Sinful Servitude

Sidhia has been under the control of the evil lich, Khemran, since he was a child. What will he do, though, when he encounters two children effected by his work?

 

    I’ve been tied down by these chains for so long; I can’t remember a time before I was sold into this sinful servitude. I didn’t do it because I wanted to, I did it because I wished to retain the last bit of life I still possessed within my fading body, although I wouldn’t venture so far as to call myself an inhabitant of the realm of the living. I served a master scarcely known amongst the inhabitants of Neopia, a demonic master of half-living spirits. He was once the leader of an infamous gang of demon zafaras that terrorized any Neopian they encountered, good or evil, human or Neopet, spirit or demon, but all things come to an end eventually, and Khemran’s band was no exception. One fateful night, in a valiant fight, an army of justice-seeking Neopians managed to obliterate Khemran’s entire gang, though at a costly price: Khemran’s army wasn’t the only army to be destroyed. Khemran was mortally wounded, and he wouldn’t have lived more than a few more hours had he not been found by the dark shaman, Vaddah, as he lay dying on the ground of the cave where he had been defeated. The shaman offered to transform Khemran into a lich, a zombie that retains it’s mind, in exchange for Khemran’s service to him, and Khemran accepted, but it wasn’t long before Khemran regained his strength and exceeded his master in power. Needless to say, the shaman who had saved Khemran is no longer with us. My master has never been known to play fair…

   Khemran quickly became accustomed to his new powers and, like Vaddah before him, took quite a liking to his newfound ability to transform innocent bystanders into mindless zombies, and it took no time at all for him to come up with a new plan of action now that his band of demons had been destroyed. After slaughtering Vaddah, Khemran set out to build an army of zombies so he could eventually use them to invade and terrorize Neopia. That’s where I came in. My job was to go out and collect "fodder," as he calls them. Basically, I was to out at night and take innocent Neopians out of their homes to take them back to my master so he could transform them. Not really my forte, but what was there for me to do about it, really? You see, Khemran possessed the one thing holding me back from disappearing forever.

   Let me explain. When I was very young, no more than about 7 years old, I was lost in a forest, and I was found by Vaddah, the dark shaman who turned Khemran into a lich. I was young and naïve, so he had no trouble luring me into his grip, telling me he would help me find my way home, but instead of helping me, he captured me and bound my soul to his so I would forever be in his service. The spell he used transformed me in ways I still don’t entirely understand, and my life was forever altered after that point. The glowing green and orange symbols that cover my body are a result of the soul-binding, as are my eyes, which were once a beautiful shade of purple, but I can’t say I mind the marks much. I was alarmed by them at first, much as any child might be if he woke up one morning to find that his hair color had been drastically altered overnight, but I’ve grown accustomed to them over the years, and now I expect I would be equally alarmed were I to wake some morning and find that they were not there. On the other hoof, though, the binding also made me, essentially, an invisible, insubstantial being to anyone who had not already encountered Vaddah. Only those who have seen Vaddah (or later, the one in possession of his soul) can see, hear, or feel me. When Vaddah was killed, though, Khemran sealed his soul in an unbreakable, spell-proof bottle and strung it around his neck so I would continue on living as his forced servant. If I rebelled, all it would take was one swift movement on his part for Vaddah’s soul to be extinguished and mine along with it, so I remained there doing his bidding.

    As you can clearly observe, though, I am no longer under Khemran's malevolent influence, and I suppose that may lead you to wonder how I managed to free myself. Well, first off, let me explain this pendant around my neck, you see it, it's like a tiny, green lantern. It's integral to your understanding of how I escaped... It contains Vaddah's soul, Khemran's key to controlling me. If he no longer possesses this, I am no longer a slave of his evil intentions. How I came to be in possession of this pendant, though, is the real tale. It begins, actually, many years before I even came under Khemran's care, if you could even call what he provided me "care."

