Bertan`s quest by Michelle Tarynne (ereader android .txt) 📕

"What are you doing?" Cressy asked, resting her forehead on the Wall. That was nice

"We dig."

"Why?" She asked, not interested in any answer she might get, for a great need to close eyes and cover her ears, to pretend that none of this was happening.

"Cos we feel like it." The voice was just as strong as before. No amount of hiding could get her away from hearing it.

"I definitely don’t feel like digging," she sighed.

"Then find something you feel like doing."

Silence reigned again, Cressy noticed with a great dose of relief. It felt so odd to talk without using vocal cords.

The sand-still stone that covered the Wall called her again. She had to inspect it. It felt so rough and yet so silky under her fingertips. The urge to lick it and check how it tasted like was so great, she couldn’t stop herself. The need was so strong and foreign that it was a surprise to find out that the Wall had no taste or scent at all. It was just like any other stone. At the back of her mind, she pondered if tasting the Wall would count as working. The sheer pleasure of linking in this way with the ancient structure made it impossible to stop, or to want to stop. As if it was the only thing that kept her alive, even though it made her thoughts to go into hiding as her mind lost its hold over her body.

Cressy came back into her senses in the part of the trench that was so deep she couldn't see the sky anymore. It shouldn't be possible to uncover the base-roots of the Wall like that, at this depth, without having the surrounding ground collapse. Still, it was exactly like that. Possible. Just as it shouldn't be possible to see such a brightly lit sky and yet it was there for her eyes to see. The surface of the Wall shouldn’t be so grainy and rough, and yet it was just like that, for her skin to feel.

What kind of world she was in? How could she go back to the one that still carried her children she had to abandon in such an unholy way? Cressy had a lot of questions in between of thinking nothing at all.

The Wall started to crumble where her fingers touched it. Sand detached from its still-form and started to flow in cascading streams, down to her feet. That part of the Wall seemed to be hollow inside, with the sand glued into the emptiness. Cressy followed the indentation into the freed space till it engulfed and drowned her body.

The inhale she took captured the unmistakable scent of liquid un-being. Cressy looked around frantically in the search for its source. There it was, half buried in the dust beneath her feet. It couldn't have been more than a cycle ago when the spill of liquid life poured into the ground. Blood, blood everywhere around. Still warm and sticky. Sick joke of the Fates.

"Why do you want me to walk through the impossible?" she asked, not expecting any answer anymore, "There can't be anything left to find anyway. I can see it’s going to be the end of me here."

"You are mistaken." Her breath hitched when the familiar, eerie voice in her head answered without any warning. "We don’t want you to do anything."

"The need to go inside that I’m feeling now is the most unnatural thing I've ever felt. It's a pull that isn't mine, like your words aren't mine either." Cressy wanted her anger to fire up her veins, while unnatural state of ecstasy stole her body, piece by piece.

"It's not us. It's you. It's always been you. Always."

"I know you lie. There is no other real need in me other than to rejoin with my family," she tried to resist the pull, "And I know I'm dead once I enter the impossible."

"You got it wrong again."

"Want?"

"You won't die in there."

"Are you certain?" she asked with the last surface breath.

"Yes."

She walked into the Wall.

"I hate myself for listening to the masters of lies. I know you lie! And I just can’t stop my body from obeying this pull. Your pull." Cressy muttered aloud just before nothingness struck her. All of her senses left her body, heeding the guidance of the forces beyond her will, unbent to her own understanding.

Creamy white walls of unknown origin and no end were all that she could remember then. when she took that fateful step. The wall of sand collapsed behind her and fused into the glass it once was. Life that was, was no more.

When silent footsteps reached his ears, it was already too late to react. The Unnamed would fail to protect Bertan and Genes in such a stupid way. He would never stop berating himself for that if he survived. A footfall this soft and deliberate could mean only the most skilled assassin was targeting him, more skilled than him. He tensed, waiting for the strike to take him out from behind.

Silence, like he had just imagined things, stretched into infinity. Sweet breath swirled right by his neck. Silence surrounded him again until Bertan slowly walked by him. Wordless, he watched her as she undressed and joined him in the foam bath. Only when she positioned herself on the opposite side, he noticed, her eyes were still closed, and a blissful expression on her face was a testament of the Madness that consumed her. It was not really her anymore when her eyes opened seemingly lifeless and deathly wide.

