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7 Heroes 11: Adameria's Memory 2

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              A month has passed since Adameria moved in with her new owner. She has grown accustomed to the way the man operates for the most part, trying to stay out of trouble the best she can. Quickly she had fallen into a daily routine. However, today started a little differently. Adameria stands back in her small bedroom, looking at the blood stained sheets in horror. After a short breathless moment, she she tears off the bloodied sheets and gathers them into a tight ball. This she carries to the forge. Her owner was out at the moment, but he could walk in that front door at any moment. She is quick to toss the sheets into the fire that still burnt in preparation for his homecoming. Within flames, she hid the evidence. Once the task is complete, she calms herself down. She acts natural as she removes one of the swords hanging on the wall and sits down, sharpening its edges so that it would appear at top quality. It’s only a few seconds after she sits down that Jerako opens the front door.

“Adameria, how do you feel about your smithing skills so far?”

“I feel as though I am able to properly handle the tools with good ease.”

“Then how would you like to make your first blade?” This comment prompts her to glance up at him, saying nothing in reply, only showing some interest in her expression. “It’ll be just a small knife, but it’s a good test for you to see if you’re ready.”

                   Jerako assists Adameria in the craft. She was quick to learn, having watched him at his work time and time again. She already had learned the basics through watching, but now she got to physically practice it. The man was pleasantly surprised by her steady hand and how quickly she caught on. He’d picked a good kid out of the lot.

“Alright, this one’s good enough for someone to protect themselves in a close encounter. With a little more work, I can have you making the basic swords ordered for the masses while I’m out.”

“Now what should I do?”

“Go fetch me a beer, girl.”

A look of concern flashes on Adameria’s face. “Isn’t it a bit early for that..?”

“I don’t like to repeat myself, get the damn beer girl, Or you’ll make me upset!”

With a sigh, Adameria hurries to the kitchen where she retrieves his desired beverage. Upon her return, the man pats her head like a dog and begins gulping the drink down. “Why not slow down a little?” Adameria suggests.

Upon hearing her comment, Jerako grabs a fistful of Adameria’s hair and tugs roughly. “Why don’t you shut up and bring me another?” The man growls.

Once Jerako releases, Adameria walks off to follow his demands, knowing this wouldn’t end well. She returns with another beer, much to the thirty-year-old’s enjoyment. “Alright!” He slams down the emptied first beer and begins on the second. “Adameria, bring me my money pouch.”

Without a word now, Adameria just grabs the small sack and tosses it to him. The man opens it and starts to count the coins within. “I’m going to go gambling. Keep the forge hot for when I return and stay inside. I’ll see you later tonight.” The man gets up once finishing the second drink and he heads out the front door.

              Time ticks by as Adameria cleans up the place. Sweeping the floors, polishing the swords, doing laundry. She cooks for herself that night as Jerako doesn’t return around the usual supper time. Adameria then washes her dishes and goes to look for other tasks to do. There wasn’t much else she knew she could do with herself. She was thirteen now and she had no one to interact with, nothing she could really call her own anymore. Life was just mindless labor at this point for her. She pours coal into the forge when Jerako finally returns around midnight, stumbling through the door in a drunken rage.

“Welcome home-“ Adameria starts.

“Oh shut up, stupid bitch!”

                    Adameria takes little offense to it, this wasn’t the first time he’d been like this. He had a drinking and gambling problem, and he was clearly an angry drunk based on all of the past experiences. She just calmly shifts the hot coals around within the fire. Meanwhile, Jerako slumps down in the chair behind her without an inch of grace.

“I lost.”

“How much?”

“Everything we’ve earned so far for this month.”

This gets Adameria’s attention. She spins around to him, alarmed. “What do we do? The rent is due in a few days.”

“I’ll sell what I can in the meantime. You don’t need as many dresses, that’ll be the first thing to go. You only need two. Anything else we don’t need goes as well. Then if it isn't enough and it gets to be too close to payment day, I’ll sell your body. It’s not like you’ll have kids yet, so it should be fine.”

Hearing his statement, Adameria bites her lip, fighting back the urge to scream at this man. She COULD get pregnant now, but she would rather die than let Jerako know that information.

