Under Her Cursed Scythe

She attempted to pull the blanket over her head to keep the lights out but her arms were too feeble to move and her legs as well. She tried to get out of her bed but her legs slipped and she fell on the floor straightaway.

"Ouch!" she wailed.

While she was on the floor, too weak to help herself to rise. She was aware that she was still in the torn-up leather leggings and the black sleeveless top that she had worn the night before. But simultaneously, she picked up on the bandages which were hastily wrapped around her wounds and felt the sharp smell and the burning of the ointments that were on them, slowly curing her.

'Did mother-' Alivia thought. 'No, no, no, no...it can't be her...she had written me off...' Doubt gripped her and at the same time, her heart ached with her memory of the misery and wretchedness she had experienced the night before.

Her last combat with the girl Victoria was far tougher than expected. The ambush was a failure and Alivia had to fight with all her might in order to stay alive.

The other cloaked people tried to help their leader but were not able to come close to them, since arrows were raining and a circle of flames was set around the two of them by Alivia.

At one point, the "rain" of arrows stopped and Alivia was winning. Yet, as if the Reaper's ring was running low in fuel, it couldn't sustain the circle of fire and once the flames were engulfed and Victoria's teammates were able to step in, both of them ended up severely wounded with Victoria collapsing on the ground and Alivia teleporting away with two broken ribs, severe bruising, and ruby red liquid ribboning through the air.

To make the night worse, the severely wounded Alivia, with blood and gore dripping from her mouth and staining the earth below, was not welcomed home as a returned heroine.

She called to mind the feral rage smouldering her mother's gaze, staring down at her battered face as if she had made the greatest mistake ever.

"Only one... again!? ONE Soul!?" her mother condemned, "You dare to come home with one soul!?" she nagged endlessly. "What did I say? I said 'You should come home with at least seven souls'! Didn't you hear me? You should still be out there, hunting down souls right now."

"But…" Alivia struggled to raise herself into a sitting position. "But there were too many of them and I am in great pain, mother. I can't hunt like this!" she countered for the first time but still, she tried her best to compel the liquid from coming out of her eyes and to restrain her fury. "At least I came home safe and sound. Shouldn't you be glad about this?*Cough, *cough…" She spat out more blood.

"How dare you retort me! Bastard!" her mother nastily yelled at Alivia. "Why should I be happy about this? You came home with one soul! How can we ever gather enough souls before the 31st?" she asked emotionally.

"Argh!" Her mother grumpily paced around the room, gesturing wildly and complaining, "You came home because of those minor injuries!? It's not like you were dead. If you can still move, you should hunt! There must be plenty of souls that you could have reaped tonight but you chose to come home! What were you thinking?" And she cursed loudly.

When her irritated footsteps finally ceased, she uttered with a plain tone, "Leave this house..."

"What?" Alivia's face went tight with emotion.

"I said LEAVE THE HOUSE! Now! I don't want a WASTEFUL, USELESS, SELFISH daughter like you!" her mother yelled.

"What?" Alivia's face went tight with emotion.

"Don't pretend you didn't heard it! LEAVE THE HOUSE! Now! I don't want a WASTEFUL, USELESS, SELFISH daughter like you!" her mother cursed.

That remark was a terrible blow for Alivia and an unexplainable fear she constantly had for her mother once again swooped in. For a second, her pupils widened in mute horror and to her, it felt like the sun in her life was suddenly gone and winter came in, placing a cold, heavy piece of ice on her heart.

"No! No! Don't kick me out, mother." Alivia cried at once. "Don't give up on me. Please! I beg you! I'm sorry! I shouldn't have come back with one soul." she apologized while she writhed and squirmed under the cold eye of her mother.

She intended to stand up and begged for her mother's forgiveness but before she could do so, she had fallen on the floor and was too weak to get up again in that she could only seize the ankle of her mother's foot and begged, "Please, forgive me, mother! Please don't kick me out!"

"Get off me!"

"No! *Cough…cough…" Her blood had dyed the floor red and an expression of affliction flitted across her face but she didn't let go off her hands. "Please, mother…"

In spite of her daughter's pain, her mother looked at her hard in the eye. "Until you have proven yourself useful again...I don't want to see you." she denoted, jerking her foot out of her daughter's grasp, and stormed away, leaving the pathetic Alivia there, bleeding.

Alivia recalled herself using the last bits of force left inside of her to search for bandages and medicine and then struggling up the stairs into her bedroom with one hand clutching her more critical wounds while the other supporting her body and dragging it upwards. However, before she could do anything to treat her wounds, she had blacken out on the floor due to excess blood loss.

She could have died just like that. Yet, without a single idea of how she was able to clamber up the bed and treated her own wounds, she somehow survived.

