Past that keeps Haunting!!

**Natasha’s POV**

“No fucking way I’m going to embrace this suicidal fate. Dammit, I’m not getting into this fucking shit,” I let out a frustrated cry looking at the never-ending depth of the jade waters. The more I looked, the jade faded into the blackness, giving it an ombre effect. The unknown darkness always scares the shit out of me.

“Calm down Natasha! We don’t have any other option.” Lukas snaked his arm around my waist, pulling me closer.

“I…I don’t know to swim.” I confessed in a throaty voice.

“You don’t have to. The clue is to forget the swim, which leaves us with the only option to drown,” Rhaegar spoke, gripping my arm and helping me to take a step forward.

“Are you fucking insane? We can't just blindly follow the clues and put her life at risk,” Damon gave a disbelieving look at Lukas and Rhaegar.

“Nothing like this will happen. We are with her. These things are just hallucinations. They are meant to test us,” Rhaegar counterargued with him.

“Save your sass to argue with Moon Goddess once we all are fucking dead,” Damon retorted.

“Hold my hand, close your eyes, take a deep breath and jump,” Lukas whispered.

“No way, take your hands away from her! We’ll think of another way,” Damon warned him, pulling me closer to himself.

“Look around Damon,” I paused a second before continuing, “There’s no other way.” The words out of my mouth were barely a whisper as my sole attention was focused on the waters surrounding us. It was slowly gaining on the piece of land on which we were standing, like a lava monster dissolving its prey. It’s just a matter of seconds for the land to be swallowed, and then we will be left with no other choice.

“Natasha...NO!” Damon’s voice got muffled the moment my body hit the water surface. The clue was to drown, so I relaxed and embraced the jade with open arms without any struggle or fear. Weightless, I started to float to the bottom, and the darkness started to consume me.

“Natasha! Natasha!” I could hear the faint voices of my mates playing over and over in my mind like a desperate prayer.

“It's all your fault,” Damon’s voice reverberated through the depth, followed by the sounds of their bodies crashing into the waters.

My eyes snapped open to find the darkness staring at me, with the strands of my hair floating around. I felt the wet and slippery moss under my feet as I tried to move onto the rocks with sharp edges. What astonished me was the fact that I was breathing perfectly fine underwater. It reminded me of my dream of Morrighan in which she rounded a witch under water. This made me ask myself, ‘If Morrighans can breathe underwater?’

The water was icy chill, but the warmth coursed through my veins due to the fear. The fear of realisation that I was not alone. I stood deadly still as if the fear had locked me in terror and frozen me in time. Slowly, the darkness diffused away, giving me a clear view of the surroundings.

The ruins of an ancient temple rose ahead of me, with hundreds of broken pillars, passages, stairways and demonic statues laying undisturbed for centuries. The structures were coated with the dead clumps of mosses. The roof was caved in by the pressure of water. The faceless stone statues carved with some ancient inscriptions were hovered over by the large crustaceans’ crabs who must be calling it their homes. Scorched marks on the edge of walls and pillars suggested that the temple must be engulfed by fires many centuries ago.

A weird kind of stench hit my nerves. It was the stench of my nightmares. The nightmares that always bring chills, but none ever this cold and ghostly. The feeling of dread was crawling my skin like millions of tiny little needles as the stench was followed by a strange sound. The sound of the claws scraping the stone and it was getting desperate. My head spun over toward incoming sound from inside the temple. I swallowed hard before venturing into the unknown interiors of the temple. The further I went inside, the more difficult it became to walk as the floor was slippery. The screams could be heard clearly as I entered a large room. Although the floor was broken, but few pillars were still intact holding up the ceiling. The small gargoyles perched out from these pillars reminded me of that stinky demonic one which we encountered earlier. As I entered further, they turned their heads laughing at me. That was the moment when panic hit me, and I realized that I was inside a tomb, and the sounds of claws scraping were coming from inside the eight stone coffins, which were placed vertically on the floor like the sarcophagus of Egyptian mummies. The lids of the coffins opened, making a creepy sound, making me taste and swallow hard the acid that a nervous stomach produced.

