Chapter 44

Had Mykella known that her father was looking for her, she would have reconsidered her plans and stayed where she was. But young hearts rarely stay in one place for very long and she was no exception.

“I’m going back in,” she said to the others.

She didn’t like the idea any more than the next person, but she had a feeling that this was the place to end all things. God is Heaven. Orion is Hell. This fortress is Purgatory. Where she came up with that idea, she had no clue; it just came to her mind as she stared up at the endless wall that stood before her. Inside these walls, she thought, there is no Time.

“We’re going with you,” replied a short round woman with long blond hair that hasn’t seen a brush in a very long time.

“No,” Mykella said as she spun around. “You have to get away from this place.”

The woman smiled and took Mykella’s hands. “You have already saved us. Let us repay that debt.”

No matter what she would say, or wanted to, Mykella knew they would follow her anyway. There was a part of her that was relieved to know that she wouldn’t be going into the fortress alone. And then there was also that other part of her (in the savior-of-mankind part) that wished that they would go as far away from this place as their legs would take them.

“How do you think we should get in?”

Mykella turned her head to look at the man who had asked the question she had. He was a tall man with a bald head except for a crescent moon of gray hair lining the back of his head. She shrugged her shoulders and knew now that she was just as ignorant as she was when she first fell asleep with Agnes keeping watch over her sleeping body.

“Well,” she began and released her hands from the woman’s. “I guess we could go through the front door.”

“It’ll take some time to get there,” the woman said and they all turned and saw the moat.

They were still on the inside perimeter, which was a positive aspect. But they noticed that the wall of the fortress in this area expanded out to the edge of the moat, making passage around impossible.

“We’ll have to go back that way,” Mykella said, looking at the very long wall. She only hoped that the front door was just beyond this endless wall.

She glanced down and remembered that she wasn’t wearing any shoes. She had forgotten that she had to take them off when she was at the mouth of the tree. The tree where Satan and God were fighting over her. She looked down at the hand that Orion had previously crushed with just his mind and recalled how Satan had mended it to perfection. She couldn’t help wondering what kind of payment she would eventually have to make – even though the devil himself told her not to worry about it.

Why they were so damned interested in her she couldn’t understand. All her life she had just been Mykella Brown, a girl being raised in an evil world that her father swore did not exist twenty years ago. And then she finds out that she is to become mankind’s savior. Now all she wants to be is the old Mykella Brown. Nothing more.

As she continued having these thoughts she kept moving her legs, one foot in front of the other. She was tired, but she knew that she would get nowhere unless she kept moving. And as she moved, she continued having odd memories resurface in her mind.

She thought of her last encounter with Ben Krieger in the hut during the thunderstorm. It had been Krieger, not her own father, who told her of her prophecy. It was Krieger who told her what she was to become. At that moment, she loved him more than her own father because he opened up to her in ways her father had not. And then he dies sitting next to her. She didn’t remember how long she sat next to his dead body before leaving him to rot – perhaps a day.

And then she thought of her Aunt Alexandria (Xan) whom she had dreamt of with her mother. Xan had mentioned that she and Xan had met once before when she was an unborn child. If that were so, then why didn’t Dad tell her anything about that, even when she knew the truth? He never told her that she had entered his dreams when she was unborn.

In fact, how did she know this now? But it was all coming back to her, wasn’t it? The dreams? The training? Yes; everything was coming clear now. The anger began to cloud her vision. She wasn’t angry with Orion trying to get into the Forbidden Realms by sending new Dreamkillers (Beth and Eric) and that weird demonic dog to kill them. She was angry at her father for never mentioning any of this to her…ever.

“Will this wall ever end?” Her breathing was becoming heavy and she was having trouble seeing straight. There were times when she had to drag her hand across the wall to keep her on track. She never knew that anger could mess with your eyesight.

She remembered being so terrified after her encounter with Xan (she had thrown her across the bedroom) that she was found later by Vince crouched beneath an airplane seat, knees up to her chest. She had been crying so long and hard that she couldn’t tell him why she was so upset.

