Lor Mandela - Destruction from Twins (5 page)

Anika didn’t want to discuss that now. “Do
you want to see this, or not?” she quizzed impatiently.

“See what?”

Anika smiled mischievously. “See the
rightful vritesse receive her powers.”

“What?” Kort gasped, “I thought I wasn’t
allowed to watch.”

“No, Kort . . . you couldn’t be with me in
Koria, but I haven’t done the power transfer yet,” she explained.
“Get ready, General. You’re about to become the entrusted of the
vritesse!” Her voice was sing-songy and playful.

Kort slowly lowered on to the bed and didn’t
say another word.

Anika lifted the silver box in front of her
and removed the lid. A bright light surrounded her, and little
wisps of color dreamily floated out of it.

Once again she heard a voice. Only this time
it seemed almost sad. “Balance . . . balance is the key. Trysta . .
. Borloc . . . balance.”

“Balance,” she repeated as the light wrapped
tighter around her.

“The powers from Lor Mandela to . . .”

There was a long pause, and then the voice
whispered, “Anika.”

The light faded and Anika stood enveloped in
a tawny glow for several minutes. She looked at Kort who was
absolutely engrossed.

“Did you hear the voice?” she asked.

As the glow around her dissipated the most
troubling change in her yet became evident. “Anika!” Kort gasped,
“Your eyes!” The general appeared quite mortified.

“What about them?” She snapped and walked
over and peered into a looking glass that was on the rock table
near where the book had been before. Her eyes, which were usually a
sultry purple, had changed to a dull, dark black. “That’s strange,”
she whispered. “The journal didn’t say anything about darkening. I
wonder what’s going on.”

Kort gawked at her from across the room.

She started towards him, but had no sooner
taken her first step when Kort bolted to his feet and flew toward
her at an amazing speed!

In under a second, he was in front of her,
wide-eyed and panting. “What was that?” he asked weakly.

Instantly, he rocketed
into the air again, this time smacking against the wall with a
loud
thud
.

Anika shrieked. “Kort! What are you doing?
Are you okay?” She rushed over to where he lay in a crumpled heap
on the floor. “What’s going on?”

Kort shrunk back as she touched his arm.

“Don’t!” he cried, sounding like a scared
child.

Anika stepped back and stared at him.

“Can you get up, love? Are you hurt?” she
asked.

“
Please, Anika! Stop! Let
me go,” he pleaded.

“Kort!”

She wanted him to look at her but he kept
his face turned into the wall. “I don’t have a hold of you! I’m not
even touching you!”

“Annnniiiikaaaa,” he whined miserably,
“noooooo!”

She leaned down and pulled him to his feet
and a loud, mournful yelp issued from his lips.

“Kort,” she demanded, “look at me!”

Slowly he turned his head toward her. His
eyes were tightly shut. “Noooo, Anika. Please . . . I’m sorry . . .
don’t . . . please . . . .”

Tears streamed down his cheeks. “Stop!
Pleeeease!”

“Kort!” she yelled. “Open your eyes!”

All at once his knees buckled and he went
completely limp and slumped over into Anika’s arms.

Anika lowered him to the ground and
frantically tried to revive him. “Kort! Come on! What is it?
Kort!”

After a few seconds, his eyes fluttered
open; he looked up at Anika drowsily.

“
Oh, Kort,” she gasped,
“are you all right?”

He shakily pulled himself
to sitting and panted, “Anika, you’ve got to stop this! Something’s
wrong! Please end this now! I mean it! Something is
really
wrong.”

I
t didn’t take long for Anika to realize that Kort was right.
Something was terribly wrong. Although her powers were stronger,
she had no control over them—no matter what she tried. In fact,
they seemed to be controlling her—and Anika’s powers weren’t the
only thing out of control.

As the days passed her skin became muddy
gray and her hair, which looked wild and unkempt, darkened to
nearly pure black.

Her eyes had remained black since the
morning she had attacked Kort, but now even the whites of her eyes
were a dull, murky gray. She had grown tired of the questions, and
the whispers, and the stares, so she stayed confined to her room
whenever possible.

As for Lantalia, her powers hadn’t
diminished in the slightest. In fact, since her calling to
vritesse, she had been able to master almost every Trysta power
imaginable and was well on her way to becoming the most powerful
vritesse of all time.