My heart escalated, and my legs started to feel jelly, as all my eyes could see was death and decay emerging from the coffins. They reminded me of the rotten skeletal mummies half-eaten by flesh-eating insects poured over the live mummified bodies of the most dreaded criminals. The torn pieces of flesh were hanging loose with black mucus dripping from their edges. The eyes were the only thing which marked them as different from the decomposed creatures of Aurora’s family. They were the brightest blue as if scorching in heat. Although they were far from beautiful, but something was alluring and magnetic about them that keeps you captured in a trance.

*Fucking Sirens!!*

I could feel their compulsion to try to control my mind but without any success. I concreted the walls of my mind, a lesson learned from my past experience with Siren. Now, no fucking ugly asses can shit in my mind, even though they were trying too hard to penetrate it. The perks of being a Morrighan!

The sudden voices behind me grabbed my attention over there. My three mates were struggling to breathe underwater. I let out my energy barrier, which crushed through the water, forcing and shifting it away from us, creating a hollow space with the walls of water surrounding us.

The skeletal mummies moved forward, and to my surprise, they didn’t stumble like animated zombies. They entered my barrier with a purpose as if it held the key to their resurrection. The moment they stepped inside, their bones resettled, and the black mucus stopped dripping. The loosened flesh coiled around and turned upwards, stuffing itself in between bones and muscles. The whole structure got wrapped by a thin layer of skin. The other sense organs sprouted out of the face, giving the deadly creatures the faces. It reminded me of the movie ‘The Mummy’ where the decayed mummy of Amenhotep had just fed on a human to resurrect himself. The resultant products were the eight beautiful plain white-dressed women.

My mind was immune enough to see through their true faces, another perk of being a Morrighan. But the same can't be said about my mates. I know something was wrong with them the moment I looked at their faces. Their eyes also reflected the bright blue flames like Sirens. They all were in trance and under the control of those damn Sirens. They were seeing what those fucking sirens were making them see.

‘Embrace the fates to greet the estranged wights of the mates.’ The line reeled over my mind when I seeped through their minds and saw for myself what those Sirens were making them see.

**Damon’s POV**

The moment my body hit the underwater floor, Natasha’s barrier was strong enough to replace the waters with the hollow space, saving us from suffocating. Even before I could peek through my surroundings, a strange and unknown force made the surrounding air thick and heavy. It felt as if a mysterious and luring energy was gripping me in a trance.

The fog around me lifted, exposing me to the faces which formed a knot in my stomach. The fear churned my insides as those were the faces of the estranged mates of my past.

The six doppelgangers!!

The doppelgangers dressed in white, whom I had handed over to Kara for sacrifice.They all stood before me, with their lifeless faces pinning me for the answers.

“Why Damon? Why did you cheat us?” One of them spoke in a grumpy voice.

“You promised to love us,” another voice broke out.

“We didn’t deserve to die,” the third voice emerged.

“You deserved to die!” They all spoke in chorus.

“You should die!” Again, their voices echoed through the hollow space, followed by the sounds of mocking laughter.

A shiver ran through my spine as their laughter faded into the night, creating an unnatural stillness in the silent space between me and the estranged doppelgangers. The scene around me started to change. It didn’t take me long to realize the familiar sight in front of me. I was in the Kingdom of Hell. It was the day of oblation. Kara was holding one of my doppelgangers, almost ready to stab her with the crystal dagger.

“Take the dagger from Kara and stab it in your heart,” The voices of the doppelgangers commanded me. They all were standing like a faint mist near the sacrificial site. My body was fighting for control, but my mind was consumed by something very powerful, urging me to step forward and kill myself. I took heavy steps as if my shoes were replaced with heavy weights. I reached over, snatched the dagger and placed it against my heart, ready to stab myself.

**Lukas’s POV**

The superior and unparalleled force captured my mind like metallic shackles. My body lost its will, and I felt like a puppet in control of some other unworldly energy. There was this white-dressed woman whose face was partially covered with loose strands of hair. Although she was as still as death, but some haunting sound came from within her which was luring me close to her. It was not the curiosity but the need to reach her. I knew deep down that it may be fatal, but for some reason, I lost all my strength and will to back out.

