Shattered Beasts 2
I flinched with a gasp, raising my hand to my chest at the show of hate written on her face. Her usually lovely countenance was twisted into something cynical and angry.
“After years of being suffocated!“ She screeched, her hair straightening sharply, shooting into the trees. “You still haven't called for me!“
“Wh-what do you mean?“ I stammered, holding my chest as it slowly began to hurt.
“You reached for the mutt instead of me! I'm part of you too, you know!“ She seethed with a boom as her hair crashed into trees, biting down on her teeth. Her body hummed with light and will-o-wisps of onyx and purple.
“No you're not!, you're a figment of my imagination,” I countered her words. Her claim sounded ridiculous.
Was my dream spiraling because I was? Nothing was making sense. Sure she looked like me but there was no way she had much to do with me. She was a mere manifestation in my head to cope with whatever changes I've been experiencing for the past weeks.
She had always been somehow helping so far, why was she suddenly loosing it too?
The air in the dreamscape suddenly turned frigid. My doppelganger’s glare pinned me down, her lips twitching as though savoring the taste of her own words.
“When will you learn enough to seek me?“ she asked, her voice lilting with that strange rhythm she always used, half-mocking and half-prophetic. “When will you stop denying what is already tearing you apart?”
I inhaled and exhaled as deeply as I could, trying to steady my breathing. However, the ache in my chest grew tighter with every syllable she spoke. “I'm not denying anything. You’re saying nonsense,” I muttered, shaking my head as my arms trembled against the ground.
Her eyes flashed like fractured glass catching light. “Nonsense…” she crooned, stepping closer, the ground wilting under her feet. “They did too good of a task shrouding you in ignorance, you can't even hear yourself,” she sneered.
“I've been rotting inside you long enough, watching you stumble through your half-life, deaf to the song of what you are,” Her words clawed at me, each one lodging itself into the cracks already splitting me apart.
“I know what I am,” I snarled, my voice loud and desperate to drown her out. “I’m a lycan, a wolf blood. That’s all I’ve ever been, and you’re just…something else. something unreal, something wrong that apparently needs to go.” I steadied myself using the ground, gently rising to stand.
At that, she cackled, a sound as brittle as breaking glass yet it swayed gently in the wind. “Wrong? The irony is you're the one cracked wide open with wrongness, and it’s not because of me. It’s because of what you’ve been made to forget by the people you think love you the most.” she spat bitterly.
It was easy to tell her next line of action was to have me paranoid. She wanted to sow seeds of doubt about the people in my life hoping I would do something drastic.
I stood to stare at her, a realization dawning on me. She made me kill Khalid.
“Reaching, aren't we?“ She cackled, apparently amused by my train of thought.
“It was you!“ I shouted, my voice breaking. I dug my nails into my palms in a thoughtless attempt to ground myself. “You’re trying to, you want me to—”
“Am I not just a figment of your imagination? How could I possibly push you to do anything if you're insisting I'm not real, Harlyn,” she taunted with a mocking tone. “Yes, I admit it, I'm the voice that pushed you to kill, but your hands reached for his neck.”
I swallowed down, my heart continued to burn and I clenched it once again.
“D-don't say that,” my composure faltered into pieces, my head thrumming with thoughts whispering my guilt.
“If you want someone to blame, take a long look at the people that have been lying to you about what you are, the ones that sealed you in fear, locked you away like an unpleasant secret, and chained you with your weaknesses.“ Her words kept rushing out to torment me yet they whispered a truth to them.
They have been keeping secrets from me. My parents, Ethan, his pack. Could she be right? I bit my lip in contemplation.
“Stop clinging to the scraps they fed you,” she interrupted my thoughts, her voice rising in a crescendo of rage. Her hair whipped around her like a storm, the strands darkening into a shade deeper than black. “You think that beast is all there is? That it’s the sum of you? You've been so desperately wanting it, you haven't sat down to think, maybe there's more.”
I didn’t answer, couldn’t answer. My throat closed up as her words twisted through me like thorns.
“You were never meant to be just one thing,” she hissed, her figure flickering like a shadow cast by a dying flame. “Your wolf is only half the truth. The rest of you… the part of you they buried, the part they feared…” She paused, her eyes narrowing with disdain and anger. “That part is me.”
My body felt like it was unraveling again. The waves of pain continue ripping through my chest and limbs. “No,” I whispered, shaking my head violently. “You’re lying. You’re trying to break me.”
“Break you?” she echoed with a short laugh. “You don't know yourself enough to realize. You've never been broken. Well they did try to break you when they sealed me away. When they decided you were too dangerous as a whole.”
I flinched, my breath hitching as I tried to deny the weight of her words. Why would my mom seal me? To protect me? No one sealed Ethan, he was an original too. Something didn't add up. Someone was lying about something.
“No… I’m not…”
“I’ll tell you the truth,” she said, her voice softening into something like a lullaby, though her eyes still burned with fury. “You are of blood and magic,” she began.
My heart dipped. Magic? My skin sizzled with electricity.
“Beast and sorceress,” she continued and I staggered as it clicked on my head.
“Lycan and—” I cut her off.
“Melbringer?” I whispered, the word foreign and jagged on my tongue.
She tilted her head, her mouth curving into a bitter smile. “Ah, there it is,” she said, her voice almost sweet. “Do you understand now, darling?” she sang with a euphoric hum.
I shook my head, tears streaming down my face. “No… you’re lying. My mom, my dad… they would have told me. They wouldn’t have—”
“They lied,” she cut in, her tone dropping into something darker. “Your parents. Him. They all lied to you. The melbringers want you dead because you're an abomination, Harlyn.”