Truer words have never been spoken.
Through my touch, I was reading her, seeing her day as she had seen it. I heard every word Justus said to her. I saw her battle, every sketch she made, every memory. A shiver of pure rage surged through me. I had no idea who or what was jacking with her emotions, but they’d crossed a line. She couldn’t handle this now. No one could.
I knew without a doubt that she was not aware of the ceremony before us. She was told more than once, by Justus, that death was breaths away. And sadly, I could not tell her that was a lie—for who we are right now would not exist any longer if lore was on point. We would never be the same.
My first thought was to take us from this tempting privacy and show her the books each member of the Rampart Warriors had studied. The mythology that somehow was my life, one that I was only vaguely aware of. But I didn’t want her to read our future; I wanted to whisper it into her thoughts, I wanted to be able to stop if it became too much for her.
I let my hand find hers and gently pulled her toward the back of the tree home. There was a pathway, one that looked like a long pier that stretched across the sky, nearly meeting the rampart.
She dug her nails into my hand. Any other time, I may have offered a playful tease on this fear of heights, but I didn’t this time. Instead, I clearly sent out my energy, letting her see the safety net I had all around her. Even if by some fluke she managed to fall off this pier that was fifteen feet wide, my essence would catch her. Not that I planned on taking my hands off her in the first place, but her peace of mind was all that mattered right then.
“I’ve got you.”
Not long after we began to walk this path, her fears started to mark the air. She put her arm around me, not understanding why darkness was shattering the violet sky.
“It’s part of what I have to explain,” I thought gently.
I waited until we reached the edge and sat down, letting our legs dangle below. Instinct told her to add her energy to my safety net. It was quite adorable. Of all the things this girl could fear, heights was one of them.
“If you’re trying to teach me to call on adrenaline, it’s not working. That’s hard ground below; not water,” she quipped, or at least tried to; the quiver in her thoughts outlined the trepidation in her, the pounding heart that I could hear as if it were my own.
“I wanted you to understand what the warriors guard. What is sacred.”
She glanced at the dark edges in the air. I could read her like a book. She thought she was infecting this place. In her mind, she was as dark as Phoenix had so rudely explained to her. She didn’t think she deserved this place, but what she didn’t understand was that anyone could create these shards of darkness.
“This border,” I thought with a nod to the wall of thick energy before us that had every color known to man swirling within it. “This is where light and dark meet. We call it euphoria.”
Her eyes, which were a ripe green, carefully moved to mine.
“At this point, the energy level is so powerful that the mind can literally manifest its corporeal or non-corporeal desires instantly.”
“Like The Realm?” she questioned.
I only offered a nod before I spoke. “It’s not as malice. It can be, but usually it’s at peace. It is where any one soul can search deep within.”
As the shards of darkness expanded on the ripples of energy, I could see our life together, those short few months, begin to play out—only this time, instead of approaching each moment with curiosity, or even anger, she was soaked in terror.
“This place is very sensitive to how you feel. What you hide from yourself and what you share with the world. It’s a form of judgment, a path we all walk at death. The moment the replay button is pushed and we are allowed to view our lives as an outsider.”
She was not new to something this revealing. She had met death’s door before. She had seen her life flash before her eyes. The only good thing that came out of that was her determination to live. One that she still held but feared.
“Our souls are light,” I thought tenderly. “We’re all born in that bliss. We allow darkness in. We allow it to control our path.”
She broke her stare with me and gazed out at the energy, our life on display. Once again, I could swear I could read her mind. She thought that she had let too much darkness in, that she was saturated in the energy we were at war with.
“Muse with me,” I said as I laced my fingers with hers. “Imagine standing here, full of light, in pure form. Bathed in it.”
She let out a deep breath, letting her mind erase the canvas of fears before us now.
“Then you let one dark thought emerge. One doubt. One fear.”
She had thousands swimming in her mind, but she let one surface, and as it did, the energy before us began to shatter with darkness.
“Now, here is where the power of the soul comes into play. It would be wise to push those dark thoughts away, to not focus on that one dark thought, but on the mass of light surrounding it.”
The cracks of darkness remained around us. In fact, they were spreading, a telling sign that she was struggling to only let one dark thought forward.
“But…” I said as my other hand started to move along her arm, giving us both a sensation that was hard to ignore, “the human soul is curious. It is designed to constantly explore…” I said as my fingertips moved further up her arm, allowing the back of my hand to graze her delicate frame.
Her sigh made my heart thunder. It was hard to hold on to the lessons I was trying to remember, trying to share with her. Those dark shards of light started to grow smaller, and the energy around us was kissed with a scarlet wave.
“…and grow. Sometimes that exploration takes you into the depths of darkness…” I leaned into her, letting my lips hover just over her neck, “…so deep that the idea of bliss is nonexistent.”
“It exists,” she said, closing her eyes to focus only on my touch.