"Mother might sound stubborn but deep down, she has a tender heart." Alivia convinced herself while a reluctant smile flashing across her face. "She's my mother, of course she loves me. She just loves me in her own way… wants to toughen me up. That's all..."

Despite of her mother's groundless rebuke and remorseless treatment, the weight from her chest was lifted and most of the flames that was blazing inside her heart had already sunk by the bandages and ointments.

"But…" She screwed up her face. "Ouch… how can I ever get well if I'm like this?" she pondered and weakly leaned against the wall.

Her head was whirling and though the bleeding had stopped, her condition was getting worse every minute. Lancinating pain was still spreading from her broken ribs just like a thousand daggers sinking into her stomach.

In the meantime, it seemed part of her wounds were infected in which a fever had accompanied the affliction. She began to cough, sweat dripped down the side of her face, her eyes became watery and her breath came out in sharp, shallow rasps.

'A healing spell' was the first thing that came to her head but, unfortunately, it was not among the few spells that was taught to her. Her mother had presumed that it would at most, be a few punches and scratches that didn't contain much threat, and had never expected a hunt could develop into an intense fight that could cause Alivia to crawl back home in such a pathetic state.

"Huff, huff..." Alivia gasped heavily. She shot a look at the Reaper's ring on the side-bed table and talked to it, "Even you can't be much of help if there isn't a proper spell…"

'I'm definitely going to die, am I?' This thought came to Alivia's mind after some time but weirdly enough, she did not find this thought horrific but rather quite well-pleasing as though subconsciously, she had longed for this "awful" inevitable to happen to her…

Luckily, before she gave up on her condition, something caught her attention.

She was hesitant at first but then her fingers began to crawl forward; and once they connected with a ball of paper that was lying about on the floor, she seized it hard to make sure she didn't lose her grip on it. For unknown reasons, perhaps due to the odd position it was in, she felt that it was something she must not ignore.

"…No way…" The instant she flattened the piece of paper, she let out a sound of fascination and surprise. It seemed to be a ripped page from a book and from the musty texture, the quill-written words and the orangish colour of the paper, Alivia discerned it as one of the pages from her mother's grimoire. And on it, wrote the words- "Healing spells".

'No way...is this the real deal?' She asked herself when her wish unexpectedly came true.

"Where did this come from? How did-" she ceased herself from talking for a second as her heart leaped into a gallop. "It...it must be mother! Oh, mother…I knew it! She loves me in her own way!" she marvelled, instantly casting away whatever disheartened depressed thoughts she had in mind.

She grabbed the Reaper's ring from the side-bed table, her fingers that were painted with her own blood- wound around it, and read the words on the piece of paper.

"The healing spell can only work if one wants to be cured. Without the will to be cured, one cannot be healed…okay…" She read the few Spanish words that followed the paragraph aloud and made a few hand gestures.

It took the Reaper's ring some time to pump out enough powers but not long after she had smelt the tobacco-infused scent of its magic, she began to experience the manifestation of the spell- the hot, burning sensation on her forehead was fading away; the throbbing and stinging ache around her waist lessened; the bones resumed to its primal position; granulation tissue began to "rebuilt"; and the colour of the cuts were gradually turning from dark red to brown, to crimson, to pink and then beige, the original colour of Alivia's skin.

One second ago, she was still lying on the ground, almost dying, and subsequently, she was back to her old self before the fight, as healthy as a horse, as strong as an ox.

"It works! " she relieved. But then, something occurred to her and she pulled her sleeves up. "Oh…" I guess it doesn't cure self-inflicted injuries … She gazed at the long wavy lines across her right arm and the short horizontal ones across her left wrist. 'Or it's just because this stupid Ring is running out of magic…' She looked at the object between the tips of her fingers. 'I must ask mother about the ways of recharging it…'

She stood up vigorously from the floor, dropped the ring into the burlap bag and joyfully headed down to the living room with the ripped page in her hand.

She planned to return the page back to her mother but only to find that she was nowhere in the house except various sets of scales, an assortment of glass retorts, beakers filled with liquid of different colour, crucibles, some contained half-crushed bane berries and a note on the table, saying that she had gone out to collect herbs for a potion and would come home before six.

********************

'Did mother forget to buy groceries again?' Alivia thought as she desperately searched for her breakfast in the kitchen. She was so hungry after her recovery in that she could gulp a huge pot of that lamb stew which she was so sick of at that moment. However, there was nothing in the freezer except some seasonings and all the cabinets were only filled with empty boxes and jars; and the only food available was probably inside Luke's belly right now, since the sink was piled with dirty plates, pans and pots, waiting for her to wash.

'Damn it!' She cursed when her stomach was growling furiously.

Just then, a thought came to her.