He held her in his arms and she knew that everything would be okay. He had that way with her. Boy, if he only knew how things would change, he would have changed his attitude pretty quick.

But no one knew and so he would never tell her of these dreams, of his teachings, of her in the future. She was to become mankind’s savior, and so he kept from her important information that might have been useful in her fight against Orion.

And what about Chris and Karl? They didn’t tell her either. Was she so evil to them that they couldn’t tell her one shred of truth?

Everything began spinning in her mind then and there was nothing she could do to stop the world from moving. Her eyes rolled into the back of her head, exposing the whites, and she stopped walking and fell to the ground, almost hitting her head against the wall in the process.

“No,” screamed several people at once as they ran to Mykella and skidded to a halt.

A couple people grabbed Mykella’s arms and lifted her up.

“No,” a woman cried as tears fell from her eyes. “Don’t do this.”

A thunderous sound erupted from the sky at that moment and they all looked up. There was nothing to see except for the dark clouds of smoke, but they could have sworn they heard angels crying from Heaven.

“Come on,” the woman cried as she grabbed Mykella’s arm. “We have to get her moving.” She had a feeling, hearing the heavens cry out, that Time was the most important factor playing in this game.

Several other people came to her aid and together they placed Mykella’s arms around them and began to walk, dragging her bare feet in the process. It seemed a crude thing to do to such a person as important as Mykella was, however, she wanted to get into the fortress – even if it killed her.

“I must kill Orion,” they heard Mykella mumble under her breath. “I am Orion.”

They stopped walking when they heard this and they all glanced over at the woman who seemed to be in charge with fright in their eyes. In her death-like appearance, could this young woman be telling the truth? Is she Orion?

“We need to keep going,” said the woman after hesitating. She, like the others, was concerned by what she had heard. There’s no way this pretty young woman could be the God-King Orion. She’s too innocent and naïve to the evils of our world. Then why had she said it if it weren’t true?

“Do you think she’ll be okay enough to fight Orion?”

.The woman stopped, turned and looked at the man holding Mykella’s other arm. “I don’t know, David,” she said. She wanted more than anything to lie to him and tell him that, yes, she would be right a rain when her time has come to fight Orion. But she couldn’t lie to him any more than she could lie to herself. “We must agree that there are higher powers at work here. If she is to fight Orion, then we have to know that she will; whether in flesh or spirit.”

The man called David didn’t like her answer, but he nodded nevertheless and continued walking with Mykella. “You really have a way of telling half-truths, Ambrosia,” he grinned at the woman. She returned his grin with a smile.

“Let’s keep going,” said Ambrosia and pushed her hair out of her eyes. “It can’t be that much further.”

By the time they reached the corner of the wall and saw what was on the other side, both Ambrosia and David stood and stared, mouths slightly open, in horror. They did not see the front door as they had hoped, but instead they saw a large garden void of any vegetation.

“Oh my God,”

Ambrosia, startled, turned her head and saw Mykella was back in a conscious state of mind.

“You all right, dear?”

Mykella blinked and looked at Ambrosia. “How did I get here?”

David wrapped his arm around her tiny shoulder and gave it a loving squeeze. “We carried you,” he said behind a gentle smile.

Mykella shook her head and turned around. She saw everyone she had saved standing behind her, all with sympathetic eyes.

When they saw that she had come back, everyone dropped to their knees and bowed their heads to her.

“No!” Mykella spun around several times, making herself dizzy, and put her hands to her temples. “I can’t do this. Stand up! I’m no one – just Mykella Brown!” There was no way they could be bowing to her.

“Young Mykella Brown,” said Ambrosia behind a smile. “When you lost consciousness, the heavens cried for you. Angels were weeping. We all heard it.” Everyone nodded in agreement. “Now you tell me; are you just Mykella Brown?” She went back and joined the others as she went down on her knee and lowered her head.

“You can’t be doing this,” said Mykella as she was trying not to burst out in tears.

