Chapter Six

I'm in that dimension again. Who is it this time that's coming for me? Who is it that's died and coming to see me here?

She slowly comes towards me. She's small. She can only be ten, maybe eleven. Who is it? I know. It's Fiara. "Hello, Hope," she whispers in her small voice. She died of sickness when she was only ten. It hurt all of us. I was twelve at the time.

"Hi, Fiara," I reply. "I haven't seen you in a while."

"It's been…two hundred years," she agrees. "It's nice here, though. I can watch you from here."

"Why are you watching me?" I ask.

"Why not?" she counters. "What else have I got to do? Mother coddles me all the time, Father just stares at me – he still thinks it's unnatural to speak to dead people even when he's dead – so I watch you. You're life had been quite interesting."

"Not right now, though," I reply. "It's difficult to say if I'm going to live much longer."

She gets a certain twinkle in her eyes. "We'll see. But if I know you, you'll live for quite a while longer."

I shrug, unsure of how to reply.

"Your friend, Jonah, is quite worried about you." She's laughing slightly. "He's done all sorts of things to wake you up. I don't want to say goodbye, yet, though."

When she said goodbye, I'm reminded of everything Dani had done. "Is Dani here? Wherever I am in the real world?"

Fiara only shrugs. "I don't know. I can't look at her because I didn't know her in real life."

I realize she is severely limited in her options of who to look at. She was only ten, dying in the year 1812. "It's been nice to talk with you, Fiara."

"You too, Hope," she replies. "Go. Your wounds are healing nicely, the Raze made sure of that."

"The Raze?"

But she's already gone.

And then I am too.

"Hope? Hope!"

I woke to Jonah hitting my cheek repeatedly. My arm has a bandage over it, and it feels numb. I was lying on a bed of straw. "Hi, Jonah."

He sighed in relief. "Oh. My. God. Do you know how worried I was?"

I shook my head, slowly sitting up. "No."

He launched into a detailed account of everything he did to try to wake me up, but I wasn't really listening. We were in a cell, the bars strong, tight, and close together. Blue lights were flickering around them too, so I assumed a kind of magic held them in place.

"Thanks," I told him, just to get him to stop talking. It was obvious he was scared out of his wits, and so was I, but he was trying to talk in order to calm himself.

He surprisingly remained quiet for a minute, and then said slowly, "I saw Dani."

I gasped, turning around. A small bit of pain sliced through my arm but I ignored it. "You saw her? Was she okay?"

He looked like he was trying hard not to cry. "Oh, she's okay. But not for long."

I narrowed my eyes. "Why not?"

He couldn't bring himself to respond to me. "Jonah," I said softly, "why not?"

"Bläsa's making her his Vessel."

I was speechless. How do you reply to that? Dani had officially joined the dark side. She had wanted more than anything to become Lěshä's Vessel, and when she wasn't, she chose to be Bläsa's instead. "How…?" I said, trailing off. What I had wanted to say was, how could she do something so stupid?

But I couldn't ask the question when I already knew the answer.

"It's happening tomorrow," Jonah continued. He was sobbing now. It was a better reaction that I could get out. "They have a huge ceremony for it and everything…"

"Why would Bläsa want that though?" Shouldn't I be worried about Dani? At the very least, I should be feeling sympathetic. But I understood. Sometimes you don't want to understand, though.

"She's a powerful Eternal. She's the Time Eternal, too. If her powers get more focused she could take him through time," Jonah replied. It made sense. Bläsa was just using her. She thought he wanted her, respected her, didn't she?

"He only wants her power," I realized. "If she was a different kind of Eternal, he wouldn't want her."

Jonah nodded thoughtfully. He was still crying but desperately trying to get it under control. "I…I guess so. But why? We needed her there."

I shook my head. "She didn't believe that. Now we just have to focus on getting out of here."

"Getting out of here?" he exclaimed incredulously. "Dani's effectively killing herself and you want to escape? Shouldn't we be trying to help her?"

