I ran through the woods until my lungs burned with white fire. They threatened to give up all together, if my leg muscles didn’t do so first.
I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
It was fainter than before. I was losing her. Panic constricted around my chest and throat. I refused to lose her.
There wasn’t a plan other than to bust in there and pull her out. Wrap my hands around those delicate shoulders of hers and shake her until sense returned. Who cares if the night sky became ill? It could mean anything, it could mean nothing.
You don’t believe that,a voice inside me countered.It was just as they predicted. The time of darkness has been named.
“No,” I ground the word out between my teeth, trying to audibly drown out my thoughts. The Luxis were wrong. Emma didn’t need to die.
By the time I raced up to the Temple, I knew I should have a plan. Barging in there was just going to get me thrown into the room of corrections or worse, disposed of. Yet, I could not stop my feet from slapping loudly up the stone stairs up a side entrance. I didn’t bother to approach with stealth, they’d know I was coming for her.
“Emma,” I cried out once inside the cool stone walls of the Temple.
She was here. I could feel it. The guilt weighed me down so heavily, it became difficult to move. My need kept me pushing through the inertia.
Then the weight disappeared so suddenly I almost tripped over myself from the sudden shift within my heart and body. Catching myself, I searched inward for any trace of the guilt that plagued Emma. I was alone, plagued only by my own panic and urgency.
Gooseflesh painfully pulled at the skin across my whole body. “Emma, I’m here. I’m coming for you.” My voice bounced off the walls, reverberating back to me as I ran through each room, each one as empty as the last. The interpretation of the sacred text had been removed, and no one had been left behind for me to question. They knew if they’d left anyone I would have extracted information out of them using any means necessary.
Coming to stand in the middle of the large hall where I’d last seen my Masters, it finally sank in that she was gone. They were all gone. They’d stepped through a portal and disappeared. A dry wheezing laugh escaped me, as my fisted hands fell open. Blood rushed back to my fingers with a painful wash of invisible pins and needles. It was nothing compared to the roar of an ocean of fear and pain that slammed into me with a finality ending so silently I thought I’d been deafened. They took Emma with them, and I would never find them as long as they didn’t want to be found. I knew it with absolute certainty. After all, they had taught me that particularly trick.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
The last rays of daylight warmed my face, but inside I was cold as stone. The fresh scent of pine stung my nose with over exuberance, as birds chirped in the towering trees a half mile out from here. It was as if they knew to keep their distance from me. From the fourth floor of the unfinished building in Smoky Badger, I had a perfect view above the Colorado forest of the sunset. The sky was lit with deep golds and soft oranges, but I wished the sky had been painted red. It would have been more fitting than this picturesque serenity.
I’d finally learned in town that they had lost funding for the construction, which is why this place remained an abandoned skeleton, half built. The wine bottles had remained untouched in the corner where I’d left them. A thin layer of golden-yellow, chalky pollen now covered them, evidence spring was nearing. Things were still, fixed here as though nothing had moved in my absence, but I had gone further than I’d ever dreamed. The last time I was here, I was a man who knew his mission. No, not a man. A force played by someone else’s hand. I had voyaged for what felt like a lifetime only to return to stand at this precipice.
It had been two months since Emma left to do what she’d thought was the right thing. She thought the order of Luxis was going to help her save the world and surrendered herself to them. Whether it was Gatsby or another Chevalier they called upon who created a portal to move the entire order, I never had a chance of catching up.
My hand barely touched the exposed metal beam holding up the roof, while the front half of my feet hung over the edge. I sucked in more of the fresh, pine air, hoping it would ground me. I was free. I was my own man, my soul to wield as I saw fit. Yet, with all that freedom I felt like little more than a flailing babe, screaming to the heavens for help while my insides had frozen into a paralysis I could not name.
No, that wasn’t true. My paralysis was fear. Fear of decision, of choice, of having to lead myself. It left me incapacitated.
Is this how everyone felt? All these years, I had passed by civilians who seemed to face each new day with assured calm as they poured onto the streets, walked to work, to restaurants, to meet with their friends and family. Those people I’d seen serenely sip coffee outside a café, those who danced on the sidewalks singing with abandon in the middle night with their friends after imbibing. I had once looked forward to knowing my place amongst them, but now I knew the truth of the perfected blank mask everyone affixed as soon as they woke up. It covered up the truth I had come to know. It covered absolute and utter terror.
In possessing my soul, I was free to choose, but there was no way of knowing whether I was doing the right thing. At times I suspected I knew the truth, but was never certain. I only knew one person who was fearless looking into that frozen tundra of fear every day.
After overcoming my initial denial that Emma was really gone, followed by the complete lack of ability to do anything about it, I considered maybe she was right. Maybe she was meant for sacrifice all along, to save the world. I roamed the empty halls of the Temple of Lux, haunting it for weeks. I would stalk about the reading room, staring at the books willing them to give me the answers until the smell of their aging pages offended me back out again. Several times, an unbidden rage swelled in me until I could no longer contain myself. I would grab books off the shelf, hurl them across the room, rip them in half, try to destroy the tools that were useless to me. There was nothing left there for me.
The trials had nearly killed me as a child, but walking through the jungle a second time, I was a changed man. I still didn’t have my powers, but I had an iron-will to find Emma no matter the cost. Gods help the creatures I slaughtered who got in my way. When I finally arrived at a village equipped with a modicum of modern technology, I discovered I was in a country called Tajikistan. I’d never been instructed on its geography, only told it was the home to which I should always return by way of portal unless otherwise instructed.
Between guidance from the locals and the currency I took from the unguarded Temple, I was able to move around from city to city, watching and waiting. I eventually made my way into Beijing where information was abundant. Though I could not read, I’d already been trained to speak in thirty-seven languages so I could properly observe wherever my mission took me. There was never a moment I was far from a radio, or television. I even learned to use the computers in the local cyber cafés with the help of some children who had taken a liking to me, despite the warnings of their parents who seemed to detect the rage behind my eyes.
The green moon had thrown scientists into a tailspin. While most described the event as a beautiful mystery they were eager to study, for many it quickly became a phenomenon, fading into the background of their day-to-day lives. However, a small percent of people around the world recognized it for what it was. A portent evil was coming. They carried posters proclaiming, ‘The end is near.’
Then I got my sign. An earthquake of unprecedented magnitude made national news. It shook the small town of Smoky Badger until the earth’s crust ripped into a gigantic crack, and everyone had to be evacuated.
Where the earth breaks, the dark lord shall journey in a fortnight’s time to set his deathly foot upon the dirt of the earth.
It made sense. We had to go back to the beginning. The soul eater broke ground when he stepped onto our plane and his dark lord was going to follow the path.
I had found my way to an airport and crossed my first ocean, which gave me ample time to think. Who was I to stop Emma? It was her life to choose what to do with it, just as my life was my own now. Could I stop her from doing what she believed in? It forced me to ask the question, what did I believe in now? Did I believe the Luxis? Did I believe any of the Orders? Did I believe the end was coming? Did I believe in myself to fight it, if it came to that? I could never meet the endless litany of questions with any semblance of an answer, and thus I flailed. Flailed for guidance, direction, from someone, anyone who wasn’t me.
My thoughts easily fell to Emma, always procuring deep stabs of loss. Her expressive eyes, the delicate slide of her fingers against my knuckles before she took my hand in hers, the concentration of her scent I’d found where her shoulders and neck met. Yet she was so much more. The way she walked into a room demanding attention and respect, no matter who thought they knew better. Where I was once blinded, she uncovered the lies around me one by one.
After all you have done, after all you have been through. I just want you to have a life you can believe in again.
