaned down and kissed her waiting lips. Before their kisses took their breath away, Lel leaned back and held her face in his hands, demanding her eyes' full attention.
"Are you ok?" he asked her with some concern.
"I'm fine. Or at least I'll be in another day or two." Her sudden coughing though made him cock his eye at her and become even more concerned for her health. The voice that spoke to him next was unfortunately not Patia's.
"Ah, my sweet, when will you learn never to ask stupid questions?" Syeira's voice asked sarcastically.
"Why do you always come around when I least want you to be here?!" he spat back at her.
"Because I don't want to see you happy!" she replied, smiling.
Then Lel remembered the book beside the bed and decided to see if his plan would work against her. "I found something that belongs to you," he smiled, reaching down and pulling the book around from beside the bed.
Syeira nearly squealed when she saw the book in his hands and almost leapt across his lap to get at it. Lel pulled it back and shook his head, making her pout like a child. "You've done some very bad things with this book and I don't think you should be allowed to have it anymore," he simply said, reprimanding her as if she really was a child.
"But what use do you have for it? You don't know how to use it!" she argued, reaching for it again with little success.
As if trying to prove her wrong, he flipped to one of the pages he had marked and clearly and precisely read every single word. Satisfied that he had done it correctly, he closed the book and put it down in his lap, then looked over at Patia. Syeira still smiled her usual mischievous smile and he didn't feel any different. Then things began to happen which neither Lel nor Syeira were prepared for.
Patia's body started to breathe heavier and her heartbeat began to race. Her face became distorted as Syeira's presence within her tried to keep its hold. Much to Lel's satisfaction and awe, the spell was working, although he wasn't sure of the outcome, but in the back of his mind he had a backup plan if things went awry. Patia opened her mouth to try to scream but instead a cloud of smoke came out and Lel knew he needed to act fast for his plan to work properly. He recited yet another spell that he had carefully chosen from the book and this time Syeira's entity entered his own body.
Not wanting this process to take too long, he flipped to another page in the book. Using Syeira's powers inside of him, he recited the spell of immortality and immediately a faint glow began to surround Patia, who had been sitting next to him perplexed and scared at what was going on. Inside of Lel, Syeira tried to gain control but because his body was not weakened by any means, she was trapped, her powers being used against her. He looked over at Patia and noticed she was having trouble breathing. Holding her throat with her hands, she gasped for air and widened her eyes in fear as the light around her grew brighter.
He quickly grabbed for one of her hands and held onto it tightly, attempting to silently reassure her that everything would be alright and she needed to trust him. But when her eyes closed and her body slumped backwards onto the bed, he frantically flipped through the book to find the right spell to fix things. Beginning to recite another spell, he started to violently cough—a clear sign that Syeira was trying to break free from his body. Closing the book, he stood up and looked down at Patia's body on the bed, still motionless, giving him the strength he needed to finally rid them both of Syeira forever.
Going back to the book in his hands, he forced himself to find the right spell—one that would give him the power to control his own immortality instead of Syeira. This particular spell was far back at the end of the book and was written small, almost as if whoever put the book together did not want anyone to discover its existence. Carefully and succinctly, he spoke every word but when nothing happened he got angry and almost threw the book across the room. Remembering what the medicine man had said about his anger though brought him back to the reason why he needed to fix this and he started to use his head instead to figure it out.
He walked over to the far corner of the hut and faced a full-length mirror he had salvaged in the rough sea voyage. Staring straight at his own image, he recited the spell a second time, and this time he felt it working. He was pushed back with an agonizing force of pain starting from his abdomen and moving upwards towards his heart, neck, temples, and skull. Dropping the book and clutching each part of his body as the pain coursed through him, he then dropped down to his knees, writhing in agony. He had never felt such power in all his life and he wanted more than anything for the pain to subside. When the pain had subsided somewhat, he slumped over onto the floor, his body still slightly twitching.
* * * * *
"I need to leave for awhile," Didier said to her later that evening, stroking her hair as she lay in his arms.
"Is there a reason why I don't feed the way you do?" Tiana asked him innocently, looking up into his gray eyes.
"Remember, mine is a curse. I feed on many to remain alive. You only fed from me so therefore you have no need to feed on others," he continued to smooth out her hair and look into her eyes.
"Do you have to leave so soon?"
