Sunyula Trife's mansion in Trainmor, Fraenon Hill stood tall and humongous like a titan overshadowing the people below it. It was four stories tall and was as wide as almost three average buildings. A lush front yard garden greeted her as she passed through the black metal entrance gates, along with Samuel and his two bodyguards. A circular water fountain stood in the middle of the garden, with a brick road surrounding it and leading towards the mansion's entrance, while trimmed bushes and grass as green as ripe apples decorated everything around it. It was scenery so vivid and stunning that Lunarey almost felt bad that so many others couldn’t enjoy it and had to settle for the horrid views of places like St. Cyprian. Samuel and his men didn’t even bother to appear as anything other than indifferent. Such luxury was no stranger to them.
As she looked up at the mansion, she saw an image she had feared ever since revealing her own identity. Above the marble steps to the mansion's large entrance doors, stood Lady Dread herself, Sunyula Trife. She was tall and slim, wearing a long, black dress that went all the way down to the floor beneath her while providing a deep neckline which ended somewhere in the middle of her chest area. Sunyula had long black hair with dark purple highlights, matching the color of her organization. She had dark, sharp eyes, adorned with smoky-looking make-up and long, bold eyelashes. Her nose was long and pointy, and her lips thin and pale. Her fingernails were long and sharp, painted black. On her waist, Lunarey noticed the infamous double-bladed sword, Scarlet Thorn, resting in its black sheath. They say she carries that sword anywhere she goes. Even when she sleeps, she keeps it close to her.
"My child, Vaikillia!" Sunyula called, stepping down the marble steps. "Thank god you're alright!" with no warning, she embraced Lunarey with a warming hug, clutching her tightly.
"Yes, mother," the word felt foreign to Lunarey. "I'm back."
Sunyula grabbed Lunarey's chin with her hand and examined her face. Seeing her purple-shaded cheek, she frowned and her eyes narrowed. "Those savages… look what they did to you," she said.
"I'm all right," Lunarey said, indifferently.
Sunyula crouched down and leveled her face with Lunarey's. Her eyes seemed to have a sincere, honestly caring appearance, yet Lunarey knew what sort of sadism hid behind them. "Samuel told me all about your memory loss over the phone." She patted Lunarey's head. "Don’t worry, everything will be alright. Come on, let's get inside." Sunyula rose back up and took her daughter's hand.
As the two walked up to the mansion's entrance doors, Samuel and the other two members tailing behind them, Lunarey's heart raced. The only thing she could find solace in was the fact that Sunyula might just be the only person who could clear the fog about how she ended up in that alley with no recollection of herself. Unfortunately, recent events had taught Lunarey that perhaps unveiling missing pieces from her past might only make her feel worse about herself.
Upon entering the mansion, a large hall greeted Lunarey. Two curved stairwells on each side of the hall led to an upper floor, while the hall itself shone with pearl-white tiles, as shiny and glossy as water. Further ahead, she could see red couches with wooden framing and a color-matching red carpet underneath them. Two men stood in the hall, waiting for them to enter, both looking old, yet not enough to be considered OldGens.
"Vaikillia," one of them spoke. "How good it is to see you again." He smiled.
"Vaikillia, these are Richard Lane and Jeffery Carter, my lieutenants," Sunyula introduced them. While the names were familiar to Lunarey, their nicknames were much better known to her. Richard of the Dementia, a man in his 40s who likes to use psychological drugs and methods on his victims, and Jeffery of the Ravage, a man also around the same age who prefers to abuse his victims sexually in various ways. The books said he is known to have many perversions and is rumored to have sexual tendencies for both men and women.
Richard was tall and had short gray hair. His green eyes squinted as he smiled at Lunarey. Jeffery looked only slightly younger, with fewer wrinkles and no gray hairs. Instead, he had long, black receding hair, slicked back. He was much shorter then Richard and had a hunched back. His nose was wide and flat and his lips kept protruding in his mouth. Something about his facial expression seemed eerie and peculiar to Lunarey, and she found herself more intimidated by the pervert then the psychological torturer.
"F-Forgive me," Lunarey stuttered. "But I have no recollection of—"
"We already know," Richard calmed her.
Looking over at Jeffery, Lunarey noticed that he was examining her head to foot, his gaze running up and down more than once. "You seem… thinner." Jeffery said with a voice as eerie and creepy as his appearance.