Early one evening, Anika was once again
alone in her room. She stood gazing at herself in a glass,
wondering what was going on and if she’d ever be able to stop it,
when Lantalia’s voice blasted from the hall.

“Anika! You’ve finally gone too far!”

Anika spun around as the tree that normally
guarded her door vanished entirely and her angry sister fumed in
its place.

“This!”
Lantalia hissed.

She moved across the room and shoved their
great-grandmother’s journal toward Anika. “So, this is what you’ve
done?” she sneered, dropping the journal at Anika’s feet.

“Where did you get that?” Anika’s voice was
scratchy and deep. “That’s mine!”

Lantalia glared at her in disgust. “You left
it in my room the night I was called! I was too busy to look at it
. . . until last night.” A fiery magenta glow rose in her eyes.
“What made you think this would work, Anika?”

As the glow in Lantalia’s eyes surged, a
painful electrical charge twisted through Anika’s body. She winced,
but refused to give her sister the satisfaction of seeing her cower
in pain.

“How dare you!” she growled, “Mother was
foolish to choose you! You’re nothing!”

Lantalia had to force herself to turn away
and break her torturous hold. “I should have known you were lying,
Anika,” she sneered. “All of that, ‘Oh, Lantalia! I’m so happy for
you’ and ‘that’s not what Mother would want’ rubbish!” She whirled
back around and faced her sister. “Now look at you! You’re hideous
and weak!”

Anika glowered at Lantalia for a moment, but
then began cackling wildly. “No, my dear Lantalia! You’re the weak
one! I am becoming invincible!” She appeared positively mad as she
shoved Lantalia hard and staggered across the room.

“Anika! You’ve gone too
far!” Lantalia repeated, both anger and concern evident in her
tone. “Do you have any idea? Do you even
know
the seriousness of what you’ve
done?”

Anika scowled bitterly; her black eyes
glared in disdain. She raised a dark arm and pointed it at her
sister and the room began to shake violently. “Leave now,
Lantalia,” she seethed, “or I swear, I will kill you!” Her voice
was evil and coarse.

“You can’t kill me,” Lantalia calmly
responded. A quick wave of her hand and the shaking stopped. “We’re
twins, Anika. You kill me, and you’ll die too.”

Anika snarled like a caged animal and then
charged toward Lantalia with every intention of attacking. All at
once her black eyes rolled back in her head and she slowly rose
into the air.

“Twin! Soon you will have no power over
us!”

The voice was coming from Anika’s mouth, but
it wasn’t Anika’s. It was bizarre—a single voice, neither male nor
female, and yet somehow both; the volume of the voice was
earsplitting. “We made you, Lantalia, and we will destroy you!” Two
powerful bolts of silvery electricity shot from Anika’s eyes.

Lantalia spun out of the way, narrowly
avoiding the bolts which crashed in an explosive shower of sparks
against the wall behind her. She looked up at Anika, who was
hanging in the air in a trance-like state. Lantalia closed her eyes
and began to chant in a monotonous drone. “Reloia sa . . . reloia
sa . . . reloia sa.” As she breathed the strange chant over and
over and over, a low hum surged in and out through the air. The hum
grew stronger until the air itself began to vibrate in visible
waves. The volume of Lantalia’s chant rose to meet the volume of
the hum.

The humming and chanting
climaxed in a thunderous explosion which rippled throughout the
entire palace, shaking the walls and floors violently. With her
eyes still tightly shut, Lantalia raised her arm skyward and
yelled, “
reloia sa, reloia sa, reloia
sa!
” and made a flicking motion like she
was throwing an invisible object at her sister.

Anika’s shadowy body twitched and shook in
the vibrating air; then, all at once, she fell hard to the floor,
landing awkwardly on her right shoulder.

Lantalia rushed to her side and lifted her
in her arms. “Anika? Anika! Wake up,” she demanded gently slapping
Anika’s cheeks.

Anika’s eyes blinked open. She groggily
whispered, “Lantalia? Wh . . . what’s happening to me?” Her mood
was the polar opposite of what it had just been and her voice
sounded normal.

“Anika,” Lantalia blurted, “when you were
receiving the powers, did you hear a voice?”

Anika nodded feebly. “Yes,” she wheezed. She
was getting weaker by the second.

