by Jamie Murray
"Yeah, it worked," Jameson said, taking Luke's arm and pulling him up.
He helped his friend stand and looked across the room as Louisa was sitting beside Cyrus as he used the wall to get himself seated. Though she was sitting next to Cyrus, Louisa was staring at Jameson with a look of admiration in her eyes, and then she rather tiredly gestured her head towards a door behind her which had been uncovered when the plants were destroyed.
Jameson was not able to lift Luke, but he did aid him as he made his way towards the door. "Just go without me," Luke urged.
"I can't," said Jameson as they approached the door. "You've got the Rain Stone."
"Take it."
"No. It belongs to you."
"What does that mean?"
Jameson reached out for the door and brushed away some of the ash which hadn't fallen to the ground. After a few seconds, Louisa soon joined him in brushing away the door, and she even turned to smile at him until she apparently found what they were both searching for and stopped.
There was a small circular groove in the door no larger than the size of the tip of a finger and, if they hadn't known what they were looking for, it's likely they would have missed it all together.
Jameson waited for Luke to make sense of it. Finally, he lifted the Rain Stone, the tiny glowing marble, and extended his arm towards the groove in the door, placing where it belonged. Instead of the stone remaining in the door, it shattered upon making contact and turned into dust, sprinkling its remains on the door. As the light from the stone faded, the ground rumbled and Jameson looked back at Cyrus who was still propped against the wall, watching them intently, bracing himself for the chance the Shrine would fall as well.
Instead, a breath of air expelled from the cracks around the door frame as it shook loose from the Shrine itself. Louisa helped steady Luke by taking his other arm as the door rose from its position and into the ceiling, disappearing. It revealed a small room with an enormous ball of light, which more than compensated for the light lost when the stone was destroyed. The light was swirled varying shades of green, spinning and morphing, fully enveloping the entirety of the circular room.
Surprisingly, the one who started walking forward was Luke, forcing Louisa and Jameson to follow. Luke's eyes were fixed on the light, though Louisa and Jameson found it difficult to even keep theirs open as they inched closer to it. Luke began to stand on his own, relieving the weight from the others' shoulders, so they let him go. Jameson shielded his eyes from the light and peered through his fingers, watching as Luke stood up straight and reached his hand towards the pure radiance.
As soon as his fingertips came in contact with it, the light immediately dissipated, disappearing in an instant, accompanied only by a loud crash, which caused another quake in the Shrine. With the light gone, Jameson could fully open his eyes and lowered his hand, keeping focused on Luke's back and waiting for something to happen.
"Luke, your arm," Jameson said finally. He was able to see Luke's arm, which no longer had the deep gash.
"Do you need help?" Louisa questioned.
"I'll tell you all about it when we're safe," Luke said, looking at Jameson and Louisa over his shoulder. "Right now, this Shrine is going to come down."
When he finished saying his prediction, there was a great rumble, followed by crash. Cyrus called from outside the room for them to come out, and when they did, they found a large chunk of the ceiling had fallen and, judging by the now continuous shaking, the rest of the Shrine was going to come along with it.
"Are you all right?" Jameson said to Cyrus as they ran to him.
"I'll be all right," Cyrus said hastily, putting a hand on his head.
The four of them ran across the circular room and into the next with the two illuminated pedestals. As they passed through the doorway, it collapsed and the debris created a dust cloud which propelled stones towards them. It became clear that the chance of being caught in the clouds behind them was dangerous and fatal, so they raised their run to a sprint down the long, narrow hallway.
The plants in the hallway had also disintegrated, so the ash covered at least two inches of the floor, making it more difficult to run. Jameson ran up the stairs at the end of the hallway, skipping over several at a time, diving up out of the secret hallway and into the main room of the Shrine in front of the Ancient Lorne. The others were close behind him, just barely emerging before the dust cloud came up from staircase.
"Keep going!" Louisa shouted at them as the torches around the room fell from their holders and entire blocks descended from the ceiling. It took some care to dodge the falling Shrine collapsing from the inside, but they all managed to get through the main entrance and descend the long staircase to the ground.
Louisa advised them to keep going, so they continued to run until they could no longer feel the shaking of the Shrine. They had to peer carefully through the trees in order to hear any indication that it was still falling over and, finally, things were quiet.
22. It's Just a Theory
Chapter 22
Jameson put his hand in his pocket and felt the five stones; Life, Light, Shadow, Sky and Soul. The Rain Stone was officially gone after it had turned to dust in the Shrine, but Jameson found comfort in the remaining ones.
Louisa didn't know much about tending to injuries, but she offered to clean off the cut on Cyrus's forehead once they returned to Jameson and Luke's home village. The four of them went to the pond where Jameson had chased Luke down, so Louisa could wet some cloth to put on Cyrus's cut.
