1500 YEARS IN THE PAST
PHAEDRA
Scarlet screams ring through the night. The air is singed with decaying energy. Andromeda holds Pandora close.
"Are they dead?" the little girl asks her mother excitedly.
"Phaedreans cannot die," Andromeda tells her, but her voice wobbles.
Phaedreans cannot die, unless...
Andromeda pulls her daughter away from the chaos.
"But I want to see," she protests. There is a joy in the child's eyes that Andromeda rarely sees.
Mist whips around the spires of fire quartz. Prometheus is supposed to be safe. Why were there bodies in the streets? Why were they decaying, when that was not possible?
Her husband's eyes are dark when she tells him. "A massacre," he says quietly. "In the middle of the night in Prometheus."
He turns to his wife, who refuses to look to the window. The glitter of fire quartz sickens her.
"It is the ancient power," her husband continues. "That which is forbidden to us."
Andromeda shakes her head. She doesn't know if she's denying his words, or her own thoughts. She knows what her husband speaks of. The dark power, the ability to destroy energy, is never used. It is never taught.
To cause the essence of a person to rot...it is unthinkable. And yet, someone had thought it. Someone had done more than think it.
Andromeda had taken Pandora to Prometheus in the hopes of igniting a new interest in her. The child showed little interest in the things other children did. She mostly watched, boredom exhaled with every breath.
Sometimes there was more than boredom there.
Sometimes there was anger.
There was so much to explore in Prometheus, but Pandora glazed over all of it. The only flicker of interest she'd shown was when the screams started.
Andromeda does not want to know it. There is nothing wrong with her daughter. Nothing to make her smile when others cry. Nothing to make her empty when others were full.
She would not give up on her daughter. Even if Pandora had hurt the glushnil, there was no way she could have been responsible for what happened in Prometheus.
Those bodies, those people, decaying into nothing.
All of them were children.
The dark power can work slowly over time, Andromeda. The effect need not be immediate.
But Pandora was innocent.
All of the murdered children visited the toy emporium that day. The one you took Pandora to.
Pandora was innocent.
People are like toys, mummy. They break.
Innocent.
Innocent.
Innocent.
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Witch Doctors Inc: SEASON TWO (Ongoing)
Fantasy🌟 Sequel to the x2 WATTYS SHORTLISTED Witch Doctors Inc: Season One🌟 Welcome to Witch Doctors Inc. Got a problem? We'll solve it. Warts? Easy. Got an enemy after you? We'll find 'em. Been cursed? Have one of our glittering elixirs. You thought...