Jerako gets up abruptly from his chair and shoves Adameria aside. “Move, I need to get to work. Gotta make what I can as soon as possible.”

                   Getting an idea, Adameria fetches a needle and thread, hoping to be able to sew some goods for sale. While she does this, Jerako prods around with a rod in the forge, bringing up the temperature of the flames. As he does this, he notices something foreign caught in the back. Something that hadn’t burned completely. The man works it out of the forges and examines it. It was a piece of the bloodied bed cloth. Seeing the red stains on it, he’s quick to realize what happened. In his intoxicated mindset, he boils with rage.

                   Slam! Adameria jumps at the noise as Jerako flings her bedroom door open. He yanks the spread off the top of the bed to see the torn sheets hidden below. This confirmed his suspicion.

“You lying little bitch!!” Jerako screams as he storms over to Adameria and smacks her hard across the face. “You’ve been hiding your bloods from me!” He rips her out of her chair and throws her to floor below. Once she’s down he starts to kick her repeatedly, knocking her down at every attempt she made to get up. The blood was rushing through his veins, blinded by his rage. He kept up with the kicks, relentlessly and powerful with each strike. She felt a shock followed by numbness in each area hit, bruising through the skin and seeping all the way to her bone."

“I’ll make sure you never keep a secret from me again.”

                   Once Adameria had rolled over, giving up on her attempts to rise once more, Jerako moves to the forge and pulls the metal rod from the fire, the end or the iron a molten orange in color. Hearing the scrape of the metal when he removes it, Adameria turns her head to see him approaching her with it. This was going way too far. She stumbles to get up, trying to run despite her throbbing pains. The moment he sees her trying to lung away he gives her a solid whack on her back with the burning rod. It promps a scream from her lips as she pulls away, feeling her skin tighten from the touch of the molten iron tip. Once she turns, Jerako snatches her by her hair. Adameria squirms in desperation, trying to escape from his grasp. This is when he brings his knee up, striking her in the stomach hard enough to make the young lady fall to her knees. Jerako shoves her back against the floor and grabs ahold of her by her jaw. Keeping Adameria’s head steady, Jerako brings the rod down slowly towards her face. She reaches out, grabbing the rod and burning her hands as she tries to stop him, applying force in the opposing direction. She can feel her skin bubbling and sizzling under the immense heat of the rod. Jerako jerks the rod back momentarily to make Adameria touch the molten end of the rod, prompting a scream and an immediate release of her grip. The moment she lets go, he shoves the rod down, sliding it into her right eye, plunging deep into the eye socket.

                     A moment of pause. Time seemed to freeze as Adameria felt the initial popping sensation. It was a feeling one should never experience. A fraction of a second passed and her screams filled the air of the house. Neighbors were disturbed by the anguish that entered their ears. However, there was no real concern they gave. No police force could be called to save the young girl. Nor would anyone call if there was. Abuse, rape, even sometimes murder, this was normal occurrences in the Slums. For these people, this was just a part of life, it was normal. Hot tears well in Adameria’s still intact eye. Then, just to make the whole thing worse, Jerako gives the rod a good twist before yanking it back out. Adamera rolls over, cupping the injured eye socket as she continued to cry out. The man just steps back, satisfied now by her cries. “You belong to me forever, girl. Let this new brand be a constant reminder of that to you. Every time you look in the mirror and see what has become of your eye, you will know it means that you are mine.”

                     Jerako places the rod in its cooling bucket and walks back to his room, deciding that he can start work tomorrow instead. He leaves Adameria alone on the floor who struggles to get up to her hand and knees, one hand still clasped over her injured eye. She takes the cloth she’d been working on and presses it to the bloody mess on her face. Wobbling in pain, she forces herself up to her feet, stumbling to the bathroom. Never had she felt this numb from her wounds. She tried to wash out the blood, the sting immense. Quickly, the throbbing pains from her bruising, and the pain in her eye overcome her. Barely able to wrap the cloth around her head to cover the wounded eye, Adameria collapses to the floor, passing out.

