After All This Time

Chapter Forty-Five

Five and I walked into the spinning doors of the hotel, while Dad had entered a couple minutes before us and was standing in front of everyone in the waiting area. Everyone started cheering at us as soon as we walked in the building, which was not a good sign.

"Woo! Y/N, Five! Yeah!" Klaus shouted at us, meanwhile the rest of them were whistling and yelling at us.

"Here they are!" Luther clapped.

"Yeah!"

Diego stood up and clapped, "That speech last night! Wow!"

"Whoa!"

"Brought me to tears, you big softie." Lila teased with her hands over her heart.

Viktor joined in and made fun of us, too, "I especially liked when you both referred to us as a family bound by destiny and love, and how no matter what you guys would always be by our side."

"Okay. Enough." Five said as we walked by Lila, who jumped down to give us a hug.

"Yes. That was great." Luther agreed.

"It was the many drinks that were talking, not us." I defended, "You guys are pretty disruptive the majority of the time."

"And your day's about to get worse." Dad said to all of us as Five sat on an orange armchair, while I leaned on the wall beside him, "The Norse had seven sleepers. The Blackfoot, seven stars. As a boy, I heard the legend of the seven bells. All these stories are the same. The village is under threat by flood, by fire, by a night that never ends. A shaman brings his disciples to a sacred cave. He tells them if they can ring the seven magic bells, the village will be saved, and all will be restored just as it was."

Lila raised her hand, "Reggie? Can we get a little less Brothers Grimm and a little more 'What the hell does this have to do with us?'"

"There is a truth to these myths."

"What?" I butted in, "The number seven is a lucky number?"

Dad glared at me and then continued his speech, "None of you can deny what's going on around us. All of existence will be gone by the end of the day, but whoever or whatever wove together space and time, they left a way to put things back together if the universe ever faced total annihilation. There is a portal in the universe. I built this hotel around it, and on the other side is the answer."

"And... we're supposed to, what? Just stroll in there, ring some bells, and fix this shit?" Luther suggested, half joking.

"Sarcasm aside, you are mostly right. Except for the guardian." He looked at all of us, almost as if he were excited.

"What kind of guardian?" Viktor asked.

Diego answered him and lifted up his half-chopped fingers, "Kinda guardian that does this. He had a sword."
"It is a force to be reckoned with." Dad agreed.

"See?" Luther shook his head in disbelief, "Yeah. This is where you lose me."

"This is where he loses you?" Lila repeated, "I checked out at the sacred cave."

"Why would the builder of this 'back door' need to have a guardian?" Viktor queried.

Sloane raised her hand like she was in a kindergarten class, "Ah! To protect it from people who want to use it for nefarious means."