Cordolium - Part 2

Emma snapped awake. She was seated in a chair in the foyer. Her head hurt and her vision was blurry at first. The room was big. Bodies lingered in the edges of the room, including the jerks who took them down. A hand was pressed on her back. Emma swung her head to see the old man out of the corner of her eye. When he looked up he gave a faint smile. Emma jerked her arms up, desperate to punch him and everyone else in the room. 

“Please,” the old man begged, “don’t struggle this time.” Emma felt the rope bite into the skin of her wrists. Her arms were pinned behind her. So be it. Emma began to swing her legs, thrashing violently about. The old man sighed and took his hand off her back. 

A young man with a mop of red hair rushed forward and tried to hold Emma steady. He grabbed her legs and tried with all his might to prevent Emma from kicking him. He wasn’t so lucky. She jabbed the sole of her foot in his gut. The young man grunted as he rolled back on the ground. The pain kept him on his knees. 

“Try and touch me again,” fumed Emma, coyly. “We’ll see if I can hit something a little more tender.”

“Geeze, Emma,” the young man spat out through the grunts, “I’m just trying to help.”

“Yeah, I feel so helped right now.” Emma jerked against the ropes again to punctuate her point. 

“You’re still recovering,” the old man spoke behind her. “The more you struggle, the harder it is to heal.”

Emma chuckled to herself. “Oh, you’re trying to help me heal, are you?” She was met with confused silence. The others in the room looked at her like she was an idiot. Their faces caused a fire within her to flare and she snapped the next bit. “So far you people have only been hurting me.”

“What?” Frankie asked, perplexed.

“Tied me to a bed, knocked me out, tied me to a chair,” She went on, “doesn’t seem very helpful-”

“No, what did you say about us?” Frankie stepped closer, staring into Emma’s eyes, searching for something.

“I- what?”

“You said, ‘you people’,” Frankie repeated. “You people?”

Emma sucked in her breath and looked at the others. They didn’t seem to care about tying her up but were more concerned about her words. Emma felt a chill run down her spine. “Yeah?” Frankie looked at the old man and then to the others.

“You don’t remember us, do you?”

The air grew still. Emma could sense all of the eyes focusing on her. The old man behind her shifted. She hated not being able to see behind her fully. She looked at each of them, half to meet their focus and half to see if they were familiar. There was the one named Frankie, the young man, the two jerks in the corner, and the old one. Nothing immediately stuck out, but their eyes hinted at a softness there, a sense of knowing.

Emma racked her brain searching for any memory of who they were, but every time she tried to reach beyond a few hours ago when Oron woke her up she was met with a thumping in her skull. She shook her head but it just made the pain worse. She could feel her eyes in her head as if her skull slowly drifting away but her senses were frozen still.

“No,” she finally muttered, “...should I?”

It’s an odd feeling when a hesitant silence is replaced with a panicked silence. No one uttered a word, but the room shrunk a few feet. The old man rushed around the back of Emma and got in her face. She leaned back to save herself, but his face hovered right over hers. 

“What do you remember?” he asked.

“What?”

“What’s the last thing you remember, Emma?”

“It’s just like you said, Homer,” the young one whispered. “This is what you were worried about.”

“Lorenzo, be quiet.” Homer snapped. The young man, Lorenzo, clenched his jaw and pulled back. Emma felt uncomfortable. She couldn’t run away from this moment, and it made her stomach ache. She tried to rip her arms free again, but it was useless. She was powerless and she hated it. All she could do was rage against her restraints and rage against her headache.

“Emma, please,” Homer sighed again.

“Stop talking to me.”

“What do you remember?”

“I don’t,” she blurted. “I don’t remember.”

“Don’t remember what?”

Emma looked away. She couldn’t meet anyone else’s eyes. Her mind was blank. No matter how hard she tried, only darkness came to mind. Nothing from before. What happened to her. 

“I don’t remember anything,” Emma whispered. Only Homer could hear her.

“That can’t be true,” he replied. “You remember your name, right?”

“Emma. Emma… Hughes?” The name came to her.

“Yes. Good. And you remembered him, right?”

“Him?” Emma started searching but as soon as she repeated the word, she knew who he meant. “Oron?”

“Yes, Oron.”

“Where is he?” Emma asked. How could she forget Oron? He was the one who rescued her in the first place. 

