“Can we talk about it now?” Eric asked once they were halfway on the train back to Oxford. Face to face with an angry bull that so happened to look like his girlfriend, who no more than grunted that they were leaving, he did the smart thing and waited until she calmed down before trying to find out if he had to deal with the crippled guy himself.

“Hmm? Oh, yeah, sure, it was nothing,” Yana answered in a single breath, then sighed. “I guess I exaggerated.”

“You can’t let someone make you angry like that. Just what is his problem?”

“I told you, they say it’s a cold, but it’s really complicated. It’s just… We’ve been through a lot, like, last year or so. And I thought I knew him better, that he wouldn’t just… wither away.”

With a soft smile, Eric put his arm around her shoulder and puller her towards himself.

“You don’t need to get mad at some jerk. If he only has a cold, he’ll be fine.”

“I’m still worried.”

“Well, if he’s that important to you…” he said, shaking his head and slowly pulling his arm away from her, which Yana quickly seized.

“Don’t tell me you’re jealous,” she said with a giggle.

“Oh, no, I don’t hold a candle to that guy,” he answered with a playful smile.

“Come on, Eric, you know I wouldn’t trade you for the world.”

They continued their flirting and, putting aside that unpleasant experience, entertained themselves with other subjects, on their friends, on their schools, on how group projects were, and were not, boring, until they reached Yana’s place.

It was very strange, but someone who did not belong to the household or to Yana’s group of friends was sitting at their front gate, with her head buried between her legs. After trading a confused glance with Eric, when Yana touched her back it was Sofia’s head that surfaced, red and with tear marks running down her cheeks.

“Hey! What are you doing here? What happened?” Yana asked. The girl poised her head on her knees and muttered something Yana couldn’t understand. She turned to Eric, who shrugged back, and repeated her question to Sofia. That time screamed, an answer as incomprehensible as the first, burying her head back between her legs and letting the tears flow free.

During the Summer holiday, she and her family had gone to England, and Helena and Polina agreed to meet in Oxford for a quick tour of the city to spend the day together again, that time without letting any of the children stay behind. They hadn’t gone inside the house because her grandfather had been ill at the time, but they had met just outside. How in Sid’s name had she found her way back to that two-story house near the heart of the city?

With a lot of sweet talk, the young couple managed to calm Sofia down and brought her inside to sit on an aged sofa.

The Natviski’s home was transported from an older decade and was designed to keep the sun at bay. The door opened on a step to the living room, its shelves lined with strange trinkets, with a set of brown leather sofa and armchairs turned towards a classic fireplace, protected by a small iron gate. The television was placed well above the fireplace, hanging from the wall, and was promptly muted by the owner of the house once his granddaughter and her boyfriend sat on the sofa with what appeared to be a sobbing young girl. It was a bit creepy, the way he stared at Sofia, his mouth just slightly open, as if waiting for unsuspecting pray, but Yana wasn’t one to question her grandfather’s strange habits - not only did she have to find out what made Sofia so upset, somehow, making weird frowns over obscure details were common not only for him but for his wife as well.

Leaving Eric to watch over Sofia, Yana went to the kitchen to get her some water while her grandmother, drawn by the ruckus, climbed down the wooden stairs that led to the second floor, stopping halfway to make sure her eyes weren’t deceiving her.

“Jany zabjuć nas.”

Eric glanced at the old man on the armchair, trying to make sense of the Belarusian words he had said to his wife, but Yana returned to the room and the sense of dread dissipated in a flash.

“”They will kill us?”” What is that supposed to mean?”

Oh, she speaks the language.

Well, beats me.

“What’s going on?” Stanislav asked. While Eric or any other of Yana’s classmates were under their roof, they reluctantly spoke in an English that had never been polished out of the heavy eastern European accent. “Who’s your friend?”

“This is Sofia. She’s from Portugal, she came here last Summer with her family,” Yana said, sitting down next to her and giving her the glass, that Sofia refused with a weak head shake. Meanwhile, Maryna quietly sat down in the armchair opposite to her husband.

“I was… really scared because some guys from the twelfth grade were going to paint my face and I hate to get my face painted,” Sofia sobbed once she calmed down enough to work up the courage to tell them exactly what had happened. “Then, out of nowhere… I transformed into one of the Rays.”

“What?”

But Eric’s question was left hovering in the air since Sofia started crying heavily again.

