The Torn Guardian (11 page)

Grace sits back a bit as she scans her mind for the answer. She starts by saying she was infuriated when she realized she was lied to even though she knew I was hiding something from them. She could not accept me being the one chosen to live, and the possibility of dying at my hand. She needed to protect Elsen and what is left of her family. Grace admits she felt the darkness surround her when she wandered around the woods, but she did not realize what it was doing until too late. At that point, she had already begun fighting Adira.

“It was eerie,” she explains. “I could see what I was doing for a little while, but after a certain point everything stopped. I don’t know what happened exactly, just that I caved to the darkness and started attacking you,” she says to Adira. “The last semblance of consciousness I have is when you stabbed me after a struck you; then I lost it entirely.”

“Then we have a great deal for you to catch up on,” I say, and Adira agrees. Adira and I take turns telling Grace about everything new we have learned and discovered so far. It is actually quite a bit. By the time we are done, the sun is about to vanish beyond the horizon. Kenley has been gone for a while, but he reappears when Adira takes a foot outside through the side door towards the lake. He has a basket full of fresh vegetables and offers to make a quick meal if we give him a few minutes.

We thank him, and I hear Grace’s stomach growl. When I look at her, she smiles sheepishly before stating that all that rage fighting must have made her hungry. I ask her if we really are good and if she is still going to help us. Grace huffs an “of course”, stating she is not about to leave the fate of the world in a crazy religious nut and other worldly being who just arrived.

After some lighthearted banter and discussion, Kenley calls us over to grab a plate. The three of us get up, but I stop Grace before she can walk past me and start scarfing down food. I reach into my pocket and pull out Elizabeth’s orb armalo. I have no idea how Grace is going to use it with her scythe, but that is for her to figure out anyway. I grab Grace’s hand, open it so the palm is open, and drop the clear ball into it. She clutches in her hand and smiles at me. I do not have to tell her what it is; she already knows just by feeling it.

When we sit down, Kenley starts talking about a way he thinks we will be able to confront and beat Sethos. Grace asks if he knows where Sethos is, and Kenley gives a resounding maybe. The life priest believes Sethos is neither in this world nor the Otherworld, but somewhere in between. Adira then asks if Viroca will be necessary in defeating him. He claims not to know what she is talking about until Grace brings up one Elsen’s citizens buying a necklace from him with it.

Upon hearing this, he stands up and walks over to one of his drawers. He pulls out another necklace, and Grace claims it is identical. Kenley explains this is dragon stone, remnants of when the dragons first created the world. This was their original solution to bringing balance throughout the world. Whenever one power grows too large, the very nature of the world reacts to re-harmonize itself, or that is what it was supposed to do. Over time the rocks abilities became weaker as the dragons distanced themselves and their magic away from the world. Now because the dragons resided in the Otherworld and Sethos went rougue, the rocks uses were limited and ineffective on a large scale.

It explains why my attacks in the cave in Briza were much more effective than when we were on the streets of Saphira. The rocks weakened the powers of the devilins, while increasing mine to regain the balance that was lost when they arrived. I ask him how we are going to find and beat Sethos, but he says we are getting too ahead of ourselves. He declares we are nowhere near prepared enough to win a fight against him.

I’ll give the old man this, he is stubborn. No matter how much we argue that we need to save the world as soon as possible he stands firm. Though he agrees we need to settle this matter quickly, he claims we will die and lose if we fight in our current state. He wants us to train here with him, but there is no way that is happening. Grace and Adira might lose their homes if we take too long.

“Come on old man. What do we have to do to convince you we can do this?” Grace questions through clenched teeth.

“You think you are ready?” Kenley asks, and the three of us quickly respond yes. Truthfully, I do not think we are, and I can definitely see us dying in the process. However, my goal at this point is not to win, it is to prevent a massive loss. If we spend too much time waiting, the world might be in such a dire state it will not be worth saving anymore.

Kenley closes his eyes and thinks. When his gaze reaches us again, we know this is not going to be an easy task. “Become priestesses,” he says.