“You remember Oron, good.” 

“Where is he?” Emma got louder. Emma got aggressive. She lurched forward in her chair causing the legs to jump a bit. Homer stepped back, surprised by the sudden movement. Oron worked for her. He was hers. And now waking up in a world that hardly made sense, they were taking him from her. 

“Emma,” advised Lorenzo, reaching forward. “Calm down. He’s here. He’s behind you.” Emma jerked her head to the side but she still couldn’t see all the way behind her. She thrashed against the chair and tried to break her body to twist. “I can help you.” She turned back to Lorenzo, air pushing violently out her nose. He approached her hesitantly, learning his lesson from before.

He grabbed the arms of the chair and spun her around, the wooden legs creaking against the floor. A couch came into view behind Emma. Oron laid unconscious on the couch, his arms tied behind his back and his feet bound. He didn’t appear to be injured, but the binding still didn’t sit well with Emma.

“Release him.”

“Not yet,” Frankie refused.

“Release him, now,” Emma barked. “I command it.”

“Lords and Ladies.” the brunette lingering in the shadows sneered. She had been silent up to this point. She was also the one who smashed through Emma’s wall of ice. Why was she so quiet? “They always think they own the world.” Emma preferred for the bitch to remain silent.

“Until the two of you can promise not to run away and fight us,” Frankie explained, “We don’t feel comfortable untying either of you.”

“You haven’t really given me any reason to not run away yet,” Emma quipped. 

“Lady Emma, please.” Homer tried a new approach. He used her formal title and gave her some space. “We can only explain so much to you right now, but we need to make sure your memory is intact. Your injuries were… severe. Once we know what you remember, we can help you fill in the rest.”

Emma struggled to slow her breathing. “I don’t remember anything.”

“I know. I know. But you remembered your name and you remembered Oron.”

“And that’s it.” Emma’s voice grew louder. Sweat ran down her forehead as her body began to tremble. These people weren’t listening to her. She could not remember anything.

“Lady Emma, you need to calm down.” 

“I can’t,” Emma shouted. She had lost control of her breathing as she gasped for air. The woman with brown hair lingering in the corner rolled her eyes and stepped forward.

“We are wasting time,” She complained. She approached Emma. Emma felt the sting of the smack across her cheek before she realized what happened. Her gaze drifted up to see the woman holding her hand up, a small smirk on her face. “Calm down.”

At first Emma wanted to tear her apart. To rip that smug look off her face for daring to slap her. This woman, claiming to be part of a group trying to help Emma, struck her with no warning. The fires inside Emma welled up and she jerked against the bindings again, gritting her teeth. But then her anger receded as she felt a change. The shock of the smack had halted her breath for long enough to reset. Her lungs no longer felt strained. She could focus. She looked at Oron again.

“I remember Oron.”

Good,” Homer exclaimed. He reached out and pushed the brown haired woman back. “Maybe, if you were to focus on that, it could help.”

“Focus on that?” Emma studied Oron. His eyes closed, face placid. He was the only other thing Emma could remember in this world. He was her retainer, sworn to protect her and care for her. That was his job. No, she thought, it’s more than that. Oron had been in her life for a long time. He was more than just her retainer.

A searing pain tore through Emma’s head as she screamed. Frankie and Lorenzo jumped forward, but Homer stayed them with the wave of his hand. Emma was making progress, and he didn’t want to interfere. 

Emma remembered a mansion. Her family’s mansion. In a far off city. She remembered being a child. Very young. She remembered meeting Oron. She was six years old? No, seven? Her father introduced him as her new retainer. He has worked for her ever since.

Emma remembered growing up. Bits and pieces. She remembered home cooked meals and fresh laundry. She remembered quiet afternoons. She remembered a cold car in the dead of winter. She remembered feeling alone a lot but Oron was always just a shout away.

Visions of a training field came into focus in her mind. Countless hours spent learning how to fight and how to use her gift. Her and Oron would spar, preparing for the day when it would all matter. The day when they would prove themselves. Snippets of the trials, of bloody combat and hollow screams. 

“We are knights,” Emma said. It felt like hours since the last words had been uttered in the room, but it was probably closer to merely a few seconds. 

“Yes!’ Frankie shouted, trying to hide the joy in the word.

“Keep going,” Homer prompted. 

