She needed to go to Elscar, the City of Dreams.
Oriana rode through the night and into the late morning of the following day before she made it to Elscar, or what was left of it.
The first time she had ever stepped foot within the city, the splendor and magnitude of it had granted her utterly in awe. She hadn’t been able to move from where she had stood just inside the city gates, completely enraptured by the sheer magnificence around her.
People bustled up and down each avenue and winding road. The streets sparkled as if paved with gemstones. Towering structures stretched through the city farther than the eye could see. A bell tolled in the distance, ringing out the time of day.
It had been a place of art and beauty. Everywhere she had looked, she had seen more happiness–pure happiness–than she had beheld in her lifetime. She remembered thinking that she had finally found it after all these years. Home.
Now, the town lay in ruins. The crumbling castle was gone, once a masterpiece of shimmering stone turrets and buttresses, a building of inexplicable grandeur. Now fallen into the craters that covered the land. Buildings had been swallowed whole and forever buried beneath the surface, looking like a graveyard. It was as if the sky had fallen atop it, stars dropping down from the cosmos to lay waste to the town she had started a life in. Her home was barely a whisper of what it once was. A pile of rock and sand. Anthes had wiped the city of Elscar from the face of the earth.
She dismounted from her steed, feet sinking into the soft, upturned sand. A stench of rot and ash hovered over the land. Smoke clouded above it like an angry spirit. People had lived here, wonderful people she had grown to know and love. Now they were gone because of her, turned to dust on the wind.
Oriana sank to her knees, digging pale fingers, still stained red, into the layers of dirt, sand, and ash beneath her. This was all her fault. She should never have come to this place. She had been foolish and naive to think that Anthes would never find her here.
The memories circled like a flock of hungry vultures. She remembered how the moon that night had been the color of a ripe red apple, as if she could pluck it from the sky and take a crisp bite from it. It was a beautiful phenomenon that only happened once every seventy-five years; the villagers had explained. It bathed the town in a mystical haze of oranges, reds, and pinks.
But that night had felt wrong. Something had caused the hairs at the back of her neck to rise, a feeling of apprehension sweeping through her. And then he was there, standing right in front of her as if he had appeared from thin air.
Anthes.
She had frozen where she stood on the glittering cobbled streets of the town's market square, which now lay buried beneath a gaping crater, swallowed whole.
She remembered a soft, warm hand entwining with hers. Turning her head, she had found the most breathtaking light brown eyes greeting her with the love of a thousand lives shining within them.
Tears threatened to spill free, but she held them back. She had wept enough.
Darragh was gone. It would never be the same–she would never be the same–and she would never get over what Anthes had done to her, to these people, and especially to Darragh, the only one who made her soul sing.
Time itself had stopped when she first met Darragh. The world around her had fallen away, leaving only her and him. He had a head of tousled golden chestnut hair and eyes that sparkled with life, framed by soft features and an easy, playful smile. He would carry his painting supplies in a sack upon his back wherever they went. “Ana, my love.” he would say, “I wish to paint the evidence of your beauty wherever we are. For it should always be remembered throughout time. The woman who stole the heart of her people, of all of Elscar.”
It felt as if her heart had been stabbed through a hundred times over, and she feared the pain of that loss would never leave. What happened here would forever be a stain upon her skin, buried deep.
Oriana closed her eyes as the scene unfolded like the pages of a storybook behind them.
“Hello, Oriana.” Anthes’s cold voice echoed between the buildings, an indignant smile plastered on his face. Her nostrils flared.
Anthes was a large man, nothing but lean muscle under pale flesh. He stood at least a head taller than everyone in Elscar, and probably all of Svakland. His long white hair was braided back into one thick plait and shorn down completely to his scalp along the sides and around the back. His white beard was clipped short around his angular face. A long sword was slung on his back, an axe gleamed in one hand, and a belt of blades was strapped around his torso.
But it was his eyes that were the very image of death incarnate, identical to the glowing crimson orb in the sky, as red as the blood of a fresh kill.
She had not a moment to process what was happening before Anthes tore a blade from his belt and threw it. The sound of the blade rang out in her ears, cutting through the air as she watched, unable to react fast enough to stop it.
And when she turned to Darragh, she saw his wide eyes full of confusion, fixed on her as he clutched at the hilt of the knife, the blade embedded into his heart. A wail so desperate, so full of heartache, burst from her as she grabbed him, catching him as he crumpled to the ground.
“No!” she shouted. “Darragh, stay with me! Don’t go!” But it was too late; there was no life left in his eyes. Her soul mate, her true love, was gone in a scant instant.
She tried to hold it back, tried to stop it from bubbling to the surface like a pot of boiling water, but it was all Anthes needed to do to unleash the monster. Her bloodlust, her thirst for death and destruction, was at the helm, its fury locked on the one man who had leashed it like a pet dog.
She whirled on Anthes. “You will burn for this!” she yelled.
The townspeople around them ran, dispersing into their homes, shops, and buildings. They knew that there was something different about this warrior; probably knew there was something different about her, but they had accepted her, and she loved them for that. These people hadn’t asked questions; they had only loved her as one of their own from the moment she set foot in Elscar.
The pain of it hit her all at once, coming to the surface in a wave of misery.
Anthes’s words stung as they circled her like a swarm of hungry piranhas. “You sully yourself with the weakness of this place. How dare you taint your soul with their filth. You know it is forbidden; you know the consequences.”
Those cruel words had her lunging for him. She attacked, lashing out with her magic and creating an enchantment that grew into a large, double-sided blade. She swung, but Anthes brought forth his axe, parrying her assault.
