scream so that one day
a hundred years from now
another sister will not have to dry her tears wondering where in history she lost her voice - jasmin kaur

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- Vindicta -

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I had made the long way to the highest tower room of the castle, killing everyone who had stood in my way.

It was a pity that Cephas had not been among these people. The cowardly cockroach had surely been hiding somewhere. But Nicolas and his troop would look for him while I took care of Xerxa.

It was not far now. I felt myself getting closer and closer to the presence of my former sister. With my right hand, I felt for the injury on my back. On the way here, a soldier had hit me with an arrow just above my shoulder blade and I had had to pull the iron tip out with one hand. Hopefully the wound would not slow me down any further.

When I pushed open the door of sturdy dark wood at the bottom of a flight of stairs and entered the round tower room, I found Xerxa standing in front of the open window, both hands resting on the sill. The raven on her shoulders had turned around to face me and was staring at me with dark eyes.

Judging from her posture, I suspected that she was not at full strength. Which was not too much of a miracle to me. Within a very short time, she got not only transplanted the heart of the primordial witch, she had also used it. And to an extraordinary degree.

"Xerxa," I finally spoke, closing the door behind me again without taking my eyes off the witch.

"Vindicta," replied the witch, who, unlike me, was not dressed in black wrappings. She had a tight, white bandage tightened around her chest, wore a long, dark red skirt, and stood with bare feet on the wooden floor.

"It's over, Xerxa," I tried gently at first. "You've suffered enough. Let's get this over with quickly."

I didn't know what reaction I was hoping for, but Xerxa's bright laughter surprised me somewhat. She then snorted, but less snidely and more amused. "Do you know what it took for me to finally reach my destination? You don't think I'm just going to let you have the heart now, do you?"

"That's your destination?", I quietly echoed. "You're looking outside right now, Xerxa. That can't be what you want."

"It's exactly what I want," the witch countered, turning her head over her shoulder for the first time to look at me with her blood-red eyes. I was a little frightened by the color. There had once been a time when her eyes had beamed a soft green at us witches.

With an uneasy feeling in my chest, I waited. My chances of ending this quickly, peacefully and unscathed were dwindling.

Xerxa twisted the corners of her mouth into a fake smile. "There's one thing you haven't understood, you and everyone else. The heart can not only create life. Through it, we can also kill. All those who have done terrible things to us."

"What about the children? With the other innocent people? With the magical beings throughout the land? None of them have done anything to us, and yet they're paying the price."

"So what?" asked Xerxa dismissively. "We didn't do anything to anyone either, and we were persecuted, burned, tortured, raped, murdered, and exiled. You lost as many sisters as I did to the humans."

My chest tightened. We had.

Xerxa spun around to face me. "And that's why I'm taking our power back. If we ally ourselves with Cephas, then the humans will no longer attack us because the only king of the land will command them to do so. The protection of witches will be included in the laws. Don't you see that I am doing all this for us?"

For a moment I stood before her undecided. She was right somewhere, of course she was. But still, Xerxa was also blind.

"I see above all that you are doing it for yourself. Cephas has kidnapped and tortured countless of our sisters to find out where he can find the heart of the Primal Witch. Cephas is only interested in himself. As soon as it will benefit him to kill us witches, then he will do so, without any qualms."

"But it won't benefit him if we support him," Xerxa countered, caught up in her wishful thinking and desperate dream of finally freeing us witches from our suffering.

"We should not support this cruel man. Not even for our freedom. Cephas murders innocent people too. No, he especially murders innocent people."

"There are no more innocent people in this world." Xerxas eyes got darker.

"There is a large part of humanity that has done nothing to us, Xerxa. You must forgive the humans."

"I can't," the witch whispered, and for a fraction of a moment I recognized green color mingling with the red of her eyes, which now filled with tears. Surely she was recalling all the loved ones we had lost. And of course it was important to think of them, too. But I was thinking as well of all those we could still lose if Cephas and Xerxa continued to live.

I had hoped that I could convince Xerxa to let me have the heart. But it was clear how stuck she was in her views and beliefs. I didn't know if I could win a battle against her. Especially with the heart of the Primal Witch, she was very strong. On the other hand, she was also visibly exhausted from the transplant and the use of the heart.

I decided not to call her bluff and struck first. With a quick flick of my wrist, I hurled a blast of ice in Xerxa's direction, which luckily caught her off guard due to the element of surprise.

The ice hit a piece of her shoulder and the black raven that had been sitting there. With a stiff, frozen body, it fell down and hit the ground hard. A small obstacle had already been eliminated once.

Instead of immediately striking back, Xerxa stared at me, apparently incredulous that I was so serious. But yes, I was serious. This was a matter of life and death, and not just between us. Even though we had once been sisters and had been through a lot together.

Then the expression in her eyes changed and the red seemed to begin to blaze.

I raised both arms as deadly spikes of ice shot from my fingers. However, the volley was deflected by Xerxa as she wiped in front of her with lightning-fast, circular hand movements. The ice spikes melted while still in the air and splatted wetly on the ground.

Before I could complete the motion for another attack, Xerxa jerked her arms up and down. There was a crack above me.

As quickly as possible, I scurried to the side. Just in time. The ceiling crumbled and cracked. A huge chunk of concrete and brick came crashing down on the floor with a deafening volume that hardly seemed to bear it and buckled under the weight.

Almost half the ceiling had been torn down by Xerxa. Raindrops hit me, coming from the exposed sky and its heavy storm clouds.

