The Warrior's Beckoning (6 page)

“Do you mean the volunteers who died in the tunnels? They didn’t trust their abilities. We need someone who can stand up against the
entities.” He looked at the Survivor. “You have much potential.” He shifted his gaze to each of us, pausing for a moment on each face. “All of you may have something to offer. In any case, you’re here now, and there’s much to be done. Come with me.” He turned and opened the air lock. The doors slid open, and we followed him.

“Everyone has something to offer,” said Daniel.

The man shrugged and offered no comment. “We have traced a powerful entity’s origins to an event that occurred thousands of years ago. I believe you met him.”

“The fog entity?” I asked.

“Yes. We tore open a temporal rift and found the precise moment”—he pointed to Daniel’s robe—“
that
book was inscribed with a piece of that energy. The entity is far too powerful for us to destroy.”

“Then how do we stop it?” Joel asked. By now, we had cleared the air lock and entered a large lab. Strange crystalline statues were hooked up to something out of a sci-fi flick, three cylindrical structures on crystalline pads. If I believed such things were possible, I would have guessed it was a teleportation device of some sort.

“There are three events from the past that must be changed—the three listed in the logbook.”

“You’re nuts! It’s not possible to travel in time…not yet, anyway,” said Joel.

“Actually, it is,” said the man, pointing to the three cylinders. “Once we learned how to detect and open the rifts, the rest was just math. Traveling in time to change the events requires separating the ethereal form from the corporeal form. Then we can throw you through the temporal rift.”

Joel nodded. “Nice theory.”

“So this facility…all this…its purpose has been to find the right people to send back in time to alter these events?” asked Daniel.

“An oversimplification, but…yes.”

“I’ll go,” said Daniel.

The man looked him up and down intently, as if trying to guess his weight. Then he reached out and shook Daniel’s hand. “You do seem well suited,” said the man. “But you have to understand. This is a one-way trip. You can’t come back.”

Daniel stepped forward and stood in the first pad. “I understand. Send me to the Scribe.”

David stepped onto the second pad. “Send me to the Warrior.”

Frank stepped forward, entering the third pad. “Send me to the Grieving Father.”

The administrator looked at Frank. “No, it’s the Drifter you must revive.” When Frank nodded in assent, the administrator looked from one man to another. “It will take several minutes to generate the power required to—” He was interrupted by a panicked voice on the speaker system.

“Code red! Entities closing in on the facility from all directions! So, so…cold…” The voice faded, followed by a sinister laugh then silence. The fog was coming.

The administrator turned to the Survivor. “I’ll need you stationed here in case it gets this far. You’ll be our last-ditch effort to hold it at bay.” He stood a few feet in front of the three pads.

“It seems to have taken a keen interest in me,” I said. I looked at Daniel.

“Maybe it’s tracking the book.” Daniel removed the logbook from his robe and tossed it to me.

“I’ll return to the tunnel system and distract it,” I said.

“Good idea.” The administrator turned to the others. “There will be another entity converging on us. It is very powerful.”

“The big monster that wiped out my team? We took it down,” said the squad leader.

“No, you merely slowed it down. It reforms, drawing its energy from the darkness of the forest. It is the spawn of hatred,” said the administrator.

“I’ll keep it busy,” the squad leader said.

“I’m with you,” said the other soldier.

“No.” The squad leader placed his hand on the other man’s shoulder. “Stay here and aid in the defense.” He headed for the elevator.

Joel and Rick also stayed behind to defend the compound. Time was short. I joined the squad leader in the elevator. We were both silent as the elevator ascended to the surface. What could we say? The two of us were going to play decoy in situations that seemed impossible. We would be up against two entities of vast power and knew we had little chance of overcoming them. We would face them nonetheless.