“One of the Rays?” Yana asked, unknowingly raising an eyebrow. It was one of the things that she had asked Jack about his world, what were the two giant birds flying outside the tower, and he told her they were two of the Rays, a handful of hidan with legendary status and power. Although the descendant of the founder of Rujad kept Rayala close, the others were a mystery as to whether they actually existed or not, except of course for Raytsu, having been found and secured by Mabaya under unspecific circumstances. “Are you sure that wasn’t just a bad dream?”

“No, I freaked out, my friends were there, they saw the whole thing,” she continued, her voice suddenly louder. “I didn’t know what to do, so I flew here.”

“On a plane?”

“No!” She screamed, making Eric and Yana jump on their seats. They had literally no idea what Sofia was talking about, and she herself didn’t want to believe it had actually happened as it would surely mean she was in deep trouble. Although it was the last thing she wanted to do, she needed them to know, hoping it would bring a semblance of comfort even though it would very likely only scare them, far more than she was.

Shrugging those dark thoughts away, but not the tears, Sofia reached out to the corner of her mind, where she had found refuge from the pranksters, and asked to transform.

Before their very eyes the girl turned into countless tiny blue particles, shimmering within each other, that quickly moulded like a liquid into a serpentine shape. When the particles changed colour again, they had turned into a small white cobra with a blue stripe running along its flanks. Its red eyes swelled up as the ice glider made several weak noises, as sad as the girl that sat in its place before.

It got worse when it realized Yana and Eric were no longer sitting next to her, having both jumped from the couch to stare at her, mouths like caves.

“Stop doing that, Yana, you’re embarrassing yourself,” said Stanislav once he thought it had been enough whining and stupor.

“But how did she- how did you do that?” she asked, turning back to the ice glider.

“Do you know something about this, Mr. Natviski?” Eric asked, as the creature started sobbing again and none of the elderly had so much as flinched with the sight.

“No, boy, I know about as much as you do,” he answered, raising his hands. “I’ve just seen too many of these funny things in my life to let it through like a fool.”

His wife quickly slapped his shoulder, but his sly smile stayed just the same. The remark also seemed to brighten Sofia’s mood, as she returned to her human form and wiped her eyes with her jacket sleeve.

“How? How did this happen?” Yana asked, tapping her foot, starting to think Sofia had been contaminated by Jack and had become a hidan or something of the sort.

“I dunno, I’ve never done it before. I got scared of those guys and… I imagined that big green bird with four wings, imagined it in this part of my head I had never found before. And now every time I picture something there, I turn into it. I don’t know why.”

“So you can just transform into anything you want?” Eric asked.

“I don’t know, I’ve only turned into that green bird and the ice glicer.”

“And that’s why you’re so sad?” Eric knelt in front of her and gently took her hands on her lap. “That’s not a bad thing.”

The girl looked back up, waiting for Eric to continue.

“Sofia, right? Have you even thought about all the things you can do now? You can be anything, no, even better, you can do anything. I want to climb a mountain? Bam, I’m an eagle. Want to swim with the rest of the fish? Now I’m a mermaid.”

“I don’t know if I can do that,” she said, not before hiding a smile.

“We’ll figure it out, no problem. You have this amazing power, and sure that means you might not be like us, but so what? Being like us sucks compared to being you, don’t you think?”

Sofia could do little more than put her head down and stay silent while Eric pat her shoulder and told her to think about it. When he looked back at his girlfriend, Yana smiled a whispered a “thanks”. He handwaved it, whispering it was no big deal and she’d likely need more help before she could have any sort of meaningful conclusion, while Stanislav traded glances with his wife, thinking that was the moment they had been told to wait for.

“Told to wait for? By whom?”

Hold on, that comes up soon.

“Since we’re in a mood for sharing unusual things,” Stanislav said, rising from his armchair. “There’s something you should see.”

With his mind still racing through all the consequences of the possibility that he was showing that to the wrong people, the old man opened a porcelain jar sitting on a cabinet and fetched a small key from inside.

“What consequences?”

“Yes, it sounds like he’s about to commit some crime.”

“Who knows…”

I legit have no idea. It’s weird, I know he wasn’t wrong, he showed the tablet to the right people, but everything about this chapter in their point of view is strange, I cut out the part where they see her as she really is because that made no sense, it’s like they were mad that they even saw her to begin with but also they had to see her because otherwise who’d set them free?

