_{by jaymamma.}

I wake from the nightmare, ready to scream. Thankfully, I get my hand over my mouth to halt it before it escapes my lungs. I wouldn’t want to wake the others. I needed them rested and sharp. Especially since I knew I could not be.

How long had I actually slept?

Gazing out the window to the moon, I could tell it was not long, a few minutes. If not for the visit from Ophelia, I likely would not have gotten a second of sleep.

I continued to stare at the moon for a while. What else was there for me to do now? The thought of Droop, if he was still alive, how afraid he must be, I could not continue like this. Had I done this before? Found someone, someone to care for that cared for me. Did I lose them too? Did I lose it afterwards?

Of course I had. Although I couldn’t remember specifics, I knew it to be true. I lost it when my parents were killed. I lost it in Ravenloft. Now here we were on the precipice.

A sharp pain thrust its way into my forehead, and then deep behind my eyes. I again got a hand to my mouth to stifle the coming scream.

As the pain intensified. I saw an image, no memory.

I was almost naked, save for a tattered robe that left me only partially nude. I felt the emotions along with the image. Rage, fear, I was trapped. I couldn’t move. A man cackled in front of me. He too was nude.

The pain abated and the memory left me. What the hell was that? I got flashes of memories past fairly often. That one, however, I did not recognize at all. I was definitely years younger.

“How is your head?”

The queen. She wouldn’t honor any of my requests, yet she couldn’t just leave me be either.

“What do you care? You did this to me.”

“Tone. I am here to help you as much as possible.”

I turned to her. She looked haggard. Probably as I did. She was still unfathomably beautiful, but looked like she was also not having a good night.

“Even when you are angry with me, you still flatter.”

Ugh mind readers, telepathy. What a pain in the ass they were.

“What happened to you?” I asked.

“You are not the only one in pain child, I have seen this before.”

“Yes” I responded. “So have I, I am sure I just can’t recall any of it.”

“You recalled something when I arrived. What did you see?”

“I was younger, I was standing somewhere, half naked. I felt trapped. I couldn’t move. There was a naked man in front of me. I don’t think I recognize him.”

“Oh” was her reply.

“What was that? Oh? Just oh? That is all you have? What the hell does that mean?”

“That my girl is a memory that will not bring you any good. The more upset you become, the more you begin to remember. It’s a vicious cycle. Eventually, you expend enough energy, enough raw power that you pass out and become practically catatonic. That is usually when I slip in and lock your mind back down.”

“How many times have you had to do this?”

She locked eyes with me for a long silent moment.

“The truth Queen, please, this is not about me being angry at you for doing such a thing. A vicious cycle you said. That I know to be true. A cycle that I, that we need to break. It becomes worse each time, doesn’t it?”

She nodded. “It does. All that stored emotional trauma compounds and interacts with your power. Each time has been progressively worse.

“How many times? Please.”

“Three times”

I took that in. “When?”

“The first was the memory you were describing, the second was in Ravenloft. The third was more recent and was done peacefully. I think you have a vague memory of it?”

“Your vampire? I think I asked about Ravenloft? You answered, and I don’t think I cared for the answer.”

“Hmm, I think you are overcoming the memory manipulations on your own possibly.”

“I need to know, and now tonight. I am cursed to repeat if I cannot remember what has passed. I must know. I will beg, plead, grovel. You know, I hate that shit. I do it for you, though. I always have.

Despite this at its core being a business relationship, you were there for me when my parents were taken. When I was on the run after for years, you guided me. You have been like a second mother from what I remember.

I got down on my hands and knees and looked up at her.

“Please, from your daughter to the only mother she has let me remember.”

She looked down at me, and for a fleeting moment I thought a single tear would escape the twitch in her right eye.

“If I had a daughter, she would definitely be you. Trying to manipulate the manipulator,” she said with a prideful smile.

I smiled. “Can’t hate a girl for trying.”

“No, I can not. Even at your weakest, you still please and impress like no other ever could.

She waved her hand. The air shimmered, and everything seemed so for lack of a better word still.

“What was that?”

“I have tweaked time a tad bit. We will need time to do this a single night is not enough. Inside our bubble time is moving faster, much faster.”

I couldn’t stop my emotions from betraying me, as my hands clapped together with elation that she was going to honor my request.

“We will go farther back than the first time I wiped your mind. I think it would be best if you could remember more of the good to balance out the bad. Even the good however may be painful. Are you ready?”

“I don’t have the option of being ready, it’s now or never.”

Darkness, that’s all there was. Then, there was light. Blinding, and yet warm and wonderful. I now knew exactly what a fresh born’s first encounter with light, and life itself felt like. I know because I believe I am currently just that, freshly born.

Why?

Why regress me so far? This was probably something no being would remember. So again, why?

“Just watch child” The queen whispered. I could not see her, but knew she was close. My little eyes finally acclimated to the light. Firelight.

So this was my birth. I could not turn my head to look around, I was just a babe. I could however take in the scenery in my direct line of sight.

The sky was a swirling mass of darkness, the ground was just dark soil. No plants to give me a hint of what region I was in.

My head suddenly turned for me, and I saw her. I cried both in my baby form and within my soul. She was a lovely TIefling woman. Even though her eyes were swollen and wet, likely from birthing me. No surprise there, though. I would never imagine birthing perfection would be easy.

My patron snickered.

Before I could memorize every detail of her face, she pulled something over me. Then we were running. She screamed as she ran.

What was she running from?

A long screech rang out from what I think was behind us. Then all around. The screech was not all that dissimilar from steam escaping a tea kettle. If a tea kettle was a demon, that…..

Wait, I knew that sound. Shadow demons. A whole pack of them. I knew exactly where we were. I was born on the plane of shadow.

