Chapter 23

The adrenaline kept Vince awake as he drove the first truck out of the outer-barrens with Karl driving the second truck and Chris road shotgun in the water truck. Each passenger vehicle was carrying a hundred troops.

He smiled to himself and wondered if there were any “star maps” for celebrity houses nearby. Perhaps Orion’s castle would be on it next to the ancient Never-never Land.

There was nothing for him to do but drive; drive without knowing where he was going.

He was about to pull over to stretch his legs, but a passenger appeared in the next seat, which made his heart skip a beat. “Jesus,” he shouted. “Don’t do that to me.”

Tracy stifled a laugh. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I forgot how it must feel to mortal people when we just appear out of thin air.”

“We,” he repeated.

“Keep driving this way and I’ll tell you about us.”

“If this has to do with you,” he smiled. “This should be good.”

Before she began, he took a look at the two trucks behind him and then looked back at his mother.

“Where do I begin?”

“The beginning is always a good place.”

“Yes, the beginning.” Tracy sighed. “Ilias came to me twenty years ago – right after you left the gate of Eden. He begged me to join him in his quest to overthrow Orion.”

Vince had pictured his sister in his mind as he watched her pray to Ilias. Hearing that Ilias wants to overthrow Orion, Xan’s story didn’t sound right. If she were praying to Ilias, and Ilias was trying to stop Orion, then why was she trying to kill them? Even his own mother had said that Xan was a Dreamkiller.

“Yes, I did,” she said, reading his thoughts. “She was a Dreamkiller without a master – you knew that. And when Ilias came to her, she had found her master. The unfortunate thing was that, being a Dreamkiller, she was – in a sense – programmed to kill. She later fell in love (if they can love, that is) with a Dreamkiller named Klaus who was under Orion’s leadership. Klaus coaxed Xan into becoming an assassin, thereby abandoning Ilias.”

“You seem to know a lot about her,” he replied and she smiled.

“She was my daughter, if you remember.”

“So, what have you been doing for twenty years? Why haven’t you attacked Orion sooner?”

“Well, for starters, I was learning to become who I am and what I can do. Also, time is so different from our two points of view. What may seem like twenty years to you might only be five years or less to me.”

He turned his eyes back to the deserted road. “Are you sure you know where to go?”

“Keep driving,” she said. “But you will have to travel by boat soon. I can’t transport you there.”

And then it came back to him; he remembered the journey that took him to Orion’s castle and then that same trek back.

He had been twenty-three years old the day the Dreamkillers, twenty of them, raided the house that he had been living in at the time. For fourteen months he and Samantha had raised Mykella together, but they weren’t living without the fear that Orion would find them – he had already taken (and killed, most likely) the entire neighborhood. Whenever word would get back to them of a Dreamkiller sighting, Vince would take Samantha and Mykella down into their cellar, which was a bomb shelter eons ago, and lock the door behind them.

Then one night during dinner, the Dreamkillers crashed through the front and back doors. Vince’s first thought was that Chris and Karl weren’t doing their jobs as Watchers, but then he saw that they had been captured as well.

They were forced to walk until they were certain their legs would break – he and Samantha had to take turns carrying a weeping Mykella.

He remembered that the Dreamkillers led the way to an old abandoned dock and a long black, grotesque barge, erected from the imagination of Orion no doubt, materialized out of the mist. They were shoved onto the barge; at this time, Vince saw that there were about fifty people captured that night.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Almost immediately after boarding, Vince felt a sharp sting in the back of his neck – and that was the last thing he could remember before everything went black inside his head.

Entrance into the fortress, he couldn’t remember either. But the dungeons,

He forced himself to look at his mother. “Will there be a boat waiting for us? Or will we have to build one of our own?”

“Ilias has arranged for transportation,” replied Tracy and she turned away.

“Why is Ilias doing this for us?”

Tracy didn’t seem to want to answer his question, which only made Vince all the more suspicious.

“Mom?”

Her heart sank by the use of the name. She had longed to hear her being called Mom. Finally she turned back to her son. “Ilias is going to try to get Orion to go back to Eden – to ambush him at his most vulnerable. Your job is to keep his army preoccupied during that time.”

Vince sighed and shook his head. “He’s using us as bait.”

“Vincent, do you remember when I told you that your prophecy wasn’t directly to protect Mykella, that the two of you would have different destinies?”

He didn’t like where this was going, but he nodded his head as he recalled that conversation so long ago – he thought he was in Pigeon Forge at the time.

“I didn’t want to tell you, but your prophecy is to lead the final attack on Orion’s castle.”

A horrifying thought entered his mind; a dream he had had a long time ago while waiting for news about his father’s health. “That battle I saw,”

She felt sick as she looked at him.

“I was in that battle; the one where no one was left alive,” he said.

“Please, don’t hate me,” she begged as tears fell from her eyes.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

She looked at him with a sarcastic look on her face. “Oh, yeah; like I’m going to tell my son that he’s going to die in a horrible battle.”

Vince shook his head. “I’m forty years old. I think I can handle death.”

A silence befell them. Neither one seemed to know what else to say.

“Mom,” Vince began and she turned to him and wiped the tears with the back of her hand. “When we decided to launch this attack, we knew that there was a good possibility that we weren’t going home. I told everyone that our fight was mostly a decoy – to let Mykella live out her prophecy.”

“Vince,”

“In fact,” he cut her off. “If Mykella does fail, I don’t want to go on living this life.”

Tracy smiled at her son; she felt proud of who he has become. Now, after a long internship with Ilias, she has decided on making a new choice for herself. “I’ve changed my mind,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“I will find a way to fight by your side.”

He shook his head with a smile. “I’d love that, but isn’t that impossible? You can’t touch anything material.”

“Then I’ll find a way.”

Vince turned back to the road for a moment and then turned his head to ask his mother another question – where was this boat? – but when he turned, he saw that she had vanished. He shook his head with a smile and he chuckled. Not once had she said good-bye to him.

And then he wondered if, when he does die, he would see her in heaven. Could she die or has she damned herself to live that existence for eternity?

He would have to ask her this when he saw her next.

He pulled the truck over and hopped out, leaving the engine running. He saw that the other trucks had done the same.

“You all right, Vince?” Karl jumped out of his truck and walked up to him, followed by Chris.

Vince looked at Karl and then turned back in the direction they were heading. “Yeah, I’m fine. Look,” he said and turned back around. “I don’t know when, but we’re going to have to ditch the trucks and travel by boat.”

“I don’t want to know how you know this,” replied Karl behind a grin.

“Your mother?” Chris tried to ignore Karl’s sarcasm.

“Yeah,” Vince answered and then told them everything that she had said to him about her allegiance with Ilias.

“So,” Karl said once Vince was finished. “Do we know where to go to get this boat?”

“Mom said to keep going in the same direction. There’ll be a boat waiting for us.”

“Did she tell you where to go once we’re on this mysterious boat?” Chris was suspicious of Tracy and Ilias – she didn’t trust them now that they are working together.

“No,” said Vince. “But I think it won’t matter once we’re on it.”

“Do you think it’ll guide us by itself?”

Vince pictured a skeletal figure rowing the boat for them across the calm water, but he didn’t tell them for fear of being ridiculed. “I think there will be a guide of some sort with the boat,” he said at last.