Adira quickly voices she already is one, but Kenley shakes his head profusely in disagreement. He stands up and motions for us to follow him out the side door of his house toward the lake. The sun has completely set, and the world’s lone large moon is peering out through the mountains’ peeks. Stars illuminate the sky, and with the exception of a few insects, it is silent.

Once the three of us join him outside he points to the mountains barely visible in the distance and says, “Within those great mountains are the ruins of the temples of life, death, light, and darkness. There is also the main temple which connects all of them. If you wish to become a priest or priestess you must complete two journeys. The first will determine if you can become a priest at all; the second will make you prove you can teach the ways of either light, darkness, life, or death. The road to the main temple is where you three will begin, but once you arrive at the main temples gates you must separate.”

“You know you’re crazier than her right?” Grace asks as she points to Adira.

“Grace,” I say her name with some disbelief that she would so quickly return to her usual nature. Then again she is Grace, but even if she is right, we need him to help us.

“What? It is true. This priest of life, or whoever, knows who we are and still wants us to prove our worth. The world is in a desperate need of help, and he is over here acting like we have all the time in the world,” Grace says.

I refuse to scold her because I wholeheartedly agree. I do wish she would say it with a bit more couth though. Kenley proceeds to quickly put the two of us back in our place. He does not think name and origin mean anything. Our current power is shown by the actions we have done, and he is unimpressed to say the least. Grace narrows her eyes but turns her attention to the mountains. “How long will it take?” She asks in a more respectful tone.

“A significantly shorter amount of time than training would if you can successfully complete it in one shot,” he answers.

“Is there no other way?” I ask.

“No,” he curtly responds.

I excuse myself and drag Adira and Grace with me around the corner. Grace brings up the possibility of bribing or beating him. Adira tells her she will not allow Grace to harm a life priest, and she also points out he knows much more about the situation than we do. Grace quickly counters we have wasted enough time.

I ask Grace about the possibility he is right. If we are not ready to fight Sethos and he wins, there is no one who will come after us. We are the world’s only chance. I also point out we can use a bit of practice reminding both of them about our abysmal showing in the streets of Saphira. Time is absolutely crucial, but if we rush, it can be just as damaging.

Adira agrees and blatantly states if I had not pulled them out when I did in Saphira we would have died. Grace sees her point, but disagrees with how to go about fixing the problem.

“You think the best way to solve this is go on a spiritual journey?” Grace asks unconvinced. “What are we going to do hold hands and learn some prayers? Just pray the darkness away? Do you want me to bust out my old lute, so we can start singing some hymns?”

“You play the lute?” I ask with a smile plastered across my face. That is amazing.

“Beside the point,” Grace says slightly irritated that is the point I got stuck on.

“No, really,” Adira says with a light-hearted laugh, “You play the lute?”

“Beside the point,” Grace grits through her teeth.

Kenley appears from around the corner. He assures us this test will not only be beneficial to him, but us as well. When we get to the actual temples of light, life, and death, we will come face to face with our creators just as he did when he became a life priest. It might be the only time we will get to personally communicate with Oran, Mors, and Jenesis. He claims that if they say we are ready, he will accept we are ready as well.

Without so much a second thought, Grace and Adira agree to go to the temples. They want the chance to speak with Mors and Jenesis, and I figure speaking with Oran will probably do me some good as well. Grace voices what we are all thinking and starts to walk off towards the mountain. Adira calls out to here asking where she is going, and Grace replies she is heading to the paths.

“Do not mistake the peace and serenity of the night for safety,” Kenley semi-yells, but Grace keeps walking. She grabs the scythe off her back and twirls it in her fingers as her response causing the old priest to chuckle.

“You don’t have food or any supplies at all for that matter,” Adira joins Kenley in shouting warnings.

Grace still does not stop, so I’m forced to intervene as well. “You have no idea where you are going,” I yell. That makes her stop. The three of us watch as her head sinks and shoulder slump a bit. We heartily laugh together, and Kenley calls her back saying we can leave first thing in the morning after a good rest. He then says just loud enough so only Adira and I can hear Grace she is exactly as he expected Death’s child would be yet also nothing like it.