   I was still young, somewhere in my pre-adolescent years, around 10 years old, I would estimate. Vaddah had sent me out to the depths of Neopia Central, the most wretched, polluted, abject crevices of the city, to bring back a poor, wretched being for him to play with. I obliged, and was presently wandering through the streets, invisible to the eyes of the inhabitants, peering through the dirty, cracked glass that seemed to constitute the grand majority of the windows in that pathetic neighborhood. After some time, I came to the window of a home that was, if possible, more morose than the rest. Instead of browned glass webbed with cracks, this window had no glass but a few useless shards jutting out from the sides, providing more of a hazard than a protection from the elements. The interior wasn't much better... what little wallpaper remained on the walls had long ago turned yellow and curled into frail little wisps scattered haphazardly across the walls like some sort of fungi on an old, dying tree, and the only furniture in the main room of the pathetically small apartment was a timeworn wooden chair and an equally battered table that matched the chair in its dilapidation but not in style. A short hallway lead back to a closed bedroom, but never in a thousand years could I have imagined what poor little being was hidden behind that door, sleeping restfully beneath her precious, tattered quilt on a cozy, rusted bed frame and half flat hand-me-down mattress. Never in a thousand years could I have imagined the life I would unknowingly change forever that night, creating, in one helpless, sinful act, a demon and an angel all in one entity, an impish creature that would grow to become my savior and the pillager of her own self. No, all I could see, on that ordinary, fate-changing night, was a weathered female shoyru sitting in the weary old chair, her clothes as tattered as she, and her hands and face prematurely riddled with wrinkles. I couldn't imagine the poor woman could be more than 30 or 35 years old, but she looked for all the world to be closer to 60 . After a moment of observation, I stepped carefully, almost reverently, into the impoverished dwelling and approached the miserable old being. I uttered a short incantation, one taught to me by Vaddah, and before the poor creature even had time to notice a thing was amiss, the both of us were already on our way to Vaddah's hideout by way of a teleportation spell.

    On a similar night many years later, not more than a year ago, actually, I sewed together the last patch of my fate when I once more set out to gather fodder, this time for Khemran instead of Vaddah. This time, though, my job description was not so vague and my victim not nearly so pitiful. I was once again heading into the busy and chaotic throws of Neopia Central, but this time not so deep as to touch the blighted heart of the city as I had done on that previous occasion so many years before. My mission was simple enough. I was to fetch a certain young, happy, middle-class couple of zafaras that Khemran had had his eye on for some time. I suppose it irked him to see two creatures so happy as these, and that was why he had sent me to gather them as his next victims. They were in their mid-20s, the female was a pretty Christmas zafara with a simple, humble beauty about her, and her mate was a handsome green zafara. It still saddened me a bit, even after all these years, to have to bring such a happy pair to their downfall. Vaddah, although by no means a merciful or gentle being, had always made a point of picking his victims out of the most deplorable corners of society, but Khemran did just the opposite, pulling the most joyful of creatures to their piteous demise in his hands.

    I found my way to their dwelling place, a nice house, although by no means elaborate, and tried to make fast work of the job, slipping in and finding the couple as quickly as I could. they were sound asleep in their bedroom, curled up together looking as happy as could be under a cozy down comforter. I stepped gingerly up to their bed, although my carefulness was entirely unnecessary, as I was invisible to them anyways. Just as I reached the bedside, though, a tiny voice peeped from the doorway and I jumped, startled by the sound, which resounded an innocence that couldn't be matched by anything I had ever heard before. Standing thee, in the doorway, was a tiny little white zafara, with pretty little wings tinted with green and a c**k-eyed little halo that looped over one ear. She stared into the dark room, illuminated only by the moonlight from the window, and spoke again, this time loud enough for her words to be comprehensible, " Mommy... daaaaddy, I heared a ghost. Ish dere a ghos' in our house, mommy?" I froze, staring petrified at the little child as I realized just how close to right that tiny, innocent little voice was. But how could she know? No, it must have just been a child's silliness, I figured. I pried my eyes away from the little zafara's pretty green eyes, chiding myself for letting such a petty matter get in the way of my work, which I wanted to be over with as soon as possible, and turned back towards the bed, now raising a hoof to lift my insubstantial self up onto where my victims lay. As I climbed up onto the bed, I heard the little zafara whimper again, "Mooommy, wake uuup..." I cringed, hoping her mother was a sound sleeper. It was always so much harder to do this when my victims were awake. They seem more distant while they sleep. Neither of her parents stirred, though, so I continued towards the center of the bed, preparing to execute the transport spell as soon as I was in a good position. Just as I triggered the spell, though, the little zafara wailed one last time, "Mommy, wake up, I'm scaaaaarred!!!" I jolted, and the eyes of the beautiful Christmas zafara beneath me, the child's mother, shot open as she screamed, a blood-curdling scream as the room spiraled and some invisible force tore her away from her daughter. Fading into the distance, I could hear a tiny voice sobbing, "Mommy... mooooommmyyyy... daaaaaddyyyy... come back, I'm scaaared..."

