They've made it through the dimension and its dangers. Now they face the real challenge.
Chapter 18 - Trials in the Temple
After their two hours of rest came to an end, Hope, Kevin and Gwen rose out of their sleeping bags and bundled up all of the camping gear back into the rucksacks, eventually deciding between the three of them to leave the rucksacks leaning against the side of the temple steps. Kevin made one last check to ensure that nothing would fall over while he and the girls were inside the temple. Hope and Gwen gazed up at the ancient building itself as they tried using their magic to penetrate through the walls with their sight and see whatever was lying in store within. Frowning when it became clear they were not able to, Gwen glanced over at Hope.
"So what's the next step here?" she asked.
Hope waited until Kevin had finished his examination and was standing beside them before she answered.
"The next part requires concentration, devotion and commitment for it to work in our favour," she said. "Any three that wishes to gain access to the temple must approach its entrance united in the desire they will be asking of the Totem."
Kevin reacted nervously, gulping down a deep breath. "Just, uh, what does that mean?" he enquired. "We're not gonna, you know, walk up the stairs one at a time holding hands, are we?"
"Nothing so much as that. Our minds have to be cleared of any other goal; they have to be set only on bringing Ben back. If one of us has any contrary thoughts, the spirits that reside in the temple will not allow us in," Hope explained. "The hardest part, however, is the door itself. Once we reach it, we must press our hands to the surface and declare our wish." She turned, regarding Gwen and Kevin edgily. "This is not as important as the trials will be, but I am not sure what will happen if this goes wrong."
"You mean, if the temple detects one of us thinking something else, it could punish us in some way," Gwen stammered.
"Possibly. It could be that the door just stays locked until we do it right or, like a boardgame on Earth, it sends us right back to the other side of the dimension and we start all over," Hope suggested, her face going dark. "Or worse, like the trials themselves, it will never open for any of us afterwards."
Gwen traded a horrified look with Kevin, who appeared just as fearful as she was about the potential ramifications of any kind of failure. Hope, on the other hand, remained stony and vigilant.
"So, before we start, clear your minds of any other wishes or desires," she concluded bluntly.
Swallowing back another fearful breath, Kevin stared up towards the entrance. The stone doorway that was once simply enormous now took on an oppressive height as if it were bearing down on him. He began to sweat and he wondered if his anxiety was being influenced by the spirits. He chanced a look at Gwen. His girlfriend appeared more terrified than he felt. For a moment, he thought what could be conflicting with her desire to see Ben brought back to life. Then the answer crossed his mind.
What wouldn't? With everything she had done lately, of her own volition or through Ghostfreak driving her crazy, she would obviously be wanting to do something like reversing time all the way to before it all happened. But then again, who knew what would come from that? Would they forget everything and be doomed to repeat every single event?
He shook his head and exhaled calmly. He had to think about his own mind. The first problem he encountered was the want to be able to alleviate Gwen of her guilt, not in any way he assumed she was thinking about, but to help her cope with the stress it was causing her. Then it was about wishing for her parents to forgive her, and then after that the thought of getting the Plumbers to let Gwen off the hook, and following on from that, he faced the temptation of being able to take her somewhere that the Plumbers would never find her. But after they all played themselves through he knew at the end there was one truth. Gwen would never take the easy way out.
Kevin sighed, knowing with that that his mind was clear. Looking over at Hope and Gwen, he noticed the determination brewing in their eyes and realised they had done the same with theirs.
"Ready?" he asked. The two girls nodded.
Without another word spoken between them, they moved up the steps and went straight to the door. Hope glanced up once to the top and swiftly lowered her head back down to her level. She leaned in, pressing her hand against the hewn surface first. To her right, Gwen hesitated for a short moment before she too laid her hand upon the stone. On her left, Kevin had immediately put his hand forward and was waiting for them. He eyed Hope first and then the both of them turned their heads to Gwen. Sharply, she responded to their attention with hardened resolve. The three of them focused their eyes in front of them, placing their sight solely on the door and concentrated every thought and emotion they had inside to that one desire, that one shared goal. Then, at once, caution was thrown to the wind as Hope started her declaration with Kevin and Gwen one word behind her.
"We wish to use the Totem to restore life to Benjamin Kirby Tennyson of Earth!"
Hope closed her eyes, cringing inwardly, unable to deal with the total failure that may be about to occur. Gwen almost lost her nerve and gazed down to her feet. Realising he had to be strong for the two of them, Kevin abstained from reacting badly and stayed still. For one full minute, all there was was a foreboding silence. Then, just when Hope was going to suggest they try again, a loud grinding noise burst into being and shook the temple with its might. The door separated from its central Y-line, dividing itself into three uneven triangles. The two lower triangles gradually slid away from each other, moving lethargically into the opposite sides of the frame. Hope, Kevin and Gwen took a step back, waiting until the door was open far enough for them to venture inside. Hope took the initiative first and leaped in when there was a big enough gap for a single person to get through. Startled by the quickness in which her old rival had dashed off in, Gwen waited for a few more moments to pass before she did the same. Kevin very nearly demanded she stay put until they could see what the interior of the temple looked like before they rushed in, but she had already jogged inside by the time he opened his mouth. Hardly giving any thought to the fact that he was the one about to recommend patience to her, he heeded his own mental advice and waited until the door was fully open. When the last inches of the lower triangles disappeared into the walls, he ran in, hoping to himself that the girls had not done anything reckless.