                   A week goes by since the incident, and Adameria is up and working as usual. Over her right eye is a medical patch they bought off the street. Around her eye, horrible burn wounds could be seen. Her face wasn’t the prettiest thing to look at. None-the-less, the due date for their payment on the house was coming up quickly. Adameria had never sewn so much in her life, but she was desperate to make the money needed for this month to keep herself from being whored out. She just continued working on a thick blanket to sell for the winter.

“We’re cutting it close, but if we sell everything we’ve made so far plus a few things around this house, then we should be able to make ends meet. Meals might be a bit scarce for a while though.” Jerako tells Adameria.

“Your vision seems to have adjusted well. That’s good.” He then comments. This of which prompts a pause from Adameria. She glances at the man momentarily before continuing on her work.

“I’m sure your blood must be over by now. So tonight, you’ll be keeping me company rather than sleeping in your own bed. Do you understand me, Adameria?”

“Yes, Sweety.” She says with a forced smile.

“I want you to move your things into my room now. Go on. You don’t need your own room anymore.”

“Of course.” Adameria says as kindly as she could muster around this man. She goes off to her room and starts collecting her things. After a moment, she pauses, lightly touching the patch now covering her eye. “It itches…” She whispers to herself as she rubs the patch a bit. Catching herself in the act, she immediately stops and picks up her clothes and carries her things off to Jerako’s room. Once she gets everything put away neatly, she steps back out of the room to hear Jerako announce to her that he was headed out to deliver the swords. He’d be back in a little bit over an hour.

                   The moment the front door shuts, Adameria turns her attention to the full bed in her owner’s room. Just looking at it, she felt her heart race. Every inch of her loathed the man, and yet she was supposed to go through with…THAT. She didn’t know what the point would be anymore. Go through with it and hate herself, or reject him and be punished for it. Not that it mattered, her life meant nothing here. She was a mere servant, a slave bought off the street. As far as this country was concerned she didn’t have a soul. None of the women who lived in the Slums meant a damn thing. All they were good for was breeding soldiers for the armies and doing the labor work for all the aristocrats and well off folks who didn’t want to do the work themselves. So why should she stay? Right now, anything felt better than this. Here she was nothing, out there she’d be a lost girl. But a lost girl was more than nothing, so she felt. Letting this impulse to just run away from all of it take over her, Adameria rushes out the front door. Pushing past people in the street, she lets her feet carry her away, darting for the nearest exit from the massive poverty struck city. She goes right to the Hellish wall, which borders their country and the next. Adameria stacks several crates lying around and uses them to climb over it, jumping to the trees in the forest just on the other side. The young lady then hops down and hurries off into the woods. She keeps running on and on until eventually she just can’t run anymore and she collapses to her knees, panting.

                   After taking a moment to catch her breath, she gets up once more, now walking as she heads deeper into the woods. Soon, she comes across a small stream in which she sits down for a moment longer by. Looking down at the water, she stares hard at her reflection. Her focus on the depiction of the bloodied patch on her face and the burn marks accenting it. “God dammit, it itches!” She slips her fingers under the medical patch to scratch at it, reopening the wound with her nails, blood trickles down her cheek. Once she satisfies her itch, she looks at her bloodied fingers.

“What are you doing out here?” The voice of a women is heard. Their tonality alluring.

                    Adameria jumps to her feet, having not noticed the stranger approach so closely. Immediately, Adameria gets into a defensive position as she looks over the newcomer. The woman was fully matured. She had a perfect hourglass shape and dark brown hair cascading down her back in silken waves. Her eyes were a warm brown, and adorning her seductive complexion was a red satin dress. In hand, this woman carried a staff with the largest gem Adameria had ever seen in her life on it. This mysterious woman was Desire, the red sorceress.

“It would appear you have seen some pretty bad days as of late.” Desire comments.

“Who are you?” Adameria asks in return.

“My name is Desire. I am the head Sorceress and the commandor of the magic sector.”

                   Hearing this announcement causes Adameria’s eyes to widen. This woman was of the elite four, the top rank of her sector in Master’s army. One could not achieve a higher rank.

“And who are you, may I ask?”

“I’m….I’m no one.”

“Oh?” Desire squats down to Adameria’s level. “Well you’re a living person, you must have a name too, so surely you must be someone.”

