Enflame (Insight #6)(39)
A ghostly grin echoed at the corners of her mouth. “You know him well. He is going to try. Until Landen opens the gate, he is facing his other deeds, one by one.”
“Like a test or something? How is he doing? If it’s like what Draven went through, I don’t think it will be easy.”
“It’s never easy facing your own judgment, but he is faring well.”
“Is he down there now? Is this happening now?”
“I don’t see or feel him, so that must mean the spell is not working because when the door is open, he will have no choice but to face this battle.”
“Why is it not happening?”
“This battle lasted days, and the source of the energy needed is about to happen,” she said, nodding to the home again.
I saw a young girl with long dark hair pushing children, slaves, and women into a cellar door on the side of the house. A young man in uniform was with her. He urged her into the cellar, but she fought violently with him. Even when he fiercely kissed her before pushing the doors closed. She ignored his demands and chased him across the battlefield, nearly tripping over where I knew Clarissa and Dane to be.
A few feet later, they had reached the center point between the pentagram and Clarissa. The girl screamed the boy’s name, and he turned to shield her. At that moment, bullets from every direction brought their death.
“Your death, Drake’s, opened the largest passageway into The Realm that Phoenix and Landen had ever witnessed.”
“Lan...Landen let me die? In Drake’s arms? To open a gate?” That couldn’t be true.
“No.” She nodded to the burning pentagram. There, I saw the same eerie figure that had stood over Dane approaching Landen with an image of me.
“Xavier, a known enemy to Donalt, told Landen he had you, that he would bring you to him at this ceremony. Landen had felt you there, knew you were close. By the time he realized it was not you, but Madison, being brought to him, it was too late...your death had come, Dane’s bargain had been made, and the souls were rising into The Realm for the damned energy to feed on.”
“We have to relive this to undo it?” I said with a tremble in my voice.
“Not entirely. He has to figure out how to open the gate. Your death is not needed, neither is mine or Drake’s. Only our energy, and only when they have found every element they need.”
“What would be missing?”
“I’m not a Witness yet, but I hear them in my thoughts. The battle plans, the warnings...they are all fighting to protect the metallic angel.”
“The what?”
“I think it’s a nickname. Basically, we are all meant to be in balance, both light and dark side by side; our lives require both for us to learn. Evil lives in power, and whether that is light or darkness doesn’t matter. From what I understand, there is a child that carries a blend of both. Her energy is metallic. No one really knows how powerful she is, but they know she can open any door, move any power, and if she falls into the hands of anyone with a negative intent, her power will be harvested for gain. That can’t happen.”
“We’re missing her?”
“You’re not. She basically sent you here.”
“Monroe?” I gasped.
Her placid stare told me I was right. “They may need her to open this gate, but they cannot ask her,” she stated flatly, as if she could read my intent to go to Chara and bring Monroe here.
“Why?”
“If her path is ever encouraged, it will not work as it is intended. She will not help unless she knows it is what must happen.”
“She’s, like, fifteen. How would she know? You realize she is Donalt’s daughter, or something like that?”
“From what I gather, she knows all the spells, where they cross and how. She feels it inside. She knows. And if this gate is not to be opened—if we have reasoned this the wrong way—then it won’t be. Landen will have to find another way to pull the energy out, and Dane will have to fight for his soul on a different path.”
“Charlie can get her to open the gate.”
“No, she can’t, and you can’t ask her. If you tell them any of this, your intent will taint their path and the spells will cross even further. You have to trust that what will happen is what needs to happen right now.”
“You sound like Landen. Did you put that notion in his head?”
“No. He didn’t believe me when I told him. It wasn’t until they opened his eyes that he saw how complicated this all is.”
“I think they’ve ruined him.”
“They saved him. This is Jupiter, expansion. He needed to understand this. If he didn’t, he would be in Perodine’s study, leaning over scrolls and glaring at Drake and all the while, this battle, those lost souls would suffer. In the end, you would lose, he would. You have to expand your mind to see this outside of what it is, to understand that life is woven together to create a perfect story that can only be read once each lesson is learned.”
The battle below seemed to be caught in a loop. I was watching the same people die over and over again, and it took all I had not to just stop it with some wrath of Mother Nature.
“I don’t want you to think Landen is ruined, that any of us are. We are growing. Nothing will change the way he feels about you.”