Codex

14 - From the Light

It was unreal, to say the least, how closed off I was the past few weeks. The witch and my friends became friends.

"When did–"

"If you hung out with us more, you'd know," Pyro said, in a sarcastic, yet serious tone of disappointment.

"Well, I've been busy, doing stuff," I defended, wanting to keep my searches a secret.

"Yeah," Dawn scoffed, "heard you've been asking the higher-ups some weird questions, but no one knows what those questions were."

"It's a secret," I winked.

"Uh, yeah, not to me. I saw all the books you forgot to re-shelf in the library, and it's really got me concerned, Eric."

"Have I, ever introduced you guys to my best friend?" I asked, changing the subject quickly, but she didn't let up and interrogated me.

Emily tilted her head in curiosity, "Hmm, are you ready to resurrect her?" she asked, no qualms whatsoever about keeping a touchy and controversial subject like that under wraps. Maybe all her years of existence numbed her from detecting when questionable topics like this slipped into the midst of attention. The eyes of curiosity were extremely tense, and although, ultimately, there would be no harm in telling them about Donna, I simply didn't want to yet.

"What a pain, read the atmosphere," I pulled her cheek, "yes, guys," I turned to the rest of them, "I've been a little off the past few days because I've been concerned about something, someone. However, I'm simply not ready to speak about that yet, so, ease off, will ya?"

"Well, you better be ready to speak to me about it," Emily pointed to herself, "because I'm literally the only being capable of doing it. Your texts won't know of it, the beings of this world lack two particular types of magic needed to perform the process."

"You're saying I have absolutely no choice but to turn to you?" I asked in a rather snobbish manner, because seeking help from her stole something from me I always had when discovering new things. It stole that sense of wonderment as I tried to figure out what the magic was, it stole the hard work I'd have to put in, and from that hard work it stole the sense of accomplishment after mastering a spell. That pure ecstasy of wonder, work, and accomplishment was the very basis of every single spell I learned in my life thus far. To learn that I needed her help felt belittling, cruel, unfair.

"That's correct. I know it was something you wished to avoid, but that's simply the way of things," her face gained several tones of seriousness, "you need to ask yourself which is more important to you now."

"I wanted to get stronger without your help, so you won't believe just how badly I want to reach your level, to surpass you."

"Oh?" her eyes opened wide and she had a hearty bout of laughter.

Something told me her strength was not something one should want, but heck, I wanted it. "Well? What are these magic types we don't know about?"

"What? She didn't tell you?" Emily smirked.

"Guess not." Would've been real nice to know, though, just sayin'.

"It, wasn't something allowed outside the circle of Apostles, so, I–"

Yeah well, you died, you're not her Apostle anymore. It ticked me off a little, knowing that Donna knew I busted my brain trying to figure out this thing for her when such a vital piece of information was needed, and instead of relaying it, she kept it hidden.

"Anyway, can we continue this later? I've got class," with that, I cast a dismissive air in the group, and made my way out. So many questions piled into me, yet, this was the first time I felt reluctant to find the answers to them. Was I giving up on the whole resurrection idea? No, never, that was a goal of mine soon after I met Donna.