    It was not so long after that incident that my life reached the unexpected twist that would lead to my eventual freedom. I found myself passing by an orphanage in the vicinity of a place that flickered in the depths of my memories, the place where so many years ago I had harvested an impoverished old shoyru for my former master, and by some mysterious pang of nostalgia, I was drawn to the run-down old place. Some subconscious urge stirred me to go into that lonely, decrepit building, though I knew that I of all creatures was in no position to enter such a place without the leave of my master. I was no savior to these children; I wasn’t even visible to them. Nothing I could do could even affect their existence in the least, save my seizing them from their last smidgeon of hope, however pitiful, to bestow upon them an existence worse than death, and that would hardly create in me a benefactor. Nevertheless, though, something was pricking the back of my mind with increasing tenacity the nearer I drew to that old orphanage, almost until I could bear it no longer, and finally I resolved, against my better judgment, to enter the dilapidated old orphanage for a moment or two, if only to fix the unexplainable craving.

    The inside of the orphanage was every bit as sordid as the exterior. The walls were mostly shrouded in darkness, but what could be seen of them would have been better left concealed. They were an ugly assortment of wood and concrete that, judging by the scattered licks of peeling paint, had at one point been painted white. Somehow I doubted any amount of white paint would doctor those walls, though. Ahead of me was an unpolished wooded staircase leading up to a sort of slim balcony lined with rickety bedroom doors that continued on down the narrow hallways that extended from either side of the balcony. The stairs seemed sturdy enough, albeit ragged, and so I ascended them, still being drawn, almost magnetically, by that peculiar urge that had brought me in there in the first place. I finally halted when I reached one of the doors, staring at the closed entryway as if whatever was behind it was what was the provocative force tugging at my heart. Perhaps it was. The yearning welled up in my chest and head, overwhelming my conscience, intoxicating me until I had lost control of my very self and creaked open the door before me, slipping in and casting my luminous gaze about the room, torpidly taking in everything until my gaze was met with another. I stared, inert and dumbfounded, into the familiar aquamarine eyes for a split second that felt like a decade, and then I bolted out of the room like a ghost in the wind, paying no heed to which way I ran so long as it took me away from the infusive innocence of that gaze.

    I found myself, perhaps moments later or perhaps hours, hiding at the far end of one of the bedroom-lined hallways, peering out from behind a large, rusty bucket that smelled of grime and cleaning chemicals. I cowered there, no longer numbed by my longing, but instead besieged with the prickling reality of fear. It was quiet, there, and I felt safer, but just I had eased my hammering heart, I heard the patter of footsteps and whispers approaching down the hallway towards me. One of the voices was dishearteningly familiar, an endearing, childlike babble, but the other was new to me. It was a harsh voice, but not unkind, at least not in responding to the smaller, innocent voice. Whether that underlying gentleness would remain if the speaker were to discover me, though, I had yet to discover. The voices were nearing me, and I was soon able to decipher their words and even see their shadows approaching down the hall. One was small, the silhouette of a small child with a long, fur-tipped tail, floppy ears, and little wings, and the other was quite tall and dragon-like in appearance, fondly looking down at her small companion as they whisperingly disputed with each other over something they had apparently heard.

    The child’s voice was whimpering, telling her friend, “C’mon, I’s dis way. It was a ghost, CC, I saw it wid my eyes!”

    The older, whose name was apparently CC, retorted irritably, “It’s not a ghost, Zef, just hang on a moment and I’ll find out what it was. You should just go back to the room.”

    “But sissy, I know I see’d it! It was the ghost. I see’d it! I see’d it!” whined the little zafara, Zef. I stiffened, eyes widening.

    “Of course you did…” the taller figure shook her head, emitting a small sound that could have been either a grunt or a chuckle.

