The Return To Erda Box Set

by Beca Lewis

  None of us resisted the Raiders. Without speaking, we knew that we would be safer with the Raiders than with the man we knew as Abbadon. Besides, we had to find Anne before we began to fight. As they dragged us down the hall, we could hear laughter. It was coming from the walls.

  I thought back to how the roots of trees lit walls and provided energy in Zerenity. Perhaps Abbadon used the tree roots to spy on everyone all the time. Aki turned her head and winked at me, a small smile on her face, which she quickly turned into a mask of fear and terror.

  We knew something that Abbadon didn’t know. At least we hoped he didn’t know. Ruta was with the trees. If Abbadon was using the roots to spy on us, Ruta was doing the same thing. Besides, Pita and Teddy would be working with the Circles, and the Priscillas were out there somewhere. I knew them. They were always coming up with something unusual that would be just what we needed.

  All those thoughts sustained me as we were dragged out into the gardens of the Keep and into one of the buildings. In spite of my hope that we were not alone, the screams coming from behind the closed doors as the Raiders pulled us through the hallways of the building ate into my brain.

  What was he doing to them? Where were we going? Did Zeid and Niko know where they were taking us and would they get us out? All my hopes were pinned on them until the Raiders opened a door and threw us into a room. After my eyes adjusted to the dark, I saw them. Zeid and Niko huddled in the corner looking terrified.

  And lying in Niko’s lap were three fairies. Not moving. I screamed and ran towards them, tripping over legs and bodies to get there.

  As I gathered them in my arms that laughter sounded again, along with the slamming of doors and locks clicking in place. I had a feeling that these were locks I couldn’t undo, and why would I want to? The Priscillas were dead.

  Abbadon Forty-Nine

  I was vaguely aware of Zeid saying, “Shh, it will be all right,” but I didn’t believe him. In fact, the more that everyone tried to calm me, the madder I got. “How can you be so insensitive? What is the matter with all of you? We are locked in a room because Abbadon knows who we are, and the Priscillas are dead. It’s over. We might as well be dead too.”

  “Stop it,” Aki hissed. “Get a grip. You are not helping anything or anyone by acting crazy.”

  But I couldn’t stop. I felt as if I had fallen down a well and was drowning. I was only vaguely aware of my surroundings. “Put her out for now,” I heard Niko say. I had the briefest moment of terror and then nothing.

  When I woke up, I was propped up against the wall. I couldn’t see anything at all it was so dark. It hadn’t been this dark before. The darkness added another layer to my anger and terror.

  “She’s awake,” I heard someone say. It sounded like Pita, but that was impossible. The last thing I remembered was seeing the Priscillas lying dead in Niko’s lap.

  “Where am I? What’s going on?”

  This time it was Aki who answered me. “Are you calm, Kara? We could actually use some of your clear questions right now.”

  A cold surrender came over me. Zut, why not. I’d ask questions. Maybe we would get out of here, maybe not. But at least I could do it for the Priscillas. Beru had taught me to use my anger. Now was the time to find it and destroy the monster that killed my friends.

  “No. I’m not calm, I’m furious,” was my answer. “And I’m ready to do what needs to be done.”

  “Don’t scream, Kara. Actually, don’t say anything,” Aki said.

  It was only when I felt Aki’s hands on my eyes that I realized that I was blindfolded, and my hands were tied together. I wanted to scream then. Why blindfold me? Why tie my hands together. But I nodded my agreement.

  Aki lifted the blindfold and untied my hands. I couldn’t believe what I was looking at, and if Aki hadn’t put her hand over my mouth, I might have screamed.

  We were still in the room that we had been thrown into, but instead of being bound in the corner, Zeid and Niko were huddled with Pita and talking about something. That was surprising enough. How did Pita get here?

  But that wasn’t why Aki had her hand on my mouth. The Priscillas were sitting on Zeid’s shoulder looking a little ragged, but perfectly okay.

  I crawled over to the little group, and Pris came over and pulled my hair. “You should know better, Kara Beth.”

  I nodded numbly. How could I be so stupid?

  I guess Pris took pity on me because she whispered in my ear, “We didn’t have time to tell you, Kara. We had to get into the room so we let the Raiders think they captured us along with Niko and Zeid.”

  “But why did you look like you were dead?”

  “They would have never let us live. Abbadon is afraid of fairies, so Niko pretended to kill us because we betrayed him.”

  I was so embarrassed. “How did everyone else know and not me?”

  “You didn’t stop to think. Everyone else did.”

  There was really nothing else to say. It was true. I reacted.

  Zeid looked over at me and smiled. That helped.

  “Are you ready to get this done now, Kara?” Niko asked.

  “I’m ready. But get what done?”

  “It’s time. We are going after Abbadon. We have a plan. And you are the key. Are you sure you are ready?”

  I was never going to be sure, but I was ready, so I gave him the only answer I could, “Yes. I am.”

  ******

  It was Zeid who told me what happened. We were sitting against the wall holding hands, and I was finally calm enough to pay attention to the room. It was a horrible room to be in. Bodies were everywhere. Some of them were lying across each other. Most of them looked dead, and in various stages of decay. That wasn’t the worst part though. It was the people that were alive, moaning and crying.