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

He then used the key to unlock a long drawer on the cabinet, that had been shut for as long as Yana could remember and removed a dark stone tablet with golden engravings on it, putting it on his lap as he sat down on his trusty armchair again. The symbols were new and fascinating, forming everything from reversed fours to little trees.

“This is a text written by the most ancient civilization on this planet,” Stanislav started. “Me and your grandmother uncovered it from ruins on the Canarias Islands.”

“Is it Babylonic?” Eric asked.

“No, this is an entirely different thing, and it can only be read by a select few. Of course, me and your grandmother are a part of the privileged.”

“What does it say?” Yana asked.

“It tells of old Gods, and it’s part of a warning to other otherworldly beings.”

“If someday trapped we become

Beware the sleeping warrior’s roar

And if someday free we turn

Beware the forgotten kind’s soar

“For the day the blight of the dead

Clears the sky in its whole

It will all end

And then begin anew

“One heart, one soul

Together, but apart, sharing their pain

Together, but apart, completing evil’s bane

But someday it will all begin again

“We will give you the Language blessing

Use it wise

So that Thunder, Fire and Ice

May once again arise

So say the Messengers.”

“It’s a prophecy, right?” Yana asked.

“Sounds like one, doesn’t it?” Stanislav answered.

“An apocalyptic one,” Eric said. “It says that it’ll all end, and then begin anew.”

“It won’t take place until long after I’m gone, so it’s not my concern.”

“Who are “the messengers”?” Sofia asked. “The ones who wrote it?”

“No one knows, but our guess is that they wrote this tablet as a warning to the Gods to try and get help from the mortal world in their conflict against them,” Maryna said. “In this culture, they were said to be as powerful as Gods themselves, and yet to be of a very different nature and with a very different goal.”

“They were referred to as the Unknown,” Stanislav finished.

***

During the flight back home as the great four-winged beast called Raytsu by beings from another realm, Sofia’s mind stayed in Yana’s smaller realm, and her grandparent’s prophetic ancient tablet. The Unknown sounded amazing, mysterious, talking about the end of the world and the heroes that would stop it. While her wings beat new life into the air, Sofia began to believe she was the sleeping warrior, soaring high in the form of the forgotten kind.

She took a dive towards the ocean, spreading her wings just before touching the surface, and the massive body of Raytsu straightened in the air, letting the sea graze the green plumage of its belly. Sofia put down her talons, each claw the size of an arm, and felt a school of fish scatter beneath the surface of the waves.

Flying was something she couldn’t truly enjoy on her way to England due to her heavy woes. But she had to admit Eric had a point. Why would you ever choose to be human when she could feel the wind struggling against the feathers of the king of the skies instead?

***

Unable to confront her parents about her newly found abilities, Sofia shut herself in her room playing on the ancient laptop she had inherited from her father. While the games specialist part of her brain monitored a fair maiden growing crops on a medieval farm, Sofia thought about the best way to avoid Nasser and Carlos the following day during school, not so keen on facing them after turning into a giant green bird out of nowhere and flying away from school.

Suddenly a loud noise made her look away from the fair maiden and her crop. For a reason too intricate for Sofia’s thirteen-year-old mind to fully grasp, Foxy was pushing the shelf on the right of her desk against the wall, growling as if she was being made fun of.

“Foxy? What’s the matter with you? Stop that.”

Sofia stood up from her chair, separated the animal’s forehead from the shelf and, while the fox glared at it, checked if everything was still in place. The only thing that had been moved was a massive bronze key, almost as big as her hand, that she had scavenged with that very same fox’s help from a heap of trash that was going to be vacated from her grandmother’s old place before it was sold away. As she picked it up her eyes paused on the coat of arms and she raised an eyebrow, thinking something about it was strange. The fox, the tree and the dwarf were the same as she remembered, but for some strange reason, she felt like the tower being pictured on the last square wasn’t there before. Try as she might, she couldn’t remember what had been there before, but the more she looked at the tower the more she was certain she had seen it before, and where.

After a quick internet search, she confirmed her theory and, after coming up with an excuse to get out of the house, she left for the back of the neighbourhood, where she could turn into Raytsu and fly away without, hopefully, being noticed. The crops continued to grow unattended, and the maiden didn’t seem to care much about them either.

