That next morning Leita woke to a knock on the door. It was Mike.

‘I’m ready,’ he said.

‘Ready for what?’ Leita asked.

‘I’m ready for you to guide me through a meditation. You’ve helped me. I trust you’.

‘That’s wonderful,’ Leita said, wanting to hug him. ‘Let me just call Doc and we can get started.

Leita called Doc, but he was feeling sick.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I feel a little off today. I didn’t get any sleep last night. Would you mind doing it by yourself’?

‘I feel I’m ready,’ Leita replied. ‘If you’re not up to it’.

‘Of course you are,’ Doc answered. ‘You’re a tremendous healer. Mike sees this in you. I do too. I have every confidence you can take over’.

‘Well, alright, I’ll do it then. I’ll let you know how it turns out. Will you be okay?’.

‘Tell Mike he’s in my prayers’.

‘I will,’ she said, hanging up. ‘Where would you feel more comfortable Mike? We can go to the Big House, or under the pavilion. It looks like it’s going to be a beautiful day.

‘I need to be outside,’ Mike said.

‘Fine, let’s go find some mushrooms,’ Leita said.

Leita took Mike to the pavilion. She stuck up the ‘In Session’ sign to warn passerby’s to be quiet. If the pavilion wasn’t a sacred place, it was certainly enchanting. Having no walls, it was open to the elements, and the roof provided protection from the sun or rain. Today, the morning humidity before the heat of the day and all the sounds of nature getting ready for the day, brought a peacefulness you will find at no other place. They could not help but be a part of nature themselves.

They grabbed a couple of mats and pillows and sat down in the center of the structure. Leita administered a quantity of mushrooms based on Mike's weight.

‘There’s nothing to worry about,’ she said. ‘We administer manageable doses which open you up to guided suggestion. My role is to provide suggestion and be with you and provide comfort if need be’.

‘I trust you,’ Mike replied.

‘Thank you. Let’s start by getting into the habit of breathing. Just breathe in and out while you listen to my voice. Take a moment to greet Mother Earth and know you are a part of it.

Leita paused for a moment. ‘Stay connected to me. Whenever you wander off with your thoughts, agree to come back to my voice. Can you agree to come back to my voice’.

Mike nodded.

Already Leita was moving Mike into a semi-hypnotic state, which with her guidance would transport him purposefully to places of new understanding. Steady breathing and prompting agreement to questions were making Mike more agreeable to going to those places.

‘Don’t forget to breathe,’ Leita said, taking in a slow deep breath herself. Mike took in a deep breath. Mike was mimicking her. Their breathing became synchronized.

‘I want to tell you that as with you, I had a troubled childhood. What happened to me was the most evil act one person can commit on another. It robbed me of my childhood and it wounded me forever. It was the very same thing that happened to you’.

These words took Mike right back to his own fixations.

‘Stay with me Mike,’ Leita said. ‘I only want you to know we have this in common. Can we agree on this’?

Mike took a moment to come back, but nodded his head.

‘I can’t tell you how to heal yourself, but I’d like to tell you how I overcame what you’re going through. Is that okay?

Mike nodded.

‘Good. Even though I relived the event thousands of times, I was so preoccupied I never thought to step outside and look at it from any other perspective than the emotional one I was stuck in. I was never able to see my trauma as something in my past that I could look at and observe. I was too close to it. I always lived inside it. Even though I relived it every day, I couldn’t look at it as one part of my life. It was too painful. Do you know what I mean’?

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Mike nodded. He knew.

‘One day Ethan said to me,’ Leita continued, ‘Why don’t we try to set the incident aside. Know it’s there, but try to look past it and see who’s standing on the other side? Let’s try to find the person you were in the first place. The little girl before her trust was broken. We don’t need to look at the event, we just need to look past the event for now’.

‘For some reason, I felt this was something I could do, and we focused on trying to find the little girl who lived inside me. To do that, I built a wall in my mind around the event until I could pass it by and start looking beyond. At first I kept hitting against the wall of trauma, and I’d back off, but over time and repetition, I was able to start looking at the trauma differently. It became familiar, still very real, but isolated and less threatening. Once we got that far, I started to see beyond my limitations, and another whole me’.

‘Take a deep breath, Mike,’ Leita continued. ‘I’d like to add my experience with yours and together we will face what prevents you from seeing the person you left behind.

‘Tell me when you’re prepared to make this journey. It might be now, or it might be five minutes from now.

Mike said, ‘I’m ready’.