For a Mind Eternal, he was pretty dumb sometimes. I didn't want to yell at him, so I only said, "Jonah. Listen. We're trapped in a cell in some Raze lair. We have to get out. The only way to help Dani is to get out. But as much as I want to help her, she has the right to choose her own course. We can't tell her what side to pick. It's up to her."

"But she's not thinking clearly!" he protested.

"I know," I agreed. "I know, but it's out of our hands. Who knows where Clara and Fane are? X said we might get captured and we did. So…let's just get out of here."

"There's no way," he replied. "The blue stuff is electrified. The bars are too thick, and it's all magic-proof. Believe me, I tried."

"Maybe we can try tomorrow," I suggested, still staring at the bars. I felt like they weren't just trapping me in a cell. They were also tight around my heart. "Are they going to show us the ceremony?"

"Probably," Jonah said. "If nothing else, just to gloat that they got Dani and we don't."

I sighed. "Then we hold out 'till tomorrow. We'll figure something out. I'll use that attack I did in the back room of the Practice Room – where I just emit magic in every direction. Make sure you shield yourself from it, I can't control where I send it."

He nodded. "Then we find Clara and Fane, right?"

"Right." I nodded grimly. "Wherever they are. They might be here."

And so we waited.

About an hour went by. It felt strange to talk to each other, but we did anyway to relieve fear and tension. It didn't seem like anyone else was here, but we couldn't see any other cells. Finally, a Raze walked by our door and opened it somehow. We couldn't see how he did it, much to my chagrin.

"I'm here for Hope," he rasped, and I bravely stood up. I didn't want Jonah to think I was afraid. He gave me a weak smile, and I nodded to him.

"I can't die, right?" I told him, and he nodded this time. Leaving with the Raze, we both knew that it was all too easy for me to die here.

We walked down a long hallway that was perfectly empty except for our cell. I could feel her (she had red eyes and brown skin, proving it was a female) hot breath racing down my neck, and for a minute I thought I was back in Bloomtown.

We reached a door at the end of the hallway and she opened it, revealing a circular room with about eight more doors. She sniffed the air, and then chose a door. I realized that all the Raze got around by scent. This place seemed so complicated, they just smelled their way to the correct passage.

That was gross on a number of levels.

The room we entered was relatively small, with only a chair and a table. I was pushed into the chair, giving me a full view of the table's contents. There were knives, razors, pliers, and all sorts of sharp tools. This was a torture chamber.

Another man was standing by the table. He had black hair, black, narrow eyes, and his face was deathly pale. His robes hung the same way Lěshä's did, and he stood with an arrogance I'd never seen before. The Raze who had escorted me bowed respectfully and left the room. I was glad that her breath was gone and I could relax…until I figured out the man's identity.

The man was Bläsa.

And I had an audience with him.

"Hope Williams," he said softly. I expected him to yell at me, or to at least have a booming voice, but it was soft and elegant. "Eternal of Death, am I right?"

I couldn't think of how to respond so I didn't respond at all.

"Not a talker? That's okay. Normally I'm not either, but one of us has to make a sacrifice, don't we?" He shot me a crooked smile which just looked wrong on his face. "And I think you've made enough today."

I still didn't reply.

"Your friend, Danielle. She's an excellent Vessel, I must say. Much more willing than you were, wasn't she?" There was that smile again. I looked for any emotion in his eyes but I didn't find any. "Then again, we're willing to do a lot for power, that I can understand."

He began to pace along the edge of the table, occasionally sneaking a sly glance at me. "But I suppose I am wrong. You do not wish for power. In fact, you want to…give it up?"

He must have heard from Dani how I didn't want to be Lêshä's Vessel. "Yes," I said quietly. Before I could finish, he cackled.

"Finds her voice, does she? Please finish, my dear. I'm intrigued what took so long to say."