“Stay with me, Anika!” Lantalia persisted,
“What did the voice say?”

She took a few shallow breaths. “Balance . .
.” she muttered. “It said something about balance.”

“Balance?” Lantalia asked. “Anything
else?”

“Yes . . . .” Anika’s eyes slipped shut.

Lantalia shook her to keep her conscious.
“Come on, Anika. Stay awake! We don’t have much time! What else did
it say?”

“It said . . . it was giving me . . . the
powers.”

Lantalia shook her again. “It said the
‘powers to Anika’, but from where? From where, Anika?”

Anika’s head slumped onto her chest. “Fr . .
. from . . . Lor Mandela,” she gasped laboriously and then slipped
into unconsciousness.

Lantalia lowered her sister to the ground
and somberly rose to her feet. “From Lor Mandela?” she gasped. She
slid down onto the edge of the bed and stared at Anika’s limp body.
“Oh, you fool! What were you thinking?”

Just then, Anika stirred. She moaned and
rolled to the side.

Lantalia quickly sprang to her feet and
raced for the door. She waved her arm and again, the branches of
the tree disappeared and she darted from the room.

Anika struggled to lift herself from the
floor and rubbed her aching shoulder. The tree branches
rematerialized without her even noticing that they had been gone.
“Oh, what now?” she questioned aloud, having no recollection of
what had just taken place.

She took a few steps across the floor and
stumbled on something. “What in the . . . ?”

There, at her feet, lay her
great-grandmother’s journal where Lantalia had dropped it. She
reached down and picked it up.

“Where did this come from?” she asked. She
couldn’t remember when she had seen it last. She ran her hand over
the faded burgundy cover and pulled it open. “Elahk E Ber,” she
sighed shaking her head, “what have you done to me?”

Meanwhile, outside Trysta Palace, Lantalia
hurried toward Koria—for the Caverns. She knew what Anika had done,
and why, but hoped that if she acted quickly the remaining
consequences of her sister’s stupid actions could be avoided. When
she reached the cave, she headed directly for the rock platform;
she had barely stepped out onto it when she shouted, “Stoi Cantara,
Lor Mandela!”

A quiet voice seeped up out of the Caverns.
“Only the vritesse can call on the spirit of Lor Mandela.”

She took a deep breath. “Forgive me, kind
and gracious one. I am Lantalia, daughter of Satia—and Vritesse of
Lor Mandela.”

The voice answered, a little stronger this
time. “Vritesse Lantalia, or the twin? What is the blood in your
veins? The soul has been corrupted.”

“Yes,” she whispered, “my sister has
corrupted it. However, my soul is pure.” She paused, and then
added, “I invite you to determine.”

The voice was slow to respond. “Vritesse
Lantalia, are you aware of the danger?”

“I am,” she answered, “but it’s the only way
for you to be safe, wise spirit.”

“Very well,” the voice replied.

A sudden breeze swirled throughout the
Caverns, quickly escalating into a ferocious wind. Dust, leaves and
even small rocks whizzed through the air.

Lantalia stood amid the debris and did not
move. Her hair and clothes blew violently in the intense wind, but
she maintained a statue-like stance. As the wind grew stronger and
stronger, bright flashes of red light began slicing through the
air, zipping and popping all around her, narrowly missing her. Had
she flinched at all, the bolts would have cut through her like a
sword and she knew it. She remained frozen in place for several
seconds until the lights and the wind finally calmed, and
eventually ceased.

The voice spoke again. “Lantalia . . . the
true vritesse of the Trysta people . . . you have come to me to
save your sister. Is it not so?”

“Yes,” she replied.

“But why, Vritesse? She stole your spirit,
did she not? Stole it, and then cloned it?”

Again she answered, “Yes.”

“A twin spirit cannot be cloned,” the voice
scolded. “The clone will be corrupted and corrupt all that it
contacts.”

Lantalia nodded; her eyes filled with tears.
“I’m afraid it has corrupted her and . . .” She paused as a tear
escaped and rolled down her cheek. “It’s also corrupted you, hasn’t
it?”

This time the voice replied, “Yes.” After a
long silence, it continued. “The corrupt part of my soul—the
darkest portion—even now possesses your sister. She is dying,
Lantalia, and I am dying because of her.”