“We were- we were on a mission?” Emma remembered that knights were brave warriors, trained in the art of Orenda, appointed by the great cities of the world. Emma remembered killing daemons and working jobs as a knight. But there was something more. Something larger driving them.

Emma felt like a knife pierced her chest. A sudden rush of pain and loss filled her. She remembered there was tragedy. 

“We were looking for someone. We had friends with us. Some of them…” her voice trailed off. Part of her did not want to remember. “Some of them died.”

“Yes,” Homer confirmed. Emma bit her lip and held firm. She could not falter now. 

“What happened?”

“You and Oron were hunting down a wanted man with a group of your comrades,” Frankie began. “When you found him, two of your friends were killed, one was severely injured,” Homer stuttered to finish, “and then, you and Oron were also gravely wounded. He stole your-”

“You were robbed,” Homer interrupted her.

“What did he steal?” Homer didn’t say anything. “How were we wounded?” Homer didn’t say anything. Emma looked down and saw the bandages wrapping her chest again. She had been wounded. “How bad is it?”

“You were stabbed, Emma,” Frankie explained, taking control of the conversation. “The blade pierced you through and impaled Oron. The two of you have been unconscious since then. We’ve been watching over your recovery.”

“How long have I been out?”

Frankie turned to Homer for guidance. He shrugged, yielding to Frankie. “You’ve been out for about two months now.”

“No. That can’t be,” Emma argued. Bits and pieces of her life before waking up in this house were slowly coming back to her. She vaguely remembered seeing her sister and her friends and it only felt like a few days ago. 

“I know this is a lot to take in right now,” Frankie tried to comfort her.

“It can’t have been two months. There’s no way.”

“It was,” the brown haired woman interjected.

“Can you shut the fuck up?” Emma snapped. The woman did not recoil. Emma could feel her anger giving way to frustration. She could use anger, but frustration had never been helpful. It caused her to lose control. Tears tried to rise up at the edges of her eyes, but Emma pushed them down. She would not cry. She remembered a vow she had once made and no amount of amnesia would force her to break it now. 

“Emma. Your wound is closed up and mostly healed, but you’re still weak,” Frankie explained. “Let us help you.”

“Let me see it.”

“What?”
“Let me see the cut.” There was silence. “I need to know it’s real.” Frankie let out a sigh and reached behind Emma’s chair.

“Is this a good idea?” Lorenzo asked, nervously clutching his stomach. Frankie ignored his protest and undid the ropes around Emma’s wrist. A sudden urge to push Frankie down and run for the door flooded Emma’s mind, but she pushed the thought away. She rubbed her wrists and was relieved to have movement back. 

Frankie helped her from her chair and led her to a bathroom. She flicked the lights on and let Emma enter. Her legs felt shaky beneath her, but Emma used the walls and Frankie’s shoulder to help move about. She could feel her muscles crying out in pain. They hadn’t been used in a while apparently. 

“Take as much time as you need.” Frankie shut the door. Emma held on to a sink for support, staring at her reflection in a mirror. Her blonde hair cascaded down her head and she pulled it out of her eyes. Her face was pale and gaunt. Her usually toned arms and figure seemed thinner than normal. Whatever happened, it had taken a toll on her body.

Emma carefully slid her shirt off to look at the wrapping. Slowly, she undid the knot that held the top layer. She pulled the bandages away, letting the long strand of fabric fall to the floor around her bare feet. As the bandages fell away, Emma saw her exposed skin. Bruises and cuts dotted her sides. Her chest felt tight. 

In the center of her chest, a fresh scar disrupted her once smooth and perfect skin. Red and pink flesh formed the shape of a stab wound, twisted and jagged. Lines shot out from the center of the scar, like little lightning bolts cutting her skin. Some of the lines reached up toward the base of her neck while others traced down her chest toward her stomach. Altogether the new scar was nearly eight inches long, but the point of impact was at least three inches. Whatever blade pierced her was wide and sharp.

Emma traced the lines of the scar with her fingers, feeling the grooves in her skin. The blade had to have cracked her sternum. She was lucky none of her major organs had been hit. What kind of weapon could do this much damage and not kill her? Emma twisted her body to catch a glimpse of her back. A starburst scar between her shoulder blades showed where the blade broke out the other side. She had certainly been run through.

“Well,” Emma muttered. “Shit.”