Dance of Love

Chapter 6

Daniels POV:

I try to hold it in, but I can't. My scream rips through the air, as I lurch forward. Ethan grabs my shoulders and pushes my body down against the table.

"Daniel, it'll be over soon. She needs to take it out." I nod my head, gulp, and look towards my right, clenching my teeth. I just want this to end already. This woman has been prying into my stomach for the past 20 minutes, the numbing agent she gave me not doing jack shit to ease the pain. I'm about to grab all her tools and through them out the window.

Then she suddenly gasps. I look towards her direction and she looks at me with a grave expression.

"I took out the tracker. But, there is something else in your system" She takes off her gloves splattered with blood, turns around and picks up a book on a nearby love seat. She flips through the pages, until she stops at one. "Yes, this is it... I'm so sorry"

"What is it?" I ask her.

"It's a daler, a chip that dissolves into your system and slowly releases a chemical into your DNA. You will slowly begin to lose your abilities, then it will eat away at your soul, until you are eventually shed of any sort of consciousness in your body. You will slowly disappear... These are so rare, I don't know how they got it. They had to have gone to the black market."

"Great." I say as I let out a loud sigh. She comes back to stitch me up, and when she finishes, I sit up.

"My sister is such a disgrace." Hailey says. She's two years younger than Ivy, just 17, but she is wise beyond her years. I bet that she's read every book in her vast collection of books on her shelf. She practiced as an apprentice under her grandmother who's a shaman since she was 10, and many people throughout the world now come to her for natural healings. She's tall like her sister, and has short white hair. She wears a long brown dress. She's doing pretty well for herself, she lives solo since her parents died in a car accident when she was younger. But, she's not frugal, she lives in a beautiful beachside home by the coast.

She walks through the room, until she finds what she's looking for. It's a small circular disk. She throws it into the air and then a 3d map of the universe appears. There are little orbs of light all around us, stars. Then she zooms into the country of Cambodia on earth. Until, we see Angkor Wat in aerial view.

She looks from me to Ethan, and sucks in a breathe of air before releasing it. "There is only one way you can get the daler out of your system."

"I'll do anything."

"You'll have to go to Angkor Wat, and meet Dalia, the protector of souls in Limbo. There is a passageway in a certain area that leads you to her underground abode."

"I'm going to die"

Dalia is the one who designates where a soul from the three sacred trees go, after they die. She is not known to be welcoming. She holds an antidote (that can cure one's body of any sickness and prolong a life) that many seers have gone out to seek after. Some have even died in the process. She challenges you to go into a dream world, and find the antidote before a certain time. If you don't find it, she takes your body and sucks your soul out and you join the pool of other spirits in limbo.

"No you won't." Ethan says coming up to me and laying a hand over my shoulder. "We're going to get you better, bro."

I plop onto a seat, and sink into the chair. What do I do? Dammit. I close my eyes and lay a hand over my forehead. Trying to think of something. Anything. When I open my eyes, everything fizzles and dissolves. I'm cast into a dark blue light. What in the fuck?

"Wake up." A soft voice whispers to me in my right ear. I turn to look but there's no one there. I'm in a cabin. A man points his gun at me. He pulls the trigger and a cloud of smoke comes out and wraps me in coldness. The sun has rolled away, and I sit freezing on a sheet of ice surrounded by darkness and colored wind. I hug my knees in and put my hands over my head. I don't understand.

I see a girl in the distance, she lays on a bed of grass, near a stream. Then she spins and it turns dark, all the stars surround us. She has the planets on the tip of her fingers, and watches them in awe.

This is a dream.

Why am I here? I'm on a dock, with my hands against a rail, looking as the seas wave's crash against the rocks under me. The water splashes and turns into bubbles and floats up. I see a face in one, a man's. Is that me?

"Why are you here?" The voice calls again, this time a masculine one. The voice starts humming.

Why am I here? Think.

The antinode! Yes. A clock starts ticking. It crashes and spills on the ground. The pieces drop in slow motion, until each one comes together to form a rose. This is it, this is what I'm looking for.

"It's yours."

I try to grab it but I fall into it. Down a large waterfall and into a body of water. I see Dalia, she swims to me. She is nude. Her long bright orange hair swirls around her.

"Help me!" I tell her.

"And why should I?" She says while sitting at a table, we're in a restaurant. She holds a glass of wine in her hands.

"I need to guide this world, I must live."

"What world?"

I look up, I'm laying down in a dark forest, and trees surround me. I begin to cry, tears seeping into the ground.

"Please, release me from this. Kill me." Trees grow high. And everything takes on a red tint. I hit a wall, and it shatters. Glass falling down and scattering.

A dove flies down and lands on my shoulder. I hear another guy's voice. I know who this is. Ethan. His words float in front of me "I will miss you."

In a whoosh, I land on grass, by a tree, at the tip of the structure. The sky has some clouds. Nothing shifts. I breathe in and out deeply. There's something on my stomach, I look down and I see a little pouch and I look inside, there was the antidote. I got it.

Then I remember Ethans voice. I get up and look around me. Where's Ethan?

"He sacrificed his life for you." I hear Hailey say while walking down a few steps towards me.

"No," Tears start forming in my eyes. "Why?!"

"Dalia was over your body, and was about to take your soul. And she asked him for something in return for giving you your life and the antidote, if he wanted to save you... He didn't hesitate to leave his body for you."

 "Fuck." I yell "He shouldn't have done that." I drop to the ground and begin to sob. "He was like my brother. We loved him"

Hailey comes closer to me and wraps my body in a hug and she massages my back. She sits with me for some time. I look up, and into the distance at nothing in particular. This was my fault.

 "If only I didn't....."

 "-Stop. Don't blame yourself, Daniel. This could have happened to anyone else on your team."

I still can't shake that horrible gaping sense of regret away. He didn't deserve to be taken.

Hailey then grabs my hand and I stand with her. She tells me to open the vial and drink the liquid in it. I do as she says, and she begins to chant while touching my forehead. I feel a surge of energy pass over me. Then she opens her eyes.

"Your sickness is gone"

And, then in one of my hands, she hands me a ring with mini purple diamonds around the band. "This is for Thalia's seer... I wish I could inform you about my sisters doings, but I haven't contacted her in a long time. I'm sorry.. But, this ring here, will help Sophia gain better awareness"