"You do realize that in reality, there is no choice to take, there are no endless possibilities,” she said slowly, “The Fates order and we follow. The path we take is always the only one possible for us to take." Her voice didn’t seem to be really hers. She belonged to the Madness, and it worried him that she could act as a bridge between the two separate forms of consciousness. The Madness could seep into her at all times, uncontrolled, then.

"We… have… met… before... We… could… meet… again," she stated slowly, submerging all of her in the still fizzling red foam bath.

He welcomed her cries of rage moments later with great relief that he would not admit, even to himself. She came back into their reality, having been almost on the brink of becoming the Edge Walker, where the Madness and reality collide constantly. A state so dangerous everyone suffering this affliction had always been killed without any trials.

The Unnamed killed himself quite a few deranged females of his own family. That was his main task. To punish and kill the ones who endangered every one of his Line. He was the executioner of the Masters and Mistresses that answered only to the Head of the Line, and that position currently belonged to the raging, but hopefully still sane, almost naked woman, he just shared the bathing pool with.

At that thought, he jumped out of the elaborate tub-pod in the floor as if the red color of it had burned his body. Bertan still didn't realize her power to control the life and death of every member of the Third Line to the throne House, and she didn't know all the rules and laws yet. Gods help them all when she finds her ruthless side, for she hated nothing in this world as strong as her own people.

Bertan couldn't stop screaming. It felt as if she screamed her lungs out, it was so hoarse and raw. All that she could express was the rage and pain, though the cause for it was already forgotten, and the awareness of her body and its real pain caught up with her mind. She shivered so much she couldn’t crawl out of the bathing pool. The Unnamed lifted her body for the second time and carried her into the same sleeping room as before. This time, he had no luxury to watch her unashamed. He took a large sheet of fabric to cover and wrap her into, knowing she needed as much warmth he could provide without actually touching her.

"I don't want to ever talk about it," she tried to say, but the tremors ruled over her body, so she stared intently into his eyes instead, "You hear me? Never!" That was the last attempt to raise her voice that failed, and her voice gave way to a hoarse whisper, "Never."

"Your wish is my command… Mother." That last word left his mouth light as a cruel caress. It was the last straw to make her break down to a raging and wailing crumpled body.

He left her to her personal hell without giving her a second glance, to spare her some dignity. He steeled himself and his face into one of his masks once again, welcoming the following silence like a saving bliss.

Genes woke up like rolling thunder. Slowly and audibly even before he managed to open his eyes.

"Berts?" was his first word, before he dared to move any part of his body.

"She is weeping. Better not to disturb her in that grimy and ugly process." An unknown rich male voice answered. The surprise it caused literally made Genes shot up into a vertical position.

"Why would she do that?" Genes was still out of breath, with his heart pounding loudly in his ears, but that would never suppress his curiosity.

"You don't spend your whole life avoiding your Fates, to embrace it with grace later on when they strike you down," a big and masked man answered bluntly.

"Who are you?" Genes blurted out wide-eyed.

The Sword males were huge by any measure. Even though the one facing him was a size or two smaller than Ash of the Second Line he saw earlier, there was a lethal peace and grace in his voice hinting that this should be a person to be afraid of. Who would even dream of fighting them, Genes mused at the back of his mind, recalling all of the war plans Rex Axe has supposedly made.

"I don't have a name," the answer was short and clipped.

"Um… then how do people call you?" Genes probed unabashed, silently mesmerized by the way this Sword stood still, like a statue, so powerful in his well-trained inaction.

"They don't." A frown on his face seemed to deepen with every question he had to answer. It was visible through his face mask.

"Why?"

"I'm the executioner; people don't want my presence around. When they do see me, it's usually too late to talk and call me any names."

"And when you take that mask off? Do you have a name then?" the boy kept on asking relentlessly, he was becoming bolder with every answer he received.

"I don't take my mask off very often." The figure deeply exhaled, like he already knew where this conversation was heading.

"Even to bed, or to bathe?" Now it was Genes’ turn to frown.

That boy looked a little too interested for his own good, the Unnamed decided. However, it was to be expected. The youngling was surely even more oblivious to the Swords ways than Bertan, and the urge to learn something had to be overwhelming at this age and circumstances.

"Yes, but then I don't need a