I held back the urge to pull her lips to mine and decided to let mine rest on her shoulder. “Now…there are two sides to everything. Say you were on the side of darkness, deep in fear and pain, an for a instant you allowed yourself hope.” My lips melted into her skin, offering a tender kiss, which caused chills to spread across her body. I smiled; there was nothing more mesmerizing than seeing her body react to my touch. “To really feel that emotion.” Her eyes opened as she peered down at me. That look…it was so inviting. Everything about her was calling me closer, telling me to shut our mental conversation off and let our energy take over.
I reached my fingertips to trace her jaw line. “You would see shards of light. Strong souls can let go of everything that pulled them into the darkness and focus on the bliss they want, they need.”
I had to steal one kiss, one little touch. “Most are so riddled with guilt or grief and remain in the darkness…they are afraid of peace.”
“Why?” she breathed against my lips. The question was not for me, but for her.
“Souls in darkness fear what they cannot see.” My fingertips traced her eyes, looking for any sign of blue, any hope. “Most in the darkness are too afraid to look into the light, too afraid to see the monsters that might be revealed, not knowing that when we allow ourselves to be completely illuminated, monsters do not exist—for we know then that we are indeed one, everything and nothing.”
I could hear her pounding heart. “Willow…you’re not weak...you’re not afraid of what the light will reveal.”
At that moment, the energy around us grew so bright, so powerful that on instinct I closed my eyes. A second later, I felt her lips on mine, her crawl into my lap. Her arms were around my shoulders, her legs were on either side of me, and the power of her energy had embraced me so tightly that breathing was not an option—not that I could breathe through our deep, provocative kiss anyway.
My arms wrapped around her back, daring to pull up the rim of her shirt so I could feel her skin against my arms.
“I’ll never be too afraid to travel any path that leads to you,” she thought with a rasp as her body tightened around mine.
When I felt her skin hum against mine, I pulled back. Her eyes were hooded, her breath was short, but I could see the waves of blue. I saw her soul peeking out at me.
I don’t know why I did it, but I laughed as I caressed her hair and stared into her eyes, watching with wonder as the blue waved across her eyes.
“What do you see?” she asked, oddly not taking offense to my out of line reaction.
“Hope.”
“You doubted how I feel about you?” she asked as the light around us dimmed.
I had to choose my words carefully. Even if her insights were on hiatus, the Radiance would have made her aware of any lie I spoke to her.
“I know your soul loves mine. I know that we are one.”
“I’m going to win this war.” She glanced over my shoulder. “This place is healing me.”
“That’s all you, Willow. This place allows you to feel your soul. The energy here walks you through your internal wars.”
“What else, Landen?”
I furrowed my brow at her.
“I get that this is a barrier. That the Veil backs up to it, that not far from here is Donalt’s doorstep. That it has to be guarded. That he is advancing—but I don’t get this trial. I don’t understand what we are fighting on our own, or apart.”
My eyes danced across her breathtaking image. “Saturn can be cruel, with or without a trial.”
She nodded once, remembering me telling her of that planet’s influence.
“It’s a time keeper. It has a way of showing you that life is not infinite in the form you are in. That the clock is running, you have a job to do. It allows you to see how far you have or have not come. It’s a cruel reality check.”
“What reality check are we being given?”
I reached to trace her eyes, which had settled on green once more. “We’re never going to have the life you want in Chara. We are not going to grow old in the home I built for you.”
“I know,” she breathed, not even trying to hide her grief.
“Guardian was given an eternity to cause Aliyanna to fall in love with him.”
She pulled away slightly, not understanding why I was not claiming that name right now. I kicked myself internally. I was acting like a coward. She didn’t need that from me now.
I raised my palm to cup the side of her face. “An eternity…in that amount of time, you would think that anyone could convince anyone else to fall in love with them, even if that emotion was felt for only comfort. But the story of Aliyanna and Guardian—of us—could never be described as a comfortable one. You see, love, like anger, embraces every emotion. It feels bliss and strife equally.”
“I love you,” she thought as that little crease in her brow deepened and confusion waved through her. Shards of darkness started to crack around us.
“You’re hidden, Willow,” I let my hand fall to her chest, to cover the flower that was pulsing as rapidly as her heart, “in here. Donalt put you there. He gave you no choice. I had no idea you were so deep.”
My arm braced her body, which was still wrapped around me. “Half of me says I would have made sure you felt safe enough to come out, to let your soul rule you. The other half says that I knew all along, that I wanted you to stay deep within, asleep, hiding from the nightmare of our life.”
Her gaze fell. She knew I was talking about this battle of her soul and ego.
“I’m going to win this war. I’m going to break free.”
“Just in time to see the end,” I thought before I could stop myself.
Her fear was so strong that the darkness flamed across the sky.
“What end?”
I let out a deep breath. “Our family, our world. They do not believe we are soul mates.”
Her eyes grew wide with obvious denial. I grasped her body against mine. “They think we are Flames. A soul made of one.”
“What?”
“They think we are the first Flames. That we were a soul divided in the cosmos, that now, after this cycle of life, we will come together as one.”
