Chapter Twenty-eight: Ethan

Matt, Dartemis, and Arkarian suddenly go still. Matt stands to face the far wall, the one that separates us from Renate, Isabel, and Neriah.

'I can't hear anything…' Matt mutters. 'I can't hear their thoughts!' He turns to Arkarian and Dartemis helplessly. 'Why can't I hear their thoughts!'

Neither Arkarian nor Dartemis has an answer for Matt, who is extremely worried that he can't hear Neriah's thoughts anymore.

'Don't worry,' Dartemis tells his son. 'If anything bad had happened to them, Neriah would have sent you a message.'

For the next ten minutes or so, everyone tries to comfort Matt. Even I send my thoughts out to him, emphasizing Dartemis's words. I mentally ask him what the last thoughts he'd gotten from them had been.

'They'd been wondering what was happening,' Matt said, frustrated. 'The stone door had opened and someone walked in, and then their thoughts just disappeared.'

Just then, our own stone door seemed to run away from its place, revealing a long corridor. Once the door has disappeared from behind a corner, torchlight can be seen on the walls of this corridor. A woman begins walking toward us, a lit torch held in her hand.

Matt sighs; he can hear Neriah's, Isabel's, and Renate's thoughts again. Although personally I would think it a bad sign to be hearing voices in my head… but that's just me.

The woman walks into the room and takes in everyone and everything, pausing to smirk at me lying on the ground with an expression of pain on my face. Then she addresses everyone in the room, looking at each of us in turn.

'I want to give you the chance to live,' she says coldly. 'I have taken the female form to make you more comfortable with my presence.' Then it hits me: this is Lathenia's child. The woman looks at me swiftly and continues. 'I want to give you the chance to join me and become one of my soldiers.'

The silence seems to ring. Then Dillon—not my first choice when it comes to addressing evil Immortals—steps forward and says callously, 'You're an idiot. You know full well that there's no way any of us—in here or in the other room with the men—is going to convert to your side. Why bother asking?'

The child of Lathenia smiles, somewhat amusedly, at us. 'I just had this exact same conversation with the women,' he tells us in a flat voice. 'Do I need to go through the motions with you, as well?' Then the woman hits Dillon with a spinning side kick, sending him flying against the far wall. 'Now,' Lathenia's child says, 'I know that this is where the conversation is going to differ from the one I just had; this is where my dear sister broke in begging for peace between us.'

'Then why can't there be peace between us?' Matt says, letting false bravery strengthen his voice.

The woman sighs, disappointedly. 'Then again, I could have been wrong,' he says malevolently as he sends a zap of Immortal power at Matt. Matt catches the surge of energy in his hands and manipulates it, turning the sizzling yellow sparks a bright orange, and sends it sizzling back at the woman. Then, before the woman can retaliate, Dartemis manipulates the fire on her torch so that it grows and wraps around its holder.

'You disappoint me,' Lathenia's child says. 'I was hoping that this interview would actually go differently from how the one with the women went…' The woman reaches a hand out of the fire and sends yellow power towards Arkarian, pinning him to the wall by the throat.

Dartemis doesn't relent. Arkarian takes the yellow bolt of energy in his hands and manipulates it, drawing it away from Lathenia's child. He gathers it all into his hands and throws it back to strike against its original caster.

Lathenia's child goes down and doesn't rise.

'Was that… different from… the girls' interview…?' I ask in as hard a voice as I can manage.

Dillon laughs lightly and asks, 'Do you think it's dead?'

'Wanna make sure?' Matt asks in a much harder voice than I could ever have used. He comes up to stand over the limp form of the child of Lathenia and Marduke, hands poised to summon the power it would take to kill an Immortal.

'Not now,' Arkarian gasps, trying to get his breath back from when the woman had held him by the throat. 'We need to find the women.'

Dad comes and picks me up, and I cry out in pain. 'Dad!' I murmur at him.

'I know, I know,' Dad says, smiling slightly. 'Not "cool" to have your dad carry you around, huh?' Dad hands me to Dillon, and I cry out again.

'It doesn't matter… who carries me… as long as someone… repositions my… leg!' Arkarian comes and does something to my leg that causes me to scream in pain. 'What the hell… did you do to it!' I demand.

'I snapped the bone back in place,' he tells me. 'Does anything else hurt worse than it had before?'

'Well why didn't you… snap it back… before!' I try to scream at him, but the edges of my vision are starting to go black. 'And no… nothing else hurts… more than usual…'

'Ethan?' Arkarian asks, his voice as fuzzy as a badly-tuned radio. 'Ethan!' And then Arkarian slaps me. He slapped me!

'Why the hell… did you slap me…?'

'You can't go to sleep!'

'I wasn't going… to sleep you… annoying bugger… I was… passing out!'

'Then stop speaking so we can get out of here!'

This gets everyone to shut up and start running through the long corridor. Although Dillon running is really hurting me, I absolutely refuse to cry out again. There is no way I am letting Arkarian anywhere near my bones again!

'You okay?' Dillon asks, probably noticing my now purple face. I nod at him, not trusting my voice to keep from screaming out in pain.

We come to many intersections, but we always seem to take the path leading to the right, trying to get to the room on the other side of our cell; trying to get to the girls. At the fourth intersection we come to a stone door like the one that had kept us trapped inside our own cell.

Matt curses. 'They're in there!' he explains. 'But how do we get in there?'

'There's probably a hidden switch or something,' Arkarian suggests. 'Start feeling around at the walls.' Dillon puts me down on the floor and begins helping to push in stones and pull on loose rocks, searching for the one that will open the door.

I look at the door. While I look at it, my mind starts ticking. My skills are animation, illusion, and instinct. Can I use either of them to open this door? I'm too weak to move anything that heavy, even with my skills enhanced. Instinct will do me absolutely no good here. And illusion… I have the ability to bring reality into an illusion. I look hard at the door and shut my eyes for a moment. Feathers! I think. Feathers!

My thoughts draw the attentions of Arkarian, Matt, and Dartemis. Their diversions cause Dillon, Jimmy, and Dad to look over as well. When I'm sure that my illusion has worked, I open my eyes. I know that, while the outside of the door still looks like rock, the inside has now been turned to feathers thanks to the illusion I had created and then cemented into reality.

'Dillon…' Immediately Dillon comes to my side to hear me better, since my voice is nothing but a whisper. 'Hit… the… door…'

'Ethan, I tried that with the other door while you were passed out!' Dillon protests. 'It's not going to work!'

'Hit… the… door… you… stupid… bumbling… son… of… a…'

'Okay then,' Dillon stops me. 'I'm just going to stop you right there so that you don't hate yourself for cursing at me later.'

'DILLON!'

'I know! I know!' Dillon stands and turns to the door, making a fist. That's the last thing I see before I pass out cold.