I wanted to make it sound good, just to spite him, but something about his presence just invoked fear into me. "If it helps my friends not to have the power, I'd give it up."

"But it's too late." He stopped pacing, walked around the table, and kneeled right in front of him. His breath, instead of being hot, was icy cold. "She's mine now. She's not your friend. She never was."

"She was!" I argued. Finally, I didn't sound like a scared little girl. "She was."

"A friend does not desert another friend when they get jealous," Bläsa said through clenched teeth. He had experience with this.

I looked him right in the eye. "Who abandoned you?"

He didn't reply. We eyed each other for a long time. Just like I had understood why Dani had done what she did, I felt as if I understood Bläsa. At a young age he must have been left behind by somebody he thought he could trust. I understood because I had too. In those 212 years I had lived, slowly I became a closed off shell of the former person I was. Clara and everyone else had brought me back, away from the shell. But Bläsa didn't have anybody to do that.

"You're wrong," he hissed. "I was born this way."

I gave a start. "You knew what I was thinking." It wasn't a question, but a statement because it had to be true.

He nodded slightly. He was still inches from my face. "No. I could just tell what you were thinking from your eyes. I was born to be Lêshä's opposite, Hope. But we were supposed to be together. I loved her."

"And she didn't love you back," I said softly. "She cast you away, didn't she?"

"I couldn't take it. I made the Raze, just as she made you five. But my race is more powerful," he grinned. "And now I have Dani, just to prove my point."

"This is a contest for you?" I exclaimed. "You just want to kill everything Lêshä made and stands for so she'll like you?"

He snorted. "She'll never love me the way I will always love her. I was made to love her, don't you understand? She wasn't. She has the luxury of choice."

"There's always a choice, Bläsa." My mind flashed back to when X had me in his back room, when he had told me I had no choice. There is always a choice, and I had to hope I'd made the right ones so far.

He growled slightly. "There wasn't for me, not when lust for her runs in my veins. So, yes, I suppose it is a contest for me to prove that I'm the right one for her. I will kill everything she 'stands for' – you included."

I couldn't help but suck in a breath.

"But I can't kill you yet…," he reasoned, "So I'll have to find out the location of the camp from you."

I thought back to what Clara had said. "We're still in Canada. In the Rocky Mountains. I can't tell you more. What if you get captured and then you're tortured? You might compromise us." That had been just about two months ago. It felt like an eternity, or at least a year. Time had lost its meaning for me after living so long.

"I don't know where the camp is," I told him honestly.

"Mhm, of course not," he whispered, leaning forwards and speaking right into my ear. I got shivers as his voice touched my ear. "But you wouldn't tell me even if you did know."

I managed to shake my head. "I have one last offer for you, Hope," he said softly. "Join me, Hope. You can live forever. You can be powerful. Forget being Lêshä's Vessel. Be with Dani again. Forget pain, forget suffering."

He leaned even closer. I tried to shrink away, but I discovered that I was cuffed to the chair by restraints that had slid out of nowhere. "You could live forever, Hope."

My name sounded unnatural coming from his lips. This was simply another choice, and although he made his argument well, I hissed, "I already live forever."

Then I spit at him, hitting his ghostly face.

He roared in anger, wiping his face with his sleeve, and then he went back to the table. "You can tell me everything you know about the camp," he snarled, "or you can submit to my torturing."

I didn't say another word. I had just angered a god. I had a god as an enemy. The consequences of my actions hadn't occurred to me until now.

He picked up a knife on the table and whispered, "You have a touch of arsenic in your blood still. This means whatever wounds I give you will heal quickly…but not that quickly."

He lifted the knife, and with a grace and speed I'd never seen, plunged it into my gut.

I roared in pain and anger, too. The knife hurt more than it should've, and I know, because I'd been stabbed before. Even if my wounds heal fast it doesn't mean I'm immune to pain. Screaming, I tried to wait for the injury to heal. It was, but very, very slowly. Blood trickled down my waist, coating my white shirt.

