The Curse of The Ancients. Quintarra

"Do sit down!" Zayd's deep voice snapped me out of my daze. I turned towards him.

Sprawled in the middle chair on the left, the general was inviting me to take one of the side seats — perhaps to keep me under control, just in case. He was still wearing the same outfit as in the prison: completely bare chest and brown leather pants, as if disregarding any sense of etiquette.

But what caught my attention the most was the woman standing at the far end. Staring intently at me, she hadn't said a word, remaining a silent statue. My imagination couldn't have described her as anything other than Xena from that infamous show.

Combining the harshness of a soldier with the softness of a young woman, the stranger kept her large green eyes with long lashes fixed on me — those eyes being the main highlight of her perfectly chiseled face. Her long, wavy chestnut hair was held back by a gold ornament that shimmered in the sunlight, matching a necklace with a blue stone that looked like aquamarine — the same stone that crowned her forehead. Carved, copper-gilded bracelets randomly crisscrossed her bronze arms and forearms, complementing similar accents on her brown leather dress with a plunging neckline.

Involuntarily, the stranger's indescribable beauty made me question my preferences for a moment.

"Xira, this is Alora," Riker said to her. But the woman just kept staring at me as if I was a ghost.

"Relax. Everything's under control," Zayd jumped in.

She shot him a doubtful look, then turned to Riker.

"Where is she from?..." Her voice carried a note of concern.

"Well… That's exactly what we're about to find out!" the general grunted.

He threw his muscular arm over the back of his chair and invited me to the table again, this time gesturing toward the empty seat across from him. For some reason, I looked back at Riker.

He just nodded.

"This whole situation is as weird for me as it is for you," I finally found the courage to speak. I accepted the invitation and sat down in a soft chair with an angular back, nearly hitting my elbow on it from the force of Xira's harsh stare. "My name really is Alora. I was born in Patras, Greece — if that means anything to you… When I was about three, my parents moved to the States thanks to my dad's citizenship. I won't bore you with the bureaucracy details… We traveled through a bunch of cities and finally settled in Boston. I finished school, then college, and got a job at a café. I have a friend, Orin — we share an apartment in Brooklyn. Don't ask how that happened, it's a long story… She's a bit… unique, let's say. She's into esotericism, chakras, and all that stuff. But, if necessary, she can throw hands like it’s nobody's business, ha-h! Anyway, she convinced me to go to yoga. There we met some old guy who gave me this ancient book with hieroglyphs. Orin said that it might be cursed, but we still dug into it anyway… And well, here I am."

I finished my rambling and finally lifted my eyes from the edge of the table. For the lack of a better word, the expressions on my companions' faces clearly showed confusion.

"YOU'RE EVEN DUMBER THAN I THOUGHT!" Zayd suddenly burst out laughing. I raised my left eyebrow at him.

"Is this some kind of a joke?!" Xira flared, staring at Riker. "YOU THINK THIS IS FUNNY?!"

Noticing her hand reaching for her dagger, Riker quickly stepped between us. I froze, waiting to see what would happen.

Sure, I'd never been a great storyteller, but this was the first time I was about to lose my head over it.

"IT'S NOT HER!" he shot Xira a harsh look, as if trying to hypnotize her. "I checked…"

"But she reeks of that… magic!" the warrior wrinkled her nose in disgust, literally sniffing in my direction.

"I know. I feel it too. But it's not her…" Riker agreed, glancing at me briefly.

Still not trusting his words, Xira turned to Zayd. According to his stories, I'd managed to take out three of his best soldiers. Actually, it had… the thing that was protecting me. I flinched nervously, trying to erase their purple, suffocated faces from my mind.

Zayd just shrugged at her silent question.

The woman's face twitched slightly. She grunted distrustfully and slid the blade back into its sheath.

"What does all of this mean?!" the warrior demanded an explanation.

But none of us could really answer.

Xira pursed her full, defined lips in disapproval and finally sat down. Silence fell over the table — and judging by their grim faces, it wasn’t the first time.

Completely in over my head, I broke it.

"Who are you people constantly talking about?" I looked at each of them. "Who is she?!"

Riker sighed heavily, as if this question was his personal burden. And just as he was mustering the strength to explain, a fierce pain shot through my head like a billion tiny needles.

Grabbing my temples, I collapsed onto the stone floor, screaming.

I don't know what the members of the Headquarters saw, but a whirlwind of faces, places, and hundreds of voices rushed in front of my eyes. Young and old, loud and rough… They all begged for one thing — mercy.

