Page 1 of The General's Captive
Looking back on my life didn’t take me long as I hadn’t really had a chance to do much with it before chaos claimed it. But then I wasn’t the only one as chaos had claimed many and had cut even more short.
Did that make me one of the lucky ones?
I never thought of myself as a survivor before it happened. I came to learn, like most people living a normal life, that it was actually sheltered. Safe, for the most part.
Oh, how wrong I had been.
Because just like everyone else, we had no idea what was on the other side.
We had no idea how so many mythologies came to be told. Why they had been passed down through the ages with no idea where they came from and in fact it wasn’t just stories told to children or to ensure the masses believed in the gods.
No…they had been a warning.
A warning that one day they would come back and that a dark God would lead them. He was known as nothing more than The General. But to me, he was so much more.
He was the master of my dreams.
And in them, he wanted one thing…
To take me as his captive.
This journal belongs to
Alexandra Clavis
I am told Alexandra is of Greek Origin, meaning ‘Defender of mankind’
Maybe one day I will learn what Clavis means, hoping that it’s not, ‘dies trying to save everyone’.
PS - so if you find this journal, let’s hope my Surname means something else and it’s not because I’m dead.
Iremember the day it happened.
Unlike most people, who would be running in terror, I was looking at the sky. Not in a peaceful, whimsical way, though I wish that were the case. No, I was looking at the sky and screaming in pain at the burning sensation that was ripping through my head like a wildfire.
I remembered the way I swiped at my head in panic, as if being attacked by bees. The burns I thought my hands would receive were secondary to my desperate need to put out the flames. Flames that I thought were destroying my hair and melting my face.
It was pure agony.
However, as I frantically patted my hands through my hair, I felt nothing there. No heat, no fire to speak of. The burning sensation now quickly fading away as it strangely collectedbehind my left ear. I fingered the area and didn’t know if I was shocked or not when I felt raised skin there. Like that of a healing tattoo, the pattern undeterminable with my shaky hands.
But then the pain came again and left me screaming as agony tore through my entire body. Pain that attacked more than just my head and now seemed to target specific places. Scalding hot burns on my inner thighs, my lower back, and my wrists, that all seemed to merge together as one.
Then just like before and only moments later it cooled, as if an icy touch was taking away the heat. Soothing the skin, calming the invisible flames that had assaulted me, until there was no more pain. Just further raised pieces of my skin that left more questions than answers. Because I didn’t know what any of it meant. Nor did I know what the strange symbols were that I could now see marred my flesh.
Unlike the one behind my ear as I could now make out the details of the ones on my wrists. Both were identical and didn’t look like they had burned my skin like I expected. It was almost as if the burning had started from deep inside me and the agonizing heat had risen to the surface, leaving me with a blood-red scar painted stark against my pale skin.
As for its design it was about two inches long and looked like the combination of an arrow and a key. One end had a sharp tip, pointing to my palm, whilst the other held a key bit with intricate notches on a single side. The top of the symbol was the most decorative part, with two stacked triangles slightly below the pointed arrowhead. A spiked symmetrical line lay horizontally underneath the triangles, and below that sat a smaller U-shaped curve with two thinner barbs branching off, like a pair of small antlers.
But as I ran my fingertip down the long line, before reaching the key bit, I couldn’t help but question what it meant.
Was I dreaming?
No, there was no way anyone could feel that much pain in a dream. If anything, that had been more like a living nightmare and one that unfortunately, wasn’t finished yet! Something I knew when I heard the cracking sound of stone and felt the first rumble tremble beneath my feet.
I didn’t know what had just happened, nor why the hell I was even off the trail. How did I get up this hill when I had been walking along the valley below? It was like my mind had been taken over and I was only now just waking up. And why did I feel as if there had been a voice in my head, one that barely still lingered. Words I couldn’t quite grasp, like they were too far away and trying to fade from my memory.
My mind ached as it tried to collect my thoughts that were jumping around my brain in sheer panic. I sat up, my head spinning and pain jolting up my back. And how did I get on the floor? Had I fallen or perhaps dropped to my knees when the pain hit? I couldn’t remember.