I held my breath and let tendrils of thorns shoot from my fingertips, wrapping around Xerxa's wrists. Before she could fight back, I pulled her forward with all my might and wrapped new tendrils around the chunk she had ripped from the ceiling.

With one hand I tried to keep Xerxa's hands in check. With the other hand, I aimed upward, sending tendrils of thorns toward the rest of the ceiling and pulling the hand downward. The second half of the tower roof came crashing down.

As the further weight collapsed on the ground, it tore a hole in the floor. The huge, heavy pieces of the tower roof crashed to the floor below. And Xerxa would have been there if she had not miraculously freed herself from my thorns with fire first.

The deafening sound of the collapse still rumbled in my ears. It had certainly been heard throughout the castle.

Frustrated, I clenched my hands into fists. My opponent was far too focused. I had to distract her somehow or get her off balance.

"You're too weak, Xerxa!", I shouted to the witch standing on the other side of the room. The only thing separating us was the big hole in the floor. "You won't be able to use the heart for long."

Xerxa didn't even laugh anymore. With a maniacal look, she had her eyes wide open. "I've brought in, created, and controlled hundreds of magical beings at once," Xerxa gasped, "I'm anything but weak."

Within a brief moment, she had leapt over to me. Eyes blazing, she stood before me, thrust out her arms, and flung me back with a mighty gust of wind. I stumbled back and caught my heels somewhere. My upper body toppled back.

I felt a cold breeze around my head and how my weight pushed me down. Only my hands clawing around the window frame and the tendrils growing from my fingertips kept me from free falling to my death.

Briefly, I looked down over my shoulder. The whole kingdom lay below us and could be seen from here.

When I looked forward again, Xerxa stretched her arms even further and leaned forward to increase the wind. My hood fell down, my hair whipping past me. With my right hand, I clawed harder at the window frame and planted my feet in the ground. I jerked my left hand in front of me now, my palm facing Xerxa.

The brilliant, bright light shot forward, blinding Xerxa. Since it burned like hell even with her eyes closed, the witch put her hands in front of her face to protect herself.

Now that the wind was gone, I leaned forward again and sprinted away from the dangerous window, right toward Xerxa. She jerked her hands forward, but I jumped right into her.

I threw us both through the hole in the floor. In the free fall, she grabbed my hip and lit fire in her hands. While I screamed in pain, we both crashed onto the remains of the tower roof one floor below us.

With a quick flick of my wrist, I reached into my cloak pocket and pulled out a sharp object. Then I jammed the dagger into the side of Xerxa's neck.

A dagger. The weapon of a human.

All at once there was silence. My former sister opened her eyes and her mouth to breathe. But she only gasped sufferingly while looking at me.

Yes, I had fought unfairly and dirty. I knew that.

While I still clutched the dagger in her throat with my left hand, my right moved through hot flesh.

Xerxa raised a hand with her last strength and clutched my right wrist with her long fingers. But it was too late.

My hand had cut through her chest and severed the rib cage. With my fingers, I had encircled the thumping heart.

"I'm sorry," I whispered, looking steadfastly into her blood-red eyes. And that was the truth.

Quickly, to cause her as little pain as possible, I pulled the organ out of her body. The red in Xerxa's eyes disappeared and changed to a light green, which finally slowly ebbed and sank into black. The witch's grip on my wrist loosened as her kneeling body sank completely to the floor.

I looked at the bloody heart in my palm. I had almost made it.

Exhausted and almost at the end of my strength, I dropped to my knees. Slowly, I removed my black coat and pushed aside the robes beneath until my naked torso was revealed. For a moment, I rested the lifeless heart on my thighs.

With my sharp fingernails, I made a deep cut in my skin. Breathing heavily, I stuck my fingernails into the opening and pulled aside the shreds of skin. Screaming and with watery eyes, I reached for my heart with my left hand and for the Primal Witch's with my right. Everything hurt. I was bleeding profusely. My body was emaciated and at the end of its rope. But I had to survive this. I just had to.

In a quick transition, I simultaneously pushed the new heart in and pulled the old one out. For a moment, my breath was gone and I no longer felt my pain. I no longer felt anything in my body.

Lifeless, I toppled over in the back. Lying with my back on broken parts of the roof, I stared up into the sky. Rain fell on my face and into my open eyes.

I hoped that my sisters were okay out there. That none of them had been killed or injured. That they would live peaceful lives whether I lived or died. They had earned it. Every single one of them.

Over and over again, I wished it. For a whole eternity of not knowing if I was living or dying.

Until the heart made a beat in my chest. And another one.

Finally, I took a panicked breath and lay on the ground like a near drowning woman who had been pulled out of the water onto the land.

I felt the tickling raindrops on my skin. I felt the burning pain in my hip and chest. I felt the heart burying itself further into the opening of my torso, joining the surrounding flesh.

Overwhelmed, I lay there and felt the skin around the heart heal and close my chest again as if the deep cut in my skin had never been there.

And all at once I felt not only myself. I felt all the beings around me. I perceived their heartbeats, how they felt, what they were afraid of. I felt an access to the beings who needed direction and felt alone and lonely. The ones who were suffering and had been forced into cruel acts. The hell beings who couldn't stand it in this world because it was tearing their bodies apart. The magical beings who longed for their peers and wanted to go to a home.

More raindrops splashed my face. I closed my eyes. And then, I released them. I set the beings all free.