On the other side, as Kevin found, was a sparse and empty room that at first glance appeared to be an entirely bland, hexagonal shaped-chamber. To his relief, Gwen and Hope were standing in the centre of the room and he went over to join them. He stalled when he saw what was occupying their attention.
Coming again to Hope's left, he gazed at the far wall or, as he put it himself, where there should have been one. Instead of another block of stone like the four walls off to the sides, there were three passageways, each of them darting along in a different direction to the other two. The leftmost one appeared to travel straight ahead on a level path. The middle passage descended deeply into the ground. The one on the right led up to what was apparently a higher floor of the temple. But the one disturbing thing about them, that they all shared, was that nothing further than ten steps inward could be seen as from there, they plunged into darkness.
As he stared at the passageways, he was so puzzled by them that he failed to hear the stone door sliding shut. The grinding noise of the lower triangles re-emerging and coming back to meet the third only became swiftly obvious to him when they were more than halfway through with the process. Reacting, Kevin spun around, aiming to go and bar them from shutting.
"Don't," Hope warned him sharply. "We cannot face the tests until the door is shut again."
Calming down slowly, Kevin shifted away from the door and turned back to facing the passages, taking care not to flinch with a jolt of panic when the triangles connected with a booming slam. He breathed out.
"Okay, what now? We split up and take one each?" he asked.
"In time. We don't choose which way any one of us goes. The temple chooses for us," Hope answered as she sat down on the floor, crossing her legs into a lotus position.
"So how do we know?" Gwen enquired, sitting next to her in the same form.
"The spirits of the temple will draw each of us in when they decide what trial we'll be taking," Hope responded. "So when it calls either of you, don't try to shake off the feeling. Just listen to it and go."
Quiet fell upon them. Seconds of waiting turned into minutes. Having remained standing where he was, Kevin thought about asking if there had been any hint in the instructions of just how long it would take for the temple to arrange the trials. He immediately reconsidered it, noting that Hope's choice to assume a meditative pose meant she was expecting it to take a while. With that in mind, he began to think of sitting himself down when a whispering noise sent a chill up his spine.
Somewhat afraid, he turned to Hope and Gwen for confirmation. Neither of them had moved. Believing that the sound was just in his imagination, he swallowed and tried to relax. The minute he did, the noise reappeared again. This time, it was not the burst of sound it had been before, but a low verbal tone. A voice. A voice that spoke his name. A moment later, another voice joined it, and another and another in the countless moments that continued to follow. Kevin dared another look at the girls. Just like before, they had not moved. Kevin tried not to panic and he concentrated on what Hope had told him. Then the great realisation struck. The voices surrounding him, unheard by his two companions, were the spirits of the temple calling to him. His trial was ready. All at once, the voices ceased, save for the one he had heard first.
"Kevin Ethan Levin of Earth, your moment has come."
He turned towards the passage it issued from; the leftmost one that led straight forward. Kevin sighed and started to move towards it. Feeling the absence of his company, Hope opened one eye and saw him heading for the passage. The rush of emotion she felt caused Gwen to sense a change in the astral balance and brought her out of her trance. She almost burst out in fright as she saw Kevin closely approaching the threshold, but then she recognised his movements. Something had his attention and he was following it. Reluctantly, she watched on as he stepped into the shadows and vanished into the darkness. Once it was clear when he did not return that he had embarked on his trial, the two sorceresses slowly returned to their meditation.
: * :
Darkness engulfing around him the moment he left the chamber, Kevin stretched out both arms until his hands touched the walls. He continued onwards, moving along the passage with careful, planned steps. After a few short minutes, his fingers slipped involuntarily into the air. He had come to an opening. Cautiously, he leaned out one foot and put it down, testing if there was ground ahead.
There was.
Sighing, he relaxed and moved on, wandering in what he hoped was a straight line through the blackness. Looking left and right as he went, Kevin started to question when and if he would be met with something. When nothing came, he raised his arms again, fearful he was going to walk into a wall if he wasn't careful.
As soon as he did, everything around him blazed into light. Kevin threw his hands to his face, instinctively shielding his eyes from the piercing brightness.
"Come on," he groaned. "Give a guy a little warning next time."
"And why should I give a pathetic little whelp like you warning?"
Kevin stiffened, lowering his arms. His confused expression turning into hatred, he glimpsed at a familiar person approaching him, someone he hoped never to see again. Long ago, the person in question used to be much taller than he was; a gargantuan man of his mid-thirties towering over a sprightly ten to eleven year old boy, but now they stood practically equal in height.
"You!" he glared at his mother's former boyfriend from years past.
