*
After a quick nap, the six teenagers decided to take the remaining time of the day by resting in the more comfortable climate for just a little longer.
Timothy hadn’t exaggerated a single word: Ahead of them lied a ravine of at least 10 metres deep and perhaps 50 or 100 metres wide, splitting the two “continents” apart.
Down in the ravine streamed a small stream. A river.
“So... How are we supposed to get past here?” James asked. “I mean – without falling to our death? We can’t just jump in, nor can we climb to the other side. So how are we going to get to the other side?”
Thomas gave him a confused look. “What’s the rush?” he asked. “I’m not exactly feeling that excited to go there.” He gave a small not at the foggy, hidden mystery that laid across the ravine.
“I’m not really in that kind of a rush, don’t get me wrong,” James defended himself. “But I do wish to finally go home.”
The others responded by giving him a small, understanding nod. They got it. They wanted to go home too.
“Well, I wouldn’t advise you to do it the same way as Gabriel did,” Timothy said.
“It appears as if the ravine dividing this land from the Land of Void has grown larger in the past thousand years.”
Samira walked over to the edge of the ravine and looked down.
“Careful, Samira!” James warned her. Samira more or less ignored him.
“That’s quite a deep drop,” she noted as she looked down. “We’ve got to be careful.”
“We sure do,” Antonio said. “it’s easy to lose someone here if we’re not careful.”
He looked around, perhaps looking for any anchor points to tie a rope to.
Unfortunately, as there were no trees, and the tiny rocks scattered around the ravine’s edge were too small to carry one person’s weight, let alone six before it’d slip over the edge, there were none.
“So... Actually, I suppose James is right,” he said. “What exactly are we going to do about the ravine?”
Timothy shook his head. “I have no idea,” he said. “It’s changed a lot around here...”
“Yeah,” Antonio replied, sarcasm hinting through his way of speaking. “You’ve mentioned it a couple times before.”
Suddenly, James gasped. “Samira! I know what to do!” he exclaimed, as he rose a fist in the air.
“What’s it, James?” Samira said. “Have you got an idea?”
“I sure do,” James replied triumphantly, as he walked over toward the ravine’s edge.
“What if I tried to use a little bit of my Magic to build us a fine hanging bridge?”
“James, no-” Samira objected while raising her palms, but James completely ignored his sister’s objections.
“Remember what happened last time, James?” Samira objected.
“So what?” James shrugged. “All I’ll need afterwards is a bit of sleep, and then I’ll be fine, Sam.”
Samira grunted, clearly irritated by her brother’s naivety. “Please, James! It’s the Land of Void! What if something bad happens?”
“Samira!” James moaned, in the same, irritated tone. “I am not ten! I am sixteen years old, and very capable to take care of myself!”
“Well,” Samira replied, more or less angered now, “I’m not sure if you noticed, but whether you’re ten or sixteen, you’re still my little brother, and I feel responsible of taking care of you!”
The two hadn’t realized until now that they’d ended up standing nose-to-nose with each other. The others stood in the background, silently staring at the seemingly escalating argument between brother and sister.
The two teens slowly walked a few steps backward, both showing embarrassed expressions on their faces.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to shout,” Samira mumbled.
“It’s okay,” James assured her. “I started this by bringing up the idea. But I just really want to do this. To test myself just a little more, see?”
Samira smiled and nodded. “Then you should do it.”
“Really?” James asked. “Are you sure?”
Samira responded by a simple nod.
James made a jump in the air, while punching it with a fist. “Wicked! Well, I better get started then!”
Samira slowly walked toward Thomas.
“Are you sure this is a good idea, Samira?” the Brit whispered, while looking at James, who was concentrating on bringing the bridge to life.
Samira shrugged. “We’ve got to trust him,” she said, also with her eyes fixed on James. “He’s right; he’s not ten years old anymore. He should be able to take care of himself and make his own decisions by now.”
Meanwhile, James was busy trying to create that hanging bridge.
This was going to be a lot harder than just “summoning” water from a dried-up well. But if he concentrated hard enough, he could do it.