  When I had asked how we were going to get out of the room, Niko told me we weren’t. We were staying. It was part of the plan. Pita had left right after I woke up from the “sleep” that Aki had put me in.

  He had barely looked at me. I know he was disappointed in my reaction, and I didn’t blame him. I was too. However, even after I knew the Priscillas were okay, I still felt the wrench of pain that I had felt when I thought they had died. Just the memory made me feel like crying again.

  It wasn’t just the memory of what I thought had happened to the Priscillas. It was what I had to do next. I had no idea how I was going to pull off the grand plan to destroy Abbadon, the real Abbadon, free the people he had captured, and then return home.

  Actually, that last part I was pretty sure wasn’t going to happen. Not for me. And I had to let it be okay. I had agreed to the plan, and I knew the risks.

  “Tell me again what happened,” I asked Zeid. I was sure I had missed details, and I needed them all if I was going to be successful.

  Abbadon Fifty

  Zeid told me that he and Niko had done what Pita asked. Zeid had captured one of the mechanical waiters, and Niko had captured a Raider. Pita and Teddy had been waiting, and they took the two captives down into the tunnels with them.

  But someone had seen what Zeid and Niko had done, and when they tried to return to the Raiders, they were captured and beaten as they tried to get them to tell what had happened to the other two men. Zeid and Niko kept shrugging as if they didn’t know what they were talking about.

  When one of the Raiders showed them a box with the three Priscillas in it, they both almost broke. But they caught a break. The Raiders told them that if they killed the fairies, they would believe them.

  So Niko did. He did what Aki had done to me. But in the Priscillas’ case, he made them look dead. After that, the Raiders were confused. Maybe these two weren’t the men that Abbadon had told them to capture.

  But just in case, they dragged them to the room we were in, an
d threw them in with the dead and dying.

  “Well, they must have figured it out. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be here,” I said.

  “They must have reported to Abbadon, and he told them who you were, and then sent them to get us.”

  “Not the same Raiders,” Niko said, tilting his head towards a pile of what looked like dead Raiders.

  “Those are the ones. He punished them for what we had done, and sent new ones to get you.”

  “If he knows who we are, then he must know who Anne is too. Why isn’t she here?”

  When Garth looked over at me with a look of terror, I knew that he was also asking that question. Where was his sister? Did Abbadon already kill her? If Niko and Zeid were correct about what was happening, then he wouldn’t have, just as he hadn’t killed any of us yet either.

  It was perfectly obvious that he could have, at any time. We had been in his sights from the moment we arrived. Well, not every moment. We had evaded his Raiders more than once, but we had made it easy for him as we marched straight into his Castle thinking that was a wise thing to do.

  Abbadon must have thought we were complete idiots, because he probably knew why we had come, risking our lives to do so, and he was toying with us as a cat plays with a mouse.

  On the other hand, perhaps he didn’t know that we weren’t mice.

  No, he wouldn’t have killed Anne yet because he was using her as bait. The real Abbadon, not the one Anne thought she had fallen in love with and who had proposed to her.

  Whoever that man was he wasn’t Abbadon, because now we knew where the real Abbadon lived. We didn’t know what he looked like, but we would know him when we saw him.

  Pita had brought the news that gave us an advantage. He and Teddy had done a quick survey of the two men Zeid and Niko had captured. As we had guessed, the waiter was a very sophisticated version of the metal toadstools. They operated independently of a network, which was a disappointment because Pita and Teddy were hoping to trace the signal back to Abbadon but hadn’t been able to do it with the waiter-robots.

  The Raider was a different story. He was put into a room that blocked all signals from anywhere. He had food, water, and clean clothing. The room wasn’t empty. It was beautiful. It had flowers, artificial light that felt like the sun, and a bathroom with a shower. And Teddy.

  At first, the Raider had been angry, but he was no match for Teddy, who kept speaking to him as if he was a confused child while holding off his attempts at violence. The short version of the story was the Raider had collapsed, and when he woke, he was confused. The last thing he remembered was being captured.

  So that had proved one of our theories. Abbadon was controlling the Raiders using a signal, which caused a form of hypnosis. And with that knowledge, we knew that once we stopped Abbadon, it might be possible to liberate the people, too.

  Our other theory was that there was more than one man who looked like what we had thought was Abbadon. Whether they were real men changed to look the same, and controlled like the Raiders, or mechanical men, or clones, was something we didn’t know yet.

  What we did know was where the real Abbadon was, and that was our secret weapon. Pita and Teddy had traced the signal to the Raider and found the building where Abbadon lived.

  At the moment it felt as if we had the upper hand. But, we didn’t have long to act. Abbadon would have figured out where the two men had gone, and why.

  Teddy and Pita had moved Tarla into a tunnel far away, and they were the only ones left in the tunnels below us. It was dangerous for them to be there, but we needed them, and they knew it, so they stayed.

  Before we stopped talking, I had asked the question again that we all had been asking all along. Why? Why was Abbadon doing this? What did he get out of killing everyone? What made him begin? What was the trigger?

