Chapter 35

Mykella looked down and saw that her shoes had been torn open at the heel and she knelt down to survey the damage. She lifted the back end of the rubber heel and let it flop back into place and she grinned to herself as it reminded her of some toy puppet with an operating mouth. She glanced up ahead and saw that she was actually a lot closer to Orion’s castle than she thought.

But the strange thing was that she could hear roars of Dreamkillers outside, most likely coming from the other side of the castle. She didn’t waste too much time pondering that oddity – she would find out what it all was when she found a way into the stronghold.

She sighed and decided on removing her shoes and laying them next to her. She figured once she was inside the fortress, she wouldn’t need them and they would be probably too loud anyway.

Once she was barefoot, she stood back up and progressed closer to the castle and stopped once she found the enormous moat circling the castle. She surveyed the moat with concern. How am I supposed to cross that?

Orion looked out into the clouded world he had created and then heard the third explosion as the rebels were trying to break into his home. He smiled and then looked at the empty birdcage where he had once had a pet dove, only to be set free by Mykella Brown.

He waved a hand through the air and the cage vanished from sight. He smiled to himself and allowed himself a moment to think of the ludicrousness of what was about to take place – there was no way they could possibly stop him.

“That was a neat trick.”

Orion jumped and spun around, cloak flowing in a circle. No one was in here when he had arrived from Eden. But still, there stood a young man hiding in the shadows of the doorway. He looked vaguely familiar, almost like out of a dream. It didn’t matter; this young man was in his own private chamber, had in fact snuck up here and broke in.

Something happened to Orion in that moment…something that has never happened before. Orion got a headache. He reached up and massaged his temple, trying to figure this man out – where did he come from?

“Who are you?” he finally asked, feeling vulnerable at the lack of knowledge.

The black-haired man laughed a little and moved into the open room, into better light. “I’m surprised you don’t remember me, Master Orion.” The man crossed his hands in front of his stomach as he made his way over to Orion.

There were thousands who addressed him as Master Orion. He shook his head. “I demand that you tell me your name. At once!”

The man smiled and bowed his head. “Alexius Grendel.”

Orion closed his mouth and stared at the young man for a moment. Alexius? My Alexius? There was no way. The last time he saw him he was a horrid monster fashioned from his own nightmares – his beautiful nightmares. No, this man was no way Alexius. And what did he say was his last name?

“Grendel?” Orion tried to look hard into the man, but there seemed to be no way of getting inside him.

“You can stop Master; I am no longer mortal. You can no more read my mind than know the outcome of the Great War.” Alexius crossed the room and glanced out into the darkened day. “And yes, I was a Grendel. Nephew of Nanaac Grendel.”

“Then what the hell were you doing in my father’s kingdom?” Now Orion felt like he had been cheated on – he felt like some young boy again, and he didn’t like it.

“I was doing the same as Barbus Whitaker. I was spying on you and your father.” Alexius looked at Orion and smiled.

Orion tried to remain in control and he told himself that it didn’t matter – that was all in the past. And he isn’t even alive now is he? “Why are you here?”

Alexius turned and walked back to where Orion was standing. “I have come to you to warn you. If I am not mistaken, you have been forewarned that you have too many schemes you are conducting,”

Orion recalled when Beth and Eric, her naïve “brother,” had come to him with that warning – which the Oracles had agreed with them. He nodded his hooded head. “Yes, it was brought to my attention a while ago,” he said. “So?”

“You were told this because at the time you were trying to get into the Forbidden Realms, create a new Dreamkiller, and destroy Mykella Brown before she could be birthed. Shall I go on?” Alexius grinned and heard Orion grunt. “And now I have come to you to put one more on your plate.”

Orion turned and looked out the window. The torch-bearers stood back to give room to the front line who carried their ramming tree. There wasn’t anything he wanted to hear from his dead friend. Friends will stab each other in the back, he thought, and even told Alexius this a long time ago. But why couldn’t he see where this was going? Why couldn’t he see inside Alexius?

“If you should happen to destroy Mykella, you would also be happening to destroy yourself.”

Orion turned, this was something new, and he cocked an eyebrow. “And what does that mean?”

“Her blood flows in your veins. If her blood ceases to flow, so shall it also happen to yours.”

“You speak in riddles, damn you. You know I’ve always hated puzzles.” Orion was about to grab Alexius and toss him out the window, but he knew that he couldn’t touch a spirit. “What is it you mean?”

Alexius shook his head. “I am not allowed to say. But I can tell you this: Use extreme caution when it comes to Mykella Brown.” And before he could say any more, his form disappeared, leaving Orion staring at the spot he had just been.

He made sure his old friend would not return before turning and glancing back out the window. The loud crash of the door exploding inward could be felt and heard all the way up to his chamber. He was brought back to the present and grinned as he thought about the rebels rushing in.

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“Come in, my Sweets,” Orion chuckled. “You have ten flights of hell before you even reach me – if you survive that long.”

* * *

Mykella heard the crash as she made her way closer to the moat. She didn’t think too long about what the crash might have been – as long as it was preoccupying Orion long enough for me to get in. She made her way to the edge and as she looked down, she felt pain shooting through her left foot. She looked down and saw blood.

“Damn,” she grunted and sat down on the ground. She turned her foot over and noticed that the ball of her foot had at least twenty cuts, drawing blood from each, which had been caused most likely from the sticks she had crunched over on her way here.

She shook her head in disgust with herself – how could she have let something this trivial happen – and then she turned her right foot up and saw almost an identical picture. Except this one had fewer cuts.