She turned her eyes from her worshippers and looked instead at the grotesque garden. There were rows upon rows of giant spikes protruding from the ground and on them hung corpses. Some of the bodies had been leaning over their spike as if they were struck from the front, and some were leaning back against their spikes as if they were struck from behind. But no matter how they died, their remains were hung out in this garden to rot for all Dreamkillers eyes.

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Some of these corpses were already skeletons and some were relatively new dead – their flesh just beginning to tighten.

“If you all want to worship someone so much, then you should be worshiping all these people who’ve died by Orion and stuck out here like some freak show.” Anger was seeping back into Mykella’s head as she looked from body to body.

At least she was angered by Orion instead of her father this time.

She looked up at the spike in front of her and she screamed when she saw the eyes of the corpse suddenly open and look down at her.

“Be angry not at your father,” the man garbled out as best he could. “He was doing what he truly thought was the right thing to do. He loves you more than you shall ever know.”

A picture came to her head then. It was an image of her future father and how he had become a Dreamkiller. She looked back into the dead man’s eyes.

“Does he sacrifice himself for me? Does Orion choose his soul over mine?”

She looked deep into his eyes and a strange familiarity struck her. She had seen them before; not the man, but the eyes. It was as if these eyes produced the answer for her as she struggled to remember where she had seen them. They belonged to the man who had given her the bread to take to Ben Krieger and told her that he was going to die and he told her how to find Krieger.

Mykella laughed despite herself and turned to Ambrosia. “Look, I’m talking to a dead guy,” she said. She knew this man, those eyes, was telling her the truth. Her father did love her; he was trying to protect her – she could see that now.

But he still had not answered her question.

“Is he going to sacrifice himself for me?” she repeated.

The eyes paused and then looked deep into her soul. “Everyone has made a sacrifice, Mykella. They know what is right.”

She tried to remain calm – it was a hard thing to accomplish; knowing that her father was going to choose Orion to save his daughter. “Is there anything I can do to stop him?” She knew that, even if her father wanted to save his daughter, there was no way Orion was going to let her live.

“Go into the fortress, into his sacred room, and pray before his altar.”

That wasn’t the answer she was looking for. She wanted to be told what to do to prevent her father’s future from happening. She became frustrated at once. “I don’t see how that’s going to solve anything,” she said up to the lifeless body that hung from his spike. “My mother prayed a lot and it didn’t save her from getting killed.”

The body said no more; the eyes returned to their natural state of death.

She stood there staring up at the figure, waiting for it to speak again. She waited for what felt like an hour before she gave up.

Mykella looked over at the other dead faces and saw the same look on them: Fear and surprise. She knew how Orion operated now; he made sure his victims were afraid of him first, and then he killed them. Their surprised look comes when he impales them. And to create a garden of the dead meant that Orion enjoyed what he did to them.

“Hey,” someone shouted.

They turned and saw a man pointing at the fortress. They approached him and saw that he had found a door.

“It’s not the front door,” Mykella pointed out and smiled at the man. “But it’ll get us in. Thank you.”

“What’re the chances of it being locked?” asked Ambrosia with a smile.

Mykella stared at the door. It looked like it was built right into the walls of the fortress without any hinges or even a frame. “Well,” she said at last. She had to admit, she had the same thought run through her mind while looking at it. “We’ll just have to knock it down if it’s locked. I don’t think I can walk much farther on this,” she looked down at the pebbles and dirt (sporadic tufts of grass jutted up in places). “Besides, there’s more than enough of us to do it.”

They all agreed without words and Ambrosia’s eyes went from the door to Mykella. “After you, my dear.”

Mykella was in front of them and hesitated before reaching for the iron handle. Did she really want to go through with this? No, her mind screamed. But it has to be done.

She reached out her hand to grab the handle and before she could touch it, the door inched open with a sluggish grinding of rock on rock movement.

A crude stone stairway met her as she looked into wherever the door opened. Moss had grown in several areas along the walls going down.