  One question we thought we knew the answer to and it was the one we were going to use against him. He wanted me. No, we didn’t know why. Yes, I was the daughter of his brother, but so what? I wasn’t even a powerful mage. My magic skills were middle of the road. I didn’t feel as if I was that pretty. I wasn’t that talented. Why me?

  Perhaps we would find out soon. There was nothing to do but wait. Abbadon would send his Raiders to get us, and the games would really begin. It wouldn’t be long before they came, and it wouldn’t be long before this was over.

  I hoped I would be strong enough to carry out the plan. No one had to remind me what was at stake. Nothing much. Just all life in Erda.

  Abbadon Fifty-One

  We were all huddled together when they came for us. Niko had his arm around Aki. Zeid and I were still holding hands, the Priscillas were in my tunic pocket, and Garth sat on my other side. I was grateful for his presence and had my head on his shoulder. Not for me. For him. I couldn’t imagine the anxiety he was going through wondering if his sister was okay.

  When the door flew open, the Priscillas scrambled out of my pocket, and as we agreed, hid behind one of the bodies dumped in the corner. We figured that no one would look for them thinking that they were already dead.

  The Raiders came straight towards us, kicking other bodies out of the way, keeping their vacant eyes on us at all times. They made that same noise we had heard before, grunting, mumbling, groaning. There were three for each one of us. They weren’t taking any chances. I kicked and screamed as they dragged me out of the room. It wasn’t all the act that we had agreed to. I was unbelievably terrified. But I was also prepared, and so was everyone else.

  None of us used any of our skills to get away. If we used them, it was possible that we could escape, but for what? We could run back to the portal, and return home. But then, once again we would have failed, as we had learned that we had done in the past. None of us wanted ever to do this again. When, and if, we returned home, it would not be to a wasteland.

  Besides, I knew there was a choice for me to make. But so far I hadn’t been given one. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. I was constantly given choices, but they were the same choices as everyone else.

  This choice was going to be one that only I could make, and no one had a clue what it could be. We had to play our roles according to Abbadon’s plans and hope that we were fooling him. We had a small advantage. He remembered our failing. He would be expecting us to fail again.

  Nothing was said to us as the Raiders dragged us through the Castle, just more grunting and dead stares. During my first week in Erda, Beru had taught me how to feel where I was going so I wouldn’t ever be lost. And that was what I was doing in the middle of all my kicking and screaming. That was the outside part of me. Inside I was paying attention to the doors we passed. It was still surprising to me that the Castle looked so much like the one in Zerenity. Looked like. Didn’t feel like.

  This Castle held no peace for anyone in it. Behind every door, I could feel the range of emotions from fear to sorrow, but there was nothing that suggested even the slightest happiness anywhere. It was a place of misery. It was a confirmation of what I had been thinking.

  Back in the room waiting for the Raiders, I asked Aki if she thought Abbadon fed off of negative emotions. Was that the difference between Abbadon and his brother Darius?

  Aki had nodded and agreed. Yes, that was what the man who looked like Abbadon had told her.

  “So, Abbadon is like the serial killers in the Earth dimension? He gets his kicks from the pain of others?” I asked.

  “If that’s true,” Garth said, “it would explain why he continues to escalate his reign of terror. He would need a bigger and bigger fix. Thinking ahead to when there was no one left to kill, would deny him what he needs now. More fear. More anger. More death.”

  Niko nodded. “It would answer many of our questions about why he is doing this. Perhaps there was a trigger, but once he began, he couldn’t stop. It also makes sense beca
use if your story about the bored brothers in the spaceship is true, that is what they intended isn’t it? Good against evil. Light against dark.

  “Which makes you wonder if those spaceship brothers themselves were good and evil, light versus dark. And if that was true, how did the two of them live together for so long? Wouldn’t one of them have killed the other?”

  Niko’s question kept going through my head as we passed through the hallways. There was something in the question that contained the answer to how to stop Abbadon.

  Although we had all stopped communicating mentally in case Abbadon could read our thoughts, we knew each other so well that when I saw Niko look over at me and nod, I figured he was thinking along the same lines.

  Eventually, the Raiders pulled us into one of the buildings outside the Castle, opened the door, and threw us inside. I had expected another dungeon-like room, but instead, it was bright and sunny, with white filmy curtains blowing with the light breeze that was passing through the room. We stood there filthy and confused.

  Aki whispered, “Abbadon is a tricky man. He keeps throwing us off base. Remember nothing is as it appears to be.”

  Aki’s words burned inside of me, how could I have forgotten? Nothing is as it seems to be. I had to stop looking at everything as if it was real. And Aki was right, Abbadon was tricky because what came next was nothing like we expected.

  Men and women who looked very much like our waiters appeared from around the corner. Beautiful people. The exact opposite of the frightening Raiders. I knew they weren’t real, which made them even scarier. Abbadon would have made sure they could overpower anything we threw at them.

  Once again, there were three of them for each of us. The men took Niko, Zeid, and Garth, and the women took Aki and me.