The Return To Erda Box Set

by Beca Lewis

  What if Abbadon knew that Niko was going to join the Raiders so that he could get into the Castle? What if he knew that Zeid would then join him?

  For Niko to hide among the Raiders wasn’t going to be hard. He could easily change himself to look like one of the men working for Abbadon. All he had to do was tell a good story, something I was sure he knew how to do. After all, he and Aki had fooled us all for a long time, why not Abbadon?

  Getting Zeid into the Castle was another story. He couldn’t change into someone or something else. Besides, he looked like a future King.

  But Zeid could transport himself wherever he wanted to go. All he needed to know was where he was heading, and then a few minutes to reorient himself after he materialized again. It wasn’t his favorite magical trick, but he could do it.

  Niko would let Zeid know where he was. Zeid would transport there. They would liberate some Raider clothing, and then they would both be spies in Abbadon’s Castle the same way that Abbadon had been a spy in ours. What could go wrong?

  Every single detail of that plan could go wrong. But I couldn’t let myself think that way. Zeid and I needed to finish this, go back to our timeline, and live our lives together.

  We all had our roles to play in this plan, and we had spent some time deciding who was the right person for each job.

  However, before we could even begin, we needed someone to monitor what everyone was doing, the same way that Professor Link did back in our time.

  Teddy was the unanimous choice. When we all raised our hands for him, Teddy blushed so bright red that it was visible through all that fur. So now we had a Teddy channel open in our heads instead of a Link channel.

  It wouldn’t be quite the same. Teddy likes to keep things light even when everything is going crazy, while Professor Link is more serious. But hearing each other all the time was a vital part of every plan, and was always our safety net.

  Garth, Anne, and I lay on the ground hidden by branches of the nearest trees. We didn’t put them there. The trees had bent over and moved to protect us. I could feel them tremble in anticipation of what was to come. Or perhaps it was me.

  Niko was already on his way to join the Raiders. Ruta and his trees had found the invaders about a mile from the cave, so it was a short walk. He planned to stumble into their camp claiming a drunken stupor had made him miss their leaving. He would beg them to let him come along and not tell, because otherwise, Abbadon would kill him for missing their departure. We were all counting on Niko to pull that act off because without his being part of the raid in the morning, things could go very badly.

  Aki would be walking into her village, but not looking like the Aki we know. She would look like her people. Her job was to get her mother to follow her into the woods where we would be waiting before the Raiders arrived.

  Pita was going to be our guide to the entrance to the tunnels after Aki returned with her mother. For now, he was back with Teddy fiddling around with some ideas they said they had. Those two were always coming up with something new, and it was always something we needed. I said a prayer of gratitude for the two of them.

  Before we left, I clung to Zeid. Very uncharacteristic of me, but this whole travel to another time thing had me feeling as if parts of me were missing. And now the most important person in my life was off to do something so dangerous I couldn’t stop thinking of all the things that could go wrong.

  Zeid kept assuring me that all would be well, but I was terrified anyway. There were so many moving parts, and I couldn’t stop thinking about what Niko and Aki had told us Abbadon was doing.

  The raid that was happening in the morning was something Abbadon had been doing in villages all across his Kingdom for years. He had left the village near his Castle alone, at least for now, but Niko said that other communities across the Kingdom had been decimated.

  Whoever his Raiders didn’t kill were taken to his Castle and either put to work or used for experimentation. Niko and Aki hadn’t said what kind and I didn’t want to know. I just wanted to stop it from happening.

  When the prisoners died, which they often did, their bodies were used for fuel to heat the Castle and the other buildings within Abbadon’s Keep. Some of the buildings were like the one that we destroyed after killing Shatterskin. Manufacturing plants where people were hooked up to machines and had their essence drained out of their bodies.

  I knew that hearing these horrible things that Abbadon was doing when she knew him, made Anne sick. As we lay there waiting for the morning, she told me that she kept asking herself how she didn’t realize what Abbadon was. How could she have missed it? How could he have been using people and other beings as an energy supply for the machines he would use to destroy every living thing and still be that man with the sad eyes?

  It was a question none of us could answer.

  Abbadon Thirty-One

  “I’m here.”

  The three of us turned our heads towards the voice, but we couldn’t see anything. I recognized the voice. It was Aki. But although we had our glasses on that allowed us to see into the night, I couldn’t see anyone other than Anne and Garth.

  And then I felt a hand on my back and another covering my mouth, which was a good thing, because I screamed.

  “Shh, it’s me.”

  I turned my head towards the voice, trying not to throw up from fear, and this time I could see Aki lying right beside me as if she had been there all along. She didn’t look like herself. Or she did. Because she was no longer the Aki she made herself look like to fit in our world, but the Aki that would fit into her village. She looked like her true self.

  “How did you get beside me without any of us knowing it?” I practically hissed at her. She had scared the ziffer out of me, and when I get scared, I get angry. Niko had told me that it was good that I got angry. He’d rather see anger then cowering and being a victim. He just wanted me to control that anger so that fireballs didn’t erupt from my hands by mistake. I could feel the heat in my palms and willed it to disappear.

