My dreams crawled with unfathomable nightmares. I’d often had nightmares since I was turned, but most of the time, I jolted awake before the worst of it. Tonight, I couldn’t wake from this.

  Sometimes the man who made me visited me in my dreams. I could never know if he walked through my dreams on purpose, or these were memories trying to escape the darkest reaches of my past.

  People will try to come for you, Eyevoree. They will try to take you away from us. They do not understand you, and they never will. We’re different. You are like us, destined for greatness and to return our history to its former glory. He will try to strike you down and you must fight. He must be stopped. Only you can stop him.

  Was this what he warned me of? Who is he? The master that Angoroth said he served… I wanted to know. I couldn’t rest knowing how much he wanted me, needed me, wanted to end me. But why?

  The voice of the invisible man almost seemed to answer my questions.

  Your knowledge will come in time. It is almost upon you. Patience, child. You will see soon enough what you’re capable of and you will fight.

  How do you know what to do when life hands you this? Do this, be that. All I have been told is what to do, and who to be. Why me? I don’t understand why this has to be my path. I don’t want this. I never asked for this curse.

  You were chosen for a reason. It is not a curse; it is a glorious gift. Those who find their bonded pair cannot bear to resist, and your life was preserved in the process. It is destiny. You will see, child. You will lead us to greatness, our whole race. Do not be afraid, we are with you.

  ***

  I was walking through a field that stretched on for so many miles. I had never seen this place before. As I walked, my eyesight became clearer and adjusted to the twilight glimmer. There were beautiful flowers growing all around me. I felt a sudden rush of happiness; I couldn’t understand why, but I knew I felt right here. A warm, radiant glow bubbled up inside me, and I was happy to be in this strange place. I sat down and smelled the world around me.

  A large red rose started to glow by my hand, just then. It shimmered with a radiant, blue-yellow light. I reached out to touch it and I gasped. My hand was pink, and fleshy, instead of a marble white, cold and hard. I felt wisps of my hair lick my face. It was coarse and natural. I never felt natural, I never felt normal.

  The light from the flower began to move. It came from the center of the rose and flew in front of me in the shape of an orb. Dozens then hundreds of lights emerged from the flowers and illuminated a path in front of me. In a daze, I lifted my hand to touch one; it jumped, startled, and flitted away, and another took its place. I began to follow them, too awestruck to comprehend what was happening, or where I was going. They just led me, pulled me across the field, and toward the moon on the horizon. I felt a strange pull at my navel, tugging me on.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  We pressed on for what seemed like hours, and the orbs continued to dance in front of my eyes and whirl around me in a ballet of illumination. The wind was warm on my face, and the night felt calm and peaceful, the smell of the flowers still enveloping me in their aromas. But my legs were becoming weak from the walk, and this was new to me. I never tired. The burning in my legs seemed to drag me down to the ground, and I wanted to rest. A voice seemed to whisper inside my head, find him. My fatigue didn’t matter, only the joyous faeries moving me along to show their secret at the end of the path of lights.

  The night grew colder and I wrapped my arms around myself. My body began to shake and convulse in the sharp, chilling breeze. This wasn’t right. The once warm air was now frigid and painful. The flowers around me began to wilt and die. The faeries almost seemed to dim as we pressed on. A feeling of fear flooded through me as the angry moon grew in front of us and mountains rose from the ground on either side of the road with every step. Soon, they were towering over us and I felt them scowl down as we took our journey into the gaping maw they formed at the base of their necks. They came together into one large hill and the moon was lost behind their faces.

  I was glad to be rid of that murderous globe, but now the darkness settled in and finally, I felt terrified. I could hear them laughing as we crawled up their jaws, up a dirt path that led to the top of their blackening slope. The little orbs felt no fear and kept on while I hesitated, pulling courage from within myself to follow them.

  The lights continued to carry me, up, up, until I felt as though my lungs would burst from the ascent and terror. The darkness crept around my ankles and tried to trip me up and drag me away. The stars were all but lost behind furious clouds that seemed to swirl in from nowhere and the night grew into an impossible black. Sweat was pouring down my back. My arms and legs turned into mud and ran down the hill, fleeing from this desolate place. Still, up I climbed.

  When the panic ripping at the back of my brain was almost too much to bear, the faeries carried me over the top of the mountain. I looked around, and all I could see was blackness. I peered back over the edge, and a sheer drop fell down into fog. There was no more road, no turning back. The floor was lost in the sea of colorless night; the flowers, no more than gray waves of nothingness. And the moon… it peeked over the edge where I had only just taken refuge, and I was instantly afraid again. With its light, I scoured every crack of the mountain’s head. There was nothing but dirt and barren waste.

  Then something caught my eye as I scanned the vastness of the peak—a shadow that didn’t seem right hidden against the blackness of the mountain. It seemed unusually out of place. A dimness too dark to be natural. I walked toward it, cautious, but so curious. The lights continued to watch, but they slung back and danced behind me as I ventured across the mountaintop to the unknown silhouette. As I approached, its figure remained blurred, blended with the quiet pitch of the rock face it stood before.

  Then it was upon me.

  The gloomy figure lunged toward me and just before I could run, it sent me tumbling to the ground. A cloak-covered body pinned me to a rock and I gasped for air as the weight of it crushed the life out of my lungs. Cold, bony hands ran up my body to the sides of my face in a painful caress. They wrapped around my neck, gently and then angrily. I could feel the figure’s horrible breath sweep across my face and even through the black of its hood, I could see it smiling. I tried to scream, but my voice was nothing more than a passing breeze. I struggled to get up, or will my wings to save me, but my body failed its calls; it felt hollow, like I had no power left to save my own life. I felt my glow escaping me as the beautiful lights that had led me to my doom slowly began to evaporate into the air. I was weak and I could do nothing to save myself.

  And that moon! That horrible moon! Laughing at me! It hung overhead now and grinned as it watched the life being choked out of my helpless frame. I stared at it, and hated it with every forced gasp left inside of me. As I shot my intense hatred toward that awful moon, it morphed to a deep, powerful crimson, and seemed to almost melt from the sky.

  In an instant, the figure lowered its mouth to my neck and bit down. I cried out as sharp fangs pierced my flesh. It drank from me with cold, hard lips, and I lay powerless as the life was drained from me. With little effort, it lifted me into the air by my neck and held me high above its sunken frame. With one last horrid smile, it reared its arm back, my helpless body still dangling from its cold fingers, and threw me over the edge of the mountain.

  I fell, down, down… back to where I had first felt fear, back to where I should have turned around and ran--ran away from the mountain and the lights and that terrible moon. My body twisted in the air as the wind played with my lifeless limbs; and still that wretched face, contorted with laughter, gleamed on. I spun toward the moon just as it transformed into a velvet shade of purple.