We all head inside and decide to call it a night, so we can get up as early as possible tomorrow morning. To say I am nervous as I lie my head down is an understatement. As the night goes on, I find myself wondering if Grace and Adira are anxious like me. From the sound of Grace’s snoring in the bed next to me, I doubt it.

I turn over and try to block all the pessimistic thoughts out of my head, but they keep coming back. Tomorrow will show me whether or not we can ultimately pull this off. Tomorrow will show whether letting Adira and Grace live was a good idea or the worst decision in history. I give one last unheard prayer that the three of us can work together before I finally fall into a restless sleep.

Exhaustion. I feel nothing but exhaustion as we make our way up the mountain to the temples. It is a shame because the weather is quite nice as the sun has nearly appeared fully behind the mountain range. There is a slight comforting breeze occasionally flowing through the pass as we walk along the rocky path up the mountain, but the jagged corners of the pebbles are really beginning to hurt my feet.

Before we left, Kenley insisted we wear the bare minimum on our journey to become priestesses. He gave us all plain sleeveless cloth tops and cuffed pants. I am not even allowed to wear my boots. Instead I’m wearing cloth shoes with so little padding on the soles I might as well be barefoot.

I have lagged behind Adira and Grace since we started several hours before partly because of the pain and partly because of my lack of sleep. They are still pestering each other and occasionally joking I am incapable of keeping up because of this large bow, but none of it is too bad this morning. I wish to join them in conversation, but at the same time I cannot be bothered to listen in.

Last night was the worst sleep I have ever gotten. That is including back in the Otherworld when I fell asleep only to experience one of my sisters’ deaths for the first time. After just witnessing Linette’s murder at the tender age of nine years old, I was scared for my life and had to go find Oran for comfort. However, in that case I at least had Oran. Last night I did not have anyone, and I kept having a reoccurring nightmare no matter what I did.

I got up to walk around; I stepped out to get some fresh year. I even tried to wake up Grace to talk, but that didn’t help. Grace is a heavy sleeper, and next to impossible to wake up before she is ready to. When I did get her to resemble some state of consciousness, it got interesting. She grabbed my shirt around my neck and threatened to eat all of my potato soup if I didn’t get Alexander to stop crying. I have no idea who Alexander is or why Grace would eat my soup in retaliation, but after that, I decided to leave her alone. 

Regardless, every time I fell asleep again, the same thing happened. I would always be doing some remedial task that did not make a lick of sense like trying to cut metal with an ordinary knife for a sandwich. Then I tried to stop only to realize I could not. I was no longer me; I was being controlled by Jo, or Linette, or Elizabeth. They laughed, and then the nightmare really began. I committed atrocious acts that I want to believe I would never do. When Elizabeth appeared, I murdered an entire town’s children while making the parents and other residents watch. I still feel awful, but I was never me. I hope I wasn’t me.

These nightmares have been eating away at me all morning, and Grace and Adira have noticed. Every time they ask, I brush it off. I do not want to talk about it, mainly because I have no idea how to talk about it. Until I can figure some of this out for myself, I will not be able to explain it to them, and they won’t be able to help me.

Grace calls my attention, and I look forward to see our path has come to an end. A pair of small worn down stone pillars provide the only inviting entry point into the forest. Kenley told us to follow the pillars to arrive at the center, from there we will separate our own ways. I will go to the light temple, Grace to Death’s, and Adira to Life’s. The grass crunches beneath our feet as we walk from stone pillars to stone pillars. Eventually these stop as well, and we come to a cave with a stream flowing through it. Translucent butterflies and small honeybees feast on the nectar of the colorful wildflowers growing in the surrounding area. We stop to take a break, and I remove the lantern and small sack at my hip that Kenley gave me this morning.

It is here Grace chooses to bring up what it was like growing up surrounded by the grand dragons instead of people. I dip my hands into the calmly moving water, letting it glide over my hands, before I pull them up to take a drink. I answer after the cool water has run down my throat that it was fairly routine. Almost every day was like the one before.

