Because I Love You✔️

Chapter 30: Another Confrontation

Chapter Thirty: Another Confrontation

"Ella," someone called, making her stir from her sleep. "Ella, wake up."

Groggy and unbelievably grumpy, she sat up. Looked around. Didn't recognize much. Rubble surrounded her on all sides, vast expanses of empty space filled with the floating wreckage of crumbled buildings, smashed trees, and burnt-black... what were those?

Where was she?

Pale gray light made shadows almost nonexistent. Feeling confused, Ella looked around: she lay atop a large sheet of burnt white brick with parapats as thick as her waist poking out of its crumbled edges, and sitting next to her on the stone slab was... was...

Her heart jumped, and the vision flickered.

"Eh?" she whispered, blinking blearily in dismay. "Amelia?"

"Thank goodness," Amelia breathed, looking at the world around them with uneasy eyes. "You've come to!"

"How did I get here?" Ella groggily asked, brow furrowing. "And why are you here?"

"Perhaps it's just a dream," she suggested, shrugging. "Since we're here and can't get off this slab, why don't we chat together?"

Ella stared at her.

"Why? We talk enough already."

"Oh, don't be that way," Amelia sighed, tilting her head. "Tell me... is true that you've fallen in love with our little demon friend?"

Butterflies began to flutter in Ella's belly, making her uneasy.

"What are you saying? Are you talking about Xaphile?"

"Yes, of course I mean Xaphile," Amelia clearly drawled, leaning forward and innocently batting her lashes. "I want to hear it from you, dear Ellie. Do you love him?"

The fluttering morphed into full-fledged alarm.

"Excuse me?" Ella whispered, feeling her hair standing on end. "Since when do you call him by his full name? And... did... did you just call me 'Ellie'?"

Their eyes met and held each other, but Amelia's pupils seemed matte-black in the strange darkness and a vaguely familiar gleam rested behind those irises.

Warning bells began to ring inside her head as she leaned away, feeling completely alert.

"Who... are you?" Ella asked without really knowing why. "You aren't Amelia Von Dolan."

That seemed to be just the right thing to say to shatter the illusion.

The girl's lips curled back over her teeth in a snarl before darkness erupted from the sockets of her eyes and spilled onto her skin.

Before the thing that was not Amelia could touch her with hands that had suddenly gone black and twisted, a cold blue light shocked her body and --

One moment she was sleeping like a log, completely dead to the world; the next, her eyes were suddenly wide open.

Blinded by incomprehension, she started breathing rapidly and frantically began wriggling.

Flopping about like a worm until she managed to free herself of the sleeping bag, Ella bolted into an upright position, coughing violently and clutching her chest.

As she did so, a strange clenching sensation smashed into her heart and the feeling brought with it a barrage of inexplicable ice and awful sensations.