Brightness burned into me. I cried out and tried to lift my hands, but I couldn’t move them. Someone placed a soft cloth over my face, and I had immediate relief. It took me a few minutes to adjust to the light. When I could finally see, I gaped at the three people who stood around me. Daniel, Emma, and Lexen.
My mouth opened and closed, and turning my head, I saw that I was not on the ground in a land of darkness, but instead floating in a tank of thick liquid.
“Wha...?” I tried to talk, but my voice rasped out like it hadn’t been used in days.
Daniel reached in and cradled my head in his hands, holding me slightly out of the goo. “Callie? Do you remember me?”
I nodded, tears burning my throat. “I would never forget you, Daniel.”
I almost had, but Laous was not strong enough.
He closed his eyes briefly, and I immediately wished he would open them. I didn’t like being cut off from him this way. When he did meet my gaze again, gold blazed at me. “We’ve been trying to get through to you for hours. Laous has your energy tied to the legreto in this rebirth tank. You had to break free on your own. We couldn’t do anything, or it might have destroyed your mind completely.”
With a cough, I tried to sit up. Daniel slid one of his hands down, so it was under my back, gently drawing me up and into his body. The liquid clung to me for as long as it could, before finally releasing me from its deadly embrace. Bits of goo were still attached, but Daniel didn’t seem to care as he pulled me to his chest.
“What happened?” I coughed, looking around.
If I could have screamed at that point, I would have. The room – which was filled with tanks like the one I’d just been pulled from – had a creepy alien-abduction-probing setup going on. “What in the actual hell is this place?”
Daniel, still holding me, started walking, moving with ease through the small spaces between the tanks. “This is an old underground facility in Overworld,” he said, and I realized in that moment how flat his voice was. “It was used for mass experimentation when our four houses warred with each other. This is Imperial territory, right on the edge of our land.”
Emma’s worried face popped into view. She reached out and took my hand, and my heart ached at the sight of tears tracking down her cheeks. “It strips you of everything,” she said, sounding like she was repeating what she had been told. “Takes away who you are and leaves a blank canvas. The boys explained it all while we tried to wake you up. They told me to expect you might be gone by the time they freed you.”
I didn’t understand what they were saying. “You all need to go back and explain from the start,” I got out somewhat coherently.
Lexen answered: “The liquid you were floating in is calledconcrestia …also known as the Soulstealer, a weapon developed by a House of Imperial overlord, the one before Daniel’s father. He wanted to go to war when no one else would. He was going to try and create an army of Daelighters to fight for him. Basically, when you go into the water, your mind becomes open to suggestion. You can be brainwashed, and if you’re left submerged in it for long enough, eventually your mind will be wiped clean, to be manipulated as needed.”
That’s why, when I had been running in the darkness, my mind had been slipping away from me. “It almost got me,” I told them, swallowing the rough lump in my throat, glad at least that my voice had returned. “For days I have been running through the darkness, and I kept forgetting everything. It was only when I used … a fire power … that some clarity returned.”
I tilted my head back to gauge Daniel’s reaction; he was looking straight at me, his expression unreadable.
“I’d never been so lost and alone,” I confessed to him. “My mind would drift away. I thought I was going to disappear forever.” My voice broke and I choked on the words, small sobs escaping in between each one. “It works, whatever this soul stealer stuff is. It does what it was supposed to.”
“How are you still here with us?” Emma sobbed with me, our hands still clinging together.
“Daniel,” I breathed, still looking at him.
His steps didn’t falter, but there was a twitching on the corner of his jaw, like he was fighting against saying something.
“When I started to use the fire power, I felt him again. I remembered him. The only thing in the darkness was him, and the energy we shared.”
He pulled me closer, jolting my hand out of Emma’s.
“That’s when I felt your consciousness,” he growled. “When I knew we were finally getting through to you.”
Since we were nearing the end of this massive, freaky capsule room, I tapped him on the arm. “Put me down, please.”
He just growled again.
“Daniel…” I made my voice as stern as I could. “Put me down. I can walk.”
Probably a lie, but I needed to stand on my own two feet. I didn’t like this distance he was keeping between us. Not physically – he hadn’t let me go, not for a second – but he was holding back emotionally. And that both confused and upset me. I was new to this emotions thing, and no doubt missed a lot of things that others would recognize.
And right now, I just wanted to know what to do to fix us.
I thought he was going to ignore my request, but with a huff he finally slowed, and then my shoes hit the ground. My knees faltered for a second, but before I could be swept up again, I managed to gain my footing.
“I should have gotten to you sooner.” The self-loathing in his voice made my heart feel like it was being crushed. “You trusted me to keep you safe, to follow you, and I almost lost you to the darkness.”
