Original Souls (A World Apart #1) (74 page)

"Well, home of course. Now that the Draconian Chancellor has been ousted, we can go back home. Get back to living."

Corinth didn't know what to think. He was terrified to start school here a few months ago, but now it too felt like home. In fact, it felt more like home than Draconia ever did. "But mom, what about all the bad laws there?" He held up his brand new llave. "You always wanted me to learn magik, and now I might have a good shot at it." He tried to be considerate of the pressure she must be facing after all that's happened. "Can't we at least move or something? It doesn't have to be all the way up here in Hyperborean, but at least to your home World." He didn't want to live in La Envidia anymore than Draconia, but he figured the lax laws would at least afford him the opportunity to learn how to wield magik.

"Oh, honey," she flagged her hand at his questions, "Draconia will have those laws repealed. Things will be fine. Plus, you get to go back to your old bedroom. You haven't been there in years now."

He wasn't at all satisfied with her reasoning. The thought of that bedroom gave him the creeps anyway. After what happened there, it made his small dorm at Aurora Boreal seem so awesomely enchanting. "But you broke an international law. Aren't they going to try to put you away?"

She stiffened a great deal. "Look!" she said aggressively, "we'll be leaving within the hour, and that's all there is to it."

Corinth sighed deeply and stood up. "What about Oliveto? I can take him with us, can't I?" He bent down near the pup at the door, still growling with its head low to the ground. He stroked behind his ear. The dog's favorite spot. It caused him to roll over for Corinth, and Julia nearly gagged at the sight. "What's wrong?" he asked, drawing close to her, leaving Oliveto to whimper from the lost attention.

"It's nothing," she said, trying to remain composed. "We just need to get out of here as quickly as possible."

"Why though? I need to say goodbye to some people. I've been here for more than two months, I can't just leave without saying anything."

She looked down at the pleading boy without breaking her attitude's stride. She gently placed her hands underneath his armpits and lifted him onto the bed. She had a rough go of it. Shaking somewhat as she put him down at the edge. His newfound height only slightly above her own. But she wore heels, and he was small and short for his age. They hugged while she tried convincing him of her logic. "We have bigger issues at han
d
…
son
," the awkwardness in her tone made Corinth's jawbone tighten. He didn't want to have this conversation anymore. "I need you to trust me. To support what I say is right for the family."

When she said the family, something dawned on Corinth. His dad told him that i
t’
d take a very long time for his mom to amass the power needed to build a new portal. But the hand of fate was their solace. He could visit after she tamed the power growing within her. Corinth wasn't completely aware of how the gate to this World apart, that his mother created for his safety, was destroyed, but he knew it was. He wondered if his dad lied about being able to visit his mother, or if he just didn't know that she could get out on her own a lot faster than expected. He figured Sena. Hendrix would have known the answer to that. So, there was no reason to get upset about missing out on all this time with his mom.

Still, he couldn't help but continue to wonder why his mom desperately wanted to leave the safe haven that Aurora Boreal was considered to be. Maybe i
t’
s the same reason so many other parents took their kids back home. But he needed to know for sure. The ever-tempting curiosity of being psychic crept into his thoughts. He leaned in close and hugged his mother tighter. Her grasp around him was weak. She seemed more tired than normal. He felt it best that maybe he didn't go creeping around inside her head. It might hurt her in her current frail state of mind and body. She was far thinner than at the beach house not so long ago. He decided not to question anymore. He looked down at his beloved pup while tightly interlocking his fingers overtop his mothers shoulders. He couldn't imagine life without him. But he decided h
e’
d give him back to Walker before he left the school for good.

As he drifted back toward his mother's face, he noticed something extremely odd. He grabbed a lump of her brown hair up in his fingers. She wore it down around her face today, with a nice summery white dress. He looked at her with his head tilted to the side. He pushed her hair back from her scalp and nearly collapsed. If it hadn't been for the quick woman catching him as he dropped, he definitely would have fallen off the edge of the bed. She pulled him in close and hugged a lot tighter than before. In fact, she constricted him with a grapple so tight that she was squeezing the air out of his little windpipes. His back arched as he cried out in pain.

"Shhh!" she implored him. "There's no reason to get upset now. Mommies here!" her sadistic tone was unsettling. Corinth still held his llave in his hand, which the girl was well aware of. "Not so fast, little soldier. I've got much bigger plans for you!"

Oliveto's screeching barks climbed to a louder and louder register, as he jumped up and bit the girl on the back of the leg. But she didn't budge one bit. The pup barely nicked her with those budding teeth of his. She lifted her leg behind her, and kicked out. The hard thrust sent Oliveto hurtling back into the dorm door with a loud thud.

Corinth screamed, "Oliveto!!!"

"Don't be so concerned with that dingy mutt. You're the one who's in danger here, little soldier." With that sadistic tone firmly in check, her appearance began matching the drawl of her way of speaking. Corinth prayed to his dad and real mom's names that he could have recognized the black roots to her hair before she got hold of him. His mom had light brown hair. Naturally brown, as in it grew out of her head that color. This girl clearly had darker roots than what she tried pretending.

Soon, she looked absolutely nothing like his mother. Not the same way Sena. Lilith, or rather, Camil, had morphed in his mind when she proved to be an evil traitor. This girl literally shaped shifted into another person. She shifted into a figure Corinth had interacted with before, but never knew it. The girl his father punched out months ago. The girl who's llave his father used to help them escape from Corinthia, when his real mother lost her cool. That's most likely where she is now. Still stuck in that World apart from all the others that she created for this very instance never to occur again.