  “I was making a point,” Aki said. “You’ve seen me do that many times. Disappear and reappear. Have you taken that into account as you lie here? Or are you only using your five senses? Kara Beth, you’ve been practicing seeing 4D without the star. Keep doing it tonight. If you need to, you can use your star. But for zut’s sake, don’t think that you will hear Abbadon’s minions coming the same way that you could hear the Shrieks or Shatterskin.”

  In all my worrying, I had never thought of that. I thought of Aki and her ability as unique and something only she could do. I had never asked if others could do the same. Aki must have felt the combination of terror and shame that I felt because she reached over and grabbed my hand and smiled.

  “It’s a lot to take in, Princess. But I know you are capable. The three of you will be fine. I will be back before dawn, with my mother. Stay safe.”

  Aki had never called me Princess before. She paused a moment before vanishing, and repeated it, “Princess.”

  What was she telling me? Aki never wasted words. In my mind’s eye, I could still see her, staring at me as if she was pushing an idea into my head. I realized that none of us had asked her what her mother looked like. In my head I heard, “Like me, silly.”

  Silly Princess is more like it, I thought. Of course, they would look alike. Beautiful. Not the same beautiful that Aki had taken on to fit in at the Castle, but still beautiful.

  Aki and her brother were both still tall. Aki was still thin, and Niko still built like a statue, but they were both a pale blue color that shimmered in the sun and faded into translucency in the night.

  Both had white hair. Niko kept his short and Aki kept hers long, just as it was in her chameleon look. Both had hooded pale blue eyes, eyes that I had sometimes seen on Aki. Perhaps when she wasn’t bothering to hide herself as much.<
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  They were both much longer limbed then their chameleon shapes which made them both look even more like gazelles. Niko had reminded me of a gazelle when I first saw him, so that quality had also shown through their disguise. Their hands were the same as ours, except they had six fingers on each hand. I assumed they had six toes too.

  I heard Teddy laugh. “Oh, the things you think about, Silly Princess.”

  I dropped my face into the ground. Zounds, I always forget to not think on the open channel. “And to answer your question,” I heard Aki say, “No, we have seven toes, the better for running.”

  Still wanting to disappear, I kept silent for fear of saying something even more idiotic. A few moments passed in silence and then we heard Niko say, “I’m here.”

  For a moment I thought he meant right beside me the same way that Aki had been, but he added. “They bought the story. But something is off with these people. I’ll be back with more information in a few minutes. Have to go meet the head Raider. Since I was late, they have to punish me somehow.”

  We all heard the intake of Aki’s breath and Niko’s assurance that it was worth it whatever it was. While we waited, Ruta hooted from the tree even though he could have just as easily talked to us in our heads, but I knew that being at the top of a tree pretending to be a bird was like being in seventh heaven to Ruta.

  Since I hadn’t heard Zeid respond, I started worrying again. I tried to restrain myself, but worry won out, and I said, “Zeid, are you okay?”

  “Silly Princess,” was his response.

  I was beginning to worry that I had given myself a name I would never live down when we heard Niko whisper, “I’m back.”

  He didn’t say anything else. He was letting us listen in to what was going on inside of the Raider’s camp. Many people were talking, or it sounded more like arguing.

  And then one voice said, “Stop,” and everyone stopped talking.

  Anne froze beside me. “I recognize that voice,” she whispered. She looked at her brother, her eyes wide with fear.

  “Who is it?” Teddy asked.

  Garth answered, “It’s Abbadon. He’s with the Raiders.”

  Abbadon Thirty-Two

  Fear took over. So many questions and no answers.

  Niko was in the Raider’s camp with Abbadon. Why was Abbadon there? Did he know Niko? Did he know where we were?

  I knew that I was not the only one having those questions fly around in their head. I wanted to stand up and run to the camp and kill Abbadon right then before he knew we were coming.

  I could feel Anne shaking so hard I was worried she was having a seizure. Garth had his arm around her, but he too was afraid, his eyes wide as we looked at each other in panic.

  “Silly Princess,” Teddy said, calming us all down for the moment with humor. When no one answered him, he tried again, using Link’s style of communication. “Stop it.”

  It was an unfortunate choice of words since it was the phrase that we had all just heard Abbadon utter, but at least it jolted us all momentarily out of our personal panic.

  “What do we do?” I asked.

  “We wait.”

  “But…,” I started to say, but Teddy cut in again with “We wait. Listen. We can’t move against Abbadon until we know more. We don’t know if Niko is in trouble, yet.”

  “But…,” I began again, but this time was cut off by Niko himself who whispered, “He’s gone. He stopped the punishment from going too far and gave out orders for moving out.

  “He didn’t show a flicker of recognition. He looked just like his picture.” As if talking to himself he added, “How can he look like a kind man and be such an evil monster?”

  I thought back to the many times Sarah and Leif had talked to me about how the true monsters in the world hid behind the facade of goodness.