***

In the far edge of Europe lies a place where the sea reaches into the furthest horizon, the waves rock a melody that revives the spirit and a breeze illuminated by a warm sun carries the scent of the old continent.

Roca Cape is only mystical in photographs, paintings, and concept. If you can go there, it’s never like that.

“It can be like that.”

“When did you ever get a sunny day there?”

“Yeah, it’s impossible.”

“And even if you get a sunny day, you’ll never get a breeze.”

“I guess just got very lucky, but it does look beautiful that way.”

What truly awaits someone in Roca Cape was what Sofia found when she landed there. A wind capable of sweeping away a small dog, a mist so thick it was hard to see a couple of inches further from one’s nose, and a sea loud enough not to let anything else be noticed. Generally speaking, it’s a very unpleasant place to visit, but it’s exactly its wilderness that attracts the fools.

Having been on the cape once when she was still in grade school, Sofia used the sound of the sea to navigate through the mist from the parking lot where she had landed and turned human. Half a dozen cars lied in wait, so it was unlikely the place was crowded. She walked by a small white info desk and down the path that crossed a field of creepy plants with bulky, red leaves. Soon she was standing by the white stone pillar of the cape, overlooking a wooden railing and the long cliff that held back the fury of the Atlantic Ocean, covered in a foggy mantle.

As much as she looked about, sneezing twice due to the fierce, chilling wind, the cape was deserted. Then, she compared the pillar she had casually rested her hand on and the image on the key on her other hand, becoming certain both were one and the same. She turned to the pillar’s face and found a Portuguese coat of arms, a couple of significant names and dates, and an inscription below all of them.

Here, where the land ends and the infinite begins

On the other side of the pillar read the history of a sailor that only 6 devoted students in the country would recognize, with more dates and names. There was nothing else that stood out on the white stone and, no matter where she looked, Sofia found no other place of interest in sight. A second inspection at the pillar bore no fruit, so she put down her head with a sullen sigh, giving up on finding the answers she was looking for there, and turned away from the pillar.

A hole on its base stopped her from taking another step. With her heart swelling with hope, she crouched down and moved away the plants covering the most of it, revealing a keyhole that would be perfect for the key on her hand. Without thinking twice about it, she inserted it and it turned with a loud echo. She blinked, and the key was gone.

To be sure she wasn’t seeing things, Sofia took a good look at her hands and then at the keyhole she had just turned, but it had vanished as well. Scratching her head in confusion, Sofia looked back up, and found no ocean, no mist and no sky that she had ever known.

The soil of the cape with its fleshy plants and the worn pillar were all still there – they were but an island, cut where the small white informationbuilding should have been. An island surrounded from all sides by an endless dark cloud, where vivid lightning burst from without pause, illuminating what was left of the cape.

Gaping, Sofia slowly stood up and consumed the scenery with her eyes. The moisty wind still blew back her hair, the smell and the sound of the waves made her believe the Atlantic was still just below the railing, but she only found more silent lightning when she rushed there to confirm it.

A gust of wind made her sneeze. It was getting late, she should be home, and yet she was…

“Bless you.”

“Thanks…” she answered automatically. Then she turned around, looking for whomever had just spoken, and found no one.

“You will not be able to see us,” the voice said.

Sofia looked to her side, where the voice was coming from, and found earth, railing and dark sky.

“Why can’t I see you?”

“No one can see us. We are Unknown, and unknown we will remain.”

Recognizing the word from Yana’s grandfather, Sofia’s eyes shone bright.

“You’re the ones who wrote the tablet, you are the Messengers!”

“Part of them, yes. We are glad that text has finally been useful.”

“What is that prophecy about, is it about the end of the world?”

“The man you spoke to has misinterpreted the contents of the text. The world will not end, not as long as we exist.”

“Are you a God? Do you protect the world?”

“As we’ve said, we are Unknown, and unknown we will remain.”

“But I know a little bit about you.”

“You only think you do.” For each word it spoke, it was like it was someone else talking even if the voice didn’t seem to change. “However, we know much about you.”

Sofia felt her heart stopping. “What do you know about me?”

“Everything. We know everything about everything. We know your human parents named you Sofia Duarte Fonseca. We know you’ve been in contact with a different dimension from your own. We know you were the one who undid the seal that trapped us in your dimension, and for that we are very grateful. We know that you are an illia.”