    All of a sudden, the little zafara pointed in the direction of the bucket I was behind, gasping, “Sissy, i’s der! The ghost is der, I sees him!”

    Her companion snorted a little, “It’s nothing but the shadows, you silly little-“ suddenly, her eyes narrowed, their stormy blue glinting in the light of the small porthole window set in the wall above me, “What the heck is that?” I froze completely, except for my shaking, as the intimidating shoyru approached me. How could she see me? How could that little zafara see me, even? I was sure neither of them had ever encountered Vaddah, or Vaddah’s soul, for that matter. What in the world gave these two children the ability to see me? I didn’t have much time to think it through, as the two orphans approached my hiding place, but before I knew it, the shoyru was looming over me, and as I looked up at her face, with her deep blue, chin-length hair illuminated in the moonlight and framing her downwards-tilted face like an eerie electrical halo, everything became clear at once. It was my magic! My magic had been granted me by part of Vaddah’s soul, so when I use it, it’s almost as if those around me have seen Vaddah himself, but not quite so strong! This must have been the child of the shoyru I had so long ago captured for Vaddah, and both of these orphans must have been near enough for some of Vaddah’s magic to affect them when I snatched their parents. They must have been able to see a translucent shadow of my form all this time, making me appear to them as some sort of apparition.

    “Who are you?” demanded the shoyru, glowering down at me, “What are you doing, sneaking around here in the middle of the night?”

    I stared up at her, wide-eyed and speechless. I didn’t have an answer for her. I didn’t know what had brought me there.

    “Well, come on!” snapped the shoyru impatiently, “Fess up!”

    Just then, the little zafara padded up behind her friend, or her “sissy” as she seemed to have decided to call the shoyru, and peeked out from behind her baggy pant leg, “See, I told you, sissy! I see’d a ghost! CC, it has mommy and daddy…”

    My breath caught in my throat when I heard her say that. I wanted to cry out, explain everything to them, but I couldn’t. My words seemed to seize in my throat before I could will them out. At last, I managed to quietly squeak out the beginning to my alibi, but I was too late, as before I could finish so much as the first word, the shoyru swept me off the ground by the fur of my chest, knocking the air from my lungs, and shoved me against the wall behind me.

    “What’s going on, here?!” she demanded again, now downright volatile, “Tell me what’s going on!”

    My eyes flitted around frantically, searching for a way to escape, but there was none. I felt pinned to that wall as much by my own insufferable guilt as by the clenched fist of the justifiably angry shoyru. I was trapped. My muscles went lax from lack of will and I hung limply at my adversary’s fist, disheartened. Just as I had all but given up, though, little Zef stepped valiantly out from behind the shielding leg of her “sister” and protested… in my favor!

    “No, CC, don’ hurt ‘im! Please don’ hurt ‘im!” squeaked the brave little voice.

    “What? Why shouldn’t I?” came the shoyru’s stanch reply, obviously not wanting to relinquish her hold on her victim.

    “Pleeease, CC, let ‘im go!” cried the little zafara, merciful tears welling in her beautiful, innocent turquoise eyes. Was this child defending me? Me? The one who she knew, by some unexplainable sense, had taken her parents, her guardians, her life away from her.

    The shoyru’s grip loosened, almost unwillingly, and she began to lower me to the ground until I was only a few inches from the cold floor, then let go, glaring coldly, but no longer maliciously. Her stare seemed oddly empty, now, without that rage. She seemed emotionless, but the emotionlessness seemed sad.

    The child’s plea had softened me as much as it did CC, and when I landed on the ground with a soft thump, I immediately began to explain myself, explain everything to them. I explained their lives to them, as well as mine, and before I had even finished explaining, I felt the furry arms of a little zafara wrap around me and something wet trickle down into my fur near where her head was resting, and I saw the irascible shoyru sit calmly down before me, making herself comfortable (or as comfortable as one could, at least, on that floor) and listening raptly to my story, pacified, it seemed, by something resembling a sort of hopeful but reluctant sympathy.

    When I concluded, CC spoke up, trying to retain her gruff exterior, but choking on her own words,  “So you were the one…? Y-you took my mother?”

    I nodded silently. It was all I could do.

    “And… and,” she straightened herself up and hardened her voice, not wanting to blemish her dignity, “You know where to find the one responsible for all this?”