“I was just leaving so-“

Desire sighs, “Running away from your problems doesn’t solve them. Especially not for our kind. You are aware what will happen to you out here, right?”

“I don’t care. I can’t go back. I just….I can’t do it anymore. If I do….it’ll only continue to get worse.”

“If you leave, you doom yourself for worse. As soon as someone recognizes you as someone who followed Master, they will do things to you far worse than death. Even if you attempt to live your life out here in the woods away from civilization, the beasts that roam these woods will kill you. To run away is simply suicide. Then everything you once did or would do would account for nothing.”

“Look at me. I’m a girl from the Slums. Nothing I will ever do will account for anything anyways. I was doomed to suffer since the moment I was born, all because of my stupid bloodline and my gender.”

Hearing this brings a frown to Desire’s face. “I can see you are suffering, child. Your sorrows have been painted on your face. But I can also see that you are strong, and I know that you are not broken yet; nor are you one to break so easily. No, you are only hurt, and your pain distracts you. This suffering of yours, you have endured it for too long.”

Confusion crosses Adameria’s face. “Distracted? From what?”

“You are distracted by your feelings and your desire to rid all of your misery. But you will never escape that. All that you must do, is deny that misery.”

Hearing this, Adameria grows annoyed. “I can’t just decide to not feel miserable. Things happen, I get hurt, so I FEEL it.”

“Then do not get hurt.”

“It’s not like I chose for this to happen to me! I didn’t ask to be hurt!”

“Why can’t you avoid harms way?”

“You clearly do not understand. The man who took my eye OWNS me. He is bigger than me, and when I try to resist or stop him, he only hurts me more.”

“I understand perfectly fine, young lady, but you do not have to let this man hurt you, and he can never own you if you do not allow him to.”

Adamreia loses it at this point. “If I don’t do as he says he will beat me till I’m dead or do whatever he can to make sure I cannot fight back! And soon I am expected to carry his babies and I have all of this coming because I couldn’t help my baby sister.” Her irritation quickly turns into sadness as her inner emotions she’d been keeping down for so long emerge. Hot tears swell in her eye and pour down her dirty face. “I failed her, this is my punishment. Oh Sersie, I’m so sorry. I couldn’t do what I should have to save you. You didn’t even get a chance in this world and all I could do was watch you slip away helplessly in my arms, crying for my help.”

                    As Adameria releases her pent up emotion,  bawling her eye out, Desire feels moved looking upon her grief stricken form. She’d clearly been through enough. So, without permission, she uses a little magic trick. Desire presses her forehead against Adameria’s, and Desire taps into her mind, removing the current emotion and taking away the stressors acting on the young girl’s mind. This automatically puts the young girl in a state of relaxation and calmness, their states of mind swap partially in order to achieve this result. Upon the few seconds Desire is connected to Adameria, she gets a glimpse of her memories as well as another version of Adameria, one that brings a smile to the mage’s face as she pulls back. Silent tears roll down Desire’s face as she looks at Adameria. “Oh sweetie, you did everything you could, you were a good sister. It wasn’t your fault.” Desire can’t help her sorrow for Adameria as she hugs onto her, rubbing her back soothingly.

                   The sudden change in the head sorceress leaves Adameria shocked and confused, however, she is finally at a sense of ease. She wipes her own tears away, suddenly feeling fine. A smile emerges on Adameria’s face. She felt so light, like an enormous weight had been lifted. Now she felt like she could really breath.

“What did you do to me?” Adameria asks.

Not bothering to explain it, Desire just gets to her main point. She grabs Adameria by her shoulders as she speaks to her now. “There’s more than one way to fight back. There are no limits to what you can do. You alone can prove that those who tell you that you can’t fight and that you are worthless are wrong. Unfortunately the world that you and I live in is a first come first serve world. Those who get what they want get it because they beat the others to it. If you want to stop someone from hurting you, you must do so before they hurt you. I cannot promise you will never experience misery again. That is something we all will feel in our lives. But in my many years, I usually find that the harder way to deal with things, is quite often the best way to deal with them. We all have to find our own ways to deal with life, but you are a strong willed girl, that may just be the one thing that could carry you in life, as long as you let it be that thing that takes you places.”