"I-I—"
"You'll have time to catch up later," Sunyula saved Lunarey from her own muttering. "Right now, I'd like to know exactly what happened to my daughter, and I'm sure she has many questions herself."
The two men nodded and stepped aside. Sunyula escorted Lunarey ahead towards the red couches. As she looked back, she noticed that Samuel and the two members stayed behind with Richard and Jeffery, knowing that they are to leave Sunyula alone with her daughter. Seeing her so-called protector left behind made Lunarey even more nervous and afraid.
The two sat on one of the red couches. Sunyula ran her hand through Lunarey's hair, caressing her like a loving mother. "Now, tell me, Vaikillia," Sunyula said. "What happened to you?"
"W-Well…" Lunarey said. "I'm not sure how I got there in the first place, but… I woke up in an alley in St. Cyprian with no memory of who I was. This girl, Kelia Hopewell found me and took me into her house. She let me stay there for quite some time."
"I can't believe you found an honest, decent person in a repulsive place such as St. Cyprian."
"Yeah, well… she didn’t turn out to be an angel." Lunarey became aggravated, while also sad. "She gave me a roof and shared her food with me. She was a real friend to me… or so I thought. It turned out she knew who I was. She saw the newspapers and knew there would be a reward waiting for those who return me to you. She was the one who called Samuel."
"Oh, my sweet, poor child. You must have felt so lost." Sunyula's voice sounded sincere, yet her face remained emotionless and void as if she wasn’t even trying to look compassionate.
"Do you… know how I ended up there? What happened?" the question had burned in her head for seemingly forever.
Sunyula looked down with a sigh. "It was those fuckers… those fucking bikers…" rage filled her up, as her black-painted fingernails scratched into the couch's fabric. "This war of ours with Harley Nation had made our lives much harder, and I always feared you would end up getting mixed in it. I tried my best to protect you," she caressed Lunarey's cheek.
"What exactly happened?"
"I wasn’t there. Samuel was. He said you had come to visit him in Garnicel, Brontspil, when some of the bikers attacked. They caught the two of you alone, with no backup from the outpost. You tried to run away from them and ended up separating. Samuel said he tried to go back and find you, but you were nowhere to be found. He didn’t even get to see if any of the bikers had followed you, which made us all worry." Sunyula seethed. "When he told me what happened, I swore I would cut open Fane Hallstead's neck myself with Scarlet Thorn." Fane Hallstead… the Red Rider, the ringleader of Harley Nation… he's behind my memory loss? "I started pulling every string I had and made sure every newspaper and news broadcast would show your picture."
"But… I woke up alone. How does this make any sense?"
"I don't know, Vaikillia. Samuel was just as surprised."
"So… you don't know how I came to that alley, alone with amnesia?"
"I'm afraid not. You must have been so scared, so lost."
"I was," Lunarey bowed her head. "I was lost since I woke up in that alley. I didn’t know anything about myself. All I had were some clues, like this injection mark," she raised her arm and showed her the mark. By now, it had almost faded completely away. "I had these shoes, which were supposed to be of an expensive brand, and…" she paused for a moment.
"And what?"
"And… this list." She took the piece of paper out of her pocket, which by now was crumbled. She showed it to Sunyula and noticed how her expression was changing rapidly to a drearier one. "You know these names, don’t you?" Lunarey asked her. Sunyula's mouth opened slightly, but no words came out. Lunarey could already see the truth in her eyes. "These people were murdered, mutilated in horrible fashions. They were victims of your organization, weren't they?" once again Sunyula chose silence. She looked up at Lunarey with that dreary expression, her eyes seeming cold as ice. All of a sudden, a sense of fear had fallen upon Lunarey. "I need to know, mother," she said despite the growing horror in her. "I need to know why this list was with me."
Sunyula lingered her silence a moment longer before speaking. "It's true," she said. "I've never hidden anything from you and I'm not about to do so now. These people loaned money from us and failed to pay us back."
"I see…" Lunarey refused to look at her mother. "So… these reactions listed here… these behavioral effects… what are they supposed to mean?"
"They… belonged to the victims. The one who… did the things he did to them wrote down their reactions."
"Why?"
"I'm not sure."
"So… who did it? Who tortured those people? Who killed them?"