He visualized the bridge coming to life, hanging by its ropes in the ravine front of him. A bridge steady enough to walk on.
James peeked at whatever waited in front of him through his eyelashes, and he was delighted to see a bridge was forming.
Blue sparkles floated around as they were crating the wood and ropes. His plan was working.
Unfortunately enough for him, he was focusing on the bridge too hard to even notice the disaster going on behind him.
The Dark Magic corrupting the Edge was strong enough to allow four Warlock Spirits to walk during the day, in bright daylight, accompanied by three Shadow Walkers in wolf form.
“Hello, young Guardians,” one of the Spirits growled. They all sounded awkwardly the same.
“At long last, we meet again.”
“Should’ve stayed away,” Thomas grunted, while reaching for his sword. But the Warlock Spirit was faster, flinging the sword out of his hands by the flick of a wrist.
“Hold on a second, young man,” the Evil Spirit hissed dangerously.
“You wouldn’t want to start a fight with Samira’s dear brother’s life at stake, now would you?”
A thousand thoughts shot through Samira’s head at a time.
How did they know? How did they find out? Who told them?
But only one thought made it through. The only thought which truly mattered to her. And that was the thought she yelled out loud as she turned around: “JAMES!”
But it was too late. James, who had just finished the bridge, had turned around to call his friends and move on, only to be lifted a metre off the ground.
Samira jumped at the Spirit keeping her brother captive, but the Spirit swiftly moved away, causing Samira to end up smacking her chin on the ground.
“Careful, my darling,” the Spirit threatened her. “If you cause me to lose my concentration, I might just... drop him.”
And, just to prove he wasn’t bluffing, the Warlock Spirit loosened his grip on the invisible force which held the boy up, letting him fall for a split second before grabbing him again.
“If you hurt one hair on his head, I swear I’ll-!” Samira growled.
“What?” the Spirit asked, slightly tilting its head, clearly unimpressed by Samira’s threats.
“You’ll do what? Attack us, with your tiny little bow and arrow, while your poor brother plummets to his death? Is that what you want, Guardian?”
The look in Samira’s eyes remained filled with anger and hatred for a second, to make place for a different expression, which filled both her eyes and heart. Fear.
It was true. He was powerless against this. If she’d make a single wrong move, the Warlock Spirit would drop James in the ravine without showing any kind of mercy or hesitation.
“Samira,” James shouted. “Just go! I’ll catch up with you guys later! Just cross the bridge and go!”
“Are you out of your mind?” Samira shouted. “We’re not leaving you behind, James!”
“Oh, come on, Samira,” James said, while letting out a sad chuckle. “Look at me, then. I’m hanging just
about a metre above an eleven metre-drop.
I don’t think we’re really in a position to demand anything right now.”
“Don’t worry, James!” Timothy shouted. “We’re called Keepers for a reason, you know!”
All eyes were pointed at Timothy after he’d said that. As if it’d appeared out of thin air (which was most likely what it’d done), he was suddenly wearing a royal purple-coloured cloak, and he held two katana sword. One in each hand.
But these were no ordinary swords; they glowed brightly, as if they were stars in the night.
Even during broad daylight, their bright glow was clearly visible. The blades glowed, just as those of the Bond of Light.
Timothy took advantage of the confusion wisely. Within the blink of an eye, he’d slit two of the four Warlock Spirits in half, causing them to dissolve into black fog.
Unfortunately enough, the Shadow Walkers didn’t like it that their owners were slaughtered. One of them dissolved and shifted its shape from a wolf to a grizzly bear, the other two attacked in their wolf form.
Thomas took the chance to retrieve his sword in the same confusion.
“Thomas, don’t!” James yelled, but Thomas ignored him.
He pointed his sword at the Warlock Spirit.
“Let him go, Spirit,” he said dangerously. “Put. Him. Down.”
The look in the Warlock Spirit’s glowing, blood red eyes changed. They got something of amusement. The dangerous kind.
“Put him down?” he hissed. “If you insist...”
It all happened too fast for anyone to comprehend.
The Warlock Spirit unleashed its grip. James fell down, while Samira leapt forward in an attempt to grab him...