“This’ll make my trip that much easier,” she whispered in sarcasm. My trip, she thought. My trip, all alone. And then the feeling overwhelmed her so ferociously that she wanted to turn back right now and say damn it all to hell.

She never realized how alone she felt partly because she had never been alone until now. She had her father and his group of Watchers. Then she had Agnes. Then, of all people, she had Orion. Then, and lastly, she had Barbus (how she wished that he would have changed his mind about coming with her). And now she had to find her way with a shattered hand and a close-to-shattered soul.

She had to force herself to continue until the end – no matter how morbid it might become. She knows that it will be almost impossible to listen to her inner voice of reason, but she knew she had to find some way to do it.

She really didn’t know why, but everything depended on her survival.

She sat there for a while, letting the pain in her feet recede as best they could at the moment. She looked down into the blackened waters in the moat and wondered both how deep the moat was and what kinds of creatures were swimming in this foreboding water.

She glanced up and down her side and saw that there was no way across the gap – the only way was to head around to the front of the fortress and use the drawbridge. But to do that would be lunacy. She would be dead in less than a second if she attempted to use the front entrance. And, who was in the front, causing the ruckus?

“Mykella,”

Her heart almost crashed through her chest as Mykella jumped up and spun around as the sudden voice frightened her. Luckily for her it was not Orion that stood behind her, rather some young red-haired young woman she had never seen before.

“How…how do you know my name?”

The stranger smiled and shook her head, her hair falling into her face. “I know a lot about you, my dear,” she said and walked closer to her.

Mykella took several steps back, feeling the edge of the moat centimeters from her heel, and then stopped. “Who are you?” She didn’t know if she really wanted to know. There was something peculiar about this woman, she didn’t know,

“My name was Leigh,” she said which caused Mykella to look confused. “Orion killed me a long time ago while I was in my lover’s dream.”

Mykella just stood there, staring at her – not daring to speak for fear of angering a ghost she had never met before. Was this one of Orion’s tricks?

“No,” said Leigh and inched closer to Mykella. “I am not a trick. I am a messenger.”

“Oh,” Mykella grinned behind sarcasm. “And from whom is this message?”

Leigh was obviously not in the mood for sarcasm. “God,” was all she had to say.

Mykella blinked and then found herself moving closer to Leigh. She could find no words to say what she really wanted to know. Deep down she really wanted to know why God had abandoned her like he had. She wanted to know why she, Mykella Brown, was damned to live this life. There were so many why’s running through her head, it felt like it might explode before she was able to ask just one of them.

“Clear everything, Mykella. I’m not here to answer your questions. I wish I could, but I’m not.”

“Then why are you here?”

Leigh looked past Mykella and looked up at the ominous fortress and wondered if Alexius was having any luck with Orion. How she longed to be back in his arms. She missed the days she and Alexius laid side by side in her bed. They were barely adults in the eyes of the law, but many – if they knew – would have cast them out. Their love would have been forbidden at such a young age.

She turned back and looked at Mykella. “I am here to warn you about Orion.”

It was like her blood had turned to ice at the sheer mention of Orion’s name. It was evident enough that she needed to be cautious of Orion, but to be warned about Orion?

“I don’t know how else to put this,” said Leigh and then glanced down. “If you kill Orion, then you kill yourself.”

Mykella lowered her eyebrows as she attempted to understand the message. “I don’t,” but she couldn’t finish her thought.

“I know,” replied Leigh. “All I can tell you is that your blood flows inside one another. That if one of you dies, so shall the other.”

“But, why,”

Leigh raised her hand in a pathetic gesture of silence. “I truly cannot say further – I do not know any more than I have told you already.”

Mykella closed her eyes for a moment. She knew she had some familial connection to Orion, but she guessed that it came from Nanaac’s sister. But what the hell did all this mean to her now? If she were to kill him, would she die in the same act?

Leigh didn’t want to leave the young girl alone and frightened. “Down there you’ll find a fallen tree – it reaches his fortress. You should be able to cross it easily enough. There’s a secret door at the back of the building. It shouldn’t be guarded right now, with the fighting going on in the front.”

“Fighting?” Mykella looked up from her thoughts. “Who’s fighting?”

“Orion’s Dreamkillers against a large number of rebellious Dreamkillers.”

Mykella thought this over in her mind for a moment. “Interesting,” she said to herself and then turned back to Leigh. “I understand that you don’t know anything else about my prophecy. But if you hear more, will you let me know?”

Leigh wanted to place a reassuring hand on Mykella’s shoulder, but knew she couldn’t touch her flesh, so she smiled nevertheless. “I will.”

“Thank you – for your help with the back door,” said Mykella and gave a half-hearted smile.

“Be careful,” Leigh said and began fading away. “Everything depends on you. And you are not from Lady Samantha’s line.” And then her appearance was no more visible to Mykella.

Mykella sighed, not knowing how to take Leigh’s final words, and turned and found the fallen tree Leigh had mentioned. She walked over to the enormous tree and wondered how the hell she was going to get up on the damned thing in order to use it as a bridge. Once she came up to it, she couldn’t even see the top edge of the tree. She sighed again, this time out of disappointment, and looked down at her fingernails. She laughed to herself as she told herself that she had only one good hand. There was no way she was going to claw her way to the top.

Top? Who said anything about having to go up to the top?

She looked straight ahead and saw that the tree was, in fact, hollow – as if God himself had carved the damned thing out like a pumpkin (her father had told her all about pumpkins and Halloween – she will make sure to give the people back their past). She reached up with her left hand and grazed it across the dry wood around the open center of the world which was once a tree. She shuddered and then took her first step inside this other weird world of total darkness, and prayed that nothing lived inside this tunnel.