"What about you?" Jameson said to Luke as he splashed some cold water on his arm to clean off the blood to reveal quite definitively that there was not even a hint of a scar.
"I don't seem to need it," Luke commented with a smile.
"Stay still, Felix," Louisa ordered as Cyrus turned his head to look over at the evidence of such a claim.
"Louisa, you know how I prefer you don't call me that," Cyrus said, facing forward again.
"I don't care," Louisa said.
Cyrus rolled his eyes. "What happened there?" he asked.
"Which part?" Jameson questioned.
"All of it," Cyrus replied. "One moment I'm stabbing that creature, the next the Shrine is falling down on top of us. And I've never seen anyone but Baloric magically heal wounds in a matter of seconds."
Louisa dipped the blood-soaked cloth into the water and looked up at Luke. "I think I know," she said.
"I'm not sure I do," Jameson confessed honestly. "I was just acting on instinct. Something in my head just kept telling me that you needed to hold the stone, Luke. What was that light?"
"This voice just kept echoing…" Luke began and then he stopped, unable to find the right words. "It kept repeating to me: shatter the stone, become the light, the Rain Spirit rises. It was getting so loud that I was pretty sure I was going to grab a rock and start pounding at the stone until it broke. Then, you took me to that door and then it was like the puzzle just fit. When we went into that room and that big ball of light was there, I felt somehow…energized. I wasn't feeling any pain. It was all gone."
"Of course it was," Louisa said. "It healed you."
Luke moved his shirt aside to reveal his side was completely intact. "Somehow," he commented. "I felt compelled to go into it, or like the voice was telling me, to just become it."
"I was acting on instinct too," Louisa said. "Sort of like…I was almost not so sure if I was the one making the decisions. I was just moving automatically until we saw that light."
"I wonder," Cyrus said, taking the cloth from Louisa and holding it against his own forehead. "If that's what went wrong ten years ago."
The other three were silent in response and stared at him, waiting for an explanation. He looked at each of their eyes and then down at the ground.
"I've replayed that day over in my head any time I have a free moment," Cyrus began. "But I could never understand why things ended the way they did. The Prophecy said, The stones will turn to dust
, and the spirits will rise again. But the stones didn't turn to dust, until now. Not until we went into the Shrine and took the Rain Stone to the very heart of where it was created. The stone finally shattered."
"And the Spirit?" Jameson led.
Cyrus paused for a long while and closed his eyes. "I'm grasping at straws," he said very quietly.
"Say it," Luke practically ordered.
"I think the Spirit was reborn or, rather, infused," Cyrus tried, sounding perplexed with his own words. "That it became another person. When the Spirits died, they became those stones and, when the stone shattered, it became the Spirit again. I think…" Cyrus let out a deep breath. "I think Luke is the Rain Spirit."
"Rain Spirit?" Luke repeated.
"Hold on," Louisa said, waving her hand. "No. We're not going to just assume this wild declaration is true."
"It's just a theory—"
Cyrus barely had any words out before Louisa interrupted him with, "I knew the Rain Spirit before any of you were even born, or even thought of, or your parents were thought of, or anyone you've ever known was thought of. And even though you might think that you knew him, or knew what he believed in, or liked to follow him around just to see what he'll do, I'll have you know that no one knew him like me, and no one knew me like he did. Luke, you seem very nice and also like a very nice friend, but you are not him. And you,"—she pointed directly at Cyrus—"are disrespecting his memory by saying otherwise."
"I was just…" Cyrus started. "I mean, I didn't mean to disrespect the Rain Spirit."
"Cyrus," Jameson said passively. "I don't think she's talking about the Rain Spirit anymore."
Cyrus confusedly looked at Jameson for a few moments, and then turned his attention back to Louisa who was covering her face with her hands. He softened to her and looked away, ashamed.
"Walden?" Jameson tried.
Louisa inhaled deeply and whimpered. "If it's true," she cried. "Then it means I messed up bad. I was too stupid to ask questions from the Rain Spirit and wait for him to tell me the full charge of what we were supposed to do. If I had let him tell me, then we would have known to take the stones to the Shrines instead of away from the Shrines. We could have raised the Spirits and we would have had enough power when we went below Market City. And then…Walden wouldn't have died. He wouldn't have been killed!"
Jameson knew it was coming. He knew Walden was dead because he had, after all, seen him die ten years ago, an event which only seemed like a few days to him. Still, although he already knew it was true, Louisa's sob made it real, and no longer an ambiguous event obscured by a missing explanation. He barely suppressed his own urge to cry himself as he lowered his head and Louisa cried openly.