“Come here, Lukas!” Her voice floated in the air, and I tried to place it for I knew that voice. It was from my past, the damned past which I want to erase from my life. Although the air was as still as a frozen body, yet the strands of hair flew away revealing the face which I hated to my core.

“Kara!” I almost stumbled.

“Why Lukas?” She said quite offhandedly.

“I don’t understand!”

“Why did you team up with Damon and Natasha? Didn’t I love you enough?” her voice sounded hurt.

“You used me,” I said in a defensive tone.

“You will pay for it!” This time she groaned out aloud before chanting some spells in an ancient language. The words coming out of her mouth flickered something, and the whole scene around me started to change.

I was lying in a small wooden bed in the playroom of King Louris’s palace in Northern Realm. Mycelle was leaning over me, trying to inject something into my body.

“What’s this?” I asked her in a shivering tone, trying to move away from her.

“Behave child!” She warned me before continuing to inject. “This is a small quantity of wolfsbane, and if you will struggle, I will empty the whole fucking thing in you,” she whispered in my ear, looking over at the lifeless bodies of four adolescent boys, who tried to oppose Mycelle.

“Take the chalice, fill it with wolfsbane and drink it!” A faint figure of Kara whispered in my ears from behind. I could almost feel her breath on my bare shoulders. Her words worked like a spell, and suddenly I was beyond all fear as I ignored Mycelle and braved my steps towards the chalice, filling it with deadly wolfsbane, and placing it on my lips to end my life.

**Rhaegar’s POV**

I don’t know how I was teleported to King Louris’s palace, Northern Realm. I was wandering hopelessly through the corridors, passages and staircases, following the whispers of a faint woman dressed in white. She was luring me to follow her. My body was literally swaying through the path on which the unexplained force was beckoning me.

“Be quick Rhaegar…Yes…Be quick!” Whispers of the voice urged me. I spun around to peek at the surrounding darkness by squinting my eyes. My hair stood on the end thanks to the raised goosebumps. My heart was thrumming like a drum when the realization hit me upon the recognition of the familiar path. The path I dreaded to walk. I had the same prickling sensation at the back of my neck warning me of the danger that I felt walking through this path centuries ago. It was the secret passageway, the same one on which Jared took me to show me the true colours of Anna. It reminded me of the day when I saw Anna fucking my uncle on my bed.

The voice took me to the balcony adjoining my room, and I was now standing on the ledge, peeking into my room through the small window. The only thing different this time was instead of Jared; it was that luring voice of the woman dressed in white who brought me here. The voice reminded me of the hissing of poisonous serpents. She was the shameless bitch.

Anna!!

“Look into the window sweetheart,” Anna's pretentious smooth voice waved through the foggy winds of the Northern Realms. My hands wanted to push that vile lady to her death over the ledge into the never-ending depths of the Northern tower, but my mind was not in my control. I peeked through the window, and the scene of Anna fucking my uncle reflected in my teary eyes. The emotions of disgust and anger ran through my nerves, devastating my heart. I watched their climax even though it was breaking me beyond the point of healing back.

“Are you hurt my sweetie?” The disgusting voice of the white-dressed Anna whispered in my ear. I was barely in my senses to respond.

“Don’t worry. I have a solution which will free you from all the pain!” She muttered in an innocent voice, flickering her eyelids with amusement coating half of her face.

“Jump to your death!” She snarled, pointing her fingers towards the icy depths. Her features took a turn of a vengeful woman. Her snarl worked as magic, and I took a step towards the edge of the ledge, ready to plunge into the endless depths where the sharp-pointed rocks were waiting to shred my whole body into countless small pieces.

__________________________________

Damon was looking at the dagger in his hands, almost ready to slit his throat.

Lukas was holding a chalice full of wolfsbane on his lips to poison himself.

Rhaegar was to take a final step to plunge to his death into the icy depths.

Natasha was dumbfoundedly watching the unfortunate events, desperate to save her mates from suicidal actions.

“**The Beauty needs to teach the Beasts,

The great lesson from ‘Beauty and the Beast’,

The thing must be loved before it is lovable,

To save it from the clutches of the Misérables**.”