‘Okay,’ Leita began. ‘First I want you to acknowledge what happened to you. See it as an event. A single occurrence whether it be the abuse or the continuation of abuse. Pack it all into one single event. Once you’ve done this, agree to set it aside for a moment. Not leave it. Not discount it in any way. Just set it to the side. Put it in its own special place. Know it’s there, but know it’s in the past and cannot touch you’.

Mike’s eyes were closed. His face started to show signs of distress.

‘Take as long as you need,’ Leita said gently. ‘Remember to breathe. You might need five minutes. You might need ten. You have lots of time.

‘In your imagination, physically push it to the side, knock it out of the way, or just watch yourself build the wall that will provide you with the security you need to see past it. Break through. Whatever. Make it into something you can see and walk past. There are many ways to get there. You will find the one’.

Mike struggled with the task. It was just like Leita said, even though he lived inside it everyday, it was difficult to go back and look at it as a single event in his life. The injustice of it all was too stark.

He did it though. With Leita beside him, he braved glimpses of his forgotten life. Images that had been completely lost since before puberty. What he saw looking back at him was not what he expected to see. It was the source and immediately, he reconnected to it.

By the time I returned to the battle, there were only a handful of fighters remaining. Our side was intact save Raven, and I counted 11 fallen angels. Two were on Chief Dan, three on Chief Jim, and the others were fighting my 10 fellow warriors. Only high ranking Draco remained and they were giving us a fight; particularly the warriors.

Immediately, I swept down on one of Chief Jim’s attackers. From behind, I struck him in the neck. The neck bone did nothing to slow my axe, and the Draco and his head fell to the ground.

‘Go help your brothers,’ Chief Jim shouted. ‘They need you more than we do.’ He said, slicing the chest of one the Draco, not killing it, but not doing it any good either.

I joined my brethren and they were having a harder time of it than the Chiefs. These Draco were powerful and cunning, and even though the warriors outnumbered them 10 to 6, they were being overpowered. The fight had turned into a free for all. Everyone was in there swinging away. The closeness was an advantage to the Draco. One blow from these guys would cause serious injury or death.

My feeling was the warriors, having lost Tasha, threw caution and discipline to the wind and attacked out of emotion. They were mad and fighting hard, but completely disorganized. It was only a matter of time before we would begin taking losses.

I decided to fly into the middle of it and try to spread things out a bit. With our numbers, if we could divide them, we could conquer them. I didn’t plan to just fly in and announce my arrival either. I was going to use the element of surprise. I picked one of the more nasty Draco who was doing a lot of damage. I attacked.

I waited until the Draco had struck one of the warriors, and was out of position with an extended arm. I flew in and chopped it off, then I sliced my axe across his gut as part of the down stroke. His innards came spilling out through the incision. Brutishly, the Draco looked down at his gut when I drove the pointed, pick end of the axe blade into his skull. He fell from the sky.

Killing the Draco evened the odds considerably, but now they knew I was there, and possessed Tasha’s axe. Two Draco immediately fell upon me. They were respecting my axe, but still pressing in on me. I wouldn’t be able to gain much ground against them. This is where the beauty of the symbiotic relationship among us warriors showed itself. Automatically, several of the warriors paired up and moved the three remaining Draco out of the arena of my fight. They held them at a distance. The remaining warriors joined me, and now it was five of us against two, rather than two them against me.

We basically turned into pack animals. The warriors would swoop down and attack the Draco’s ankle tendons, or come in from behind and attack their necks or try to sever their wings. The warrior’s axes were not as decisive with these Draco, but they stung, cut them, and distracted them from me.

Every time they were distracted I struck, and my blade was more telling. My axe cut deep, and damaged the Draco. We weakened them, and eventually they slipped up and when they did, I was there to take them out.

It was much quicker work to slay the three remaining Draco we warriors were fighting. Still employing divide and conquer, as well as our pack-like attacks, the Draco fell quickly. We then turned our attention to the remaining Draco fighting the Chiefs.

All the fallen angels were killed that night. To their credit, they fought to the end, down to the last one, but in truth, they knew they would not be allowed to escape. If they fled, we would have chased them down and killed them.

The battle had lasted through the night, and as dawn started to show, we turned our attention to the Mark-Steppers who had escaped from the Borderland. They were making their way to the festival area. When we had killed all those we found in the forest, we ended up near the festival area and the port not far beyond. They were waiting to board ships departing for the mainland. We killed them too, but to our disappointment, some had already departed.