The Witch Within Awakening Arc Final Part

Unlocked

     It had been almost a year since Loc had killed her triplet sisters, Gracey and Sarimon. She had never stopped having nightmares about that day. Even-though she had a terepist and her parents kept on making sure that she was alright constantly their faces never escaped her mind or thoughts. She would always see them in her nightmares and they would ask her one single word and she would always wake up screaming.
     "Why?"
     She made many attempts to move on, like getting a voluntarily job at Bancha Bendenietus' bookshop and exploring Underground Town but nothing truly worked. Even-though everyone around her tried anything and everything to get her back to her old self again Loc knew that deep down that was out of the question, after what she had been through rendered that an impossibility.
     Then everything changed one month before the one year anniversary of her sisters untimely death. Loc was walking back home from a full day working at Bancha Bendeniethus' bookshop when she thought that she saw Sharimon! She looked again. No! It was Sharimon! She looked alive and well but there was something strange about her, but Loc hardly cared about that. All that matted was the fact that she was alive and well. So she ran off after her. When she turned a corner Loc ran and ran around that corner only for her to seemingly vanish!
      Loc thought that she was seeing things but the event repeated the very next day at the exact same place in the exact same place. Now she was both freaked out and confused for if she was seeing this it meant that, somehow, what she was seeing was real and not just a figment of her psychology damaged mind. This continued for a week until, for some reason she turned around and smiled with a smile of pity and sorrow.
      "It was not your fault." She said as Loc broke down and cried.
     "Thank you!" She cried.
     This too lasted for another week she would tell her therapist. Every time she would dehydrate herself crying out her gratitude. Then the whole thing changed as did the rest of her life when the third week came.
     "It was not your fault." Sharimon repeated for the seventh time.
     "Thank you." Loc repeated.
     "For I, the will of Grasharlo, tricked you." She said.
     Loc looked up in disbelief as Sharimon Cerberus smiled with a twisted malice that she remembered Gracey having. Her face looked less like hers and strangely more like Grasharlos' that when she thought back on it, Gracey too looked more like that witch when she woke. Loc would have slapped herself for not noticing, if she was not already horrified by what Sharimon had just said.
     "W-what do you mean?" She asked clearly not even wanting to know the answer as she bagan to nauseatingly realize that she was playing into her hands. Even worse was the fact that she had been playing into their hands ever since Gracey woke up!
     "I tricked you. I wager that you were even hardly aware that I was the one truly behind the War Of The Witch Within for I knew that I had to wake one of you up so that I too could be truly and fully woken. So I forged a mask for myself and made myself a hero and went along with everything. I knew that I would have to do something to seal everyone's confidence in me so I knew that I would have to sacrifice some of my precious disciples.
     " Then when one of you did wake I knew that I would have to act the way my mask would have me to until I could take my first opportunity to wake up. So it was for my own ends that I had you return to The Order Of The Ring Of Elders. Why, even that was planned, for I knew that you would do all to selflessly come and try to rescue me before my other third woke me up and try to return her to the pathetic Gracey." She explained.
     "Then is that why you are here? To wake me up?" She scoffed. "And if you are alive then Gracey is too, so where is she?"
     Sharimon chuckled playfully like a child.
     "Why? You are far from the truth! No, I hope to wake you in all good time." She continued.
     "Where is Gracey?" Loc asked more threatening than intended.
     "I will get to that, however, would you like to know why I made my appearances predictable? After all, you must know by now that predictably is not something that I am famous for." She asked.
     "I don't know, why?" She asked losing her patients.
     "It was to make sure that you would take notice and start to expect me. After all, that, I knew, would be the best way to keep you here. Talking, detracting you from our true purpose here in Underground Town. Rehos' home town I believe. I wonder which one has him accompanying us in our new bodies. Anyway, enough of that. What I want to know is, did you say goodbye?" She said out of the blue.
     "To who?"
     "To those fools that called us their parents." She replied.
     "What do you-" she cut off as she realized what she was getting at.
     "No!"
     "By now we have already killed them. Yes, Loc! I am nothing but an illusion. You see when I was whole I used to deceive many people some had even been through The Forest Of Illusions, although nower days my old tricks won't work like they used to. Now that hardly matters for when you go back I hope that their blood will wake you up." She laughed as Loc ran through her and dashed to her house and was there before she knew it.
     She opened the door only to see that she was far too late. There was nothing but a bloody pile of organs and bone awaiting behind to greet her. In her horrified state she saw her parents heads on a stake held up by the grim mass. Their bloodless faces frozen in fear as the pole was visible from their mouth opened by their fallen jaws. The worst part was the identical parallel lines down their faces. Loc backed away.
      When T.O.O.T.R.O.E. found her she was unconscious in the contents of her own stomach, dehydrated from her own tears. Her body shaking uncontrollably and all colour had been removed from her already pail face. When one of them touched her she was cold and soaking with sweat.
      She did not wake for a week and had to be tube fed. Bancha had visited her many times and placed beside her bed a book, hoping that the smell of books would wake her up. However he was absent when she did. Only the head of T.O.O.T.R.O.E. was present. Her eyes were different than before. They seemed to scream of determination but they were somewhat distant. The first thing that they did was follow the line of light and dropped onto the pile of books beside her. They blinked the last tear of that day as her red eyes saw as they were had to remain open as they looked up at him.
      "You need not tell me what happened for I already know. I was afraid that this would happen that is why I told you not to go after them. The Lady of Darkness Grasharlo always was sick and twisted like this." He said. Loc looked away.
     "I heard Sharimon talk about this place called The Forest Of Illusions, what is it?" She asked trying to keep herself calm.
     "It's a place where you go to become immune to illusions. It used to have four terms but after The Lady of Darkness Grasharlo there are now six." He said. "Why?"
     "I want to go there. After all if I was immune to illusions then mother and farther would not he dead." She explained.
     "And what will you do in return?" He asked.
     "Anything that must be done."

The Witch Within Awakening Arc, End.
      The Witch Within will continue in the future...