The Slayer

3 - Healer's Touch ♪

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Fire. So much of it. Rage, grief, mixed emotions swirling within me. My head was throbbing.

I was burning.

Heat engulfed my body. I heard screams, crying for help, people dying all around me. My mom crying,"No! Please spare her! No...! Aaah! What's wrong with you?! You monster!"

He was there. The person who killed my family was there. And I was hearing him kill my mom. I couldn't see anything. Then the screams stopped. Darkness. All around me, suffocating me.

I woke up from the nightmare, panting and covered in sweat. It was early morning. I looked at the clock. It was 6 am and I could hear the birds chirping.

What the hell was that dream?

Was I getting my memories back? Would I finally see his face?

I got up from the bed. I wasn't a morning person, but there wasnt much sleep left in me.

I washed my face first to clear my thoughts. I looked at myself in the mirror by my side and combed my straight,short hair.

Then trying not to wake anyone else, I took the book I was reading and lay down on the bed with my legs crossed. I tried to read the book but I just couldn't concentrate. Finally I gave up and closed the book, then stared at the ceiling.

When I was small, I used to pretend that I was still at our home, with mom and dad. That everything was fine. But after a while it just got too painful to slip back into reality, so I stopped. Of course I had had nightmares before, but none so vivid.

Usually it was just the scene which I saw upon gaining consciousness- the one with the corpses, again and again. Sometimes I woke up, thrashing my arms to escape from the nightmares. I received psychiatric therapy all those years ago. But that didn't help.

They would say things to comfort me, sometimes try to cheer me up. After sometime, they just stopped trying, seeing no change. They dumped me here, in this orphanage.

This dream brought back the very memories I'd been trying to suppress. I bit my lip, trying to prevent myself from replaying the scenes in my head over and over again. Maybe I was getting my memories back. But the real question was, did I actually want them back?

I went to school after reminding Lily of her promise again. I was so upset for her. I still couldn't believe she was a healer. She didn't know it yet, but after a few years, she'd probably have to suffer like me.

On the way to school, a tv in a shop was on. The news reporter was saying, "This just coming in, citizens in Atlanta are in panic as perilanter sightings have been reported! The government has declared a state of emergency in Atlanta. The perilanters have already claimed the lives of many innocent civilians."

Then they switched to blurred footage of mauled bodies of brutally killed people.

What on Galaxia was going on!? Perilanters...oh god.

They were monsters.

Hundreds of years ago,there were two extraordinarily powerful people. They were Slantin and Liang. Liang had become corrupted by his powers and misused them, wreaking destruction all over. Slantin tried to stop him, but it lead to a huge war which lasted for years.

Liang turned innocent people into monsters using sacrificial, illegal dark magic to build his army. The number of people he killed was more than enough for that. They were called perilanters. They were immortal, and couldn't die. They could be temporarily stunned, sure, but not killed.

They were each unique. Every one of them was a different type of monstrosity. They also spread diseases, which were incurable. Even a scratch could send you to death.

Slantin used guerrilla warfare along with his supporters, retreating and attacking. He captured the perilanters group by group. Then he trapped all of them in a cave and sealed them with his magic.

He created a very powerful barrier around the cave which was considered impossible to break. After that there was a long, terrible battle in which many lives were lost and laid ruin to quite a few parts of Galaxia. But in the end, Slantin won the war. Or at least, that's how the story goes. He spent the rest of his life trying to find a way to turn the perilanters back to their original selves. But he never did.

Now that the barrier had somehow been broken, conspiracy theories would be all over the place.

But what she said next was even worse. "Along with this, unknown diseases with no known cure have also been breaking out. The most common is a disease now being called sleeping sickness which puts people into a coma like stage."

Who could have been so powerful to actually have opened the cave sealed by Slantin's magic?

Not to mention no one really knew where it was.

"According to the health department, the diseases only spread from perilanters to humans and not between humans.

"All of this has led to people protesting for their safety and for the amendment of Article 205 on the Healer's touch. As of now institutions in Arinata will continue working as usual till further notice...."

I didn't hear what she said next because I froze in shock. If the healer's touch was made legal, Lily and I would be dead.

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