I did not think that was a bad thing, but Grace and Adira look as though I told them I was tortured for hours on end. They ask if I had any friends and what I did for fun. It makes me tense because I don’t have answers to those questions. They aren’t answers these two will understand anyways. There was no need for fun in the Otherworld. I was focused on training, so I could save and protect a world. Jo was my friend, and she would occasionally visit. But those times were rare to begin with and as I got older, her visits became less frequent and farther in between.

I shut Grace and Adira out. I do not want to think about what it was like there anymore. Instead I take another drink from the river, and it revitalizes my muscles. If these two are done stressing over things that no longer matter, I am ready to keep going.

It turns out they are, so we walk to the wide mouth of the cave. I take a single step inside, and a deafening roar comes rearing from deep inside. A forceful gust follows the roar, hits all three of us in our faces, and we fall flat on our asses. After Grace gets up, she reaches down to provide me a hand then Adira. We dust ourselves off as much as we can and return our attention to what caused us to fall back in the first place.

“I don’t remember the old man mentioning this,” Grace says.

“He didn’t,” I reply.

“Do you feel that?” Adira asks.

Yes. Yes, I do. It is like Saphira, but considerably stronger. This is a pretty awful way to start our official journey to becoming priestesses. “What are the devilins doing here?” I wonder aloud.

“Trying to stop us from speaking to the elder dragons,” Adira says, and Grace agrees.

It is not going to work. Grace, Adira, and I are more motivated to speak with the dragons than Sethos realizes. Plus, we know how to use the armalos more effectively now. Sethos’s monster minions, no matter how large, are not going to stop us. Not when we are so close to finally getting some answers. If we have to fight through hundreds of devilins to speak with Oran, Jenesis, and Mors, so be it.

As Adira and I have come to expect of her, Grace takes charge and leads the way without thinking things entirely through. Adira tells her we should get ready while we can since we don’t know how many are enemies are in there. Grace quickly resigns and joins us again at the front of the cave. She lights her lantern by pulling out some of the dust in her sack and throwing it in. It lights instantaneously. I replicate what she did, and my lantern also burns brightly. I hang it at my hip and prepare my weapon.

With the magnifying glass secured to the bow, I cautiously step forward. Adira joins me, and we keep watch while Grace attaches the orb to her scythe. The growls are currently at a distance, but there is no telling how long they will stay that way. If we are lucky, they do not know we are here yet. Maybe we will even be able to sneak by.

Grace really does appear to know all about her scythe. It took her no time at all to figure out how to attach Linette’s armalo to hers. At the top of the scythe is a knob. She twists it, and presses a button and the knob explodes into five curved rods. It looks somewhat similar to how a hand holds a ball. She pushes the ball into the opening, and the orb snaps together with the scythe. The orb glows green as it did when I touched it to the plant back in Briza, but that is not the only thing glowing. The scythe’s entire blade radiates a bright lime green before it calms. It continues to be luminous but no longer blinding to look at.

“I have no idea what just happened,” Grace says as she twirls the scythe in her hand, “But it is spectacular!”

I tell her to be careful as I think the blade is now poisonous. Grace brings her scythe closer to her for inspection and confirms this; the orb currently reads poison. She rotates the orb inside the prongs and with a bright flash the green changes to red. Grace excitedly says the blade now burns. She continues to turn the orb reveling a new color as she goes. Adira wonders just how many there are, and they both turn to me for an answer.

Little do they know, they won’t be getting one. I’m not a walking encyclopedia of my sister’s memories. Maybe before I came down to the world I would have been able to remember, but lately I’m impressed if I can recall any event from Linette’s, Elizabeth’s, or Jo’s lives properly at all. I tell Grace I’ll think about it when we have time, but we need to focus on getting to the center temple.

Grace turns the orb backwards and eventually arrives back at the green she started with. When she tells us she is ready, we start to make our way through the cave. I decide to bring up the rear. It is more logical, since, unlike Adira and Grace, I won’t be running into the fight. Most of my damage will be dealt at a longer distance.

