Page 84 of Black Onyx
“The Void is a Realm?” I ask, shocked.
“I just assumed it was magic, not an actual place,” Mayhem agrees with me, and if he didn’t know, then I don’t feel quite so bad that I had no idea.
“We can come back to that. What else does it say?” Reaper asks Storm.
“The beast has escaped into the Crimson court,” he starts and gets interrupted again.
“That must be where we are,” Killian says and then, when Storm gives him an exasperated look, adds, “sorry, please continue, brother.”
“Thanks,” Storm replies drily. “It’s causing terror and havoc. We need to subdue it and stop it from continuing its attack on the crimson court. They have tried everything and have had no success. We only have two days to complete this task, and then the green portal will come to take us back to the castle. Once back at the academy, we will have four days' rest before the next level if we successfully complete this one. Then it goes on to say, "use everything at your disposal, or you die.”
We’re silent as we run the words over in our minds and make sure we remember them.
“It’s interesting that it tells us how many days rest we get in between levels. I knew that there is always a break between each level to recover and study for the next one, but I didn’t realise that we were actually given a set time of how long we’d have.” Zev comments.
“It’ll certainly help us manage time better. So what do we do about the beast then?” Killian asks, his tail still wrapped around his waist.
“Kill it?” Loki suggests, looking around at the rest of us.
A sick churning starts in my stomach at his words, and I clamp my mouth shut, not sure where my reaction is coming from; I want to know what the others think we should do before I weigh in my opinion.
“Not necessarily,” Rival replies, and I lose some of my tension. “It says subdue, not kill.”
“I’ll give you that, but what do we do with it if we actually manage to subdue it?” Reaper argues.
“Not only that, but they’ve been trying to get rid of it for goddess knows how long now and haven’t succeeded, and they’ve had a chance to study it. We aren’t going to get that, especially in the time frame we have. I mean, we don’t even know where it is. The scroll didn’t say that, which means that we’re going to have to find a village or something so that we can get some information on where we need to go.” Mayhem explains.
I can’t keep my mouth shut any longer, my gut instincts are going crazy, and I have to say something, “We will not kill it.”
“What?” Storm asks me since I almost exploded with the statement.
“I didn’t mean for it to come out quite so forcefully as it did,” I apologise and then take a breath and try to explain where I’m coming from more clearly, “We cannot kill it. Think about it for a second from its point of view. The beast has found itself in a new and unfamiliar place, a place that is full of light that it is not used to; you’ve all travelled with me through the Void; you know what the light levels are there,” I start to explain when Zev interrupts me.
“You travel through the Void?” he asks. There’s an urgency to his question that I don’t quite understand, and where I would typically question whether to tell him about my Void gift or not, there is clearly something bigger going on here. Whoever that voice was, has put him in our path to keep safe, so I have to believe that I can trust him.
“Yes, it’s my main gift.”
“That’s why you never used your gift when we sparred?” he asks, but I think he already knows the answer and just asks the question because that’s what’s expected of him.
I tilt my head slightly, studying him. “Vision?”
He nods, “I can’t tell you. I would if I could, but I can’t risk it.”
“Don’t worry, mate, we know how it works. We won’t ask.” Loki reassures him, and Zev’s shoulders droop as the tension leaves him.
“Farren, you were saying?” Storm asks me, trying to get our conversation back on track.
“Right, it’s arrived and immediately been attacked because it's different and doesn’t fit in here. It’s scared and acting out of fear. We need to take it home. If we can subdue it, then I can take it back through the Void with me.”
Storm studies me and then asks, “It’s that important that we don’t kill it?”
“Yes,” I reply firmly.
“Alright, then, we won’t kill it.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“That’s great and all, but we still have to find it and then convince it that we aren’t going to harm it like everything else in this Realm has tried to do,” Reaper says.