"The sooner I leave, the sooner I can return to you," he replied leaning over to kiss her forehead.
A part of her didn't want him to leave but a part of her knew he had to. He leaned down to kiss her lips quickly, got up from the bed, and left her alone. Although Tiana was very capable of fending for herself, she hated being alone. Too many things had happened to her when she was left alone—things that she herself could not defend. TimeS and again she had to have someone else save her from her demise and a part of her resented that. She almost felt weakened by her own fears when Didier wasn't around. Trying to let the boat's gentle rocking lull her to sleep, she laid her head back down on the pillow and slowly began to drift off.
Footsteps above deck jolted her awake soon after though, and she nervously listened as the steps came down the stairs to the lower level of the boat and closer to the room. After hearing the footsteps stop, she breathed a sigh of relief, but when the door flew open, she jumped back in the bed and screamed. The person in the doorway screamed as well and pulled a light up to survey the room. When the light hit her face, she shielded her eyes with her arm and finally spoke to the intruder.
"Put that down, you're blinding me!" she shouted into the light. The light was immediately lowered and she peered into the darkness. "Who are you and what do you want?" she tried to speak in a demanding voice to deter her intruder from attacking her.
"Tiana? Is that you?" the voice of the stranger replied.
"Shine the light up to your face so I can see you better," she demanded. Obediently, the stranger lifted the candle up closer to their face. "Garridan?" she asked, surprised to see him here.
"I'm so sorry if I intruded on your sleep, Tiana," Garridan stammered. "I was looking for Didier and the others said he might still be here on the boat."
Tiana leaned over and lit another candle at the side of the bed and gestured for him to come further into the room. "You just startled me, that's all. I'm sorry if I wasn't who you were looking for."
Garridan came into the room and set his candle down on the table nearest to the door and sat down on the chair opposite the bed, to better converse with her. "I'm glad you're ok. I wish I could say the same for your sister," he replied solemnly, bowing his head as he spoke.
"What happened to my sister?" she demanded, worried that she was no longer alive.
"On our way back to the boats, she stopped on the beach in pain. We didn't know it until she was examined by the medicine man, but she had lost a baby." Tiana had already known her sister was going to have a baby, but upon hearing the sad news, gasped and gripped the side of the bed. Garridan continued. "She had not broken a fever when I was unfortunately thrown overboard by the storm. They never came around to find me and I was lucky to have been picked up by Didier. I will never forgive Lel for keeping me on deck when he knew I had no balance at sea and when he knew I should have been below deck with Patia!" he growled.
"But my sister, is she ok?" Tiana exclaimed, not caring too much for Garridan's quarrel with Lel. As far as she was concerned, Lel meant nothing except as her sister's lover. Her sister's life was more important to her at the moment.
"As far as I know she is. The medicine man was keeping a close watch on her condition but the baby is gone. And I'm not sure if it was even mine!" he whined.
Tiana couldn't help but roll her eyes. As much of a man as Garridan was in stature, his maturity never seemed to come close to Lel's. She had always tried to push Garridan onto her sister because she had felt he was a better match than Lel, but listening to him just now made her renegotiate her argument entirely. Garridan had so much more to learn about life and that it wasn't all about the fanfare you write about in stories. At least Lel was experienced and in a way Tiana felt that her sister was more protected now than when she was around Garridan.
"I'm sure that if it was yours, she wasn't supposed to lose it," she reassured him. "Things happen the way they are supposed to, I guess," she sighed.
"You wish you were with her too, don't you?" he asked her with some concern.
"I wish that she is able to live a complete and full life and that no harm will come to her," she concluded, not wanting to get into her own fears.
"You miss Lel don't you?" he concluded, making her look up sharply. "I can see it in your eyes. You feel he chose the wrong sister, don't you?"
No one had ever asked that before. She did not know how to react to it. After everything that had happened when her father died, she swore she would never forgive him. He was the last person to see him alive and he was the only one that somehow knew why it all happened the way it did. Being the keeper of such secrets, as well as his incessant love affair with Syeira, caused her to be even angrier with him. When he had finally admitted to her that he loved her, it became harder to resist him and even more difficult to keep her own feelings hidden. It wasn't until after he had begun to show signs of affection towards her sister that she grew suspicious of his true intensions with her. Even so, he had always come to her aid and she appreciated that more than anything.
