Adrift in Silence

Prologue

Together, mother and child walked hand in hand under a sky of soft warm hues, a watercolor painting pulled from precious memories come to life in a splash of blood reds and tender oranges, blurred together in a delicate, velvety violet. The sun rising above the short wayward hills, piercing through that vast distance, shined its dim heavenly light on mother and daughter Fayemont. Elaina watched contently as her beautiful child, Lucina, delicately grazed her hand through the tall brush of the vast open wheat fields, laughing as it tickled her delicate skin. Elaina guided her daughter towards the fields, allowing her to set off on her own. Lucina gleefully pranced through the grass like a gazelle, leaping for joy, caught up in her own world of merriment. Elaina smiled angelically as her precious Lucina's long black hair bounced freely in tandem with her tenacious spirit.

"Mija," Elaina called forth, her voice as gentle as the wistful wind, gliding past their similarly wavy black hair, long and ridged like icy mountain caps. "Come." Lucina followed her mother across the field and came to the base of a single tree, tall and brimming with life, surrounded by the wide-open sky above and miles of grass below. Elaina placed her hand on the smooth bark and like her mother, Lucina did the same. "I planted this tree the day you were born, on a summer evening, just like this one," she said fondly, stroking the tree, "and it will stand tall, long after I am gone." Elaina crouched down onto her knees and stared into Lucina's whimsically innocent face, their matching hazel eyes meeting in delight. She placed her hands on her daughter's olive coated face, rubbing her thumbs into her soft and supple cheeks. Lucina smiled and was quick to throw her hands up and caress her mother's face, her lighter toned hands brimming brightly against her mother's darker complexion.

"Luci, I won't always be around," she whimpered softly, her voice on the verge of cracking. "But that doesn't mean I won't always be there for you," she assured her. "I will live on in your memories, and my love for you will never die, so long as it beats in your heart." Lucina was silent, her unphased gaze never left her mother's tearful sight. "If you ever feel alone, if you ever need me by your side, just come here to our special place." Lucina turned to the tree, slowly raising her head toward the shifty branches above. She seemed unsure of what her mother truly meant. "This tree is like our bond," she explained, wrapping Lucina around her arm and placed her hand on the trunk. "Its roots run deep within the earth so that it will never faulter, even during the harshest of storms, the hardest of times." Luci placed her hand over her mother's and smiled. "¿Entiendes, bebé?" She nodded yes as a tear fell from her mother's face. Staring at the ground she turned her head slightly, peeking over her shoulder into her mother's eyes, cheek to rosy cheek. "I love you," Elaina whispered into Lucina's forehead before kissing it gently with her soft warm lips.

Years later there beget a storm

A storm that swirled over that same field, enveloping the once blue sky with a shroud of darkness and a menacing pocket of green thunderclouds. Under that ominous, bustling formation of clouds, spinning in tandem, almost as if being manipulated, stood two cloaked figures, far on either side of the lonely tree. "So, Mary, you managed to follow me all the way here," one figure dotingly said to the other.

"What have you done, Esmerelda," Mary asked, not the slightest bit amused by her lack of seriousness.

"I did what had to be done to set things in motion. Tragedy causes suffering, suffering leads to helplessness, and the helpless are powerless," she answered in an odd, broken rhythmic fashion. "Feeling powerless begets the desire for POWER, or have you forgotten?" she asked while on her erratic tangent, twirling green energy between her long delicate fingers.

Still left with the burning desire for answers, Mary asked, "Is that what Forneer wants, to make that family suffer?"

"Forneer?" Esmerelda giggled, trying to hide her smile under her fingertips.

"What sort of power will come from their suffering, what use are they to you?" Mary asked, tired and frustrated of searching for those dire answers to their questions, while more questions flooded their mind.

Esmerelda couldn't hold her manic joy in any further and she burst into laughter, cackling like a witch flying erratically in the moon light on her trusty, old magic broom stick. She managed to contain her cynical laughter long enough to utter a slew of words. "You wouldn't believe me even if I told you, but it doesn't matter because you won't live long enough to find out," she teased then directed her glowing hands and crazed laughter to the skies, summoning forth a barrage of green tinted lightning bolts, spewing like snake venom across the sky. "IRTS IL!" she cried, bringing her stiff hands up towards Mary.

Mary ran towards the bolts of falling electricity without hesitation and said, "IPS LEM IR!" A metal spire rose from the earth at an angle, like a gnarled fang, sticking out between a pair of lazy lips. It drew in all the electricity as Mary glided their hand along its coarse metal surface. They leaped off the spire and cried, "IRTS IL IR!" draining the power of Esmerelda's spell into their hand, coursing it through their body, and summoning blue lighting from the other.

Esmerelda smiled wickedly and the color of her hands changed from green to yellow to red. "SAB IF!" she roared, raising her hands together, wrist to wrist, her palms opened like a set of prying jaws about to swallow the lightning. From her hands a ring encoded with a complicated slew of runes appeared, opening a ripple in time and space and from it bellowed forth a gargantuan blast of hell fire and ash, unlike anything the world had ever seen. The fire quiet literally ate the lighting and dispersed it throughout the blast, sending it all back at Mary tenfold.

Mary rolled along the grass and landed on their knees, coming face to face with hellish blaze. Taking a deep breath, Mary raised their arms outward as if they were accepting their fate with open arms, then brought them back, clapping their hands, casting a multi-tier spell full of sophisticated runes. The clap created a sound wave that stunned the fire long enough for the spire behind them to rip itself from the ground, root and all, and fly though the wall of fire. Following the spire was all the water Mary could rip from the sky and earth, creating a typhoon that sniped its way into the gapping fire, dispersing it all in a tornado of misty haze.

                                 "RRRRRAHHHH!" Their battle cries clashed "HAHAHAHAHA!"

The roaring winds nearly knocked the two spell weavers off their feet.

Esmerelda looked back up at Mary through the overwhelming, fast-moving haze, annoyed that they concocted the perfect set of spells to counter her most powerful attack, almost as if they knew what she was going to do before she knew she was going to do it. "Marrryyy," she cried out their name, as if dragging it through the mud. Her body twisting and cringing, her fingers curling with frustration and delectable anticipation. "Always so clever!" she snapped, lunging her exaggerated face forward with her arms pulled back.

"This ends today, Esma," Mary warned their old friend, "whatever you and Forneer have planned here, it dies with you, then I'm coming after him." Esmerelda did not take kindly to their bold remarks.

"It won't end with us," Esmerelda warned Mary, "not unless you're willing to do what is necessary for the greater good."

"Never," Mary assured her as they brought their hands up to their temples, channeling all their power for one final blow.

Esmerelda crossed her hands, covering her crooked smile, showing nothing but the distant loss in her demonic eyes as she also prepared for the clash to come.

"AF XEN TLU!"                                                                                                                                             "AF XEN TLU!"

They unleashed all their power through their fingertips into one ultimate clash of Nexium energy to determine not just their fates but the fate of all the following events to come.