Something in Sunyula's face suddenly changed. The black-purple haired ringleader remained as cold as stone, yet her eyes narrowed as if she was trying to read her daughter's mind. "You really don’t remember anything, do you?" At that point, Lunarey had figured that once again she was about to face an ugly truth, one which she will forever wish to forget, yet before she could ask her to let her go on living in ignorance, Sunyula's words came shooting at her like a fast bullet. "You did it, Vaikillia. You tortured all of them. You killed all of them."
Lunarey's heart plummeted. Her ability to focus was gone. Everything turned black around her. Why? She thought to herself. Why? The question flung around her mind endlessly, hurting with each time. Why? She begged to know. Why would I do that? What kind of person am I? Why did I ever deserve to have such a horrible fate? Oh, what a lovely blessing I received when I lost my memory… now that blessing is gone. Ignorance truly is bliss.
"Vaikillia?" Sunyula's voice echoed in through the fuzziness in her mind. "Vaikillia?" Lunarey finally turned to her mother.
"My name is not Vaikillia," she said. "It's Lunarey."
"What are you talking about?" Sunyula seemed baffled.
"I said…" Lunarey rose up to her feet, staring down at her mother, the infamous Lady Dread, with the utmost contempt. "My fucking name is Lunarey!"
Sunyula reached out to grab Lunarey's hand "Why are you—?"
"Don’t touch me!" Lunarey flinched.
Sunyula's expression turned dark. She wasn’t used to being yelled at, and clearly she didn’t appreciate it at all. Still, Lunarey didn’t fear her mother. As dangerous and deadly as Lady Dread might have been, Lunarey knew that her mother would never harm her. She could see it in her. She could feel it.
"Samuel!" Sunyula called for her lieutenant. Within a few seconds, he was in the room. "Take Vaikillia to her room. She's tired and needs some rest." Sunyula seethed.
Samuel grabbed Lunarey's hand and escorted her out of the room. "My name is not Vaikillia," Lunarey whispered under her breath one more time as she walked away with Samuel.
The two climbed up the curved stairwell and entered a long hall, decorated with a purple rug that covered the whole of it. Entering the first room on its right, Lunarey found herself in a large room with a wide bed, a wooden closet, and a glass window. The bed's sheets were in the organization's traditional purple colors and the window had drapes matching it as well. It seemed to her that wherever she would go around the large mansion, she would constantly be reminded that vicious criminals were living there, with the haunting purple colors always chasing her.
"What happened?" Samuel asked her, resting his hands on her shoulders. "I can tell when Sunyula's upset. What happened in that conversation?" Lunarey looked away. She couldn’t even bare to look at him. "Vaikillia, talk to me."
"Did I really kill all those people?" she finally said. Her words choked in her throat. Tears came running down her face. Her eyes remained hidden from his, looking away instead. "What kind of a fucking monster am I?" she buried her face in her hands, falling on her knees. Her soul screamed in agony through her ever-running tears. Suddenly, she felt Samuel's warm embrace, just like at the hotel.
"Calm down," he said in a soothing tone. "You're no monster, I guarantee you."
"Then why did I do it?" her voice cracked through her weeping.
"Because you were ordered to, by your mother." Lunarey finally turned to look at Samuel. Her eyes were bloodshot and swollen and her cheeks stained with streams of her tears. "She'd been grooming you. Sunyula's not like Reus Mallistrom, who keeps himself behind the curtains while his lieutenants run his organization. She likes to take part in our actions, so she knows that one day she might… die. And if and when she does, she'd like you to replace her, just as she replaced her late father, Henrick."
Lunarey's eyes froze. She… she made me do it… "I hate her," she whispered. "I hate her," she repeated. "I want her to die, Samuel." Her teeth ground with rage.
"She will," he promised her. "Soon."
"When?" she begged to know.
"I don’t know. Soon." It was good enough for Lunarey. She couldn’t stand another minute under her mother's roof. She wanted her gone. She wanted to be free and live her life away from all the violence and death that chased Lady Dread's organization. Yet she didn’t push him further for an answer. She settled for what little he gave her. She never forgot that he was a killer. She never forgot that she couldn’t trust him entirely, but at her current situation, she allowed herself to find comfort in his words. 'Soon.' I'll hold you to that, Samuel of the Shatter.
