Phillipa I
The camp was peaceful, the moon shone brightly on the people within it that were talking and laughing casually with an air of pure bliss. Well it was as peaceful as they could make it be when every Cursed One in the camp was wary of an attack at any moment.
For over a hundred years, the lives of every Cursed One born in the Continent has been quite monotonous. They were either running, hiding or busy preparing for an ambush or a midnight raid that always came. From before she could reason things she had always known that life was not easy for her and her kind, it had never been easy or safe in any way and most certainly it never would be.
Having the ability to do many things that no one else could do was never seen as a good thing, the Uncursed had made it blatantly clear to them by killing them in their multitude with a righteousness that meant that there would be no end to their genocide until every last one of them were in the ground. Sure, her mother and the Elders had never stopped telling her that the Uncursed were more afraid of them than the other way around; however, it wasn't that she doubted them but the reality was that they ran most of the time and not the other way around.
At the moment though, they were all enjoying a simple dinner of venison, unsalted as it was. It was a welcome change to the constant water drinking and the chewing of leaves and fruits they could find just so they could survive on their journey to the ocean where they had hoped they would meet the ship that was routinely sent from the Island every moon to take them all to their homeland where they would be safe.
Said Homeland was something her mother and the Elders kept reiterating to them on multiple occasions to try and give them hope and faith to keep moving on the road. They kept reminding them during their free time that their ancestors had come from the Islands to the Continent to try and spread out, which meant they had a home to return to now that the Continent had become inhabitable for their kind.
To Phillipa though it sounded more like they were the ones hoping they could go back home where they would be safe, despite their hidden fear of the place being more myth than real. If they were real, why hadn't they sent people to rescue all of them in droves over the century? She had no idea which option she preferred, that the Islanders were real but didn't give a fuck about them or they weren't real and they were on this road for nothing.
Phillipa looked at the Elders and had to applaud their ability to keep most of their despair away from their faces in order to raise the hopes and emotions of everyone in the camp. She could tell that even they doubted the existence of the ship that came to rescue Cursed Ones from their cruel hosts, but what else did they have going for them, it was either believe in a pipe dream or give in to their fate on the Continent.
"Phillipa, please pass me the water." Her mother asked her as she took a bite from the meat they had hunted for earlier in the day.
The good thing they had going for them was their Curse which helped them purify the dirtiest water they had found on their journey into very clean water for drinking; else she hypothesized that they would all be dead from drinking unhygienic water.
Waving her hands in a small circle, she was able to separate the dirt from the water in a big bowl and put the pristine water into a cup that she took to her mother who nodded at her in pride and gratitude.
According to the Elders that were with them, she was the fastest to learn every spell in their memory to the extent where she was more powerful than many of them that had spent years learning the spells. To her fifteen year old mind, that was only a good thing if she could take down an entire army; sadly to do that would require lot more energy than her body had to offer. With them barely eating any energy giving food, they could last barely a minute against the regular soldier no to talk of an entire army.
"Carlos, go check the camp corners, make sure the wards that would alert us are still functioning." One of the Elders said as he pointed at one of the Cursed who had finished his meal and was simply washing his hands.
Carlos nodded his head in obedience and left the clearing to inspect the reasonably large camp that housed about two dozen Cursed Ones, half of which were old which meant only the other half could fight, among the other half were four children with she being the eldest of them. If they were attacked unprepared, well there would be no hope of them fighting back and surviving an attack.
"Hey Phillipa, you like my hair?" A little girl asked her as she came running to her with a big smile on her face. The hair in question however, was not the most beautiful at the moment, whoever did her hair was nothing but a terrorist.
"Oh, aren't you the most beautiful girl in the world?" Phillipa asked with a smile as she placed her hand on the girl's head and looked on with admiration.
"Yes, I am more beautiful than you Phillipa." The five year old girl said in glee as if what she had been telling herself all her life had finally been affirmed.
"No Phillipa, tell her I am the most beautiful girl in the world, not her!" The other five year old girl said in disapproval.
"You girls are so silly, what matters who's more beautiful than the other, you both are beautiful." The little boy said as he approached them with a smug look on his face. "Tell them Phillipa, tell them."
Looking at the three of them she could tell that they had probably had a rather heated argument about this and had hoped she would settle the nonsense.
Phillipa let out a laughter of amusement, what she would not give to be a child that had no care in the world. Her laughter however was cut off as she heard a scream from Carlos which sent dread all over her body. The brief moment of joy that she had just been enjoying left her body so fast that her heart dropped and sweat began to gather on her forehead. Looking around the camp, she saw everyone tense up and raise their hands to a fighting stance as they got ready for the inevitable attack.