Like her hesitation to approach the door, Mykella didn’t want to go down these steps. One part of her mind told her that one step could crumble beneath her bare feet and she would fall, hitting her head several times on the way down, and ultimately killing her. Another part told her that Orion would be at the bottom of the steps, killing her just as easily as a crushed skull slamming against the steps. And the last, probably smallest, part of her mind told her that she had no choice (it was made for her before birth after all) but to go down these steps.

With one hand planted firmly on the wall for support should anything break beneath her feet, Mykella placed her bloody foot down on the first step. When nothing happened, and her confidence increased, she began a slow descent into the unknown.

The others followed close behind, holding each others’ hands. They, like Mykella, didn’t trust the steps and so they made a human chain.

When Mykella reached the bottom landing, nothing happened except that she came to a large wooden door. This time there was no hesitation. She pushed the door open and walked into a room she thought she knew, except she couldn’t’ve been here before because her father never let her out of the apartment.

But as all memories seem to find their way back, she felt an instantaneous sickening overcome her. This can’t be the same room, she thought and went over to the altar. It was a knee-high stone structure and she leaned down and grazed her fingers across the surface.

Mykella tried to remember exactly what had happened then but all she could recall was that she had been in this very room. But then another memory surfaced – this one very recent. She had opened the door, the one on the other side of the room, and had witnessed a younger Orion in some sexual macabre act with an even younger-looking woman in chains.

Both times she had been in here by way of dreams. And now, here she stood, in the highest conscious state that anyone could be in. And she didn’t like it now any more than she did when seeing Orion.

The room was empty except for her and her new friends. At least that was a small relief – she didn’t have to face this alone.

She looked back at the altar and remembered what the eyes had told her: she had to pray. Why? To get answers? She had to get to Orion – to end this war – and she really didn’t think praying would do that for her. Time was the most important thing to her right now.

But didn’t she tell herself that Time stood still within these walls? That time meant nothing?

Who was she kidding?

The longer she waited, the higher the chance that her father would sacrifice himself for her. She may still be angry at him for keeping his secrets, however he was still her father and she loved him more than life itself.

“Are you going to pray now, dear?”

Mykella turned and looked at Ambrosia with a surprised look (she knew that Ambrosia had heard the eyes as did everyone else present). The idea of her friend even suggesting a thing like praying at a time like this shocked her. “No,” she said.

Ambrosia gave a shocked expression of her own. To say no to God is eternal damnation.

“We have to find Orion and my father first.”

Ambrosia’s expression changed to that of sympathy and sorrow. “I really think you should pray.” She tried but Mykella shook her head.

“I don’t have time right now. I’m not saying no to the idea of praying; I’m just saying I have to get my father first. Then I’ll pray.” She was heading for the door when Ambrosia said,

“For the past fifteen years I have prayed to God that someone would come – that he would send someone. And then you show up. You cannot possibly say ‘wait’ to God when he wants you to pray. Prayer is a line to God that no one else can share.”

Mykella stopped and lowered her head. Then she turned around with tears in her eyes. She was struggling with what to do.

“Several of us can go ahead to look for your father and the others will wait for you outside that door,” said Ambrosia as she pointed to the door to Mykella’s back. “There’s no way we’re not going to give you what you need, Mykella. But you must also listen to your God as well.”

Mykella went back to Ambrosia and fell into the woman’s arms.

Ambrosia patted Mykella’s hair. “I know, Mykella. Your destiny is different from mine, but I believe that the two cannot exist without the other,” she whispered and Mykella pulled away.

“What do you mean?” she asked and wiped her eyes with the cuff of her shirt.

“You are mankind’s savior and I am to help mankind’s savior. I believe that destiny has brought us together,” explained Ambrosia and then she smiled. “And there’s nothing anyone can do to me to stop me from helping you.”

Mykella shook her head in sorrow. “You won’t live if you try to help me,” she said. “That’s why I told you all to get away from here. You’ll all die now – what kind of a savior am I if I can’t save your lives?”

Ambrosia placed a hand on Mykella’s shoulder and grinned. “Maybe you should ask that when you pray. I don’t need any answers, my dear, but it looks like you have a lot of unanswered questions.”