  I missed Sarah and Leif and their wisdom. I knew they were back at the Castle making sure that whatever we did here didn’t impact Zerenity negatively. So far we hadn’t done much, but I knew that was coming to an end.

  The next few hours were torture. My jaw ached from clenching my teeth together. I knew that Niko and Aki would not be happy with me if I didn’t practice relaxing while we waited, so I would relax and then get tense all over again.

  I wanted to be up and doing. I wanted to throw fire bolts, or fly through the trees striking down the raiders, or—well almost anything but lie there.

  Aki, Niko, and Zeid would check in if something were wrong. Otherwise, they were to remain silent. Ruta hooted from the trees. Sometimes Teddy would say something silly, and we could hear Pita snort in response. But mostly we were quiet.

  After what felt like five thousand years, but was just a bit shorter than that, Aki told us that she and her mother were on the way.

  At the same time, Niko said the Raiders were within a hundred feet of the village. Too close. Much too close. If the Raiders saw Aki and her mother, they were lost.

  Niko opened his channel for us to hear what was happening. I knew it was what we had agreed for him to do. But the screaming was terrible, and we were not able to do a thing to stop it.

  The Raiders were yelling at the top of their voices, and the villagers were begging for mercy. Mercy that would never come. And we had agreed to let it happen. We could only guess what Niko was doing. We knew it would be the worst day of his life. He would be part of the Raiders that destroyed his village. He would be watching as the Raiders captured everyone including him and his sister.

  What if this was a mistake? What if we should have stopped this before it started? I knew everyone was thinking the same thing, but it was too late. We had decided, and that decision meant we were all part of a tragedy that could never be undone. We would never forget it. It would haunt us for the rest of our lives. We all paid a price that day, but it was the people of Willowdale that paid the worst one.

  Listening to the battle, praying that Aki and her mother were safe, knowing that we could have stopped the death and destruction going on, I promised myself, that we would end this or never go home again.

  “Amen,” Teddy whispered. Once again I had left my channel open to my private thoughts, but this time I was glad. I wanted to be held accountable. I was a Princess. I had power. I would use it.

  “We’re on our way,” we heard Aki whisper, and the three of us breathed a sigh of relief as we stood, stretched our frozen muscles, and then moved silently in their direction.

  The Raiders were busy with the village. Abbadon was heading back to his Keep where he would wait for his new prisoners.

  We should be safe, but there was always the chance that he had spies in the woods that we didn’t know about. After all, we were there, hopefully without his knowledge. So in a way, we were the spies in the woods.

  Abbadon has his Raiders, but we had more help on our side then Abbadon could ever imagine. The trees, the rocks, the earth, all of nature was on our side.

  The trees had spread the word that we were there to stop Abbadon’s reign of destruction, and we could feel their support and encouragement.

  As we started to move, I was so stiff I tripped over my feet. This time it was Garth who kept me from falling.

  “Still clumsy, I see,” I heard Ruta whisper, and the trees laughed.

  Once again they had taken pleasure in raising a root for me to trip over. It worked. I stopped clenching my jaw and smiled instead. I had friends. Abbadon had hate.

  From my time with the people in Doveland back in the Earth Realm I had learned that Love was the only power. We had that a hundred times over.

  Abbadon Thirty-Three

  For the next few hours, there was no time to ask any more questions. Everything moved so fast it was a blur. After I tripped over the tree root, we ran towards Aki and her mother, Tarla.

 
Aki had told us that her mother had trouble walking and she could use some help. She assured us that no one had followed her from the village, but still, we were on the lookout for anyone that Abbadon might have sent into the woods as scouts.

  That’s what we would have done, but there was no one there. The fact that there wasn’t, was almost more frightening. Why wasn’t there anyone? Abbadon was smarter than that. It felt more like a tease. Perhaps he was making it easy for us so that he could be in control of us later. That’s what it felt like to me, and I knew I wasn’t alone in that feeling.

  I had heard Ruta whisper, “This is too easy,” and no one disagreed.

  Still, we did our job. We found Aki stumbling towards the cave, holding a woman who, if she had been healthy, would have looked exactly like Aki.

  Instead, she had scars running down the right side of her face, and her right leg dragged on the ground. I hissed at the sight. There was no question in my mind but that she had run across one of Abbadon’s minions at some point. Garth hurried to Tarla’s other side to support her weight, and Anne and I watched the woods for signs of trouble. There was nothing. Again, the lack of trouble worried me.

  We made it back to the Cave without incident. Tarla was crying. “Are you in pain,” I asked, as I helped her get comfortable. When I couldn’t understand what she said I realized that Aki and Niko not only transformed themselves to look like us, but had also learned a new language. “She says she is happy to have escaped the Raiders. And she is worried. Her children are in danger,” Aki translated.

  “She doesn’t know that you are her daughter? How did you get her to come with you?”

  “I tried to explain, but it didn’t make any sense to her,” Aki said. “All she could see was Niko and Aki as tiny children getting carried away by the Raiders. She screamed. I screamed too. Both of me screamed. It was horrible.” Aki stopped to catch her breath and look away from her mother for a moment.