The Curse of the Sands (Part 4)

Zii finally spoke out. The girl looked at him, with her blade in front of her face, and smiled devilishly. She turned in that instant and ran. Zii’s eyes narrowed as he chased after her. He knew this city better than she did, but even if he caught her, he couldn’t kill her. She had no pulse. She ran with vigor as she dove through shop stalls and knocked people over. “She is clumsy.” Zii thought to himself as he chased after her. The girl leaped over two merchants and kept running as Zii chased after her. He jumped up onto the merchant’s stall and leaped from the stall to the rooftop of the house behind them. Eyes always on the girl he leapt from rooftop to rooftop never losing speed. The young girl felt his eyes upon him, and in one last leap into the air, she vanished. Zii stopped for a second as he considered what had happened just then. The air seemed quiet again, the onlookers never noticing Zii but dumbstruck at the girl who had mysteriously disappeared. Zii shook his head in disbelief as the air near him grew warmer, ducking just in time to see a dagger fly over his head, and jam into the wall above him. He growled in anger when he couldn’t see her anymore, and went back to inspect the dagger. Surprisingly enough it had a red string of thread dangling from the end with a note bound tightly around the hilt. Yanking the dagger from the wall he pulled the note from it. Unraveling the note he read the one word written on the paper.

Amerie...

Amerie had found her brother. Perhaps not the way she had wanted to, but she had found him. She knew he would understand the message as well. It was simple and clean. But would he understand the situation? Perhaps. Perhaps he still sought to destroy her. She did not know.

Was it Amerie he saw? Zii was confused; didn’t Syri tell him that he killed her? But if the message was true, maybe it was Amerie. The forsaken were not entirely up to date on who killed who. Perhaps she had come back for answers. Perhaps she had come back for revenge. He needed to find her again and he needed to know what happened. If anyone was to know, it would be her.
Passing one of the mirrors in the spire building he saw his reflection smile at him. Stopping in his tracks and back stepping he returned to the mirror. “You bastard, you did this didn’t you?” Zii said with hate to the mirror. The reflection kept his devilish smile and replied “Yes. Yes Zii, I did it. I killed Amerie, but, in reality, YOU killed Amerie.”
Zii spat at the ground in a display of disrespect, “I swear to you, when I have control over you, you will die. You may be part of me, but you will not soon be able to overtake me.”
The reflection merely laughed and faded.

Amerie sat on a rooftop’s canopy, in the shade and in peace. No one bothered her there, and from where she sat she could almost see the entire city. All except for the spire. Curious it was the spire... No one seemed to live there, yet that is where most the commerce takes place around. She knew Zii held up in the spire, and she sought to attempt to contact him once more. She had to know, she had to know what had happened to Zii. He couldn’t have been himself when he did what he did, there was no way he would have killed her with reason.

Syri meditated in the room at the top of the spire. Zii’s home is what she knew it as, yet how could someone so distant stay in one place? The double door’s opened in silence as Zii stepped into the room. His footsteps made no noise, as he approached Syri; the double door’s reacting on slope and closing by themselves. Zii leaned down and kissed Syri on the forehead, startling her and ripping her from her meditation.

“Sho’karka Zii! You scared me half to death!” she exclaimed. He leaned down onto his knees and hugged her tightly, laying the both of them down.

“What is it? What is wrong?” she asked.

“Amerie is not gone.” Zii replied. Syri comforted him and said,

“Love, I know it’s a hard truth to take in, but you must understand, she is gone now.” Zii sighed into her neck,

“No Syri. She is dead, that much I know. But she is forsaken now.” Syri sat up on her elbows and looked at Zii with a quizzical look on her face.

“Utara? I don’t get it...What do you mean?” Zii looked into her eyes and without a trace of a lie on his face he told her the story. He told her of the fact that she met every move with his, that she murdered three guards with ease. She was just like him in every way. She wasn’t dead and Syri was beginning to understand why Zii was the way he was. So she decided to help him find her.

The detch’kage met a week later in the same bar as before. They were all curious why the meetings were in such frequency and what had happened. Zii attended the meeting like normal, with every other rogue, warrior, and assassin. The flames erupted again and out stepped Doga’, Syri’s bodyguard, who was followed by Syri herself. She spoke to the Detch’kage of the Amerie, and her description, telling them all, that she must be found dead, and alive. She was a forsaken and almost impossible to hunt down, and the clan knew that. They all set out, the thirteen left sent to find Amerie and bring her before Syri.

Night came, and Amerie looked upwards at one ledge jutting out about fifteen feet above her on the spire. She was headed straight for the top, and nothing was going to stop her. She set her foot on the side of the building, digging her boned toes into the wall. It gave in easily; this wasn’t going to be hard. She stepped back a few feet, and took a running leap onto the wall. Her bone-fingers and toes digging into the soft wall, she began to crawl up the side of the building. Reaching the ledge she pulled herself up and squatted, hugging the wall the entire time. With one powerful thrust she shot straight upwards to almost the halfway point of the entire spire. Her hands slammed into the wall as the wall grasped them back. She pushed off slightly from the wall and began to run up the wall on all fours, her body blurring with the night. She slowed down long enough to see the sands stirring miles away from the city. “A sandstorm.” She thought as she climbed higher and faster. The ground seems an hour away as she looked down, the other four spires below her now. The balcony that Zii stood on was only feet away as she slowed to a crawl, moving up the building. She could hear his breathing, his exasperated sighs. Someone said something that she couldn’t quite hear, but Zii responded “No...I know... Its something I need to deal with personally.” A woman walked out to the balcony and approached Zii. Amerie had never seen her before, though she was beautiful.

Syri approached Zii and had said

“You know the Detch’kage cannot capture Amerie...”

“No, I know... Its something I need to deal with personally.” He replied, as Syri slunk up beside him. The stars were bright and the night sky was dark for no moon shone this night.

“I just don’t know how. How is she supposed to know it wasn’t my fault? That I had no control?” Zii said with a solemn look on his face.

Amerie had thought about it then. “That I had no control?” Did he truly? Was something wrong with her brother? She climbed the side of the balcony with a quiet grace, and sat on the balcony itself. “It is okay my brother. I forgive you.”

Zii looked to his left, not surprised in the least that his sister had come for him before he had gone for her.

“I must know though, what was wrong. How was it not your fault?” Amerie asked with a hollow voice. Syri gripped Zii’s arm tightly with her own, perplexed by the girl on the balcony.

“There is a beast inside of me that doesn’t care about the consequence of what it does. It does not care that it had possessed me to murder you. But you must know that I could spend my entire life apologizing for what I’ve done and it still wouldn’t be enough.” Amerie looked directly at Zii with her pale white face catching the faint glow of the light from within Zii’s room. The night was warm and comfortable to the skin of those who could feel it.

“A beast you say. Perhaps it was what you’ve kept inside all of your life. Since we were children you’ve always held back your anger, your hate.” Amerie said breaking the short silence. She had proven a point; Zii felt it in his heart. She spoke the truth, what if this beast was merely his anger, hate and rage, taking over? What if he had no control over such things?

“I do believe that could be it, but it would not explain the mirrors. They’ve been talking to me for almost two years. Anytime I see my reflection it speaks to me, smiles and taunts me. I questioned it, what happened to the house, it never answered me. I threatened it, it ignored me. I have no control over this alternate self of me.” Syri gripped his arm tighter, tears almost coming to her eyes. Her beloved was a monster yet there was nothing she could do to help, she had felt so useless. Zii’s face remaining solemn he spoke once more, “I know what it is tormenting me.” A silence ensued only to be broken by the occasional slight gust, of warm wind.