The first sign of an attack was an arrow that whistled through the air so fast that they only saw it after it buried itself in the neck of an Elder who had been looking around cautiously. After the first came another which was parried out of the air with their Curse before an entire wave of arrows tore through the air with vengeance.
Phillipa raised a wall of earth to block about half a dozen arrows before punching the air to send a wave of fire that licked through the bush where the Evangelists were hiding in. Their screams didn't distract her from raising another wall of earth to stop another wave of arrows before she ducked low to gather the vines on the ground to turn them to ropes which she raised around herself like a bunch of vengeful snakes before sending them into the other side of the bush to grab any Evangelists hiding inside.
The unfortunate Evangelists she had been able to capture, she pulled out and slammed into the trees and boulders around the forest before she turned to look around the camp to see how the others were faring. The sight was gruesome.
Her mother was still fighting hard against the Evangelists that had begun to seep into the clearing now, going for them in close range with flinging spears and their maces that broke the skulls of any Cursed One too slow to say the curse that would protect them in the skirmish.
"Phillipa!" She heard the voice of a little girl call from her left.
Turning to the girl, she saw a burly man standing over the girl with his axe raised high. Without thinking, she raised her hands up which raised the spear that was on the ground before flinging it as hard and as fast as she could which sent the spear through the man's armor.
"Are you alright?" She asked the girl as she raised her up from the ground to hug her close to herself.
"He's dead." She cried out as she pointed in the direction of one of her friends that only moments ago had been making fun of her.
Phillipa's heart broke at the sight of the corpse of not just the boy but the rest of her friends who had all been butchered in the most gruesome way possible. How could they kill the children as if they were animals to be slaughtered for food! Their limbs had been separated from them, some had only their head away from their bodies others had been cut in half! This brutality was beyond just hatred, this was the work of a sadistic bastard that enjoyed killing harmless children that were unable to cast curse strong enough to protect themselves!
With anger and rage boiling in her veins, she stood up and kept the girl behind herself as she faced the four Evangelists that cautiously approached her wearing a strange cloak that sparkled under the moonlight.
"You even kill children?" She asked them as they raised their axes and swords to glare at her with pure hatred.
"You my dear, are all Cursed." Was all their leader said before looking at the Evangelist that was laying dead on the ground with a huge hole in his back. "Like I said, you lot don't deserve to breath the same air we breath or walk the same earth we walk."
"Well, boo hoo." She said in reply before she raised her hands which raised boulders from the earth and flung them at the Evangelists, however, the boulder simply exploded on their body while they stood there starting at her unimpressed. "What?" She asked in alarm, that had never happened ever!
"We are wearing what the Crown Prince called, Blessed Cloak. This makes us as you can see, impervious to your Curses." The man replied before he walked close to her to smack her down to the ground while she was still in shock.
Staring up from the ground, she saw many other Evangelists pour into the clearing wearing the Blessed Cloaks that the others found out the hard way were impervious to their Curses. The little girl behind her tugged at her clothe as she cried out her name, but Phillipa's ears still rung from the slap.
As sound returned to her ears and her head finally cleared from the fog, she looked to her right and saw a small dagger half buried under the rubble. Grinding her teeth, she picked it up and threw herself on the leader to stab him in the shoulder two times in anger.
However, she was once more hit but this time harder by the steel punch of one of his men which caused her to black out.
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"Round them up." She hear the leader say as she woke up from unconsciousness.
Phillipa looked back at the man with a glare of her own which instead of making the man worried a little as he should be, it made him smile even more. Her rage turned to confusion as he slowly approached her before it turned to pure fear as he brought out the infamous collar that trapped ones Curse inside them. The sight of it kicked her fight or flight into overdrive and made her make a move to flee only to be smacked back to the ground by the Evangelist behind her.
"Stay down there bitch!" The guard yelled at her before kicking her once, then twice.
Her cough was so loud and painful to her ears but that was not enough to make her forget the pain from the kick or the dread that fell heavily on her body as the leader approached her before kneeling in front of her as she tried to sit up.
"Oh my dear girl, you have no idea what comes next for you, do you?" He asked with a bitter smile as her eyes went to the bandaged shoulder where she had stabbed him.
"How do you like your new wound? What will you tell your men, that a girl stabbed you with bread knife?" She said with a sarcastic smile as she tried to push down her fear of the dreaded instrument being brought to her.
"Let's see if you will still be able to be a smart-ass when we get to the Tower." He said before putting the collar around her neck as she was held down by a guard. The collar on her neck was famous for being able to shut out the Curse from the Users making them unable to manipulate nature as they were supposed to, the more powerful the Cursed Ones the more painful it was. The pain she felt was indescribable, how did one explain how liquid hot the pain that traveled from her neck to her head and down her hands and belly felt?