Riker muttered my name and run up to me. The moment his hand touched my back — for the first and only time — a savage pain cut through my skin like the claws of a hungry beast tearing into its freshly caught prey. My eyes rolled back into my head, covering in a dark haze. I went into a state of shock.

And then she came…

Or rather, I…

It was like a horror movie, if I were watching it through a mirror with myself in the lead role. It felt as though some otherworldly thing had boldly stolen my face and stretched it over its dark being as a mask. And it was clearly hanging on by a thread…

Black lines cut across my hollowed cheeks and forehead like scars, and instead of eyes, two glowing blue-white lanterns stared out from my sockets. A beige cloak covered my head — every last hair gone — and my hands… dozens of the thinnest fingers on both sides twisted and writhed like grotesque threads, trying to hold onto a shimmering sphere.

I didn't know why, but I figured it might’ve been someone's soul…

Suddenly, the image in my head shifted to another. A little girl appeared before my eyes — or so I thought at first. Standing somewhere in a dark forest, the helpless creature called to me with a trembling, barely audible voice.

"SAVE US!.."

A choked gasp of terror seized my throat. I flew out of that carousel of events and plunged into complete darkness…

Chapter 9

A ringing clap of thunder shook the walls of my room. I jolted upright and realized I was lying in my own bed. Everything around me was exactly as I'd left it — as if not several days had passed, but only a couple of hours. Time is a funny thing…

I jumped to my feet and sprinted into the living room, looking for Orin.

"YOU ARE NOT GOING TO BELIEVE THIS!" I exclaimed when I saw her sitting at the kitchen table.

Looking me up and down, Orin dropped the little spoon she'd been using to eat her favorite chocolate flavored oats.

"OH MY GOD, THAT'S SO COOL!" my friend squealed after I told her everything I'd seen during the night. "YOU NEED TO GO BACK THERE RIGHT NOW!"

"WHAT?! NO! FORGET IT!" I waved off her stupid idea.

"AREN'T YOU EVEN CURIOUS?!" Orin was surprised by my stubbornness. I furrowed my brows at her.

On that point, she hit the nail right on the head… With every visit, Argos revealed itself to me in a new way — not to mention I was dying to learn more about that secret group of three rebels hiding behind the mountain walls. What did they do? Who were they? And how did fate even bring them together? Because if my instincts were correct, their trio had been pieced together from completely different corners of their mysterious dimension.

But there was another side to the coin. One that made my survival instinct sound the alarm at the mere thought of going back to those dangerous lands.

I got up from my chair, bared my back, and turned to Orin. An awkward silence hung between us.

"Ugh… What am I supposed to see?" my friend drew out.

"There's nothing there?!" I didn't believe my ears, reaching my right arm over my shoulder as far as my flexibility allowed.

"Just your bony spine," Orin joked. Noticing my confusion, she asked. "What's wrong?"

"I don't know… It's just… really weird…"

Not feeling anything at all, I headed to the bathroom mirror. My eyes adjusted to the yellow, dim light and scanned my pale skin, which looked as if the sun had never touched it once in my entire life.

"I don't understand…" I muttered, expecting to see a shredder of flesh and tissue.

But everything was exactly as my friend had described — through the oval, slightly cracked reflection, all I saw was my bony back.

"Not everything that happens to us leaves a physical mark," Orin noted, answering my unspoken question.

"But it felt so real…" I shuddered, remembering the claws that had dug into me like blades.

My friend only shrugged, not fully grasping how vivid my dreams were. Then again, if she were in my shoes, I probably wouldn't have believed this ridiculous story either…

"It suits you!" Orin added with a smirk, checking out my new outfit. That was probably the only physical proof of my story — the reason she hadn't committed me to a loony bin yet.

Orin grunted thoughtfully under her freckled nose and went back to the living room. Like a little tail, Silas ran after her, pretending he wasn't the one who'd already gobbled down a third of the Choco balls right from her bowl.

Despite all her tricks, Orin couldn't convince me to go back to Argos. After a few days of failed attempts, my friend finally gave up, accepting that maybe I really was better off staying away from that place. For my part, I decided to focus on real-life problems and finding a decent job. We were still living off Orin, and her back was too fragile to carry all three of us, so I switched gears. Funny enough, my brain didn't give me even a hint of another adventure — just tortured me with familiar nightmares about job interviews I had to pass in nothing but my underwear, or showed me a blank screen.

