CHAPTER FOURTEEN: LACEY

"Come along then." the old man picked up his cane and tapped it twice on the ground before standing, with a great deal of difficulty. "I have the answers you want, and I want to give them." He coughed, and by Lacey's count it was the thousandth time.

Lacey was unsure of what to do. She was pretty sure he was he relative. After all, not just anyone could get information about the Batalion and especially get a member tattoo. She had never heard of a Jordan Pierre, in the archive or in any of the family history books she had read. But she was curious, she always has been, and it would be her downfall.

After she stood up and dusted off the standard issue gray slacks the Battalion makes everyone wear, she caught up the old man, Jordan. Do I call him Jordan? She wondered, Should I call him Uncle? He did say he was my father's uncle, or something like that…..

"Where are we going?" Lacey tried to get his attention. He hadn't gotten too far in front of her, only about three paces or so. By Lacey's assumptions he was at least 80, and it showed in his gate. Surprisingly, he was able to keep a pretty fast and steady speed, Lacey had to actually put in an effort to keep up with him, and she was not expecting that.

"To get the answers you want," he coughed out, nearly tripping over his cane. While he continued to gulumpf forward he managed to choke out, "You first need to hear the entire story. From the true beginning to the full end."

"So tell me the story," she said. "Right here right now. Why do we need to-"

"This isn't the kind of story you can just hear to understand," Jordan interrupted. Lacey had decided to call him Jordan, if he was going to call her Lacey she could call him Jordan. He coughed before continuing, "This is the kind of story you need to see. You need to see it, to understand it. To believe in the truth."

He started to have a small coughing fit, probably from walking to fast. He spat something on the ground, and Lacey couldn't help but cringe at the fact that anyone would do something so disgusting. Jordan still shuffled along, it was almost like the coughing fit had made him want to move faster.

This is ridiculous. Lacey couldn't help being sceptical, after all it took her nearly her entire internship to believe what the Elders of the Battalion were talking about. The prophecy, if you could even call it that, that the Elders spoke of was so far fetched even Lenny had a hard time believing it, and he believed in Santa till he was 14. I'm pretty sure he still believes in the tooth fairy. But what Jordan is talking about is almost down right impossible. Right? I'm right!

"How much farther are we going, because I-" once again Lacey was interrupted, and it was really starting to tick her off.

"I know what you had going on today, and believe me this is more important." grumbling he looked over his shoulder at her, and coughed again. "I'm not trying to be rude, but there isn't a lot of time left, and you need to know this information before it is too late."

"Then why can't you just tell me-" For the third time in less than 5 minutes, Lacey got interrupted. If he did that again, she was going to have no choice but to smack him.

"We are here." Turning into a dimly lit alley, dimmer than it should have been for the time of day. The alley was a dead end, and nearly empty, despite the single garbage bag at the entrance. There wasn't even a doorway.

"We are….where now?" Her patience was running thin, and ability to be respectful to strangers was dying out. If Lenny was pulling this, she would have chewed him out for wasting time 12 minutes ago, but since Jordan is supposedly her elder relative so she had a slight extra amount of endurance, but not that much more.

"We are at the current source." Jordan's voice had a ring of wonder, respect, and awe, like he was entering hallowed ground. "Step lightly, we don't want to disrupt anything."

"O-kay." She was trying her best to play along. Apparently three was Lacey's magic number, because not only had she been interrupted by this guy three times, but this guy had also confused her for the third time in this moment. First with knowing her full name, second with this strange new prophecy, but this third time was the last. "You are making less and less sense every second you keep talking. YOu need to give me some answers now, or I am leaving."

He huffed, turned around, and marched them both out of the dead-end-alley. "Now listen here Lacey." he tried to continue but was cut off by his own coughing. "This is a sacred entrance way. You need to have a little more respect. I know you are used to being the smartest person in the room, and I know you have trouble dealing with people because of your-"

"Now you top right there!" She was angry, no furious. NO! she was fuking enraged. She didn't know she could feel anger this intense. "You know way too much about me for me to know nothing about you. I learned your name not 20 minutes ago. I have no reason to trust you whatsoever. That is just a fact, that isn't some symptom of… Just… you need to give me a reason to trust you, and explain what the hell is going on the the next three seconds or I walk."