We hear more growling and snarls as we make our way through the twists of the damp cave, so we are constantly checking the corners before we advanced. When we get to one of the final corners, the growls and snarls stop. The silence is considerably worse. I feel all three of us tense up. All we can see is black ahead, and while our lanterns light up enough to show us where we are walking, they are not going to provide a lot of time to see and react to our enemies attacking.

Grace states what we are all thinking; there is more than likely an ambush ahead. I agree and warn the others to keep their guards up and stick together. The growling earlier sounded like a lot more than one, but there is no way to avoid a confrontation. There is only one path through to the temples, and we are staring at it.

As soon as we walk in, the devilins launch their attack and get us to separate. Adira and Grace fight their way back towards me while I strike the monsters back with a barrage of arrows. Unlike before in Saphira our weapons are doing quite a bit of damage, so the armalos are not only adding an ability when they are paired together, they have increased in base power. It impresses me how much damage Adira and Grace are doing. They do not have the full blessed power of life and death, but they are still dealing an extensive amount of wreckage. The added power is an absolute necessity, without it, we would be being overwhelmed.

Every time I fire an arrow and it misses my initial target the cave lights up from its blazing glow for a moment, and we can see the numerous enemies surrounding us before the arrow inevitably pierces one of them. Although Adira and Grace are attacking effectively, they are making it harder for me to cover them.

Both are focusing on different areas, and not converging. They expect me to cover both of them at the same time, while no one covers me. I nearly get pummeled to the ground because of this. It is too dark in here to see exactly what is going on, and one of the devilins managed to get behind me. I dove out of the way, and seconds later an arrow blasted through him. Because of that, I lost sight of Adira and Grace, but I can see their lights. Unfortunately, they are both moving farther and farther away from each other and me.

This is beginning to get out of our control. If they move far enough away from each other, the devilins will successfully separate us, and I will not be able to cover them at all. The dark creatures attempt to close me off from Adira and Grace, but I am not about to let them. I load two arrows and fire them, then I quickly set another two and shoot them off as well. Two devilins are dead in front of me, and I scramble to get out of the circle these monster are attempting to trap me in.

I believe the lantern light flickering violently around that is closest to me belongs to Grace judging by the grunts and shouts I hear in that area. Adira does not sound like she is fairing much better across the room. We need to regroup, but as long as we are in this room, there is no time.

This is bad. I yell at Adira to get us out of here, but she either cannot hear me or cannot respond. Grace is trying to fight back towards me while I attempt to aid Adira, but I keep hitting the wrong target. It is like these monsters are purposefully jumping in front of my shots because they know if they let me get one off properly, they will lose their ground. Thankfully, Adira apparently did hear me, and she pops up in a flash right next to me. Grace also joins, and the three of us are finally back together again.

I tell Adira we need to leave, but the enemy is not acting right. They devilins just stopped attacking us out of nowhere. They have backed off to where I can barely see any of them, but they are absolutely still around. Although I hear and feel their heavy hot breaths, for some reason they are not trying to kill us. Grace, Adira, and I are frantically looking around to figure out why they stopped, but there is nothing here.

Out of nowhere, the intensity of darkness in the cave practically doubles. The three of us can finally see why they stopped. It’s huge and hurling towards us from above, but only Adira can react fast enough to get out of the way. She disappears using the claw leaving me and Grace. Without thinking I push Grace out of the way, and the new enemy crashes into me disintegrating the cave floor in the process.

We fall through, and I land on the cold, rock floor directly on my back. I cannot move momentarily, but I really need to get up. The only positive of my current situation is for some reason this section of the cave lit up when we landed, so I can actually see the thing trying to kill me. Though my eyes are having a hard time staying open, and to be honest I kind of wish I didn’t have to see this disgusting being.

I do not know if this creature is to be considered a devilin or something else because the only characteristics it shares with the creatures above are that it is ugly and filled with dark energy. This greenish gray nightmare is at least twice as large as the devilins, and it has the head of boar and body of a bull. Its four tusks, two located on each side, have remnants of dried blood stained onto them. Jagged spikes run all along his back, and his four yellow slanted eyes focus on me lying down. I can feel the hatred it has. I can feel how much this thing wants me dead.