I am SO SORRY for taking so long to update! This chapter was really hard to write (for some reason) and... holidays are over now. No one will be able to update that much. Or, at least, not easily.

Hopefully, this chapter doesn't disappoint.

I don't know how many chapters I'll make. Probably somewhere between ten and fifteen, maybe more, maybe less, depending on how many you guys want.

Disclaimer: I don not own/claim to own Lorien Legacies. Just this story's plot.

"Where am I supposed to go?" he asks in desperation, grateful that someone's helping him but not that said person is only helping him to a certain point. "My legacies aren't working, I have a hole in my chest and I can't even walk for myself!"

"Not my problem."

Wait.

That's too far ahead. You can't be told the twist before you know the rest of the story.

Maybe a quick explanation.

Heroes, and fairytales.

In typical fairytale, we have a prince and a princess. It typically begins with them falling in love at first sight, and typically ends with them marrying.

But this doesn't happen in real life. The guy doesn't always get the girl. They don't always both survive to the end.

In a fairytale, the prince undergoes a hard journey to save the kingdom, completes the journey, saves the princess and gets his happily ever after.

But this isn't a fairytale, and a journey may be for nothing more than to find his loved one.

In a fairytale, the prince chooses to be hero. It is automatically assumed that all heroes have a choice in the matter, that all heroes get happy endings, that all heroes remain heroes for the rest of their lives. This, too, isn't true.

Especially the happy ending part. Heroes don't get happy endings.

Because the thing about heroes is that, a lot of the time, they just get lucky. And, one day, their luck always runs out.

When one is a Garde and being analysed by a Mogodorian doctor, it is pretty much needless to say that is awkward.

Well, it is for Number Eight, anyway. He's sitting in a wheelchair (still not over that) while one of his worst enemies does weird stuff, like check his heartbeat and poke the hole in his chest (funnily enough, it doesn't hurt).

"Do you remember anything about your time being dead?"

Well, isn't that cheery?

"No," he admits, telling the truth. "Just… darkness."

"What about the Loric after life?" Setrakus asks, dark eyes settling on his face and sending shivers down his spine. That look…

Wait.

There's a Loric afterlife?

"Nothing," he says. "There was nothing."

And there was nothing. Just the silence and the emptiness and the cold (frozen in an ice block, remember?) and just nothing.

That is what he remembers. The darkness of the mind. Our worst nightmare.

He will do anything not to go back there.

"Fascinating," the doctor guy says, jotting something down on a clipboard. Honestly, he feels like a lab-rat, just sitting under a microscope unable to fight back.

Ra actually looks furious.

"No afterlife?" he says slowly, as if struggling to wrap his mind around the concept. "After death, there is… nothing."

"That's right," he confirms, wanting to bolt away from the dark look the Mogodorian's sending him. "Nothing. Not even a tiny flicker of light."

"WHAT?!" Setrakus suddenly yells, looking more furious than Eight's ever seen him. "There is no afterlife? NO afterlife?!"

"Something tells me you don't appreciate that," he says weakly.

Despite what you may think, Mogodorians are not completely heartless monsters.

In fact, they used to be quite loving creatures, with a simple curiosity for the world. They had a love even stronger than the Adorai of the Loric. They were, actually, quite good friends with the Loric.

But so many people died in their society. So many it was unreal. At least double the amount of people a day than on Earth now.

As all their loved ones died, the Mogodorians comforted themselves with the fact that they had gone to a better place, where everyone could live happily.

But this one thought, this one thing, drove some Mogodorians mad.

Because the mistake that a lot of children made as they were growing up, was that, because they'd be sending them to a better place, that meant that it would be 'okay' to kill them.

And as those children grew up and taught their children, this idea got passed down and spread to so many Mogodorians that it was soon like all of them believed it, like it was a major religion that had taken over their minds. It was this one captivating thought that murders could use to get off trial, that could excuse all these heinous crimes.

But Mogodore soon descended into chaos, as it always was going to ever since this started.

Death no longer became a fact of life, but a necessity. The hunger for blood overtook their minds. They thought that, yes, death was bad, but it was okay.

So genocide became essential. It was the only way to move forward, to accomplish great and new things.

The Loric were just casualties. And, really, they did them all a favour – no grieving, no sadness. All sent to the afterlife at once.

Somewhere along the line, true love disappeared for the Mogodorians.

The Loric Nine, well, they're just more casualties. They are a threat that could bring down the whole empire, with their petty ideas about death and clear black and white view of the world. And so…

The Mogodorians have a mission – kill all Garde.

Considering the amount of Garde there actually are, this sounds like it should be a fairly simple…

(I've told you all this before. I have, go back. You won't want to read this again, so I'll miss it out.)

