Nychta - The Bloodrose Kingdom

Chapter 3 - The Raven's Flight

I was floating. I was weightless. I was transparent.

I was in a void of white, with nothing but my translucent body to be seen. My milky skin, with only the moon being able to kiss it was glowing brightly, with a light that felt serene and calm. Gravity did not restrain me, and I felt like a feather in a windless, warm night.

The black curls of my hair floated too, each of them surrendering to the lack of gravity. I touched my naked body, my own warm hands caressing each and every part, making sure that it was still held intact.

What was I doing here? Was this a dream? A vision? And what was all of those things I’ve seen when I touched the gem?

The gem. That was it.

I remembered it again, my eyes widening. The events from earlier still rang loudly in my mind, vivid images of running and dark trees flashing through my memories. I sighed a deep breath, my chests contracting and expanding, cool wind in my lungs.

The guards could have caught me, and there was nowhere else for me to go but the prison. The Rust Prison, to be exact.

But I let go of my thoughts, let go of all the things that made me worried. I was one with the gem, and it seemed to find its rightful owner too. What power does it hold? What type of magic exists in such a tiny piece of wonder?

As if in response, tiny tendrils of black came from above the undefined white void. It moved like black ink on milk, swirling through a sea of white. It was making its way slowly towards me, finding its master, its one true owner. I knew it when I saw it.

Curls of the ink made its way slowly, and as it landed gently like a feather on top of my head, I closed my eyes. I let the darkness enter me in generous forms, ready for whatever it will give me. I have been starving for that magic ever since I was born, hungry and greedy for every little piece.

And like a missing puzzle piece, the magic completed me, my body feeling ethereal and powerful as the bond continued.

In waves that were continuously rushing and getting quicker by the minute, the darkness entered me. I felt it in my veins as if it was a holy salve that quickly relieved me of all my pains and worries. My brain was slowly being soothed, my body being touched and caressed at all the right places. Tingles of pleasure went through my spine, the hairs on my body raising at every second. It was not in my capability to resist such a mighty and powerful force, and I was getting as much as I can.

I felt the darkness consume me, my ears shutting off, and my arms feeling a light embrace. The white from before has been replaced with dark so deep that I saw nothing. But I was not afraid. This was what made me whole. This was what defined me now. A creature of the dark, a creature of immense power. A creature to be feared.

I opened my eyes to a blinding sunrise.

A sunrise, the first one, right before my eyes. I couldn’t believe it. My heart thumped as my eyes widened when I saw right before me the entrance of the Sun, which did not touch the land of Bloodrose ever in my whole existence. It was a mighty ball of wonder and life, spreading warmth straight through our hearts and to the life that only existed in a subtle rays from the moon.

I was laying by the side of the now-illuminated river. It was a blue river, a color that I barely saw during the usual moonlight-covered nights. It went to a cave with a gaping mouth and a dark interior, a place uncharted and filled with things I didn’t know of. The water was a never-ending tapestry of different life. It now reflected the sun, mighty waves of light and color bouncing off of it.

My breaths came in huge waves, panic suddenly cruising through my veins when I remembered my situation.

My body felt lighter now, like it wasn’t mine and I was inhabiting somebody else’s. My limbs became longer, the air above feeling cooler than usual. I felt this as I stood and nearly lost my balance, my boots touching soiled ground. The banks was filled with overgrown weeds and rocks, and my tattered clothes was also painted with it.

I had a new bounce to my body now, which was hard to get used to.

As I looked around, I saw that the sun was my new enemy.

I was squinting hard, my eyes barely adjusting to the new sight. Was this a curse? A blessing? What could’ve caused it? Has the kingdom of Bloodrose gone to its end days, or was it at the start of its glory days?

Tales of the Bloodrose’s creation flashed through my mind.

The creation of the world was only a twinkle in the mind of the Creator, a whisper in a mixture of power, art, and passion, which was the its mind. It was divine, holy, omnipotent. It thought of life, for the wonders of his mind cannot stay within itself without a continuous cycle inside it, something that would keep its fires aflame in days of loneliness.

And so the Creator made the World. A mighty and vast orb of everything I see today, of everything that the Creator’s mind can think of. But life was nothing without mind, and so it created the Nychtas, sentient creatures of different passions, desires, and philosophies. We grew plants, harvested it, and then repeated it for the rest of our days. The animals, the lesser creatures, served as good nourishment too. It was a life of simplicity.

But sentience came with a price, and it was curiosity. It was that curiosity that caused nychta to create fire, which created tools, and then made buildings of bricks and castles of steel and literature and art and everything that only we can think of.

The minds that caused abundance was divided though.

The driving philosophies, the good and the bad, drove the Nychta to eons of battle and thriving, making the world a harsher place for everyone. The gems that were instilled in our foreheads gave fragments of the Creator’s powers, but the nychtas used it for destruction and death. It created rifts in the world, rifts among the nychtas ourselves, and rifts that separated from us being united.

The War of the Divide, which divided the land into Gaia and Bloodrose solidified and cemented the World into good and evil. The world did not nothing to stop the wars, but it agreed on one thing: the sun was for Gaia and the moon was for Bloodrose.

Seeing an epic event directly in front of my eyes, a mere sixteen year old who has witnessed a lot of tragedy before me is something that was forever forged in my memory. The day when the balance between both worlds was broken, with no obvious explanation or reason for it. It was a rule breaker, a law-defying act of the Creator’s power. Whatever kept the world in its state was ready to be unseated with a new one. One that we needed to prepare for. One that needed immense amount of understanding to adjust to. One that needed us to change ourselves.