Daniel’s Sacrifice

THE GLASS CYLINDER
closed around me as I awaited what I could only assume was certain death. I would step into the unknown. Perhaps there was a song or a poem that could adequately define the situation, but personally, I found more comfort in the Word. I thought of Ecclesiastes, where Solomon said that both the foolish and the wise would fall into darkness; we all face the same fate. An energy flowed around me, and I began to lose myself. I looked at my hands and saw a transparent image of myself appear. My body grew numb, and I felt as though I was slipping into a dream—one from which I would never awaken. That was me: wise enough to grasp the sacrifice required, yet foolish enough to step forward.

Reality faded before me, and I slipped into a void. A pulsing stream of light stretched through the center of the void, like a tunnel of light, piercing the fabric of space and time. It all seemed so fluid…light piercing dark, me flowing in a stream of light. All tactile feeling left me; I was now separate from the physical reality I had known. Echoes circulated the void, growing ever near. A cry rang out—the cry of battle? Was I already hearing the sound of someone facing down a tide of hatred, a battle I would soon enter?

The scene drew near. I could feel it now. The Scribe had no fear of the fog that pursued him. He found sanctuary in knowing the Lord.
He was a man consumed by the cold unseen, yet fulfilled by warmth. There were forces at work other than evil.

I come in his name
.

The Scribe had taken his own life, limiting the entity’s power. Still it took his body; still it struck down his protectors. With no strength remaining, the knights leaned upon their swords and staffs, shoved into the ground, to await death with honor. The new entity opened its hidden mouth, and a wave of its cold fog roared toward the knights, enveloping them. It entered their bodies, freezing them from the inside. They shook, and they trembled, but they made no sound. Their very life essences were being frozen, yet they refused to cry out. Nor did they curse the Lord they had served so valiantly. Amazing…

The last knight crumpled to the ground, his skin gray and cold. The sages stood over the fallen knights. The entity inside the Scribe’s body paused, as if sensing my approaching presence. The sages reacted similarly as I entered the Scribe’s possessed corpse.

At first it felt as if I had awakened from a long slumber. Then the cold set in. The entity did not react suddenly but slowly, seemingly not viewing me as a threat.

“What’s this? Another soul for me to devour?” it said in a distant echo.

“No,” I said. It felt so strange to share a single body, yet to possess two different voices and thought patterns. “I have come to fight you.”

The entity laughed. “You? You are no match for my power,” the entity said mockingly. “Wait…have you been sent here from another time? Ah, the future, yes. So you have seen what I am capable of, yet you are not afraid? You are either very vain or very foolish.”

“I am neither. I am faithful and loyal, and that gives me courage. To fear something is to grant it power.
You
have no power over me,” I said.

The entity scoffed. “Enough!” it shouted. “I will send you back into the void for all eternity!” With that, the entity drew in the energy of all its slain minions. As its power grew, I began to drift, my anchor loosed by its surge of hatred and sorrow, a force beyond any one man.
The sages focused the last of their energy, drawing what they could from their fallen knights, and their staffs released a bright light into the waves of darkness. Their energy flowed into the Scribe’s corpse and was channeled into me.

No, one man could not resist the entity.
And if one be overcome, the two shall stand against him, and a threefold cord shall not be quickly broken
. Ecclesiastes. We were united threefold—the knights, the sages, and the scribes—against this entity. The entity’s hold on the body was slipping, and its rage grew.

The knights were still there. I could feel them—their spirits, their strength. The entity’s rage burned as its power diminished, like fire without oxygen. What would happen to me? The fog surrounding the body began to fade, and my skin—
my
skin now—returned to normal. The last remnants of the entity’s cold soul faded from me and formed into a whirlwind, spiraling into the sky. The dark shadows that it controlled joined with it, the mass swirling faster and faster, tightening in on itself until…nothing.

The fog and shadow vanished into the night, leaving behind only the full moon. The stars…so numerous! So glorious! The sages looked at me in wonder and then turned their gaze toward the light that surrounded the fallen knights. The knights’ skin regained color, and their chests rose and fell with life. They stood, swords and shields ready, but the enemy was nowhere to be seen.

