Enter the Shadows: Book One of the RTS Series (First Full Draft)

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Daniel

They lead Daniel to a garden, which was surprisingly unoccupied considering the weather and time of day. He noted to himself that the garden's architecture reminded him vaguely of things he'd seen when he went abroad with his parents to Shanghai one summer for the week long Midsummer celebration. His heart sank when he remembered they did not attend a Midsummer festival this year due to his trials, and again he felt homesick. But only for a brief moment as his attention was drawn back to reality by Robin and Leala.

He sat at a picnic bench with Leala and Robin sitting across from him. They had grabbed some snacks from a grocery store on the way over, mostly chips and water, and all three of them were mostly picking at the food. Daniel wasn't really a fan of the taste of American food yet, but after the ordeal they went through he wasn't going to be too picky.

After taking a minute to get settled, and hearing Leala compliment how well the three of them did against Cordelia, Daniel spoke up.

"How much do you already know?" Daniel began. "I think that's a safe place to start."

Leala spoke up first. "Cordelia... the woman who I guess lived there, she said you were an Esoteric and I had 'Invoked' powers, but I don't know what any of that means."

Daniel nodded, though he remembered little about the conversation he had with Cordelia. "That's a good place to begin." He cleared his throat. "Do either of you have a piece of paper I can use?"

Robin reached into his backpack and tore out an empty sheet from one of his notebooks, and handed Daniel a pencil.

"Thank you," he acknowledged briefly. "Anyway, Esoterics are what you two might think of as wizards or sorcerers; people with the ability to do things seemingly impossible. An Esoteric uses what we call Theurgic energy, or the energy of the human soul, to do these things." He wrote down some notes on the paper. "Any human with a soul has the potential to use this power, it's all dependant on their ability to access and harness it.

"Sometimes, a person with no previous experience using Theurgic energy will suddenly be able to do so, usually in a life-threatening event. This is called 'Invoking'." He looked up at Leela. "You mentioned the car accident from the start of summer and that was when your powers manifested, right? That was when you Invoked. Do you remember what you felt right before you had your power?"

Leala nodded. "I remember wanting to fight back. I didn't want to die."

Daniel smiled. "That is the power of the soul." He echoed something Astra had told him a long time ago. "In dire situations it's capable of doing incredible things, even awaken power in someone who never knew what they were capable of."

Robin spoke up. "Why are we only now hearing about something like this? Surely people would be putting this in history books if this were the case."

"Our groups like to stay hidden," Daniel continued, "especially after things like witch hunts and executions. I think the Wurzburg hunts back in the 1600s were the nail in the coffin and what drove major Esoteric families into secrecy, but honestly it probably wouldn't have taken much to push us away entirely. In any case, you've probably bumped into an Esoteric a few times throughout your life, and you've just never known it. They probably didn't know either. We can walk among the bl-" he stopped himself, realizing he nearly said "blind eyes", a phrase he was used to saying or hearing before but after encountering Cordelia the phrase left a bad taste in his mouth.

"The what?"

"The Laic. It's what we call people with little to no access to Theurgic energy." He felt better using the proper term. "But we can hide among regular people with no problem in most cases. It's why I actually moved here with my mother a few weeks ago, without going too into detail. Laics like yourself are remarkably good at dismissing anything abnormal and looking for a logical explanation, so it's frankly not that difficult for us to keep these things hidden. It's probably why your parents forgot about the accident."