the Order FanFiction

The Order part 29 Who is Alex

As Andromeda listened to Head Mistress Devon, she sounded so sure, but what does it have to do with this guy, why is he still here, and who is Alex?

"I woke up here with no memory of who I was or how I got here. At first I tried to make it through the fog. I would get to a place down the ways, then wake back up here with no way out. I eventually gave up and mapped the land. Here's what I have discovered."

He handed a parchment that was attached to the side of the leather-bound notebook that looked as old as his rags.
Master sorceress Devon nodded as she studied the parchment. And the patterns on the walls-the complex enchantment-had etches and waves that she had never seen before, and the hand-drawn map was not made by an amateur. There were several landmarks they didn't even see when they were in the fog.

"Here, these enchantments are encasing you within a 4 square km radius. I believe I can break them so you can leave, but I'll need a powerful Soul Crystal. Do you have your medallion?" whispering to Andromeda, who lifted it off her neck without even thinking twice.

"I should be able to..." she reached her hand through some sort of hole in space-time and pulled out a dark crystal that looked like a giant teardrop. It fit in her hand.

Soon after, Andromeda realised what she was doing, and as she waved her hand over the gem, she whispered some sort of incantation, and the dark glow started emanating from it.

As soon as she did, Head Mistress Devon lifted one of her earrings, that at the time Andromeda swore was just an ordinary set of earrings, but they began to shift. As she laid one over the tip, it transformed, changing shape as it began to move. Some sort of nano-filament webbing encased the gem, the glow started travelling through the filaments.
As the webbing covered the entire thing, leaving only spots that also warped and shifted in colour.

She then placed it on the stone slab that was at the base of the cave, and called out "Enchviva Invitus," and the gem began to float up into the centre of the archway.

As it steadily floated, then the filaments stretched out across the archway, where an invisible enchantment-channels of these intricate designs-started glowing blue, then they faded.
And Alex was also floating, although only a few centimetres off the ground. He felt the enchantment lift, and as it did, he looked outside.

Then the fog began to roll away. The fog was a symptom of the tomb enchantments, somehow cursing this realm and him.

Then light, shining through what was left of the fog, brightened up the surrounding forest. Alex lifted his toes as he stepped out of the cave, feeling there was finally hope for him to escape.

He had felt like he was trapped there for so long that there was never any escape for him. Hope had left him long ago.

There in the distance-he never noticed it before-but there was a sort of castle. At first, he thought it was just a tower, a watchtower, but it extended back for ages. "Was that there before?" asked Andromeda.

He shook his head. "No, there was only a tower. That's as far as I got before I would be returned to the cave, or tomb as you call it."

"Well, let's go see if we can get past it. I have a feeling that what we seek is also there."

He gathered his things, or what he had scavenged in the surrounding fog, and took a breath. His anxiety was clear on his face, but his long black hair was still ragged.

He tied it back and grabbed his bow made from wood from the cursed forests. It appeared black, and as scarred as Alex was in the sunlight, Andromeda only just noticed them.
The light blinded him for a while.

After spending so much time in the fog, there was no light, but after walking for a bit, he saw a little more. And the statues that were always following him were standing still. Nothing had changed the fact that they had been turned to stone. But he still stared at them, half believing this was all a dream.

Andromeda grabbed his hand. He took a breath and turned away. She squeezed it, then let go.

And walked forward. "Come on, let's get out of here." And Headmaster Devon felt a strange weakness in her right arm as she stopped. As she clutched her arm, it shook out of her control.

Suddenly she stepped forward, unaware of what it actually took for her to lift that curse.

There was a path that trailed left and one that trailed right. "The left path leads back up to the tower, where I believe the entrance to that castle is located."

"We must hurry. There's not just stone in these woods."
Devon, Andromeda, and Alex were stepping up what appeared to be steps, but the wood had long since rotted away. Among them were scattered bones that didn't appear to be part of anything.

But as soon as they got past them, a strange sound of rattling bone made Andromeda and Alex look back, only to see that they had formed individual bone men, their eyes dim and their hips hunched over. Suddenly they appeared to snap into place, as their eyes started glowing a bluish red.

The walls creaked and moaned, so did the risen bones. Alex drew his bow.
Andromeda drew her quarterstaff and Devon her wand. Alex fired as they slowly stepped backwards. He hit one after the other as the bones dropped.

There were more rising-at first that's what they thought-then Alex shouted, "They keep raising, we must destroy their skulls!"

Andromeda threw a fireball directly at one of the larger ones, and as it exploded, the skull shattered and fragments hit the others, destroying them too.