Amateur Author

After three days, Emma was taken from her cell and brought to a beautiful room somewhere in what seemed to be some sort of castle. The overlord had `visited` her on several occaisions, and it didn’t take him a lot of effort to get Emma to comply to his wishes. Se seemed numb, her eyes had lost their spark. Everything good in her life was gone. This realization had sucked the life from her, and she didn’t have much of a choice anyway. She was clever enough to realize that if the overlord didn’t get his way, he would make her comply by any means he felt nesaccary. She saw in his pitchblack eyes he was a ruthless and crewel man, capable of anything.

Four women undressed her and bathed her. They seemed very excited about it, and a little envious. But Emma noticed something artificial about the respect they showed her; it seemed fearinduced. Still, they constantly called her `lady`. She thought the term was unsettling and yet familiar, but wasn’t sure why.

‘Your weddingdress, mylady,’ one of the women announced and two others rolled in a mannequin dressed in an elegant and extravagant looking gown.

Emma would give anything to slip into some pants and a shirt right now.

The women helped her into it as if she was a mannequin herself. They didn’t need to adjust anything; it was a perfect fit. Not surprising, considering for all intent and porpuses, the Brotherhood had fabricated her – or at least payed others to do so.

As the women finished dressing Emma, the two large doors giving access to the room opened and the overlord walked inside. ‘Leave us,’ he ordered.

Without thinking twice about it, the women left the room in a hurry, but not after each of them honoring the overlord with a respectful bow.

‘Isn’t it supposed to be bad luck to see the bride before the wedding?’ Emma asked.

‘A silly superstition not worthy of the Brotherhood,’ the overlord replied dryly.

A very bold assumption for a man wanting to bring on the end of the universe because he believes it will make him a god, Emma said to herself.

‘So, you have gotten used to the idea of becomming my bride? Of joining the most powerful man of the universe in wedlock?’

Emma added megalomania to the her list of `things seriously wrong with the overlord`. ‘The thought alone is making me sick to my stomach,’ she snapped, then sighed: ‘… but I have no choice, do I?’

The overlord grinned malevolantly, which he felt was a sufficiant answer. ‘You should know I am looking forward to consumating our union.’

‘By the gods, you might as well kill me now.’ The thought of sex with him was far worse then marriage.

The overlord smacked her across the face with the back of his hand and snarled: ‘Never ever disrespect me like that again, woman! Don’t think I won’t punish you severly! There are plenty of horribly painful wounds I can make that can be covered by cloth. Obey or learn to obey the hard and painful way!’

Emma touched her burning cheek. She felt humiliated. Jaydon would never have touched her in anger, but he was dead. She slowly got up. A strong feeling of familiarity creeped up on her, as if she had been in a simular situation before, eventhough she knew she hadn’t been as far as she could remember.

The overlord walked towards the door. ‘I will see you in a two hours, when we will be wed in my throneroom.’

‘Who was she?’ Emma hollored, her fists closed. She trembled with anger. She had to know.

‘What do you mean?’ the overlord replied without looking over his shoulder.

‘You killed her, didn’t you? You killed her, and then you made me!’ she said it with an accusing tone of voice.

Now the overlord did turn around. ‘You know?’ His surprise was bigger then his anger for her insolence.

‘Just that I wasn’t born like other people, and that I don’t have amnesia, but simply don’t have a memory yet.’

He glared at her, his hands behind his back. ‘Who else knows?’

‘No one,’ she lied.

‘Not even that trader of yours?’ The overlord spat out the word `trader` as if it was something revulting.

‘Especially not him,’ she fibbed. ‘I didn’t want him to know I was some sort of freak of nature. I figured it out all by myself.’ She kept the truth from him to protect the two other people who knew the truth; Nakita and Doc.

‘Naturally,’ he nodded, ‘that shouldn’t surprise me, considering who you are, or who she was.’

‘I want to know,’ she stated, quickly adding the most respectful ‘Please.’ she could muster.

‘You – she – worked for the House of God. They never named her you see, they simply called her `the Lady of God`. Her and those before her. The Lady is a seer, an oracle. Some say she is as powerful as the Man of God, the religious leader of the House, but in reality, she is nothing but a drone. Everytime before one dies, she predicts her successor. The church fetches this girl, often within hours of birth. The parents are either forced to silence, or killed if they are unwilling to comply. The Lady sees future, past and present, so you can see why she is such a valuable commodity. I, as leader of the Brotherhood, descided to break the chain. So, we erradicated the convint where they kept her, killed everyone and used her genetic material to make you.’

‘You killed her too?’ she gasped.

‘She was an old crone, well in her eighties. You don’t expect me to marry that? And her successor, which she hadn’t revealed yet, would be a baby. I don’t want to wait two decades! I just traded her in for a younger model; you.’

His indifference shocked and nausiated Emma. She felt as if he had killed her, and in a way, he had. Still his story held some facts she didn’t completely comprihend; she didn’t have the power to see the present and the past. Sure, there were her preminitions, but they were short, uncontrolable flashes which only showed her events about to happen and they had them only three times so far; all three times to alert her to danger. She realized this put her in an even more dangerous situation; as soon as the overlord realized his goose with the golden eggs was nothing but a common hen, she would suddenly and rapidly become highly expendable. He would most certainly kill her, if only out of anger.

‘So, now your bloodline, the Line of the Oracles belongs to the Brotherhood. To me!’ he laughed. ‘I will see you in a few hours, woman. But then again; you already know that.’

As he walked out the door, the women hurried back inside to continue preparing Emma for her big day. She just stood there, frozen, and let them do what they wanted. She was trying to figure out how to fake fortunetelling long enough to come up with an escape plan, at least long enough for her to escape – assuming that would be possible. She couldn’t think of anything.