"Did you like that?" Bläsa hissed. "Did you enjoy the pain?"

I shook my head, gurgling slightly.

"Do you want to tell me where your camp is?"

I shook my head again.

He slashed my arm but I barely felt that pain. My head drooped and I wished I would pass out, I wished…

He slapped me and I didn't.

The bleeding in my knife wound stopped finally, but he only stabbed me again. My breathing went shallow as my body tried to get past the arsenic but it couldn't.

"Stop…," I whispered, begging him. It felt like hours had gone by.

"Will you tell me what I wish to know?"

I couldn't. I couldn't bring myself to.

We continued playing his game. Finally he stopped, leaning on the table for support. He waited there, letting my wounds heal, and then he said, "You've fought past the arsenic. You're no use to me."

My vision was clearing and the wounds were going away, slowly but surely. Finally. The effort left me exhausted and I felt like I could drop at any moment. My eyes felt heavy and I tasted a coppery tang in my mouth.

The door opened and two Raze came in the room. My cuffs slid away and I was hauled up by their nasty fingers. I didn't want them to touch me but I felt weak and I didn't trust my own legs to carry me back to my cell.

"Maybe your friend will be more helpful," Bläsa grumbled. We left before I could say a word. I wasn't even sure if I could say a word.

The two Raze, a male and female, dragged me out of the torture area and back into that circular room. My eyelids felt heavy and I struggled to stay awake, but I wasn't about to collapse in the middle of this room. I had to warn Jonah what was coming…

We made it back to the cell, and not a moment too soon. As they opened the door and shoved me inside, I collapsed onto the hay. "Bläsa will be ready for you soon," the Raze hoarsely told Jonah, and they closed the door again, the blue force shield flickering back on.

"You have to be careful," I told Jonah. "He wants to know…" My voice faded out for a minute, but then I managed, "…where the camp is."

Jonah gasped. "We don't know where it is, though! The only one that knows is –,"

"Joel, and he's dead now," I finished for him. We both knew that X could reveal the location, but a Raze might have overheard him. Even so, I knew where the location of the camp was…sort of. Clara had let it slip to me that it was in the Rocky Mountains in Canada.

Jonah, luckily didn't know that. And neither did Dani.

I let gravity control all of my limbs and I flopped down onto the straw. I was so tired I could barely open my eyes. "Do you have any arsenic in you?" I asked Jonah blearily.

He shook his head. "I don't think so. The cyanide they gave me wore off a long time ago."

At least something good had happened today. "He won't be able to torture you, then. Your injuries will heal...he wants us alive."

I could tell by the silence I'd either scared or confused Jonah. Seeing as he was always scared here, I'd probably done the latter. Finally, he asked, "Why?"

I mumbled my response, and I wasn't paying attention anymore because I was too tired, so it came out in French. "Parce que nous allons renseignements importants il a besoin." It took me a while to realize that I hadn't spoken English, and I confused Jonah even more.

"I pride myself in knowing things, and I do know many languages," he replied, "but French isn't one of them."

I apologized and translated, "Because we have important information that he needs."

He nodded. "He thinks we know where the camp is, but what else could we tell him?"

I shrugged, as best as I could without opening my eyes and while lying down. "The defenses. Our powers. He wants us to join him like Dani did."

I was too tired to feel my heart break a little as I said her name.

Jonah asked me something else but I couldn't hear him. I began falling asleep, getting closer and closer, but then Jonah yelled, "Hope!"

I snapped my eyes open, expecting an attack. "What? What is it?"

"You were falling asleep, and that appeared."

I looked at him to see he was pointing nervously in the corner. Following his arm, I saw somehow I had conjured a spirit. A man was standing in the corner of the cell, but he was all smoky and hazy and had a turquoise hue to him, just like other ghosts did. I could see all the detail of his clothes (which was a lot. He had a toga on, a sash, and a belt like thing, and he was wearing one of those leaf circles the Greeks put on their heads) but I could also make out the bars behind him.