Love and Hatred
Lucy had successfully managed to convince her mother and David to have dinner at Cheyenne’s; but Cheyenne had decided that it would be better if she took the lot out to dinner. They didn’t go to anything too fancy though; after a short discussion, they settled on Macy’s, a family diner not too far from Cheyenne’s house.
It wouldn’t be a good idea to discuss too many private subjects in a public area, but as long as they’d keep it down and not talk about Magic and other worlds too much, they’d be fine. And, of course, there was the “disappeared teenagers”-part that nobody was supposed to hear.
The group of six (David’s wife Camilla had come along too) took a table in the back of the restaurant, as far away from the other dining people as possible.
Not much was discussed that evening, though. They were mostly talking about Camilla and David, who were considering adopting a boy – Camilla had always been infertile, but she truly wanted children.
The boy’s name was Finn, and he was twelve years old and eager to join his new family.
Talking about this young boy getting parents that loved him made Cheyenne feel happy inside; it allowed her mind to drift off from all personal trouble for a bit. But her heart still was with her own children all evening.
The Edge
“JAMES!”
“SAMIRA!”
Two hands, trying desperately to reach each other, to grab each other. One, falling rapidly, gloved by a blue, fingerless glove. The other by a black, with a bronze plate covering the back of the hand wearing it.
The hands reached for each other, but the falling hand fell too fast to grab the reaching hand.
They missed.
James fell.
Samira watched James as he disappeared in the darkness, while hanging over the edge of the ravine, one hand stuck out into the depths. The hand which had attempted to grab James’s.
“James!” Samira shouted. “JAMES!”
She kept shouting her brother’s name, until the shouting faded away in sobs of hopelessness. No.
This hadn’t happened.
The Warlock Spirit and Shadow Walkers seemed to have disappeared. But it didn’t matter to Samira. They had taken the most precious thing in her entire life away from him; her brother.
Her father had been taken from her years ago; now she’d lost her brother too.
Samira felt she was grabbed, forced to stand up. It was as if her ears had gone numb; she heard his friends’ voices shouting her name, but it was as if they were miles away...
“SAMIRA!”
Samira came back to her senses by a hard slap in her face. Thomas had slapped her to bring her back.
“Samira, are you all right?” Thomas asked. He looked worried.
“What?” Samira asked. A creepy smile crept up around her mouth. A laugh followed. “Yes, Thomas!” she laughed, sounding almost maniacal.
“YES! I am perfectly fine! WHAT DO YOU THINK?” she roared.
“We’re going down into that ravine right now, and find James! I don’t care how deep it is down there or whatever awaits at the bottom-”
“Samira, that’s not a good idea-” Thomas said, but Samira ignored both his and Bella’s objections. She proceeded to walk toward the ravine’s edge where she had been dragged away from, but Antonio stopped her in her tracks.
“Calm down, Samira,” he said. “Your anger has raised to your head.”
“Antonio,” Samira said, “please let me pass. I have to save James-”
“James is gone, Samira,” Thomas said. “There’s no way he could’ve survived a fall like that.”
Samira closed her eyes. “He’s not,” she hissed. “And I am going to find him.”
She wanted to walk past Antonio, who prevented her from doing so by grabbing her shoulder.
“James is GONE, Samira! Thomas’s right!” he shouted. “There’s nothing you can do!”
“He’s NOT! HE IS NOT!” Samira shouted, jerking away from Antonio’s grip with all her might.
“Listen,” she breathed, slightly calmed down. “Here’s the deal. I don’t care whether you’re coming with me or not, but I am going down there. I refuse to believe he’s gone until I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I am not leaving him behind.”
“I’m with you, Samira,” Timothy said, still wearing his purple cloak and carrying his glowing katanas.
“Good,” Samira replied. “Anyone else is welcome to follow. If not, wait for us here. Or leave. Whatever.”
Without saying anything more, Samira walked toward the ravine’s edge and started the climb down.
Timothy followed her closely.
Thomas, Antonio and Bella looked at each other. “Shouldn’t we be following them?” Bella asked.
