Salient Secret 2

23

Vada

George brought us to a very small cottage somewhere in an area in Australia, the name was too strange to remember, and it doesn't matter, we're not here to stay. We walk down the stone path in the tall grass with the blazing sun burning our skin and George knocks on the door.

"George?" the woman who answered asks in disbelief.

"Yvonne! It's so good to see you," he says joyfully while he wraps his arms around the red headed woman. "These are my friends, Vada, Rik and Tanith," he says introducing us and we all flash her a polite yet fake smile.

"Well what interesting hair you've got," she says touching my grey, black and white ensemble of hair wrapped in a ponytail as if her flaming red hair is classified as average. "Well come on in and meet the others," others? This cottage looks barely big enough to house one person, now there's others?

We walk in, Rik has to bend his head to get through the rather short doorway, the wooden floors creek as we make our way to the main part aka the living room/kitchen in one.

"Tasia! Clover! Niko! We have visitors!"  Yvonne yells to summon the others, I don't know why because she could probably whisper and they'd hear her in through these thin walls. "They must be out, I apologize. Would you like some tea?" she offers so politely that it would feel wrong to decline.

"That would be lovely," Tanith politely says clearly feeling compelled by this womans sweet character.

"Really George? She knows where the archives are?" Rik whispers so that Yvonne can't hear over the noise of the boiling kettle.

"Don't be so quick to judge Mr Daniels," he responds. Wait how does he know Riks surname?

"Yeah Rik, she seems like a wonderful woman," Tanith adds.

"Here you go," Yvonne says setting a tray with 4 cups of tea on, we each smile in gratitude and pick up a teacup.

"Hmmmmm, this is wonderful," Tanith says, she is lying, this tea is awful, it tastes like she just crushed leaves and threw them in boiling water. The look on Rik's face says it all, luckily his back is facing Yvonne in the kitchen so she can't see his reaction.

"Thank you dear, the thing about good tea is it puts you in this lovely trance..." her words trail off and everything starts becoming all mushy, uh oh, that tea was so not tea.

Palmer

"Guys look, I found something Aurelia wrote about Cynthia's powers," Cassian says and Imelda and I walk towards him. "It's in Latin though," he continues.

"How do you know what it's about then?" Imelda asks.

"I studied Latin for a while, so I can pick up a few words, I know 'potestatem' means powers and 'quod' means had," he explains while pointing to the words on the page.

"You must have studied for a very short time," Imelda criticizes because on a page full of Latin words he can only identify two, I laugh and earn a forbidding look from him.

"There has to be a Latin dictionary here somewhere," he says looking around like he would be able to spot it immediately. Idiot.

"We've been at this for 4 hours, let's just take a break," Imelda suggests.

"You guys go ahead, I'm gonna keep going," Cassian says.

"Okay, Imelda and I are going to find the food and drinks George was talking about," I say and then we step out into the passage.

"I don't know about you but I am not walking down this road-long hall," she says and then teleports away and appears far ahead of me. I follow her lead, when we get to the end, there's large portraits of people along the wall. "Cynthia Wilder," Imelda reads the gold plaque beneath the portrait of a green eyed woman. Why would a picture of Cynthia be up in the Electus archives?

"There are 7 others, these must be her children," I observe moving toward the portrait of a green eyed male beside Cynthia. This must be one of her sons, I approach the plaque and read the name, "Ambrose Wilder."

"Ambrose?" Imelda asks with her eyebrows scrunched towards each other, "Why does that sound familiar?"

"Ambrose George," I say realizing how stupid I was for not figuring this out sooner.

"George? He looks nothing like that guy," she says staring up at the portrait.

"A random guy shows up out of nowhere in our well secured house, knows exactly who Avery is and he knew where this place was, he was too good to be true," I say.

"But Palmer he looks nothing like that, there is more than one Ambrose in this world you know."

"In a world where my brother can shape shift and my friend can magically heal people, this does not seem impossible nor crazy," I say.

"Palmer look at this whole wall, I can bet George is not the only one of the seven still alive somehow. If you're right, then the others could be in some serious danger," she says with fear in her eyes, and that says a lot because out of the 5, she is definitely the hardest one to crack fear into. She teleports away, I'm guessing to Cassian, so I do the same.

"Cass we have to go, the others are in danger," she vaguely explains.

"What? What happened?" he asks.

"George, is actually Ambrose Wilder, somehow he is alive, and there's a good chance the other 6 are alive too," I explain with a few vital details.

"They're immortal," Cassian says to himself moving back to the bench with multiple books on, he picks one up and opens it. "'Immortalem', they are immortal," he finally says out loud to us. "Earth, water, fire, air, emotion, spirit, darkness," he reads to himself.

"What?" Imelda asks on behalf of both of us.

"The seven pillars," he says like that explains it all. "Electus was built on 7 pillars, I read about it in one of these books. But people can't be pillars though, that's what's confusing me," the passion in his voice slowly dies out throughout that sentence.

"Maybe he isn't the pillar, what if somehow he is channeling it," I suggest.

"Guys!" Imelda shouts, "Our friends are in serious danger. We know Ambrose is earth, that means our friends could be going up against the others alone right now, we have to find them."