The girl his father deemed, the cheetah girl, compressed his feeble body even further. Her strength seemed to be gradually increasing with every passing second
.“
Now
!
” she shouted like a maniac, "let's go!" She hopped up onto the bed with Corinth still in her grasp, lifting him off his feet, as she was taller than he was. She then ran straight for the window that Corinth looked out of every morning, hoping for a better day than the last. His wish unfortunately didn't come true this morning. The sun was high in the sky while Corint
h’
s racing mind assumed they'd go crashing through the window, down onto the entry platform to the building. Instead, they went through the window, like it was instead a portal. A portal from which nothing came out on the other end.

No one knew, no one saw, only Oliveto, the green furred pup, witnessed the terrifying event. And he lay unconscious against the door to Corinth's former dorm. He was gone without a trace. Disappearing in broad daylight. For how long, no one but I, the Nexus, could tell.

Unknown...

A series of thin-legged feet scuttled through the hallways of the Eternal Vista castle. Clearly making their way to a specific destination. Five different bodies, hundreds of legs, all closing in on their instructed target.

<*>

Criston sat, strapped in a chair, in a rather empty room. Five openings all around the spacious chamber. He looked down each one, turning his head from one to another. There was nothing to see, but he heard the hoards of feet tapping against the ground.

"They'll be here a lot sooner than you likely expect." Drake didn't seem like the kind of man to do something he didn't believe was absolutely necessary. Despite the fact that he held him prisoner, Criston quite admired him in many ways.

"Why are you doing this?" Criston asked, trying to sound as vulnerable and non-threatening as possible.

"That's not really your concern. Those . . .
things
, on the other hand, should be." The stern featured man chuckled in a composed manner. His sharp nose, cube head, icy blue eyes, and short black hair reminded Cris of most men from Draconia. He was the father of their race, truly. His black robe left everything to the imagination. Only the light cream-colored skin of his hands showed, besides his face. Though he was technically dead, he looked to Cris to be the age of a typical fifty-year-old Draconian male. It was strange that a man that has been dead for over 1,000 years looks younger than Sebastian does. "So, Criston, my child, what's it going to be?" he looked up from the tools he had neatly scattered across the four legged table against the stonewall.

"Obviously," Cris fidgeted with his restraints, "I can't join you. My family is at risk here."

"But don't you see that they're not. I, well we, merely want to walk amongst the living again. Is that too much to ask, considering who we are!" He looked around the room, thinking of his brothers and sisters. "The Great Eight are the sole reason you exist. We saved the human race from extinctio
n—
"

"And then nearly killed us all in the Ancestry Wars!" Criston countered boldly.

"How much does a thirty-four-year old know about the old days!" he yelled, turning a slight red. Then quickly regained composure, as he realized his civility was in question. "Time wasn't recorded then the way it is now. Things happened and things passed that were not remembered by all. The Ancestry Wars had a hell of a lot of reason to be waged. Not all of them pertaining to power, as you may have been led to believe. Really, Aurora sacrificed her life, and essentially that of her own son, to end the feuding. Much more than power was at stake in those unsettling days." Drake -could easily sense that he was getting nowhere with Cristo
n—
fast. But truthfully, he only needed the hand. The one that guides fate. Drake's cold demeanor wasn't something to be dismissed, the way Criston had already done. Where Sebastian cared only about the advancement of Draconian blood, Drake only cared about the advancement of himself. He'd destroy Cris if it were in his best interest. But it was
n’
t. At least Cris already knew that much.

Drake turned back to the metal tools laid across the table. "You see, many confuse the properties of life and death. A lot believe and interpret pain as a symbol of sadness, darkness, and ultimately death. But this is so a misguided theme. My apathy is what spurs me in these current days, Cris."

Criston sat back in the chair, trying to seem relaxed as the tight restraints cut into his dark skin. Drake made his way over. He stood in front of the former police officer, like a king of men and gods alike. His frame was massive and well determined. In fact, his appearance was downright intimidating to the muscular, but more lean, Criston. Hellishly tall, even more so than the six-two man seated before him, monolithically broad, and certainly mentally imposing. He looked down with a glint of respect, somehow mixed with condescension, all wrapped up concisely in his stark blue eyes.

"I am to understand that you are a prideful man?" Cris nodded in acceptance of the assertion. "I am, as well. But here in Eterna, there is no emotion. There is no love, fear, joy, or even physical pain. But the one thing," he stretched out a lonely finger in the dead air, "...the only thing they leave for those to experience; is sorrow. I have been here more than a thousand years feeling sorry for my deeds perceived by another as sins. That other I speak of, views itself as above me, but I don't quite agree. It is the price the human mind pays for having memories. To feel regret over them."

Criston honestly didn't understand. He wasn't a dead man, at least not yet, so it'd be hard for him to comprehend the eternal sorrow of ones, not so well lived, life on earth. His only point of reference was the time he spent in the Halls of Sorrow, with the Keeper Russell, before entering through the eternal gate.

"See, Eterna is a place of nothingness. We don't eat, we don't drink, we don't feel, and we just don't care. But I want my purpose back. I see the eight Worlds have developed to the point that they're starting to come back together. Children born of two different races! I never dreamed of such a thing in my time being possible without tragedy on its heels. I want to experience this great age, I want to live again!" his shouts echoed throughout the five halls. Those halls continually weighed on Criston's mind. He could hear them coming for him. While torn between the words of Drake and the imminent arrival of his predators, he caught a hole in Drakes story that he didn't understand.