Cyrus stood up and reached out for Louisa, pulling her into a comforting hug. "You took the Fighter!" she shrieked, swinging her arms wildly at him, punching him in the chest several times, but he held onto her and put his hand on her head. Her crying became ungraceful, sobbing and hiccupping loudly as she finally settled and allowed him to embrace her. She kept her arms in front of her and did not return the gesture, but she did not fight him anymore.
Luke watched the entire scene, wide eyed, and then looked briefly to Jameson as an indication that he was going to excuse himself. He ducked out of the area, returning to the village by himself. At first, Jameson felt as though his place was to remain with Cyrus and Louisa, but then he looked over to where Luke had gone, and decided to leave the others alone for now.
He hurried after Luke and caught up with him just as he was reaching the village again. "Hey, if you need to stay with them…" Luke led.
"No, I think they need a minute," Jameson said.
"All right," Luke said with a nod. "Uh—now that the Shrine is gone, the Forces can't come out of it anymore, right?"
"I guess."
"So that means it'll be safe again? You think people will come back?"
"It'll take some convincing and some hard proof, but I think so. I hope so."
They were quiet for a few moments until Luke started walking again, clearing his throat in an attempt to preface the beginning of a new topic. "So that stuff he was saying about the Prophecy and the Spirit…"
"I don't know," Jameson said immediately.
"Right," Luke agreed a little too quickly.
"What I mean is…" Jameson revised himself quickly, sensing Luke's hesitation. "I am not the one to ask. I don't know anything about it. I mean, that's just one theory. It might be valid. But I just…" He trailed off and stopped himself with an awkward laugh. "I'm just repeating myself."
"It's fine," Luke said. "But…if it's true. Then I could have done something to prevent Devin taking over?"
"Don't think about it like that."
"But I have to. Remember that day you left all those years ago? You asked me to come along. And I admit, truly and honestly, I thought I should have."
"But you didn't. You can't change that."
"If I had, though, maybe things would have been different."
"Maybe. That's something we can't know."
Luke ran his fingers through his hair and grabbed the roots, frustrated. "Why is it me?" he asked, bewildered.
Jameson felt somehow relieved with the candidness of Luke's question. "I find myself asking that a lot," he said simply.
"What should I do now?" Luke asked.
Jameson was about to repeat his previous response, but he did know an actual option that may help Luke. "My friend Baloric."
"Baloric?" Luke said, his eyes lighting up. "You know him?"
Jameson was surprised with many things regarding Luke's response. He couldn't believe Luke didn't know he was associated with Baloric to begin with, and then was equally surprised that he had not already mentioned Baloric's name and had this conversation. In the end, he decided to inquire, "How do you know him?"
"I don't know him personally," Luke said. "I know of him. I think I've seen him a few times."
"Remember that adventure I was telling you about?" Jameson started. "Baloric was with me. Louisa, Walden, me and Baloric. He was there when we went underneath Market City and he got one of the Ultimate Powers, the Mystics."
"That makes sense!" Luke said, slapping his forehead. "That's why he can use his magic without absorbing life, right?"
Jameson shrugged helplessly. "I don't know," he said. "But I do know that he's the smartest guy I've met, and he'll definitely have a theory on this whole business with the stones and the Spirits and everything else. He always has a theory."
"So what are we going to do then?"
"You have to come back with us to Miner Town," Jameson said and Luke looked skeptical before Jameson had even finished his sentence. "That's where Baloric is. He'll know what to do."
"Leave the Forest?" Luke clarified. "Now?"
"Well, as soon as Cyrus's ready for travel," Jameson said with a nod.
"The Shrine was just destroyed," Luke reminded him. "This time is crucial. If there's going to be any hope in bringing any balance back to the Forest, then I have to be here. I have to make sure the Forces are really on their way out."
"Luke, what are you going to do?" Jameson pointed out. "You have to come with us. Whether you're some kind of reborn version of the Rain Spirit or not, you're part of this now."
"You know what you're asking me to do, don't you?" Luke said.
"You asked me what you had to do next, and I'm telling you what I think," Jameson explained. "If anyone can tell you about destiny or fate, it's Baloric. He's an expert on the Prophecy so if you really want to know what's in store for you, then he'll have the answer."
"And what if he tells me I'm the Spirit reborn?" Luke questioned, sounding somewhat irritated. "What happens then?"
Jameson stuttered, not sure of the answer. "I don't know," he said finally. "Like I said, Baloric's the one to ask about this stuff."
"Tell me what you think would happen to me."
Luke looked very serious, so Jameson searched for the truth, but a
lso something which perhaps Luke would tolerate. "We will probably have to go to the other five Shrines and do the same thing," he said and Luke did not appear to take kindly to this. "Shatter the other stones. Maybe it would lead us to the way things were supposed to be the first time around."
"I can't do that," he said after a long pause.
"Why not?"
"I can't be anyplace but here in the Forest. I need to be here right now."