"I am not a 'that'," the spirit roared. "I am me. Achilles."

We both gasped. Looking him up and down, and finally at his heel, I could see that the spot he was dipped in the Styx River in the Greek Underworld wasn't even there. So, of course, in my stupor-like state I naturally asked, "Why don't you have a heel?"

Jonah looked at me like I'd gone insane. Achilles looked slightly disturbed that I'd come out and said it with no prelude to cushion the blow.

Achilles stood up a little straighter and said, "In the Underworld, we appear how we truly lived life. I lived showing myself of as strong when I had a huge weakness. Now, in death, my heel did not follow me there."

Jonah nodded respectfully. I didn't think to follow his lead.

"Why are you here, sir?" Jonah asked.

Achilles nodded approvingly. "I like you, young soldier. You know the chain of command and respect." He looked at me as he said those words, but I didn't really process that he disliked me.

"To answer the question," he continued, "Hope was in a state of conjuring, even only for a second, and you looked like you could use some guidance."

I blinked. "I was?"

Achilles sighed. "She's a slow one, is she not?"

"No, sir, she's not, she was just tortured for information." Jonah said those words lightly, as if they struggled to come off his tongue.

Achilles nodded. "Did you give the enemy the information?"

I shook my head. "No."

He nodded again, this time a bit more favourably. "That is good. That is a sign of a good soldier, even if you are a girl."

I looked at him with a smirk on my face. "Really? Your pulling the sexist card?"

He shrugged. "It is true. You are a woman trying to be a fighter, are you not? That is a difficult thing to do for your gender."

I glared at him. If there's one thing I can't stand, it's hate against another race, whether that be prejudice, racism or sexism. "You know what? You can just take all that sexist crap and shove it up your ass, okay? When you've found your balls you can come back and talk to me."

I only confused him with my 'modern slang.' "My balls? Do you mean to say I'm a jester of some kind? And I have no ass. My faithful donkey died years ago."

Jonah tried to stifle a laugh. I gave him another look. "Yes, when you've found your inner jester you can talk to me."

He shrugged. "If you won't listen, I'll talk to your friend."

"What do you want to tell us, sir?" Jonah asked, trying to bring the situation back to the normal side of things.

"I know Bläsa. He was Hades to the Greeks, Pluto to the Romans, Anubis to the Egyptians and the Devil to the Christians. He is evil in it's true form, but none of the religions got it right," he said. "He wasn't born to be evil."

"He told me that," I cut in. "He was born to be Lêshä's partner, but when he told her of his love for her, Lêshä rejected him and he went evil."

Achilles nodded sharply. "That is it. You must remember not all of Bläsa is bad. In the Greek's case, there were times where Hades could be rewarding."

"But what do we do about Dani?" I asked. "How can we show her that Bläsa won't help her?"

Achilles lifted one shoulder. "It's her choice."

It scared me, because that's exactly how I was trying to deal with it. It's her choice. I had told Bläsa that there was always a choice. I had never been in a situation where I didn't have at least two paths I could take. I wanted to take the right ones, but then again, I ended up here, so…I must've gone wrong somewhere.

I began falling asleep, and as I did so Achilles' outline began to fade. "Oh, so you're just going to let me go?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Not…" I had to try to stifle a huge yawn. My body was shutting down, forcing me to sleep so it could get all the way past the arsenic and heal. "Umm, yeah."

"Goodbye, sir," Jonah said.

Achilles nodded, and then he was gone.

"Wow!" Jonah exclaimed. "He was so cool." I'd never seen him star struck before.

"Read…read on…read on him before?" I managed, getting ready to sleep.

"Yeah. You should rest. They come for me, they come for me. I won't tell them anything," he promised. "Don't worry about me."

And so I stopped resisting and gave into sleep.