    “Sort of,” I replied, truthfully, “As I said, Vaddah is dead now. Khemran killed him and took his place, but obviously I do know where to find Khemran.”

    “Yeah yeah, good enough. Only wish I’d of been the one to do that wretch in…” the shoyru cracked her knuckles and sat back, her arms crossed and one eyebrow raised, “So what’re the chances a miserable creature like you might be willing to lead us to where he’s at?”

    “Will we see mommy and daddy?” Zef piped in.

    “Well, I can… They’re…” I stammered, and then let my fear of their disappointment hamper with my judgment, “Of course,” I nodded softly, “I can lead you there. We’ll need to be cautious, though, so Khermran won’t grow suspicious. I can come and lead you a bit nearer at night when I go out to run errands for Khemran…”

    We occupied the remainer of the night, until it came time for me to hurry off and complete my mission before Khemran grew suspicious, plotting out how I was to lead these two orphans to my master’s hideout, one for vengeance and the other to see her parents again (I could not bear to bring myself to tell the little child what had become of her parents…). I returned home at dawn with the excuse that I had lost my way searching for the victim he had sent me out to retrieve. Khemran believed me. This plot was off to a fine start…

    So I was to lead them to Khemran. I was to betray the one who held my fragile excuse for a life in his hands, ready to sever it at any moment. My life was on the line, but something, some peculiar sense, told me that something much greater than even my life would be on the line if I abandoned these two children whose lives I had unknowingly destroyed. I didn’t know what it was. I had always been driven by my fear prior to then, but now there was something else overriding that overpowering sense of fear, pushing me not just down a different path, but the opposite path! And so, against the directives of the fear built up in my heart, I began to lead the two orphans towards my master, slowly but surely, each night returning to them and leading them a little nearer as I carried out my duties for Khemran, and each day returning to my master as if nothing exceptional was going on, never faltering in my duties to either, never letting on to Khemran what was gradually approaching his stronghold.

    The journey was not long, as Khemran’s fortress was located at the far corner of the Haunted Woods, inside a cave disguised by an enchantment, but because of the sluggish nature of our voyage, it was nearly 2 weeks before we were finally within a night’s journey of Khemran’s dwelling. When we reached our final camp, though, at the end of the 13^th night, a strange apprehension fell heavy upon my heart. My fear began to seize at me once again, finally catching at my heart and tearing at it, rupturing it and allowing waterfalls of remorse and terror to cascade out and fill my entire being. As I left them that night, met by Zef’s adoring babbling and hugs and CC’s reluctant, taciturn approval, I could hardly bear to stay a moment longer with these two, poor creatures that I knew I could never come back to. The acrid guilt of betrayal dripped into my chest and mingled, if only for a moment, with the flood of fear, but it merged so quickly that it hardly registered. Finally, silently, I left them without a goodbye, hoping they couldn’t sense my apprehension as I traipsed away trough the eerie, dark woods one last time.

    So I had abandoned them, my trusting and altogether innocent charges, purely out of my own selfish cowardice. I cannot deny it, for there is no other explanation for what I had done to them. As I trudged away that night, I could almost feel the repulsive concoction of emotions sloshing about in my chest. With every step I took I could feel a bit more of the burning guilt trickle out from the open wound in my heart, but still I did not turn back. I urged myself never to turn back, for I knew, or so I thought, what would become of me if I did.

    The next four days of my life were, to put it lightly, positively miserable. As the intoxicating fear that had been protecting me, numbing my senses and justifying my every motion, began to drain from me, settling down to its usual ever-present subconscious murmur, more and more of the agonizing guilt was allowed to drip into my being, burning at me from the inside out like acid. By the fourth night, I could take it no longer. I half feared I might wake the next day to find a hole burned straight through my chest if I didn’t somehow redeem myself.

