After Fate Fell

43 • SIX

1 year, 3 months, and 17 days after it all
•SIX•

The river comes into view over the horizon as the car rises up to a high point along the coast. Nobody says anything, we just look at it. We're all exhausted, even though we've just been sitting in the car the whole day, but it's a different kind of exhaustion. We're tired of wandering aimlessly, tired of being separated from the others, tired of not knowing what we're doing. We all have our sights set on the same thing: Lorien. And if we don't leave soon, I'm afraid something could pull our little group apart. The threat of death has never been greater than at this moment, in this place. We can't stay here long.

The sky is dark, and I fear that another storm is inevitably coming our way. I wish that the wind would stop, the sky would clear, and the storms would secede. But they won't. I think again about my weather-controlling legacy, and how long it took me to get any kind of handle on the storm before. I don't know if I could do even that now. I feel as if my powers have been completely drained from my body, replaced by a feeling of emptiness. It's hollow, and it scares me how...normal it feels. As if this emptiness is the new norm for me...for all of us.

We are plunged back down over the other side of the hill where we had a great view of all that's set out before us, and as we descend, the river is now hidden from our view. All I need to know is we'll be there soon. I just can't believe that it took us this long to make it here.

A few minutes later, we rise over a similar hill to the one before, and the river comes back into view, along with the view of a huge light out in the ocean, blinding in it's intensity. I blink it away and see the others sitting up, confused. As I focus back on the path ahead, something else comes into view, much closer, in the valley below us. Four people, wading at the water's edge. The others. It has to be them. I can see the others in the car see the same thing I do. This affirms that I'm not seeing things. They're really here. They're really alive.

But then my heart drops as we near, because three of them are hunched over the other's unmoving body. A chill runs up and down my spine and my fears become reality. Sam's vision, as impossible as it seemed, has become reality. I just hope he didn't see somebody die. Please let them be alive. Please let us all make it home.

The four become clearer in my view, and I'm able to pick out each individual. Four, Marina, and Five have spotted us, and look up from Ella's body which they were focused on. They show no emotions. As happy as they should be, they aren't, can't be. Which somehow scares me more than Ella's body below them does. They have become victims of the desert, and Ella, may be a victim of this twisted charm, though she wasn't even there when the rest of us received our charm that gave us our number, our order we were protected by but also the order we were supposed to be killed in if found. I don't understand any of it. I just hope she's alive, that she can hang on. She brought us here, she's the only one who knows the way out...the way into this beast and hopefully, the way out of it as well.

I put the car in park and we all jump out of our seats, opening our doors, with no care to close them in mind, we're only focused on the others, focused on Ella.

"It's not looking good," Five says, not bothering with pleasantries. "But she's alive."

I sigh of relief, even though he just said she's not doing well. She's alive and that's all that matters. Somehow, we just need to bring her back to life.

"Did you try to heal her?" I ask, looking toward Marina and John, but already guessing their answers.

"Yes, but...nothing," Marina says, looking up at me for just a second, and then looking back down at Ella, transfixed on her, as if she can't lose sight of the youngest of us, as if she'll somehow run away or something.

"It's like she's in a coma," Adam says, kneeling down beside Ella, putting his hand on her cheek, then her forehead, then her arm. "I don't get how she can be so warm yet so pale," he says confusedly, feeling for her heartbeat, which I'm sure he'll find.

"We don't understand it either," Marina says, kneeling down beside him. "When I tried to heal her, I felt the warmth enter her body from mine, but the life and the healing, don't seem to have made their way to her."

I don't see their car anywhere near here. I don't ask, this isn't the time. The light out in the ocean seems to have gotten brighter, maybe in contrast to the darkening sky behind it. I don't know what it is, what it could mean. There's no way that's a ship, no way that's anything normal, anything earthly. Maybe...maybe the light has something to do with Ella's fainting.

"We should get her into the dark," I say, and the others all look at me, confused. "I mean away from that light," I say, pointing out into the ocean, straight at the source, and I feel a tingle in my bones. Maybe it's messing with me too.

I see Marina understands.

"Help me lift her," she says to Adam, and he does.

We all move toward a high dune which leaves a large shadow, hiding anything that lies behind it from the brightness that lies in the ocean.

Marina carefully holds onto Ella's shoulders, Adam holding onto her legs.

"I was deaf when it happened," she says. "Ella fell, and I couldn't hear a thing for probably ten minutes, maybe more. The other two felt wonky too. I don't think whatever that light is is normal. I think it's what we came here to find, came here to kill," she says, and she seems so sure of this. I agree. Now we just have to somehow venture out there and see what power lies within it, see where Legacy's power ends and its begins.

If whatever this thing is can make Ella, the clear strongest of us all, fall into a coma by simply just looking at it, how the hell are we going to survive long enough to take it down?