Either way, it did let me rest.

I passed out at my computer after yet another failed day of calls: some rejected me due to my age — because apparently, I might get married and go on maternity leave — while the others flipped it the other way around, directly linking my life choices to a lack of work motivation. And as if that wasn’t enough, I then had to relive that humiliation again in my dream, where I happily told them all to go to hell and kicked the door off its hinges on my way out.

But instead of waking up, I got sucked into a bright void right from the doorstep. When I opened my eyes, I was staring at Zayd's annoying face.

"PRAISED BE VELGORN!" the general boomed, as if he'd been waiting for me for a long time.

"DAMN IT!" I grumbled back loudly.

I rolled onto my back and sprawled out on the stone floor.

This time, I hadn't landed in the wilds of Argos, but in the Headquarters — right under my overseer's nose. Though, it turned out, that wasn't an accident.

"You're pretty hard to catch, I'll admit. We took turns guarding the trap for almost seven dyadics," he shared, leaving me confused.

"Catch?" I repeated. My face twisted at his carelessly thrown words, which made me feel like a rabbit or a dog that had slipped its leash.

And what the hell is a dyadic?!

Zayd raised his thick eyebrows mockingly and glanced at the runic circle under my ass.

"You left a few things here. They came in handy. Thanks!" he had a dig at me, reminding me of my torn t-shirt and dirty underwear.

"Pervert…" I hissed, not wanting to know what they'd done with my rags.

"Don't flatter yourself. We just burned them to make some paint for the ritual," Zayd explained. "A few quick moves and — bam — you're back."

"But why?" my curiosity got the better of my attitude.

The general's face turned serious. His next words came with visible difficulty.

"We need your help…"

I propped myself up on my elbows in surprise. This was a first for me. Usually, it was the other way around…

"Not here," Zayd added, noticing my intrigued look. "The sanctuary isn't the place to ponder over worldly problems — even universal ones."

A spark of fear flashed in my eyes, and judging by the general's knowing face, it wasn't for nothing. I swallowed the lump of mounting anticipation and took his outstretched hand.

Apparently, I hadn't landed in the main Meeting Hall, but somewhere more secret. Mesa-etn — or "The Forgotten Altar", as Zayd later translated — had gotten its name from a half-destroyed mountain temple on which ruins the Emissaries' Headquarters now stood. That's what their trio called themselves. It hadn't been demolished completely — rather, restored with good intentions and by the members' own hands, with help from Admiral Condo, whom the brave warriors of Argos revered as a distant ancestor of the respected commander and leader, Garak the Fierce. Zayd promised to take me to his temple later. For now, the general was eager to notify his friends of my arrival — as if their time was measured in minutes.

"Let's go." He nodded toward the staircase behind us.

Sizing up the climb, I realized this was only the first half of the same middle staircase that led to the members' quarters. We, apparently, were somewhere on the lowest level.

A dark stone elevation — a smaller copy of which was hidden right behind the altar, which looked more like a clay fireplace — led out of the gloomy chambers, thick with incense and the occasional shuffle of tired caretakers’ feet, straight toward a bright opening. It mockingly challenged me, as though we were about to climb from Hell to Heaven.

A doomed sigh escaped my chest.

"Get used to it. It'll do you good," Zayd said ironically, eyeing me up and down. I gave him that familiar sarcastic smile.

Leaving the partially empty sanctuary with its lonely altar surrounded by flickering cream and red candles, we started our ascent.

"You could’ve set up your little camp somewhere on a nice green meadow, next to a cool lake, under a warm sun, you know?!" I grumbled, barely able to breathe.

Judging by his silence, Zayd didn't appreciate any of my suggestions.

By the time we reached the first landing, I was bent over like a boiled shrimp, leaning my tired, shaking hands on my creaking knees. For such a dubious dream, this felt way too real!

A shadow of condescending disgust flickered in the general's deep eyes. My physical state clearly made him pity me.

Anima Sana In Corpore Sano3[3] — or whatever the fuck…

"I'm coming!" an irritated growl escaped my chest. "I just need to catch my breath… Whew!"

Taking advantage of the moment, I looked around, studying the details of the main hall we'd passed through earlier.

Turned out, I was pretty close in my guesses.

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Примечания

1

Princess Merida, the fierce, red-headed protagonist of Disney/Pixar's 2012 animated film Brave.

2

Grandfather (Greek)

3

Sound mind, sound body (Latin)