And thus, we have accomplished the current point in this story (or thereabouts).

Or, maybe we need a little more background.

Setrakus Ra. Let's learn about him.

No one is born evil.

No, really, it's true. No one is born evil – it's a process, they become evil.

Of course, a certain type of person is needed, where two people have the same upbringing and yet end up on different sides. But, in general, it's more circumstances that make a path leading onto evil.

Some people say it's a choice. It's not.

Well, okay, occasionally it is, but mostly don't get a choice. Stuff happens to them, they think that they're the good guys, and by the time they realise that what they're doing is wrong it's too late.

Some people relish the thought that they're evil, indulge in it and take great pleasure in seeing pain. These people are also often insane.

Setrakus Ra, like most children, was born innocent.

He was pure. Not an ounce of badness in him. Just your typical Mogodorian new-born.

He grew up with his father, his mother having been killed in childbirth.

"Why are you not sad?" he asked his father one night. "Mommy died, and you're not sad?" As a child, Setrakus Ra was, in fact, quite adorable.

"I'm not sad because death is a part of life," his father answered after many moments of silence. "Besides, she's in a better place now. That isn't a bad thing."

That was the day the idea that corrupted most Mogodorians wormed its way into Setrakus Ra's head and made a nice little home for itself there.

"I don't want to die," he announced to the boys he hung out at breaks with, years later. They all scoffed.

"Why not? You go to a better place."

"I know," he asserted. "But I don't want to go there. I'm going to live forever."

"Death claims us all in the end," Andrekus Sutekh, ever the wise one, told him.

"Well, I'm going to be the exception to that rule," he said, looking them all in the eyes. "I am going to achieve immortality."

They all snorted.

"Yeah, good luck with that."

And then they were back to talking about the piken matches in the arenas and forgot all about what he'd just said.

Setrakus wasn't really evil yet, not at all. He wasn't even evil when he got out some blank blueprints and started making plans for immortality.

Because, no, becoming evil isn't just an overnight process. It doesn't happen at the flick of a switch. It's a gradual process, one that takes time.

In the path to becoming evil, there are often many points where someone can go another way, can become the good guy.

But these aren't choices, because the person isn't even aware that these opportunities are there, that they're even on the path to being evil.

Setrakus Ra was no exception to this rule.

(Somewhere along the line, in his path to leadership, Setrakus Ra's mind became twisted and evil. No one's quite sure when it happened, but only that it did, and that it was the afterlife and immortality that drove him to it.)

No one is born evil. Not even every evil person knows that they're evil.

But here is where Setrakus Ra is the exception. He's evil and he knows it. He's proud of it.

Eight is seriously scared right now.

He is, he really is. He's got an angry Mogodorian is his face, one that clearly hates him with every fibre of his being. It scares him, to be honest. He's fully expected to die again, to go back to the darkness without any of the other Garde even knowing that he came back to life in the first place.

Wait… does that mean that their scars have faded, seeing as he's back alive and all?

He wonders if his own scar has burned onto his ankle.

He's about to check when he realises that he's still got Setrakus Ra uncomfortably close to his face, teeth bared (he seriously needs dental floss) and… growling?

Ra grabs his shirt (the same shirt he died in, still with his blood staining it slightly) and leans in closer, until their eye to eye.

"The afterlife is real," he hisses, eyes filled with a burning fit of fury. "You probably just aren't worthy of going there."

(But Setrakus Ra is only trying to convince himself and both of them know it.)

"Of course," the Mog doctor, who Eight had forgotten was there, interrupts as Setrakus pulls away from the Garde. "He's Loric. They are unworthy of life, never mind afterlife."

"And yet," Setrakus says, lost in thought but still with his empty eyes baring into Eight's skull. "This one is apparently worthy of returning to life, even after death." He pauses for a moment, eyes searching the younger boy.

There is silence.

"Keep him alive," he finally declares, walking out without a second glance. "He could be important. And…" Eight can just imagine the smile. "I still want to know how he came back."

"It should be your problem," he retorts, folding his arms. "You're the one who's going to be in for it if I get caught."

"Well," the other person replies. "You'll be in hot water, too. Besides, this is all I have to do to work off my debt."

He pauses.

"What debt?"

No. You still don't know enough.

He is wheeled back to his room by a big, beefy Mogodorian who stares at him for prolonged amounts of time.

It's quite intimidating.

"Once, this guy saved my life. He didn't have to. He could have left me to die. We weren't even on the same side. We were enemies, in fact. We hated each other. But he saved me anyway.

"I guess, eventually, we sort of became friends. Neither of us killed each other, I didn't rat him out. He should have ditched me as soon as I was fine, but allowed me tag along anyway, even though I was probably going to either kill him or turn him in.