Thomas nodded. “Bella’s right, Antonio. We should go after them.”
But Antonio shook his head. “No way,” he said. “We’re staying here. We’ll wait for them to come back; we’re with too many not to be seen down there.”
Thomas stared at the ravine. “I hope Samira’s right...” he sighed.
Meanwhile, a couple metres further down in the ravine, a sixteen-year-old boy had managed to save his own life by clinging on to a ledge and creating one to stand on underneath his feet shortly after. Magic.
James was surprised to hear someone calling his name in the distance. A familiar voice. It was Samira!
“Samira?” James replied. “I’m okay!”
“James?” Samira’s voice came from the darkness above him. He could see the light of Timothy’s katana swords move around with them. “I’m glad to hear you’re okay! Stay there; we’re coming to get you!”
James did as he was told, and waited for Samira and Timothy to come and get him. He stood still as he waited and watched the glowing katanas come closer, until something else caught his attention.
A tiny, green light, floating not too far away from him.
He tried not to look at it at first, but his gaze was drawn to it, as if it was hypnotizing him to look at it...
The longer James looked at it, the calmer he became. It was as if the light radiated a sense of serenity, bringing that feeling of calmness over James.
It almost felt like the light was calling out to him. Wanting him to come nearer.
What he didn’t know, was that Samira was now nearby enough to be able to see the little floating light as well. Apart from this, the feeling it gave Samira was exactly opposite to the feeling it gave to James.
Samira knew this “light in the darkness” could never mean anything good; he could feel it.
In the glowing light of both the katanas and the green light, Samira could finally see him. “James,” she breathed.
She got in such a sudden hurry to reach her brother, that she misplaced one of her feet in the dark and nearly fell down.
“Careful,” Timothy said to her. “Falling down here is the last thing you might want to do.”
“Tell me about it,” Samira grunted.
She wanted to keep her eyes fixed on James, but she had to keep an eye on where to put her hands and feet instead, to prevent similar repetitive actions from occurring.
So it happened that she didn’t notice what was going on down there where James was.
Driven by curiosity, James decided to go check out whatever the green light was supposed to be. He knew it was a bad idea, yet he still wanted to know.
But every time he got close enough to reach out for the light, it’d float away from him, just out of his reach.
As if he was hypnotized, James scaled the wall, following the light all the way across it. He made sure he never let the light out of his sight.
“I’ll get you,” he whispered. “You’ll see.”
What kinds of danger could there possibly be behind this small, innocent light, after all? It seemed like nothing to worry about.
Samira probably wouldn’t mind if he just went to check it out for a short moment. Right?
Meanwhile, Timothy and Samira had arrived at the ledge James had created to prevent himself from plummeting to a painful death. But he wasn’t there...
“Where is he?” Samira said, while looking around. “Where’s James?”
Fortunately, Timothy knew the answer. He pointed one of his glowing katanas into the dark distance, saying, “There he goes! He’s following that green light!”
“Oh, give me a break!” Samira grunted. “We must catch up with him, before he winds up into trouble - again!”
But they’d barely begun to scale the wall, or both James and the light seemed to have disappeared into the dark.
“What!?” Samira exclaimed in frustration. “Where did he go? He can’t just have - disappeared - right?
Timothy looked at him. His golden locks seemed to glow in the light of the katanas. “Perhaps the ravine takes a turn over there?” he suggested. “We just have to follow him and we’ll find out.”
And so they did. They kept climbing, careful not to misplace their hands or feet.
It was obvious that Samira was in a hurry, but despite of that, he knew this wasn’t the right time or place to be in a hurry.
One wrong move could cost them their lives.
James, who was still following the mysterious floating light, had ended up in a secret cave, hidden in the walls of the ravine.
The light had stopped moving, and was now floating still in the middle of the cave. Nothing – or nobody, for that matter - else seemed to be present here.
“Hello?” James asked. “Is anybody there?”
Nothing happened. Until, a few seconds later, a familiar voice spoke to him from the dark.
“At last, James,” the voice said, still hidden in the shadows. “We meet again.”
She then stepped into the light, showing her face. It was Sabrina.
