Awoken (Ilea, Book I) (COMPLETED)

Chapter 31

As I arrived I witnessed a hooded figure holding the small girl up in the air by her neck. I froze. I could see the child’s face but the hooded person had their back to me and I watched in horror as the girls screams stopped and her eyes turned glassy. She was dead.

The figure threw her warm corpse to the floor and turned to her father who lay beaten and bloody on the ground. The man’s hollow eyes never left the body of his dead little girl as the figure paced towards him. “Who cured her?” The man demanded.

“I don’t know.” His voice was lifeless, as if all the joy had been sucked out of it, but then he started to scream and threw back his head in agony. I became unfrozen and hurled the dark figure through the air with my mind. He crashed into the ground and then sprang back up again with inhuman agility, as he did so the hood fell down and revealed his face. My hand flew to my mouth in shock and dismay; it was Senkrad.

I looked at him; his entire irises were blood red, his eyes bloodshot. The expression on his face was one of anger and violence so strong that it matched the fire in his eyes. I felt a magical attack being thrown at me and somehow managed to block it, then there was another and it knocked me in the arm, slicing the skin from muscle and making me scream.

A sadistic smile spread across Senkrad’s face as the man who I had become to think of as a father, relished in my agony. I quickly threw up a barrier around me and repaired my arm, knowing I could do nothing else with such blaring pain distracting me. I then felt the power growing in me and looped a current in the air, making it wrap itself around Senkrad’s body, take him ten feet into the air and start to crush him. He howled and I found myself encircled in a ring of fire. I made a strong wind extinguish it and drew all of my concentration on the current surrounding Senkrad.

I glanced at the dead girl’s body on the floor and became angry. The wind around Senkrad grew tighter like an invisible rope and I heard a few of his bones breaking under the intense pressure. He started to scream. Then he shouted my name, “Ilea. How could you do this to me?” I looked at him again and his face was gentle, his eyes back to their normal colour. I made the wind stop and drop him to the ground, his head banging on the floor and causing him to become unconscious.

I didn’t know what to do. That was everyone I cared about, gone; Jacob, Johanna, Rowan and Senkrad. Two taken away and the others more evil than I had ever imagined. I could not believe Senkrad had just killed an innocent child in cold blood, yet the proof still lay on the ground staring up at the night sky with eyes that could never see again.

I looked over to her father and with a shudder realised he was also dead, the hideous scream of pain still etched into his expression, even after death. Trying to remain sane I cut two mounds of earth from the ground with magic and laid the bodies in them, covering them up with dirt.

I looked up at the stars feeling tears fall from my eyes and roll down my cheeks. I was crying for the innocent girl and her father, for Jacob and Johanna, and for myself. I pitied myself. What should I do now?

Senkrad was still collapsed on the floor, but he looked asleep, I couldn’t bring myself to harm him; he looked so peaceful and kind; as if the monster I had just witnessed was simply a figment of my imagination but I knew that wasn’t so.

I wrote in the ground above the two bodies a small inscription about the two people now under the earth. Then I turned and left.

I didn’t know what to do, so I just ran, the sound of the girl’s screams resounded in my head and I pumped my legs even harder, passing bush after bush that seemed to blur in front of my eyes and then disappear behind me. I didn’t know where I was going I didn’t know what direction I was going in, except for away, I was running away from it all and nothing on this world could make me go back.

I ran for hours and hours without rest, but eventually the punishing pace caught up with me and I found myself feeling tired to the bone. I stopped and looked around myself for the first time; I was in scrub land, the only life I could see for miles around were small plants, the rest of the landscape was sand and rocks.

I looked around for somewhere to hide and saw a large, coarse bush about 100 yards away. I walked over to it and made the branches move so that there was a small clearing in the centre. I crawled in and made the branches close behind me and then fell into a deep sleep which no thoughts or emotions could enter.

I woke the next day and through the bush leaves I could see that the sun was high in the sky, I moved the branches again and climbed out into the open looking around me and trying to work out where I was, I realised at once when I put together the temperature and the type of plants around me; I was on the Desolate Plains. Nothing moving lived here, it was blistering hot in the day and freezing cold at night and the only things able to survive were strong and resilient plants that had thick roots that could find their way to the water deep underground.

The Desolate Plains stretched for hundreds of miles across and were the border of my country, they were at least a hundred miles deep and on the other side was a whole new country, a whole new place… A whole new start. I took one look back at the country I knew and had grown up in and quickly looked away, knowing that I would probably never see it again if I crossed the Plains because of two things, I might not make it to the other side and if I did manage to get to the other side I would never be able to come back.

I looked ahead of me into the horizon, only seeing a wide expanse of land with no signs of life on the other side and took a step forward. It was the beginning.