“An illia?” the name didn’t tell her anything, or even sounded the very least familiar.

“Yes.”

“What’s an illia? Why am I an illia?”

“If you wish to know more, you must do us a favour in return.”

“Sure, as long as it doesn’t take too much time, I should be going home…”

“You’ve suggested that we protect the world, and that is a partially correct assumption. We protect every dimension there is from peril and destruction, like yours and the world of the hidan.”

“The world of the hidan? Where Jack came from?”

“There are infinite worlds beyond yours and your friend’s, and although our power is infinite so are the worlds, and there is only so much we can do. The neal-hidanna Seli and Lissandra are only two of the beings that cooperate with us, should you remember them. We’d like you to do the same.”

“Yeah, I remember them…” Sofia said, thinking about how they had helped Jack and Yana, and how amazing it would be if she could do the same for someone else. “Will I have to beat bad guys?”

“More than you can imagine.”

“And you’ll tell me more about the illia.”

“In due time.”

“I really want to help you, but…” Sofia ended up saying, thinking in the back of her mind that she was dreaming and imagining the whole thing.

“It’s done, then.”

“That easy?”

“That easy.”

They make it that easy even if you try to complicate it.

The voice paused, as if checking for something, and quickly said:

“Excuse us for a moment.”

In the place where the voice of the Unknown was coming from a faint circle appeared in the air, quickly defining into a silver arc slightly larger than her. From the arc, as if crossing a door, appeared a brown-haired man in a white, long coat, carrying a briefcase by his side. He looked down to Sofia and smiled as the arc behind him grew dimmer and vanished.

“Are you the Unknown?” Sofia asked raising an eyebrow, not really believing that was the case, but checking just the same.

“No, no, I’m here on their request. I’m Dr. Maxim Swain.”

“You talk very good Portuguese, doctor,” Sofia said.

“Thank you, young lady. You speak very good Ladensse yourself.”

She tilted her head in response. Sofia wasn’t talking in Portuguese? And where had she heard that strange word before?

“Did Seli tell you about the hidanna you have to find?” asked the Unknown.

“A fifteen-year-old boy, if memory serves right.”

“Yes. He’s at the Royal Brompton Hospital, in the city of London. It is the capital of the country they call England.”

“How far away is it?”

“Are you talking about Jack?” Sofia asked, fearing the man was a scientist from Vulcan who had managed to follow him there.

“Yes. I’m here to help him get better.”

“We have great curiosity regarding your friend,” the Unknown said. “You must bring him here when he recovers.”

“You’re not going to take him back to Vulcan, are you?”

“No.”

“And you’re not going to do any more experiments on him.”

“I swear I’m only here as a physician,” he answered, raising a hand in peace. Still unsatisfied, Sofia made a mental note to go to the hospital in the next couple of days to check up on Jack. If he claimed to have been attacked, she was sure Raytsu could resolve the issue by means of mild torture.

“Alright,” she ended up saying, with a smile.

Dr. Swain smiled back. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and find England.”

“It’s easy, really, it’s north of France. So, if you go that way you’ll find the Eiffel Tower, a giant iron tower, and you go north from there and you’ll find England. London is the city with the Big Ben, which is a giant clock tower, you can’t miss it.”

“Thank you kindly. I’ll take my leave.” Swain put out a hand for Sofia to shake and turned to the sky. “I’ll let you know my decision later.”

“Of course,” the voice of the Unknown answered.

“Well then, until we meet again.”

With that, he walked to the edge of the island and vanished as he stepped outside its boundaries, making Sofia open her mouth, wondering if he had been consumed by the lightning.

“Weren’t you in a hurry to go back home?”

“Huh, yeah, but what do you want me to do?” she asked, turning towards the voice.

“There’s nothing for you to do at the present moment. We’ll let you know once there’s something we’d like you to do. Just come here when we call for you.”

“Oh, all right. So… how do I get out of here?”

“Exit the boundaries of the cape like Swain did. You’ll be back to where you were before.”

“Can’t someone else come in here by accident?”

“Only we decide who enters our dimension.”

“Ok. So, see you soon?”

“Very soon.”

Imitating Dr. Swain’s steps precisely, Sofia left the world of the Unknown and stepped into a complete Roca Cape. The wind blew right in her face, reminding her it had never left, and she sneezed three times in a row.

She was definitely going home with a cold.