Legends of Amacia Heart of Darkness
Chapter 26: Nightmare FATE

While Hanna and Selina slept arm in arm, Hanna dreamed. She stood in front of a seven-foot tall mirror, looking at her nude form wondering if Hannibal would ever get his male body back. Her reflection suddenly shimmered and the right side of her reflection became Hannibal while the left side remained female. An eerie smile came over Hannibal as his half of the reflection suddenly pulled away from Hanna’s half of the reflection, separating the male and female halves of Hannibal into separate entities. Hanna stared with her mouth open at the transformation. Hannibal’s reflection turned to Hanna’s female reflection, holding out his hand to her. Then Hanna’s reflection morphed into Selina. Selina took Hannibal’s hand while Hanna watched. They abruptly kissed and groped one another in a passionate embrace while Hanna watched with growing embarrassment feeling isolated and left out. The two reflections suddenly turned to Hanna and Hannibal held out his hand to her. “Come join us, Hanna,” Hannibal called to her from the mirror. “We’re not one without you. Come.”

“Come,” Selina chimed, “We need you more than you know.”

Hanna approached the mirror and hesitantly reached out to it. “What do I do?” she asked.

“Touch the mirror,” Hannibal ordered.

Hanna started to touch the mirror, but stopped short when a small but familiar voice murmured in her ear, “Don’t touch the mirror, Hanna. It’s a trap.”

“No,” Hanna cried out, backing away. “Something’s not right here.”

Hannibal and Selina’s reflections suddenly grinned wickedly at Hanna. Their smiles were so diabolical it made Hanna cringe. “Touch the mirror, bitch,” the evil Hannibal snarled. “You cannot stop your FATE. You will be assimilated and become one with us.”

Evil Hannibal’s voice turned Hanna’s blood to ice. She suddenly found a knife in her hand. “There’s no stopping FATE,” evil Selina cackled. “You will become one of us. Stop resisting the inevitable.”

“Never!” Hanna screamed, throwing the knife at the mirror, shattering it. An unearthly shriek rose from the mirror as it crashed to the ground in dozens of pieces. A bizarre fog rose from the broken mirror that caused Hanna to flee.

As she fled the fog, a sinister voice echoed in her ears, “There’s no place you can run where you can hide from us. All will succumb to the will of FATE and be assimilated. There’s no escaping the inevitable, human. ”

In the blink of an eye, Hanna found herself standing in a Stonehenge-style circle of crystal monoliths on a high mountain peak. An unearthly roar rose from the fog that surrounded the circle, which could not penetrate its perimeter. “What on earth is going on here?” Hanna moaned, panting for breath as she dropped to her knees in the middle to the circle.

The voice that had warned her about the mirror whispered in her ear, “Don’t be afraid, sister; you must reawaken the power within you.”

“But I thought I had done that when I merged my male and female components,” Hanna replied fearfully. “What have I not done?”

“You haven’t tapped your true power,” the voice replied in her ear as the fog swirled, alien hisses and roars rose from the mist just outside the circle. “Uniting your two halves is only part of what you need to do. Within you is the power to command power, given to you by the Almighty Himself. Creation itself is at your command. All you need is to remember your forgotten past and embrace it.” A glowing representation of Hannibal in his male form clad in strange platinum-colored plate armor suddenly appeared in the circle with Hanna. “Embrace your destiny and nothing will be restrained from you. Embrace yourself as you see here,” the voice in her ear ordered.

Hanna rose to her feet and noticed the glowing form of Hannibal in armor before her. He didn’t look like the one in the mirror. This Hannibal emanated great strength, knowledge, and compassion. However, he looked odd to Hanna, like he was part cat. Without saying a word, the apparition opened his arms to Hanna with a smile.

“Only together can we defeat our shared enemy,” the apparition said. “Let me help you and be your strength.”

“Embrace your essence, sister, and fuse with him,” the voice whispered in her ear. “This time it’s not a trick of the Emperor. Accept him and yourself and you’ll have a power even the Emperor cannot match.”

Hanna hesitantly stepped forward and embraced the apparition. The apparition smiled, wrapping his arms gently around Hanna, saying, “Good girl; now we can begin our journey together.” The moment she touched the apparition, he vanished into Hanna and she felt incredibly strange and empowered. It reminded her of when the angel Bannon entered the clone body the Emperor had sealed Hannibal’s mind in initially.

Looking towards the creeping fog that roared at her, Hanna shouted, “Get away from me, whatever you are! I’ll never join you.”

An evil apparition appeared in the fog that looked like a twisted version of Hannibal and Selina melded into one nightmare fiend with half being evil Hannibal and half being evil Selina. It snarled at Hanna, pointing at her with its claw hissing, “Stupid bitch, you cannot stop FATE or your destiny to become one with us and lose your soul. You have no power to resist us. You will be assimilated into our matrix.”

“Then why is she still standing here,” the real Selina called out, having appeared next to Hanna out of thin air. “She does not answer to the like of you...whatever you are, demon! Be gone from us!”

“Foolish kitten,” the evil Selina hissed from her side of the apparition. “Think you have the power to tangle with us, one who has power to command power; one who has swallowed entire worlds, including your own? No force in the universe can withstand the power of Chaos and FATE. It’s both your fates to become one with us in the chaos of Oblivion.”