Her scream was loud, that much she knew, however before she could fully process the pain, she was grabbed roughly by the Leader and then tossed to the ground to feel her clothe being ripped from her body. The alarm she felt despite being in a haze sent her body kicking in a bid to escape the act she knew was coming next.
Another slap and kick was not even close to being able to stop her from turning around to hit the Leader with his head and try to scramble away. "Get away from her!" Her mother yelled out only to be kicked and punched down to the ground.
A yell from one of the men that was still alive after the defeat was the last thing she heard from the man as he was stabbed immediately by a sword as he tried to fight for her. Before she could process the fact that the man who had taken care of her like a father was dead, her mother's head was separated from her body. Her scream of defiance turned to scream of pain as the people who had taken care of her her whole life were now dead.
Her once defiant spirit was now gone and replacing it was shock and fear as her life that had made a little sense once was now over in an hour. Only moments ago they had been heading for the shore where they would be saved from the brutality of the Continent, now her life had become one of certain suffering.
With her mind disconnecting her from the pain her body was soon to receive, the Leader ripped her clothes and proceeded to penetrate her and take her virginity from her. Everything else became a blur for her after that. From the leader to the next Evangelist and then the next, she was harshly introduced to one of the many horrors her people have had to face for over a century. She had no idea what state she was in when they were done or what even happened to the others that she was certain had survived the fight, or what had happened to the little girl she had tried to keep safe, but one thing she was sure of was that in the end she was taken to the Tower; a prison for Cursed Ones that kissed the sky.
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Like a piece of rotten meat, she was tossed into her cell with a finger that showed her where she could handle her business should the need arise. Phillipa barely felt the cold wet floor or even noticed the lack of proper lighting in the cell, not when her mind was blank and still processing the events that had happened which led up to her present predicament.
A week ago they had been on the run with a destination in mind, they had been resolute in their plan to get to the shore where they would see a boat that would take them straight to the Island; a home where the Cursed Ones were referred to as the Blessed Ones. Now she was in a cell after being raped by who knew how many men with her mother and other men dead before they were able to do anything to protect her. Her best bet was that everyone in the camp that had survived the fight were all dead now and that she was all that was left from the camp. The worst possible scenario was that some of them were alive and had been taken to another Tower just like her, but in the other side of the Continent.
Phillipa rested her back on the wall before she dragged her knees up to her chin where she rested her arms on before she dropped her head on them to face the ground, eyes closed. She felt violated, she felt dirty and so disgusted by not just the men that had raped her but also by herself unable to do something as simple as protecting herself when she had needed herself the most.
"Ah, I see you were also treated to the Evangelistic treatment of everyone born with the Curse." She heard a young boy say from the opposite side of her cell, which snapped her out of her haze. The cheerfulness in his voice was not just jarring but out of place from a Cursed One in the most dreaded place that no Cursed One ever wanted to be in.
"You mean to tell me that you were raped too, by let me guess; a bunch of women?" She asked in disbelief as she looked up at the boy in disbelief.
"Oh gods no, how would that work if I was not aroused? It was by a bunch of men with inclinations towards young soft boys like myself." He said as he walked to the gate of the cell to reveal his handsome features.
Phillipa walked towards the cell herself to reveal her face to him through the minimal light that their eyes had adjusted to already. "How long have you been here?" She asked him as she sat by the gate to look at him.
"Wow, you are beautiful." He said out of the blue which was another shock to her. She felt anything but that but somehow he was able to see it and then say it to her. She had not even spent a minute with him and already he had shocked her to silence with two sentences.
"What?" She asked in confusion which snapped the boy out of wherever his head was in.
"Oh, a year, I think. Keeping track of time is not the easiest thing to do when you can't tell between day or night." He said as he too sat at the gate to watch her.
"What do you think is going to happen now?" She asked as she hugged herself tighter. No one outside the Tower really knew just what happened to their kind once they were in the Tower, but they got the gist that it was not funny for them.
"Who knows? I don't like to think about it too much you know, neither do the others." He said as he used his eyes to indicate to the other people in the other cells. "What's your name by the way, I think the best thing we can do for one another while we are here with each other is to remember each other by name 'cos you never know when we could lose each other; don't you think? Faces will fade away but names... they never do." He said with eyes that seemed to old to belong to someone her age who had been all cheery and happy only moments ago.
"Phillipa, what's yours?" She asked as she rubbed her arms due to the cold that seeped into her body through the clothe that had been torn in multiple places by her new hosts.
"Henry." He said as he looked at her clothes in sadness and then back to her eyes with a comforting smile. She didn't know anything about this boy but something told her that because of him her time spent in the Tower, which was going to be a very long stay if she was unlucky, was going to be slightly less painful.