I looked down at the white toga that clothed my body. The chest of the toga was red, drenched in blood. The knife fell free, and the puncture sealed itself. I was alive, yet so far from the life I had known. I began to sing a song that I had not known before. Had the Scribe written it?

Unravel the mystery of me
,

The key embedded in me
.

What is it to be?

This call I answer
,

This path I venture
,

What is it that I see?

Who is it that I hear?

In this nightmare I have known

In the past I run from

Unravel the mystery of me
,

The key embedded in me
.

What is to come?

The past I explore
,

How do I move forward?

Is it I that holds me back?

Who do I wait for?

The Savior I look to

In the battle I run to

Unravel the mystery of me
,

The key embedded in me
.

Who am I to question the struggles I have known?

Am I to understand this plan you have woven?

The will that I follow by your unseen hand

Unravel the mystery of me
,

The key embedded in me
.

In the final victory
,

Will you be waiting for me?

This Savior

I accept the Lord that I kneel to
.

Unravel the mystery of my salvation
,

Your Word embedded in me
.

There was a mystery about all that had happened, and it stretched well beyond my understanding.

One of the sages spoke. “You are the one we have waited for.” He made a motion to the sky with his staff. “One of wisdom and faith who would come, sent by God from another age, to take this body.”

“How did you know?” I asked. I followed his motion with my gaze.

“Gabriel empowered us with a message. The Holy Spirit empowered us for battle,” the other sage replied.

“Was it a dream? The message, I mean?” I asked. I studied my new body.

The sages nodded.

“I, too, was a part of a team assembled by a singular dream…in another time, another place. The rest is up to them now.” It all seemed to be leading to something. But what?

David’s Sacrifice

I WATCHED AS
Daniel’s body fell to a slump in the chamber. Then my chamber closed, and energy crackled around me. I found myself somewhere between reality and a dream; my body became numb, and everything went black. A rift into a black void opened above me, and I was pulled into it. Darkness was everywhere. A light, nigh and fast, formed before me and shot through the void, pulling me deeper. Perhaps I should have felt fear, yet I was at peace. I was a soldier, and it had always been my duty to face danger in the place of others, to fight in their stead to keep them safe. Darkness has always awaited me, and light has always carried me.

The void shaped itself around the light into a tunnel. A scene appeared at the end of the stream of light, and I heard the sounds of battle. A sinister laugh echoed through the void. I was not alone. The entity and I were heading into the same battle.

My instinct was to raise my hands to battle it now, but even as the thought formed, a bolt of energy struck it away.

The entity laughed. “Well done,” it said. It was a black cloud, a mass of shadow. The shadow and I traveled the rift and loomed over the battlefield. In the distance, deep in the forest, an army of mortals and angels fought fiercely against a massive army of demonic creatures. Below, Ahadiel stood over the bodies of the Warrior and the
Destroyer. Ahadiel removed the sword from the Warrior’s body and placed it across the sword on the fallen man’s bloodied chest, folding the lifeless arms across the blade.

In an instant, I was thrust into the Warrior’s body. The wound healed as I entered. The shadow entity that had shared the rift entered the Destroyer’s body. The power I felt in my body was beyond my words, yet as powerful as he was, the Warrior was not able to achieve victory on his own. Only Jesus could do that.

“Fighting from victory.” At last I understood what that statement meant. Our victory was assured. All that was required was to sacrifice ourselves. The first warrior had opened the door for me. Standing quickly, I raised my sword. The Destroyer rose, too.

“My friend, we have been given a chance to partake in something grand,” the Destroyer said to me.

I remained steadfast and silent.

“The coming of darkness!” To my amazement, the Destroyer sheathed his sword. “Stand down, Warrior. We will not fight in this time and place. There is another battle coming for us, another time and place where you and I will match swords. But not before.” With that, he turned to enter the dark forest and faded from sight.