“I don’t see how,” Mykella began and Ambrosia put a soft finger on Mykella’s lips.

“I’ll be right outside the door and when you’re done, we’ll catch up with the others, who by then should know where your father is,” she said and turned her back on Mykella. She went to the door and opened it, saw that no one was out in the corridor and they filed out of the room. She smiled back once at Mykella and then closed the door behind her where she waited like she said she would.

Mykella’s first thought was that they had abandoned her (but didn’t she want them to go away in the beginning?) and then she tried to let that thought go as she took a deep breath, held it for a moment, and then let it out slowly.

She paused while looking down at the altar, feeling out of place knowing what she was about to do. No one was watching her, so why feel embarrassed?

She went over to the altar and knelt down before it. She clasped her hands together and propped her elbows up on the altar. “God,” she began, and still felt a little foolish. “You told me to come here and pray, so I’m here.”

She closed her eyes and tried to let herself go, to let her mind be as open as it could possibly get.

“There are so many questions you have,”

She wanted to open her eyes, but she knew the voice was talking inside her head and she knew that if she opened them, she may lose the connection. “Where’s my father?” she asked, not knowing why she was speaking out loud.

“Your friends are very close to him as we converse, Mykella,” answered the voice. “But that’s not what you really wanted to know. If you ask me from your soul, I will not deny you every answer I can give. But you must ask from your soul, because if you ask from your lips, I’ll know you are holding back.”

Does my father have to sacrifice himself for me?

“Yes; he must in order to believe he has done something to help you.”

Is my prophecy to be mankind’s savior?

“Yes and no.”

That wasn’t the answer she wanted to hear; it was like God himself was trying to hide something from her.

“In your eyes you will become mankind’s savior, so the answer is yes. However, in my eyes, you are to open the gates to Heaven. I have closed them once Orion tainted Eden and they have been closed ever since, so you can understand that there are a lot of souls roaming around, confused and lost.”

Am I the Second Coming of Christ? She didn’t know where she had heard that before, maybe from her mother.

“No.” There was a smile emanating from the voice. “Jesus will do that when the time has come. He opened the gates when he was sacrificed. As will you.”

She suddenly felt faint. She had to sacrifice herself? And then she remembered her brief encounter with Beth. What is my relation to Orion?

There was a pause from the voice of God, as if He didn’t want to answer that one question. “He is your father.”

And that was when her eyes snapped open. She knew from a very young age that Vince was not her birth father – some deadbeat named Donnie was. There was no way Orion could possibly be her father. She was only twenty years old. She closed her eyes again, head still swimming in uncertainty. Explain, damnit.

“When Orion was sixteen years of age, he conceived a child with his mother – he raped her without knowing who she was until after the fact.”

But, she was killed – Orion impaled her.

“Yes; and that was when I stepped in. I took that unborn soul – cells that small still have souls. I give souls to every little thing that is alive. And just because the sperm and egg has just been in contact, doesn’t mean it isn’t alive. I took that soul and saved it for a special person and a special time. I saved that soul for you, Mykella. Agnes thought you were Lady Samantha’s daughter, but not true. You are Orion’s daughter.”

There was nothing she could do or say. She knew she was being told the truth – and not even half-truths.

Do I have to sacrifice myself for everyone? Is there nothing I can do to stop it?

She opened her eyes without waiting for a response. Her entire body had gone numb from the information she had received. She didn’t want to know the answer to her final question, even though she meant it at the time she asked it.

She stood up, using her hand on the altar for balance, and slowly made her way to the door where her only friend waited for her.

It took her a moment to realize that she was reaching out her hand for the door, and when she touched the handle, she had to use every ounce of her soul – what a morbid concept that is now, she thought – to push it open.

Ambrosia was shocked to see Mykella so soon, but when she saw the drained look on the young woman’s pale face, she quickly stepped over to her and caught Mykella as she fell, unconscious, into her arms.

“My God, what happened?” Ambrosia whispered and laid Mykella’s body down on the floor and waited for her savior to awaken.