"I was going to, at first. Then I sort of… changed my ways, I guess you could say. We parted ways eventually, me re-joining the Mogs. But he still saved my life. I still owe for him that.

"So this is me, paying off my debt. He would've wanted me to do this. It's not my problem if you have nowhere to go – it's just my problem that you get out alive."

He spends the next week alone.

That same Mogodorian comes in from time to time, delivering food and drink. The water is warm and tastes horrible, and the food is some weird porridgey stuff glooped on stale bread, but it's food and drink, so he digests it nonetheless (he never thanks the guy who delivers it – he's still being held captive).

He's still in that room he woke up in. it's still clean but plain, and he's still stuck in a wheelchair.

The use of his arms have come back, which is a relief, as he can eat his food without resistance. But his legs still refuse to budge and his arms aren't really strong enough to do anything much.

Five and Setrakus Ra haven't come to visit him since they left him, and he's certainly not complaining.

Much to his surprise, a bunch of movies and a TV are sent in to him. Perhaps Setrakus Ra is trying to convince him to tell him how he came back to life (though he genuinely doesn't know), or maybe Five has taken pity on him. He doesn't know, and doesn't particularly care.

Watching the movies feels like giving in to temptation, and therefore his enemies. But the boredom is soon too much and he watches the movies.

(They are all, he notes, romantic movies in which one of the main protagonists dies, like Titanic and Moulin Rouge. It reminds him so much of him and Marina, and he can't help but feel as if someone is trying to spite him. They probably are, actually.)

All in all, he is treated quite well considering the circumstances.

One day, not a particularly eventful one, just one where he's watching Titanic for the fifth time, the same Mogodorian that delivers his food wheels his chair out of his room.

"Does Setrakus want to see me again?" he asks, picking at the hem of his shirt. It's the same one he 'died' in, still with his blood on it. The soldier mutters a no…

And that's when he notices two guards unconscious on the floor.

"What the -" he starts to say, but is cut off by a large hand being placed over his mouth. He looks up to see the Mogodorian place a finger on his lips, before removing his hand and starting to wheel him to the right, a direction he didn't get to go in as he went to see the doctor guy.

As they silently walk down corridors, he takes the opportunity to study his pusher. The guy looks like your average Mogodorian, with bulging muscles and empty eyes. But this one seems to be helping him… why?

Pretty soon they reach their destination – the shuttle bay (yes, they're still on board the ship, and, yes, the ship has a shuttle bay). The Mogodorian (he really needs to come up with a name for that guy) parks the wheelchair and types in a concealed code, making the doors slide open. All too soon Eight is actually inside a shuttle, watching the beefy guy starting up the engine.

"What are you doing?" he asks, wondering why a Mogodorian is helping him. The guy himself spares him a brief glance before going back to whatever he's doing.

"Don't mistake this as me pitying you," is all the answer he receives, which doesn't really answer his question. "Mogodorians don't show pity. Only strength."

"Then what are you doing?" he asks, exasperated.

"What I feel I have to," the guy replies, hitting a button which causes the shuttle to awkwardly jerk into the air. He faces the Garde properly now, empty eyes still looking right into his soul. "I'll get in huge trouble if I'm caught, so I'll have to cover my tracks carefully. I can't come with you."

"Answer my question," is all he says, tilting his head to one side. "Why are you helping me?"

"Look, you were brought back for a reason," the Mog says, typing a couple more commands into the control panel. "Something tells me it isn't to hang around Setrakus Ra watching movies. Also, I owe someone something."

"But…" he pauses, realising something. "You said you're not coming with me?"

"That's right." He doesn't even look up.

"You're not taking me somewhere safe?"

"Nope."

"Where am I supposed to go…?"

"Not my pro…"

"Well, it should…"

(Etcetera etcetera.)

You can pretty much figure out what happens next, by adding up all the little snippets that were told before. I won't bore you by repeating them all and letting you hear them again.

Instead, I'll skip up to where I left off…

("So this is me, paying off my debt. He would've wanted me to do this. It's not my problem if you have nowhere to go – it's just my problem that you get out alive.")

He's quiet for a moment, simply because he can't think of anything to say.

Then, "who are you, anyway?"

"Who I am is not important."

"Well I want to know," he presses.

"Fine," the Mog guy sighs. "My name is Rexicus Saturnus."

Then Rexicus Saturnus runs through the doorway and jumps onto the floor, the ramp at the side, and the doors close behind him.

Then the shuttle takes off, and Number Eight is alone once more.

This safety might be only temporary, but it's one step closer to a happy ending.

Thank you to everyone who's read, faved, followed, reviewed or even thought about this story. It means so much to me that people like this.