    It so happened that, on that night, Khemran had assigned me to go out on a special mission for him. I was to go to an old theater near the northern boundary of the Haunted Woods and see if I could locate someone there who was of particular importance to Khemran, a small, yellow krawk with black and white feathered wings and pink mane. Khemran refused to elucidate more than the essentials to me, so all I really knew was that the krawk’s name was revivify, and that he apparently betrayed Khemran after him army was destroyed. Other than that, I knew nothing, so of course I was a bit curious, but before I delved too deep into that curiosity, I had more important matters to attend to…

    I set out that night with renewed conviction, heading at first in the proper direction, but then straying off on a side path as soon as I had escaped Khemran’s watch. I traversed along the unpleasantly familiar trail, my way illuminated by the last slivers of tinted light cast by the half-set sun dancing with an eerie glow through the sweet-smelling foliage around me. I felt oddly refreshed, and my senses were acute to the serenity of the dusky forest. The chirruping crickets and leafy fragrance soothed my whirring mind and brought me to a tranquil state of blurred senses and dulled reality. For at least a moment, I felt almost sane again.

    After around half an hour’s walk, I heard, to my relief, the crackling of a campfire nearby. Reassured, I approached the sound and stepped carefully around the bushes that partially surrounded the hiding place I had selected for my two charges, grateful they hadn’t given up on me and left, as I feared they might have, and then… Wham! I was met with the end of a large, wooden staff swinging straight at me, with enough speed and power that it sent a wave of wind rippling through my fur, and coming to a standstill less than an inch away from my nose. I froze, eyes as wide as luminous green and orange platters, and slowly led my gaze up the staff until my eyes met with those of the one wielding the staff.

    “How DARE you! You disloyal, lying, disgusting little traitor!” exploded CC, jabbing her staff at me to accentuate her point, which in turn caused me to flinch to avoid having my nose smashed in, “What was I thinking?! Following scum like you… I should’ve known something like this would happen! And the nerve of you, showing your face here again! What’re you here, for, anyways? Come to take us to your master, now? Come to have us become worthless, decaying zombies, now, too? Go on! Tell me!”

    "I'm sorry! I'm so sorry! I..." I couldn't bear to tell the truth, "I ran into trouble. I've returned, now, though," I tried casually to step out of the line of CC's staff, feigning that everything was alright, but before I could so much as lift a hoof, CC's staff was at my jaw, pressing lightly against the side of my head and holding there with her unspoken threat.

    “Oh, really?” she interrogated coldly, “Of course you did… Now tell the truth.”

    “I am!” I retorted, “Will you not believe me?”

    “No,” CC replied curtly, pressing her staff a bit harder against my face and leaning in a bit, glaring directly into my frightened eyes with an intensity I would not have deemed feasible prior to then. She scoffed at me with a deadly sort of severity, “I don’t trust traitors.”

    At that moment, Zef came crawling sleepily out from the makeshift tent, consisting of a tarp strung up on the other side of their hiding place, and padded up to us, hugging a tattered blanket and rubbing her tired eyes. “Sissy…” she whimpered, “Wha’s wrong? Why’s you yell- Sidhia!” the child spotted me and instantly sprung for me and gathered me in an adoring embrace, “You’s back! Oh, I knowed you’d come back! I jus’ knowed you would!”

    CC stared down at her sister in astonishment, softened by the child’s misplaced faith in me and then stood up straight, relaxing her stance, and returned the intimidating staff harmlessly to her side. “All right, Obsidhian, take us to Khemran,” she grunted without emotion.

    I let out a deep breath of respite and nodded meekly, “That’s what I came here to do,” CC snorted disbelievingly in response to that, but I continued, “Gather up your belongings, and I’ll lead you the rest of the way there. We should reach the hideout before morning. We can hash out the remainder of the plan along the way.”

 

    As I had anticipated, we reached Khemran’s veiled fortress well before dawn. With a simple incantation I had made use of countless times beforehand, I unraveled the illusion hiding the fortress, and the moment we stepped foot inside the mouth of the cave, the world around us became the entryway to an intricate network of dungeons and corridors in which Khemran resided and stored his army of zombies. It was a maze of tiled corridors alternating with stone chambers lined with cages containing Khemran’s zombified victims. CC and I had laid out our plans on the trek there, so we split off to carry out our own parts of the arrangement almost as soon as we had entered the stronghold. I was to take Zef to see her parents while CC dealt with Khemran, who I had already instructed her on how to find.

    I led Zef through the corridors, carefully avoiding taking her through any of the zombie holding chambers until I was certain I had reached the proper one. Finally, though, we arrived at our destination, and I turned to Zef, a solemn look in my eyes, “We’re here, Zef.”