I looked at the once-dark forest that covered the town.

I gasped in awe.

Trees the size of hills and the age of the world itself loomed around me in giant tendrils of branches, roots, and leaves. They were pillars of immense strength and life arranged in dizzying swirls and towering canopies, bare glimpses of the rays of sunlight penetrated through it, giving light to everything below, which was plants of different popping colors and varieties.

The moon gave light to us when we needed it, but the sun showed the beauty of our divide, the beauty that the moon only gave us glimpses of. It painted the forest with earthy hues of brown, and blue, and green, with the fog now nowhere to be seen. It was as if life came along with the sun even when death and misery covered these lands before. We were the evil in the divide of the world, and so we had been cursed with ravaged lands and a harsh environment. It was about to be changed now.

But the view of the scenery was interrupted, as I quickly observed the large battalion of the guards on the other side of the river.

The sun struck their shiny armors, making me flinch as I looked at it. But when I only took a mere few seconds to observe it, the aged and mature nychtas was still looking at the sun above us, for all of them have never seen it for years longer than mine. A picture of gasps and mouths shaped in awe flashed in my mind as I tried to guess the faces behind their metal masks.

I did not even think twice.

I went back to the route that I used to come here, even though my mind can barely remember the steps I took. The sudden shuffle of footsteps snapped the guard’s attention back to mine. It must’ve been the sunlight that distracted them from seeing me wake up, but it was a mystery to me as to how I had survived the night without being held captive.

I barely made six large lunges when an arrow struck my left ankle. The sharp pain of an arrow made my back tingle, my eyes widening as I screamed in pain. This was a pain I have always felt occasionally from random and occasional chases, but the queen’s guard had a special ingredient that kept things more painful: poison.

I felt the rush of thickened blood to my feet, rendering it useless and stiff. Breaks of sweat ran through my temples, adrenaline rushing through each every part of my body.

They made their way towards me, clinks of metal and hooves dashing through the river. They were quite wobbly, unused to the sun that blinded them as they were just newly adjusting.

I was crouching helplessly, my left hand pathetically trying to make my foot move. I was helpless. I was weak.

I was trying to capture the last scenes before my captivity, before I remembered something. The gem! I had it now, and it certainly was going to give me something I didn’t even knew about, something I had only acquired now.

I closed my eyes, scrambling through every part of my body to find anything, any signal of whatever power I had. My hands were shaking, my hips trembling, but still nothing. In a last second and desperate move, I tried exerting force in my forehead, where the black gem was now attached.

In an instant, a flow of power that started as a tickle then turned into a mighty force trickled through me. The guards stopped in their tracks, seeing the gem light up in a mysterious and unknown way.

My head was clawing with whatever power it was. This was the first time I had tried to use it after all, and I did not that I was capable of it.

When an unknown signal ticked in the back of my head, I willed my force towards it.

In an instant, a rush of wind went to my back. They were colored with dark, raven black, a color that I embraced during the vision earlier before I regained consciousness. It was swirling towards me, and blocking the guards from me. It was creating a barrier of immense force and power, ground trembling from the force.

The wind blew my hair in all directions, my eyes squinting at the sudden thrum of power. My hands held my numb ankle tightly, trying to make use of it.

It made up for a very convincing act, but it was barely worth the effort.

Like a knife that sliced thin meat, the hand of the captain slowly made its way through the barrier, hand trembling hardly as I willed the barrier to form. I was giving effort, but his experience was definitely playing a good game.

I was the fish readying itself in the water, not even being able to move. The wind kept the others away, but it was no match for the giant fisherman that so willingly moved into my position. The sea of wind I have created for myself slowly faltered, ice cold fear replacing whatever flames of courage I had for a short while.

My head slowly rose as he firmly took hold of my hair. It was a grasp that made my body weak, the kind that made me surrender in an instant.

He was an image of terror, as his body was shaded from the sun directly above him, a colossus of electric strength and power right in front of me. I was a meek and petty thief, who has only discovered her abilities at the moment.

My heart thumped as he opened his mouth.

“What are you?” He asked, each word said slowly in staccato. It was filled with hatred and disgust, masking an obvious feeling of envy that I unwillingly discovered through an unknown force.

Heh, my mind chuckled, a feminine voice of rasp and deepness said in my mind. I had unwittingly read his emotions then, and an unknown entity now talked in my mind. Was I just going insane? Or was this the gem talking to me?

Fight it. Fight that coward, the voice said. I cracked my knuckles in response. Tears were now threatening to make its way to my cheeks, an obvious sign of defeat that I was not going to give them. The voice was beckoning me to fight, beckoning me to show them whatever it was I was capable of.

I took the last wisps of wit I had.

“I’m that nightmare that will haunt you,” I say, my new voice ice-cold and terrifying, giving me chills myself. I took my right hand, fists covered in a dark whirlwind of black electricity, wind, and immense, unknown magic, as I punched the captain with all I had. It was metal on skin, or something even worse than it. My body felt the impact, with me taken aback by the force that came from it.

It didn’t take a second before he dropped on the mossy ground head-first.

But it took a toll on me, my body giving out at the first run of power. Not only did my left foot become totally numb, but also all of my lower torso. The numbing poison was spreading fast.

“Take a hold of the captain!” one of the guards said.

“Take the girl too!” he followed.