"That's not true!" she tried to protest, keeping her true feelings as hidden as possible.
"It's ok to admit it. I didn't want him to choose her either."
"What did you want with Didier?" she asked, attempting to change the subject.
"I wanted him to finish his conversation we were having earlier, but I can see that since you are here, he was lying to me anyway!"
"What did he say?" she grew suspicious. He shook his head, wanting no part of the quarrel that would surely ensue if he mentioned what Didier had said to him about those sisters. "Garridan?" she pressured.
"He said to forget Patia the way he had forgotten about you!" he stammered, keeping his head lowered to the ground as if being punished for what he said.
"Really?" she mused. "Well I doubt very much that he was being serious, since I was here on the boat the whole time! He was probably just reassuring you that my sister was alright and that now that you are here with us, there's no reason to fuss over her," she tried to reassure him, although her suspicions of Didier grew.
"I really do hope she's ok," he changed the subject again.
"Garridan, maybe Didier was right. Maybe it is best to forget about her for awhile at least. You're here now and we have no idea where the other boats have gone. He needs you right now to help the others."
"I guess you're right!" he exclaimed jumping up and out of the chair.
"Where are you going?"
"To help the others!" he replied with a revived enthusiasm.
Tiana sighed as he left. Something that he had said did not sit very well with her. Didier had acted as if she was no longer alive even when she clearly was! She decided to set another test for him and quickly searched for a piece of paper and a writing utensil somewhere in the desk. She scribbled something down on the paper and, wrapping herself up in a shawl she found in the closet, she left the boat and set out along the water's edge, away from their camp.
* * * * *
When Lel finally came to, he could feel his heartbeat pumping through his entire body. There was a heavy mist inside his hut and all the candles had been snuffed out, making the room almost impossible to see anything. In the darkness he heard the faint laughter he knew all too well. Squinting, he found his way up and was able to light a candle. Shining it up above his head he saw the one person he knew needed to be stopped once and for all.
"Did you think you could figure out how to really use the book?" Syeira asked him, the book lying on the floor beside the bed.
"I can still stop you, you know that!" Lel argued.
"How can you? All you've managed to do is kill your girlfriend by extracting me from her body!" she laughed as Lel frantically checked Patia's body for signs of life.
He grabbed the book from the side of the bed and stared her down. "Is there anything else you would like to say before I finish this?!" he demanded.
Still laughing, she nodded her head. "Of course you realize right now that if you choose unwisely and you pick the wrong spell from that book, everything will be over, including your own life!"
"I've already given her immortality, I've absorbed your powers into myself, so the only thing that is left to do is extinguish you forever!" he countered angrily.
"Again, make sure you choose the right spell! Turning me into a fly or a toad isn't going to 'extinguish' me, as you put it!"
He quickly rummaged through the pages, not caring if they ripped or tore this time. When he found the spell he was looking for, it nearly leapt out of the page at him. Staring her down, he recited the words under the light of his candle and watched what would happen. To her surprise, he had found the right spell and once the last words were recited, her form began to warp and change, causing her to cry out in pain and agony.
"I hate you for this! You will pay for this! No matter what happens, this is not the end!" she shouted at him as her body began to dissolve into the air around her.
"This is the end Syeira! I have your powers now, which means you have no more power over her or me!" he replied back.
"My powers are meaningless within you! You are not of the right bloodline to hold such powers!" she exclaimed through pain.
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"It means that the powers I have possessed and virtually gave to both Patia and her sister were passed down through the same family line! Don't look so pathetically confused, my sweet! It means that somewhere down through history, those two sisters are related to me through blood!"
And with that, Syeira's presence was gone, dissolved into the air and the mist in the room, never to be seen again. Lel breathed a sigh of relief and looked over at Patia's body that still lay on the bed, unconscious. He gently brushed her hair away from her face and contemplated Syeira's last words. They were related by blood. But why did she cause them so much pain? Perhaps jealousy that lasted several generations? That was probably the one thing he would never know.
What he did know was that the powers that coursed through his veins now would keep himself and Patia alive for eternity. He just had one last spell to recite. Walking over to the mirror again, he faced himself, and recited the same spell he had recited for Patia. Instantly, the same glow surrounded him that had surrounded her body. He felt his heart racing and he was having trouble breathing, but he kept his composure as his body started to convulse. When he slipped out of consciousness, he knew the spell had worked.