    “Are Mommy and Daddy in there?”

    “Yes, they are.”

    “Where?”

    “I’ll show you. Come with me…” I walked slowly, reverently into the chamber, followed by the small zafara, who was peering about the room with increasing horror.

    “S-Sidhia, what are dose t’ings? They’s scary…” little Zef whimpered.

    “They’re zombies,” I murmured, leading her on still farther into the chamber, to where her parents were caged.

    “They look sad,” mused the little zafara. I nodded, and we kept walking.

    A minute or two later, we reached the cage we were looking for. Inside, skulking about at the back of the cage, were two ratty-furred, shallow-eyed zafaras. They were recognizable, at least to me, but they bore little resemblance to how they had once been. Presuming Zef would never figure it out on her own, I opened my mouth to break the truth to her and point out her parents, but before I had time to speak, she had already darted straight over to the bars of the cage and was reaching through them, her tiny arms held out through the bars towards her unresponsive parents.

    “Mommy! Daddy!” cried Zef, “Mommmyyy, wha’ happened to you an’ Daddy? Why’s you here wit’ all de zom’ies? Mommmyyy…”

    Then, to my alarm, Zef’s mother, whose beautiful white fur and lush wings had depreciated into a famished grey creature with hollow eyes and tattered wings that appeared almost as if they had been plucked by a butcher with cerebral palsy, actually turned and began approaching in response to the child’s cries, a low rumbling emitting from her throat. I panicked, trying the think of a way to protect Zef before the zombie reached her, but I thought to slowly. I didn’t have time to act before I heard the clattering of rattled bars and snarling sound of a distraught zombie mingled with the heartfelt pleas of an innocent child. The pleas were not for safety, though, I realized… Zef was not frightened; her cries were out of compassion, not fear.

    “Mommy, no! Please, Mommy, stop it! I’s okay. I’s jus’ me. Come ‘ere Mommy, lemme give you a kiss… Please Mommy? Don’t be sad. I come’d to visit you!”

    I watched in utter astonishment as the child comforted her zombie mother until the zombie bent down and, through the bars of the cage, let her daughter squeeze her tight in a heartfelt embrace. After that, the zombie stood back up and shuffled her way back to the back of the cage, pacified, and Zef stood there, staring transfixed after her mother. I couldn’t quite place what she appeared to be feeling, but it wasn’t an emotion I would have thought characteristic of a child so young. It held a bit of sadness, but also a sort of respite. I don’t think I shall ever cease being amazed by that child time and time again…

    After a few minutes of that reverent silence we experienced as Zef stood there staring in at her departed parents, the stillness was cut short when CC found her way into the room where we were at. The shoyru walked quietly up through the shadows without a sound save the slight slapping of her feet on the ground, and stopped right behind me, standing there and watching Zef for a moment, and then turning her gaze down to me. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched as she opened her hand and lifted something out of it. Then, to my astonishment, the ill-tempered shoyru lifted a tiny, mint green glowing pendant, straightened out the thin sliver chain, and dropped the whole thing over my head.

    She muttered, gruffly but with a hint of fondness, “I don’t know why I bother doing things like this for a traitor like you.”

    It was Vaddah’s soul! I couldn’t believe it. What could have brought her to perform such a kind act for someone she knew she couldn’t trust? With that one, kind, merciful act, CC had just freed me, thoroughly freed me, from everything that had held me down for so long. Yet I couldn’t even find the words to thank her.

    “Mmph,” she grunted in response to my silence, “You’re welcome.”

    I glanced down at the pendant that now rested against my chest, searching for something to say, and finally uttered, almost inaudibly, “Well, we have what we need, so I suppose we ought to head out now…”

    CC nodded and glanced over at Zef, then back at me.

    “Supposedly there’s a deserter from Khemran’s old army taking refuge with a group of other pets in an old theater out near the border of the Haunted Woods, a krawk named Revivify. I’d be willing to bet they might be able to provide us with some support if we explain our situation. Should we head there, first?”

    With that, I set out on a whole new epoch of my life, this time with two of the most wonderful companions alongside me and the power over my own life resting lightly upon my chest in the form of a beautiful little pendant containing the other half of my existence.

Author's Note

I need to switch Neopet-species' to regular-species on this. I'll update this once I do.