Hanna’s face hardened as she stepped forward. Selina watched in utter amazement as Hanna shed her female form becoming a strange version of Hannibal in armor that looked distinctly feline in nature. “Enough of your lies,” he roared. “Only the Ancient of Days guides my fate, He and no one else. He also guides your fate and declares your fate ends here. Give my regards to the Abyss, you fucking doppelganger.” His armor suddenly blazed like the sun as a brilliant swirl of white light appeared around him in streamers. He stepped forward and stomped his left foot on the ground while clenching his fists. Selina rushed to him, latching on to his form from behind as he released a powerful flaming shockwave that pulsed in every direction. The blast reminded Selina of the blast Hannibal released at their capture in Cush. The fiery shockwave plowed into the evil fog, burning it away with the evil abomination that was a mix of him and Selina. A wail rose from the fog as it vanished. In the blink, the armored feline Hannibal vanished, leaving Hanna standing there panting with shock-filled eyes.

“Did I just do that?” Hanna asked in amazement, not believing what had happened.

“You did, my prince,” Selina replied. “I don’t know how you did it, but you did. You’ve power I was completely unaware of. How did you do that? You changed into an armored version of your male self that looked almost Lynxian and obliterated that evil ghost without even using a weapon.”

Hanna suddenly moaned and dropped to her knees, visibly weakened by the powerful elemental attack. Selina caught her and gently lowered her to the ground. “I honestly don’t know, Selina,” Hanna answered. “I was chased here by those evil doppelgangers that couldn’t come past the crystal circle. Then a bizarre version of me appeared here, the one I apparently turned into, and bode me to be one with him. A voice in my head told me not to fear this version of me, unlike the ones I just destroyed, so I hugged him, and he became one with me. I’ve never felt such power before. It’s like a piece of me is waking up after a lifetime of being asleep. He saved us. But how he conjured that blast, I don’t know. It’s beyond my limited comprehension.”

“Don’t let it shake you, Hanna,” a voice called out.

Selina and Hanna looked up to see Gideon, Jarret, Bannon, and the hooded angel surrounding them. “What you just incorporated was a forgotten piece of your past; a piece that will be of great value to you in the days to come,” the hooded angel explained. “So don’t worry about it. For now consider him your primordial warrior instinct...your draken within, which will protect you in when you need him the most.”

Selina stared in astonishment. “Who are you?” she asked bluntly, “I know Gideon and Jarret there, but I don’t know you or this other woman?”

“I am Bannon,” the female angel said in melodious voice that instantly put Selina’s mind at ease. “I was assigned to Hannibal because of what the Emperor has done to him. I’m helping him cope with his new female status until he replaces the way to return to his original form. I don’t mean him or you any harm.”

“It’s okay, Selina,” Hanna murmured. “Bannon was the one who helped me cope with being locked in that other body, and now she’s helping me cope with this mutation of my real body. I couldn’t do it without her. She’s like a sister to me and is showing me how to live as a woman.”

“Oh, okay,” Selina replied. “And what about you, big boy; who’re you and what’re you doing here?”

The hooded angel stared down at Selina with burning ice-blue eyes; the only part of his face that wasn’t covered. “As I told Hannibal, my name is not important right now. What is important is that he and you know that things are in motion that cannot be stopped. Hanna will be taken from you in a matter of hours to the Arena where she will be tested in combat and if the Emperor has his way, killed while you watch.”

Selina’s face fell in horror. “You mean I’m supposed to watch them kill my husband and soul mate right in front of me? That’s evil beyond my comprehension!”

“But don’t worry,” the hooded angel reassured. “Hanna’s not alone out there. You’re always with her and Hannibal giving them strength because of your fusion. Moreover, the piece she just integrated here is also with her along with Bannon, Gideon, Jarret, and me. This is a trial for both of you and you must approach it as such. The prophecies are coming to pass as we speak, so do not give up hope. The Lord is with you both. Now, it’s time for you to wake up. The time is nearly at hand.” Before either Selina or Hanna could say another word, everything went dark.

In the Harem, Hanna woke with a start, bolting to a sitting position, gasping for breath while tears ran down her cheeks. She clenched her chest and sobbed softly, feeling helpless as a baby. “What’s going on here,” she whispered to herself. “That was so bizarre.”

“You’re telling me,” Selina replied, hearing Hanna’s words after snapping awake. “Did we have the same dream again? I saw you in a crystal circle beset by an evil mist and ghosts. You became a man again and destroyed them with this strange energy blast like the one you did in Cush before our capture. Then you became a woman again and we were surrounded by angels with one of them being very big, hooded, and mysterious.”

Hanna looked down at Selina and paled. “Oh, shit, it happened again,” she moaned. “We shared the same dream. You saw all of that?”

“Not all of it,” Selina murmured, “...just the part where you were under siege by this terrible mist and the demon that looked like both of us melted together. I haven’t a clue as to what’s going on here.”

“The mist and the ghost have to be from the Emperor,” Hanna surmised. “It has his fingerprints all over it, but there was something else, something elusive and dangerous about the mist that wasn’t part of the Emperor. I could sense it.” Hanna looked around and saw everyone asleep. “I bet it’s four in the morning again,” she mumbled, laying down and cuddling with Selina. “Bizarre shit like this always seems to happen to us at four in the morning.”

Selina suddenly heard a hissing, whistling sound. Then a peculiar odor reached her nose. “Hanna, do you smell that?” she asked with growing concern.

The odor tickled Hanna’s nose and immediately made her dizzy. “Yeah Selina, I think they’re...gassing...us,” she replied, coughing just before passing out in Selina’s arms.

“Hanna!” Selina cried fighting the gas as it tore her consciousness to bits. “Got to fight it,” she moaned as she felt her body getting heavier and heavier, “Got to...stay...awake.” The gas won out...plummeting Selina into a deep sleep.