I wasn’t surprised to feel her denial. We had grown accustomed to not following the path of our parents’ thoughts.
“The marks,” I thought, with a nod to her chest. She raised her hand to touch my chest; even though my shirt was blocking her from my skin, I felt that mark scorch. It was like it was reaching for her mark; it wanted us to fit together as badly as I did.
“What do they mean?”
Her question allowed me to push my cravings down. I allowed my thoughts to manifest images of bleeding hearts. A flower that grew only in the Radiance along our borders. At its death, it created the massive trees that shield us, like the one we were perched on. In fact, it is said this is the first tree born in Chara. I had my doubts, but who am I to argue with mythology?
“When the flower blooms, what looks like a dagger is in the center. The flower dies as it blooms. The dagger stabs the earth, creating new life, a new generation. It was the symbol given to Guardian and Aliyanna. It was the source of nature that they used to explain their existence in this place.” I let those words settle before I went on. “It is said that they will return, bearing the marks. They will become Flames and rise to rule a new generation, a generation of Flames that will forevermore protect the world they live in and each world their mates reside within.”
“Reside?”
“All those souls, the ones that chose to remain where they found their soul mates, the Flames will protect those worlds, too. The Flames will be the fiercest army known to man and will defend each soul that was born on the land of Chara.”
“Would that not be all of them?”
I let my eyes tell her yes. She was gauging how massive this was.
“Why would anyone need an army that big? And where are the other Flames coming from? Is it only us?”
“The army would be built to take down darkness, those who brought torment. They would protect the world from an invasion from Esterious, or rather Donalt.”
“Then why are you afraid of it?”
That was a loaded question that I wasn’t sure I knew how to answer. When my gaze fell, she lifted my chin, demanding that I look her in the eyes.
“It’s the end for us.” I clenched my jaw, trying to fight my anger and grief. “We spent our existence fighting, and only half that time at each other’s side. We wasted it all. This is the end, Willow. This is it for you and me. If we are the Flames, then it’s game over. We rise. We rise and let our army, our final blow, create a new generation. No more deaths or births, no more walks down mortal paths.”
“We die instantly?”
“I don’t think it’s the same kind of death we have faced; more so that we will not be as we are anymore. It’s not clear.” That was an honest reply. No one knew for sure, but each had a belief that no, we would not die in that moment, but find immortality until we chose to rise to the cosmos. Basically, we would become a God and Goddess in their eyes.
I furrowed my brow as the gravity of my situation became more clear to me. One way or another, whether I was to be a Flame of Chara or a Master Escort, mortal form was in my past. That was a little eye-opening, unsettling. I suppose in some way, yes, I was dying.
“ What else?” she asked as her eyes raced across my image.
A shuttering breath escaped my lips. “It’s semantics…soul mates are not two, but a family of souls. It is possible to find a soul mate and not your Flame—the one you have divided your soul with. When we rise, all Flames must rise.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means if Brady and Felicity, Marc and Stella, Chrispin and Olivia, our parents, any member of Chara is not with their Flame, they will leave the one they are with to find them.”
“You’re not serious?”
“I am.”
“How could they?” she nearly raged, but she was
too afraid.
“It is said they would not feel the pain of that loss; that it will be a natural instinct.”
“It’s not natural to throw away love.”
“They feel that it is. That if they were with only a mere soul mate, the love of a Flame would elevate them to a new high, one that would allow no grief or remorse.”
“What about the families? The children?”
“Let’s just say that the majority are overly confident that they have their flames in hand and do not fear that within a day’s time their families will be shredded.”
She nearly turned green. I pulled her to me and leaned her head on my shoulder as I swayed us.
“And if we don’t rise? If we do not become Flames? If we ignore it?”
“I don’t know…I don’t know that we can ignore it. The marks are here.”
“But you are not at ease with this.”
“No…I’m not at ease with it because I know without a doubt that we are the originals, we are home again, we are the foundation of this dimension. But if we don’t rise, if we are both in a dark place and cannot face that hell…the belief system in Chara will crumble. Even if we find a spell or a way to kill Donalt in some other form, Chara will never be the same.”
“A dark place… “she nearly whispered in her thoughts.
I reached to cradle her face. “Lore states we will be as one. My deeds, all the hell I walked, the times…the times I let myself forget us in your absence…you’ll see that, feel it…I will see yours. Our past, our guilt, our regret will be shared. The last few months have only given us glimpses. I don’t ever want you to see the dark corners of my soul, and I know you don’t want me to see yours either. Us holding back, wanting to protect the other, us standing in our judgment—that could stop this ascension.” My eyes rushed across hers. “This is not something we can decide, tell ourselves to get over, to push through. The Radiance brings the subconscious forward, if we do not truly want to share this hell, if our fear holds us back, then…it will not happen.”
I glanced at the wall of energy behind her. “The entire world has believed that they will be invaded one day by Esterious, but the Flames will be there to stop it. Their belief is amplifying this, and it’s powerful enough to push this forward, even though we are not ready.”