After Fate Fell

13 • ELLA

1 year, 3 months, and 13 days after it all
•ELLA•

I prepare myself to jump out of the train car. It's funny, this situation I'm in. I feel like I just got on this train, and now I have to get out again. Seems a lot like everything in my life. Once something starts going in the right direction, things change all of a sudden. Like when Crayton and I would just get settled somewhere, and then something would happen and we were forced to keep running.

Run. Stop. Run.

I'm used to it.

I strap my backpack on tight, and put my back up against the crates in the back of the car to get a running start. I don't want to jump too far, because I could hit a tree, but I also need to get away from the tracks so that I don't get pulled under the train. It's definitely moving much faster than when I boarded.

My back against the crates, I try to run at a diagonal so that I have some inertia kind of moving in the right direction. I close my eyes as my feet leave the edge and my arms fly up to break my fall.

I feel myself tumble, somersaulting once, twice, three times until I'm brought to a stop, my hands and knees resting on the dew-covered ferns below me. Somehow I didn't injure myself that time.

I have to wait for the train to pass until I can cross the tracks to the other side, so I look up at the sky, hoping to see stars, but there is just the canopy of trees, and in the little clearing for the tracks, I just see clouds above me. The moonlight shines through dimly. It's beautiful, but in a different way I guess.

After a minute or so, I realize that I could speed up the process by walking along the tracks backwards, so that I'll reach the back of the train sooner. So I put one foot in front of the other, and walk.

I can feel my legacies are strengthened here. The whole train ride, I kept feeling a slight tugging in my mind, and the feeling kept getting stronger. I tried to reach out to the others using my telepathy, and it worked. I talked to Six but something seemed wrong. But then she convinced me that she was fine. So now I'm just confused, and she stopped responding. I could try to contact the others, but I'm sure that she told them that I made it, and that's all that matters right now.

I can see the end of the train approaching, and I realize that there may be people in the back car, so I jump into the tree line and crouch behind a larger tree. The sound of the train starts to get quieter and quieter, and more and more distant, and eventually, I decide that I'm fine to come out.

I look toward where the train went, and see the dim lights of it grow dimmer and dimmer. It's gone. I step onto the rail closest to me, and balance my weight on it. I realize that this is the highest point I'll be at for a while, so I peer into the woods, looking for that blue energy I saw before. It takes a few seconds, but after scanning in all directions, I find it, dimly emanating from the forest to the right, ahead of me. I step off of the rail, and into the gravel in between the two rails. There's only one set of tracks, so I cross quickly. It doesn't look like there's any more trains coming, but I get into the woods as soon as possible.

I orient myself in the direction that I saw the light, and begin my hopefully short journey to the Sanctuary. On one hand, I'm surprised at how short it took me to get here, but on the other, the time is killing me because I just want to be there already. So I grab my flashlight and begin moving quicker.

The forest is dense, but I can still spot the light deep in the forest. It shouldn't take too long to get there, I suppose.
After a while of walking, I realize that the light has become much brighter than before, and I know I can't be far from the Sanctuary now. It's there. It's so close I can taste it.

And then all of a sudden I'm bombarded by voices in my head, John, Six, Marina, Nine, and maybe even more, I can't tell. They're all saying something different, and I can't decipher any of them because they're all trying to communicate with me at the same time, or are these from different times and I can only hear them now that I'm this close? I don't know.

The light is becoming extremely bright now, almost blinding. I squint, and through the voices and the light and the confusion, I can finally see them. The ruins of our beloved temple, the Sanctuary. And the well of Loric energy, exposed in the Mexican rainforest, a stark contrast of blinding light versus the piercing blackness of the night.

Then the light flickers, and the voices stop.

"Ella," I hear a voice.

Legacy.

I run to the well, toward her energy, wanting to be immersed in it.

"You should know something," the voice says, cutting through my excitement.
I have so many questions to ask her, so many things I need cleared up, but now, all that matters is what she is going to say.

"Do you not know why you cannot feel my presence atop that mountain far away? Something evil is churning beneath the ground, eating away at all that is Loric. I am dying. Lorien is going to fall, once again."