“Yes child, this is why I believe your ability to wield shadow magic is so innately potent.

Amidst the bouncing and jostling of my mother running and the screeching, I began to make out another sound. The sounds of hoof upon ground.

The screeching turned to howls and sounds of bestial combat.

After an undeterminable amount of time, there was silence. Silence save for the heavy breaths of my mother. Then snorts and the whine of a horse or perhaps horses. Slowly and gently, the cloth that covered me pulled back. I could again see her face.

One of her hands touched my cheek, the other the gaping wound on her neck. The baby me could not have known, but the current me did. This was a fatal wound, already the light in her eyes had begun to fade. In her last moments, all she wanted to do was look at me.

For all the wondering I did, for all the questioning I had subjected myself too. I had not been voluntarily abandoned. I could see in her dying eyes that she would have done anything, given anything to save my life. In fact, she had.

In her last act, she fought to her feet and looped the cloth that I was swaddled in around the neck of the black mare that had beaten back the shadow demons. Likely this was the same mare that would also in short order fend off the wolves on the prime material plane.

Reality shifted and twisted. I suddenly was pulled out of my infantile self to a short distance away. The queen stood beside me.

“In the spirit of honesty”, her nose twitched in disgust as honesty rolled out. “There is more to the story even before your birth, but trust me when I tell you that is not to our current purpose. Someday I will tell you of events that predated your birth.

I looked at her, and she met my gaze steely eyed.

“I can accept that. Let’s fill in one hole at a time. Until I have what I feel I must find.”

She smiled.

“Do you remember what happened on your seventh birthday?”

I had to take a moment to recall.

“Yes, my adopted parents took me to a carnival for a horse show.”

“Anything else?”

“No, should there be?”

She reached out and touched a finger to my forehead.

It felt like a lightning bolt raced through me before groudnig at my feet.

“Try again, think about that day.”

I did, and yes, there was something else.

“I saw one of the stage hands mistreating one of the horses, I got really angry…”

“Yes, that was the first time your power manifested. Well, not the first time.”

“My father stopped me he….?”

Again, a massive shift in reality occurred.

The young man used his ring to cut alongside the horses neck beneath the mane. For what reason did he do such a thing? I did not know then, nor did I now. The girl I was really didn’t care, she just knew she saw something wrong, and that made her very angry.

I felt my anger as the seven year old girl. The shadows cast in the small stable where this occurred began to twist and bend beneath that anger. and snake their way across the floor towards the man’s feet.

Then I felt hands on my shoulders.

“Lilvari, he is wrong, and what he did is horrible, but you can’t do this. Remember, take a moment before you act. Breath, what else could we do? Think about it. My father turned me around and knelt and looked me eye to eye.

“Using your power for tricks and pranks is one thing, using them to hurt others is another. Keep breathing. I’ll do it with you 1, 2, 3. Control it, use it better.”

I felt my anger not subside, more like it fled me. From my mind, I felt it moving downward past my chest, across my heart. It drained and into the shadows I had gathered. It took shape and into what resembled a small impish creature. I could feel its anger. My anger. It wanted to leap upon the man and tear pieces out of him. But it could not. Only if I let it. I however was no longer angry, not in the least. I was in control. With but a thought, I dismissed the creature I created from my emotions.

The queen again drew me out, and back to her.

“I don’t recall any of this.”

“That’s because I was not the first to meddle in your mind.”

“Wait what?” I asked.

“You had been demonstrating powerful innate magical ability since you were young. After this incident, your adopted parents were quite frightened, so to protect you, they had you bound.”

“Bound?”

“Yes, an ancient practice was expensive and difficult to find someone capable of it. They had to employ powerful sorcerers and clergy to accomplish this. They sealed away your connection to the planes of magic, and erased your memory of that power.”

I took a long moment to reflect. I don’t know how to feel about this. Should I be angry? No, I could not be they had clearly been correct in doing what they did. They had no motive to do so other than to protect me.

I found that my sense of love for them only benefited from this knowledge.

“I don’t think I realized how much I had been loved before now. I always thought my real parents just didn’t want me….thank you for this, my queen…really.

She siled. “You see now why I went a little further back?”

“Yes, and maybe to show me how your tampering with my mind was done out of care on your part?”

She smiled. “I thought you would understand, things are far removed from what they seem. Two significant and formative moments, the ones I deliberately hidden from you remain. The one you have already started to recall, and Ravenloft, are you ready for this?

I stood up straight. It seemed like I wanted to know what I was missing for so long. At the same time, I had always been afraid of what I would find. Now I found that I was not. I also knew I had found exactly what I needed.

“It can wait, my queen. I have what I need.”

She breathed out a long sigh. “Thank the stars!”

“I do have one question.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“When I handed Cursebringer to Dare to torture the hag. I saw faces I did not recognize. Am I responsible for putting them there?”

“Yes, you are. Cursebringer was not always Cursebringer. What happened in Ravenloft led to what it has become.”

“Were they friends?”

She looked down, which answered the question more than words could.

“Was it because I had to do what I did, or was it because I lost control?”

She sighed again. “It was a necessity. You lost control because of what you had to do. I can not stress “HAD TOO”

I summoned the Goat head staff. I think I will go with this for a bit until at least I know the whole story.

“That is up to you child. Before I dismiss the bubble, can I ask you a question? “

“Anything my queen.”

“What is it that you have found today? I hope it will enable you to move forward with no more tampering on my part.”

I smiled. “I have found something else to do with my emotions when they become unbearable, or I fear I will not be capable of internally controlling them.”

“And that is?”

I smiled. “Guess we will just have to wait and see.”

“I will be watching just in case, now sleep.”

She touched my forehead and all went black.