“My own way to deal with life you say?”

Desire smiles at her, then makes a comment, hoping the girl understands what she implies by her next words. “By the way, your second skin, it is absolutely beautiful.”

“You think? I’ve always hated it. Never thought it was very strong.”

“I disagree. One day you may learn to even love that skin. That is, when you learn how you want to use it.”

The moment Desire tells her that, something clicks in Adameria’s head. Then she remembers that Jerako said he’d be returning around an hour. “I apologize, I must have waisted so much of your time when you must surely be a busy woman.”

“It most certainly was not a waist of time.”

“I should get home before Jerako returns.”

“I wish you the best of luck in whatever road you choose from this day on.”

“Thank you, for everything!” Adameria waves back as she runs, hurrying back to the house.

“Oh! And don’t forget! If you scratch your wound it won’t heal right!”

                      Retracing her steps, Adameria hurries back to the wall. There she climbs a tree and leaps back over to the crates she'd stacked. Stumbling past people, Adameria darts back for the house. Once inside, she is relieved to see that she beat Jerako home. Glancing at the clock she realizes he is to return at any second. Taking a deep breath she focuses on her task at hand. Not one for money, not one to satisfy her master, but the task that would satisfy her. So she positions herself by the forge, and waits.

                    A few minutes tick by when Jerako enters through the front door. He pauses when he sees Adameria just standing there, she looks back over her shoulder at him and it brings back a memory to him. In her one good eye there seems to be a glow, the same spark that drew his attention the night he bought her on the streets. The sight of it brings a small smirk to the man’s face. “What are you doing?”

“I was just waiting for you.” She tells him. The sound of her voice carries as it seems to have changed in some way, softening. Jerako felt the air get heavy around him as he entered a trance-like state. Feeling compelled to approach her, he walks up behind Adameria and carefully wraps his arms around her. “I didn’t make you wait too long, did I?” He whispers to her, his breath ghosting her neck.

“Not at all.” She replies with a smile as she looks back at him over her shoulder. Jerako’s face experiences a drastic change in expression within the following seconds. At first in a blissful pleasure that suddenly turns to cold shock and horror as he goes stiff, eyes widening. Adameria simply steps forward as Jerako stumbles backwards, touching the wound at his side.

“You were right, this knife is good for close encounter defense.” Adameria comments, her sensual smile morphing into a smirk. “However, this really isn’t about defense.” As the man leans back against a wall for support, holding his heavily bleeding wound in pure shock, Adameria just walks over to the forge and pulls out the hot iron prod he’d used on her. “It’s about survival.” Walking back over to him she hits Jerako as hard as she can with the prod, knocking the unstable man down. “The Slums is a cruel place, indeed.”

On the floor glaring up at her, Jerako spits, “You sly little whor-!”

                   With a strong thrust, She shoves the pointed end of the prod through Jerako’s throat, silencing him for good. Looking over his body with no real definable emotion on her face, Adameria simply tosses the metal prod aside, unmoved by the event that just took place. She felt nothing for this man.

“Let’s see how much you made today.” Adameria plucks the money pouch off of Jerako’s dead body and counts the money inside. “Looks like you were successful, for once.” She takes it, quickly packing up her stuff in a bag before stepping out of the house for the last time. It would simply appear as though he was executed for not rent for the house by the time anyone discovered him, not that anyone would really care.

                   As Adameria walks down the street late that night, she moves silently past shady individuals. She wonders to herself what she should do now. Where would she go and what would she do? That’s when her vision rests upon an attractive and wealthy young man sitting in one of the bars. A smile appears on her face and a small laugh comes out of her. “I guess I’ll just simply go about it, my way.”
More uncomfortable content, but explains a lot of important detail for Adameria's backstory.

Second of four memory chapters.

Updated: 11/11/18

You can read the next chapter here: Coming soon!
The previous chapter here: sega-superstar.deviantart.com/…
The first chapter here: sega-superstar.deviantart.com/…

There is a comic version of this story,  it can be read here: sega-superstar.deviantart.com/…
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