“Sabrina?” James asked, instinctively starting to move backwards. “What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same,” Sabrina said. Her voice sounded cold and almost threatening, and her face looked unnaturally pale in the green light.
“I – uh – fell,” James shrugged. Sabrina still didn’t smile.
“You used Magic,” she said, still on a chillingly cold tone, which sent chills down James’s spine. “Something I thought I’d restricted you to do.”
She looked a lot different than the last time they’d met.
There were deep, purple circles underneath her eyes, indicating sleep deprivation, and her blonde hair was tangly and untidy.
“I have no choice, Sabrina,” James said. “It’s the only way to get past this ravine.”
“Exactly,” Sabrina said, still, on that same, cold tone. “You’re not supposed to cross the ravine, James. You never were... And now I’ve found you, you shall never do so, either, I’m afraid.”
James knew something fishy was going on, even though he didn’t know what exactly. “Sabrina?” he said, sounding slightly suspecting, “what’s going on?”
The next moment, he let out a yell in horror.
Black veins had started to appear from the skin on Sabrina’s neck, spreading all over her face. Her eyes changed their colour to blood red.
“You should’ve run when you had the chance, boy,” she hissed. “Because there’s no chance for you to get away now. There’s no way to run...”
James did want to run. And grab his sword. But when he tried to do so, he found out that all four his limbs were completely frozen. He was paralyzed, unable to move.
“Your powers belong to the Master,” Sabrina hissed. “And he has sent me personally to collect them.”
“Sabrina, NO!”
Sabrina started as two figures entered the cave. She wasn’t pleased to see either of them, but the blond-haired one appeared to irritate her the most.
“Ah, Timothy.” She spat the name out. “By your outfit, I’d assume you and your little friends are on your final quest.”
Timothy snorted in disdain. “I didn’t want to believe it at first, though. Just for the sake of you being you... I think you understand how disappointed I am to find out it was true. Especially after all we’ve been through, Sabrina.”
“You should be disappointed in yourself, Timmy,” Sabrina said. Her eyes shortly flashed toward James, then to Samira. She realised she was cornered and her chances of seizing James gone, because she threw Timothy a withering look.
James didn’t think he’d ever seen such hatred in a pair of eyes.
“I warned your little friend-keepers to leave it be, to stay away...” Sabrina hissed. “But they wouldn’t listen. And now...”
A malicious grin crept up around her mouth, showing a set of vampire-like teeth behind her thin female lips. “And now you’ve got a storm coming.”
“What do you mean?” Timothy said. “Speak up.”
“You better watch over those teenagers, Timothy,” Sabrina threatened him. “Or else you won’t have anything to look after at all pretty soon...”
Both Samira and James, who’d been freed from his paralyzed state due to Sabrina’s lack of interest in keeping him captive, instinctively reached for their swords after Sabrina had made this particular threat. This was bad.
Timothy’s eyes darkened. He didn’t like to be threatened, that was obvious.
He looked very confident, and that same confidence also returned in the way he spoke to Sabrina.
“I’m not afraid of you, Sabrina,” he said. “I’m not afraid of anything. This world’s taken the meaning of fear away from me. I shall defend the Last Generation of Hope, and I know my fellow Keepers will do the same.
We will hunt you down, Sabrina. You’re going to lose.”
His confident face made way for an amused, arrogant smile. While slightly shaking his head, he said, “We’re already dead, anyway. We’ve got nothing to lose.”
Thomas became even angrier than she already was. “Just wait and see how much you’ve got to lose, Keeper,” she hissed. “Because I’ll take it from you.”
And with those final last words, she was gone. In a flash, like the darkness had swallowed her.
All what was left of her was the glowing green light.
“She’s going after them,” Timothy said. “She’s going after my friends.”
He looked at Jam
es and Samira. The look in his eyes was serious. “It won’t take long until she’s alarmed the Master that things are getting out of her control. And when that happens... The man himself shall take care of the situation.”
He shivered shortly. Perhaps he was afraid of something after all.
“We must hurry. Come on, the rest of the team is waiting for us to return.”
Guardian: Protectors of Light Page 44