"Fine," he coughed out. "I was there at your birth, because I was your father's godfather. When I held you in my arms, and looked in your eyes I knew you would be one of the knights in the prophecy. Your father would send we weekly letters about you until the day he died. Everything I know about you he told me. He would tell me how you were doing, and he told me when you were diagnosed with Autism."

"Stop right there!" This was an invasion of privacy. And it was an insult, because he was wrong. "I do not have Autism. I am just on the spectrum. That is all."

"I'm sorry," he apologized, and he really look sorry. "I didn't realize there was a difference."

"Well there is!" Lacey shouted. She hated how much it angered her to even talk about this. Her mother always made it sound like so terrible handicap, but on the inside she was no different than anyone else. "I have a small people, but enhanced intelligence as a return. In truth, I am almost no different than any other person, and I don't need to be treated differently." She was talking to the ground, and had been nearly the whole time they were together. Lenny and Ash were the only people she was comfortable looking in the eye.

"Alright. I'm sorry. I didn't know, and," he coughed again before continuing, "If I would have known, I wouldn't have said anything of the sort. Are you alright, Lacey?"

"It's fine." she straightened her shoulders, and cracked her neck. "I'm fine." She turned to face the alley way. "Now explain to me what that is." Her voice was hard, almost cold. She had lost all of her patience for the day. For her not uncle, for Lenny and Ash's family issues, for her own family issues, and for this mission. Her new goal was to get this day over with so she could go to bed.

"Alright, well," Jordan started before stopping because he needed to cough. "This is one of seven entrance ways to-" his coughing cut him off.

"Do you need water or… and inhaler or something?" She was really starting to question the lifespan of the guy. With every cough, it looked like a year had just dropped off of his life. And the guy had to be at least in his 80s, so that didn't leave him too much time.

"I will be fine," he cleared his throat before continuing, "Thank you for your concern though."

"Oh, I was just.." Lacey wasn't really concerned about him living, she was more concerned about the answers he had, and that they might die with him. It was only then that she realized how impersonal she got when she was angry.

"No, I know what you were just, but there was still a concern there." He winked at her, like they now shared some secret, and that meant they were family or something. "This is one of the seven entrances into the mist."

"The mist?" she chuckled. She tried to hold it in but it was no use. "That doesn't exist. All the recording of 'the mist' were proven to be fake-"

"Well it is real and we are about it walk right into it." he took off his cap, and banged his cane on the ground. "So how about you shut your trap for a second, and let me give you the answer you keep demanding but then not letting me give." He was a foot shorter than her, but the glare that he was giving, made Lacey's spine shiver. Lacey kept her mouth shut, and Jordan continued. "Magic comes out of the mist. It is what separates this world from the magical one, it's a barrier, but it is also where the magic in our world comes from. The Mist is a gateway, but it is also its own place. It's not exactly its own dimension, it is more of an interdimensional space. This alleyway." He turned and pointed into the dead end we had just left. "Was built on top of one of seven places in the world where there is a direct entrance into the mist."

"Okay. Let's just pretend for a second that I believe you," Lacey was about to drop some serious knowledge on this guy. The mist had been her favorite topic to research since she was, like, nine. She knew absolutely everything there was to know about its history, principles, uses, and abilities. "That is alley is an entrance to the mist. The Stonehenge portal was sealed in 860 CE, and all other subsequent portals were closed along with it."

"Didn't I tell you that the information given to you by the Battalion isn't always correct. The Elders keep secrets. They have a different agenda than what they've told you." He was nearly yelling, but not out of anger more out of passion and concern, if not frustration that Lacey didn't automatically believe in and trust him. Lacey couldn't help but think that Jordan was the one of those guys that wore tin-foil hats and blamed everything on aliens. " You can't just close all of the entrances into the mist, they can be closed, but there is more to it that that. The issue with trying to close the entrances is that once one entrance closes, another must open. Magic of this realm comes from the mist, and we don't have contact then we don't have magic," his voice dropped and his eyes darkened, "and you know what would happen if this world went from having loads of magic, to having no magic at all."

He was right. Lacey did know what would happen; she knew first hand how destructive the absence of magic could be. After that was what made her mother go insane, and it's what drove her to kill her husband, Lacey's father.