Beneath and Beyond

Chapter 39

Kiedi woke with a pounding in her head and the chill of the moist ground on her cheek. She moved her hand to rub her cheek but it wouldn't budge. She tugged again but it still wouldn't move. With more effort that she cared to admit to she forced her eyes open and was confronted with trees and shadows moving amongst the fog. 

She looked down at her hands and saw that they were bound by rope around the trunk of a tree, the bark pressing against her back. She tried to sight the knot and then used her telekinesis to untie it. She had to admit in the past three days she's used her powers more than she had in weeks.

She rubbed her sore wrists and rolled unto her knees. She could hear vulgar sounds through the fog around her. The last thing she remembered was facing off with a bunch of parasite demons before she pushed Jazz away and got knocked upside her head.

Jazz! What if they still had Jazz?!

She kept low as she crawled through the fog keeping an eye out for the shadows as she searched for Jasmine. She had a feeling that she was in the midst of a parasite demon camp and so kept her gaurd up but It took too much energy to keep her shield up constantly so she just kept her eyes and ears sharp for any movement.

"Where's the girl?!" She heard a yell from the direction she was coming from.

"Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!" She mumbled to herself as she started to crawl faster. Her knees felt sore from crawling over rocks and twigs and hard clumps of dirt.

She saw a slender figure slumped on the ground in front of her and she slowly crawled over to it. 

"Jazz?" she whispered. She stopped a few inches away from the form but it wasn't Jazz but it was a female. She touched the woman's shoulder and was met with the chill of dead flesh.

"Ahh!" she gasped as she fell back on the floor.

"What have we here?" A voice said behind her as the shadow turned into the form of a man and gripped her hair before she had a chance to put up her shield.

"Oh boys!" he whistled as he dragged her along behind him.

"Let go of me you freak cannibal demon!" she yelled at him.

The shadows gathered around her and slowly they turned into faces of men with greedy grins on their faces.

"If any of you so much as touch me I'll kill you like I did your friends in the-" she was cut short when one of them backhanded her.

"Shut up wench!"

Kiedi felt anger surge through her as she stared down the one who hit her. Her eyes started glowing and she mentally threw off the one who held her hair and levitated into the air.

"I warned you," she said through gritted teeth and stared down at the one who hit her. She tilted her head to the side as she commanded his blood to boil. The flesh he stole turned to a fierce red before it combusted in front of her eyes. 

"Now for the rest of you creepy parasites!" 

Kiedi followed the guards into the palace's viewing room. They had showed up just as she killed the last monster in the camp and caught her just before she passed out. Now here she was covered in parasite blood being escorted to go meet her grandfather and mother.

The King, a dark haired man who looked no older than fifty, sat on his regal throne with an amused look on his face as she walked in the room. 

"Send for the others," the King commanded the guard beside her. "How are you my dear?"