The Necklace: The Trial Realm

Chapter Five: No Looking Back

Me, Malikah of the Ring, a peace maker?

There just wasn't any wrapping my head around the idea.

Why couldn't I be something cooler? Like a war mind? Had Tonyedda told me that was my stone, I'd have been a lot closer to believing it. That's what I'm good at. I can look at a person and within five seconds tops of watching that person, I can pick up on ques in their body language to determine how best to beat that person if it came to hand to hand.

The big guy on the end of the group with the mass of black curls around his shoulders, muscles everywhere you look, and the red stone glowing brightly for example. He stands firmly planted in the ground, definitely too solid to try to take out by running at center mass like is best on most tall people, with him you have to be quick. He's big, which makes him slower and less agile than me. It'll take me longer, but in a fight against him, I'd antagonize, get him coming for me, then be swift on my feet, staying just out of his grasp, wearing him down until my opening arrives, then leap onto the back and put him in a chock hold. Sure, I'm likely to get the air knocked slap out of me when he attempts to get me off by slamming himself down on the ground and squishing me between his mass and the ground, but I won't let go.

A war mind, yes.

Peace maker? I'm going with no.

I've started way more fights than the ones I've ended.

"Come with us." Tonyedda says gently, having given me a few minutes to try to swallow the information I've just been given. "

"How did you even know how to find me?" I ask, ignoring her request. "And how long have you been watching me?"

"We've only been here a short time." She tells me, the group around her getting antsy, shifting their weight uncomfortably back and forth while I still lounge on the dirt. Either they think they're too good to get down in the wet dirt, or they don't trust me either. If it's the latter, I like them a little bit more, but if it's the former, it makes me not like them so much.

I've dealt with enough stuck up, better than you, holy are we, attitudes to last me a life cycle. I don't need to get mixed up with some group of random supremists just because they say I belong with them.

"When your necklace activated, basically when it found you and your soul connected with it, we follow the sense to where the person is." Tonyedda continues. "We can't stay long though. We've got many things to attend to back home, and it isn't good for us to dwell in another realm too long. It's dangerous even. Although the Gods created the Demi, and the Demi created us, The Six don't like us meddling in their realms and taking people back to the seventh with us. We must hurry back." She reiterates. "Come with us."

Again, this isn't worded as a request.

I should be turned off to all of this. I should wave them on their way, return the necklace, and go back to the wallows, but I can't walk away. I don't even feel the need to stand.

"I can't just up and leave." I say after a beat, and it's true.

Do I want to? If I'm being honest with myself, kind of? I don't know what drinkers and faes and whatever else means, but...Well, the idea of leaving the Ring and all of its sickness, death, and misery is tempting.

"I have people who count on me here." I explain all about the kids in the wallow who need my coin I earn, and about Mags and Mr. Mags who reply on my coin to pay for the apothecary. "I can't leave them, even for my own destiny."

I suddenly resign myself to this truth. I am needed. I'd like to think anyone in the Ring who is offered a way out would jump at the opportunity, and maybe under different circumstances, I would too, but I can't just desert the people who have always been there for me.