"That's right, small fry. Me," the man retorted. "Look at you, huh? So big and strong now. Why? You think you can take me on with a few well-built muscles? Then I'll show you a thing or two."
The man crouched back, balling his hands into fists. The hate in him swelling up, Kevin matched him in movement and prepared himself for the fight. The man punched forward. Kevin dodged, grabbed him by the arm, and swung him around in a circle. The man wrenched himself free.
"Beginner's luck, kid!" he spat. He moved again, throwing an uppercut at Kevin's chest. Kevin grabbed the fist. The man smiled and revealed his sneak attack. Before he knew it, Kevin found himself clubbed over the head by the man's other fist. The man continued his assault relentlessly, pulling Kevin up by the shoulders and thrust his knee into his chest. Then, as Kevin gagged, the man dropped him to the floor and smashed a left-cross into his face.
Kevin slumped down, stunned. He looked up, ready to face his attacker's next onslaught, and saw with mounting confusion that the punch had bizarrely thrown him a good distance because the man was now standing about ten metres away from him. Slowly, Kevin recovered and made to stand, but found that he couldn't. Another pair of hands were clenched around his shoulders. Kevin turned his head to glance at their owner and saw they belonged to an old man dressed in a dirty brown tunic whose face was ragged with age and had a stringy mat of dark grey hair on his head and eyes of cold blue steel. The eyes, Kevin discovered, were not directed at him but his opponent.
"This is the one, is it? The man you spent all those years being prepared for?" the old man asked in a spry young voice that far defied his apparent age. "The man who made you fear and hate him when you were a child? Who drove you to such bitterness? Who made you seek out power?"
He turned to look down at Kevin and smiled encouragingly. "You can beat him."
"How?" Kevin asked.
The old man pointed to their right. Out from underneath the floor, a podium rose into view, but it was the object perched upon it that caught Kevin's attention the moment he saw it. On top of the stand was the Omnitrix, green and glowing with energy.
"Absorbing the strengths of that watch may have made you look like a monster, but you can't deny the sheer power it gave you," the old man said, interrupting Kevin's stupor. "Everyone who ever wronged you, you made them fear you, all but that one man. He never saw what you could be capable of. He still thinks of you as pathetic and worthless. This is your chance to change that, Kevin. Touch the Omnitrix, take its power, and show him what you can do."
His last word fading away into a whisper, the old man vanished back into the light. Gradually, Kevin got back up, his eyes transfixed on the watch. He stumbled over to the podium, never noticing that his mom's old boyfriend was stalking towards it as well. Kevin reached it first and gazed at the Omnitrix. As he did, his mind and sight blurred with memories of the times he spent as a mutant because of it, both good and bad. At the age of eleven, he had never known he could have such power, until he learned of his abilities whilst living life on the streets, but even then he never got much respect. It was after he absorbed the power of the Omnitrix that things finally got better. Or so he had believed at the time, for what he saw as respect then was something he recognised now had been total fear of not just his abilities but also in the way he looked.
A monster; a freak of nature. Even if he had wanted to confront his mother's boyfriend in that state, that meant he would have had to face her too. What if she rejected him and sided with the man he hated once and for all? Worse, what if he hurt her in the process of the confrontation? That, he could never handle or live with. The Omnitrix had given him power alright, but it left him trapped. And afterwards, after all the help he had in getting returned to normal and making amends for his past, he vowed never to be a freak again.
The next time he received powers from the Omnitrix, he was absolutely against it and wanted everything done to revert it and be changed back. It took him a long time to realise he was making the same mistake in a different way. In his irate desire to be returned to human form, he lashed out at everyone, including Gwen, as they searched for a means of accomplishing that. For a power to accomplish that, he remarked.
The third and most recent time had to be the worst of them all. While the first time had been a desperate yearn from a lonely isolated child, the third was a full, instinct-driven, addicting thirst. He was at his strongest, his most invincible, and in the end it gave him nothing.
He looked at the Omnitrix again, taking it in with new eyes. Three times he had power, and they never gave him anything worth lasting. It was under his own steam, his own effort, that he was rewarded with worthwhile things. Not relying on power brought him a better life. It brought a relationship with his mother back, friends he never dreamed he would have, a good job and standing with others. And it gave him Gwen.
Tears sparkled in Kevin's eyes as he finally acknowledged a truth he had been mysteriously blind to. Or, he thought, one he had just never voiced, not even to himself.
"I don't need power," he declared quietly. He rounded on his mother's ex and raised his voice. "And I don't need to prove anything to you anymore."
The man scowled at him in return but said nothing. Then, in a flash of light, the man and the podium with the Omnitrix wavered out of existence. Mystified, Kevin was left waiting until the light flashed again and he too disappeared.
: * :
Some time had passed in the hexagonal-shaped chamber before the voices made their second appearance. They came for Hope. Reacting swiftly, she opened her eyes again and followed them to their source. They were calling from the right-hand passageway, the one leading higher up into the temple.
"Hope of Ledgerdomain, born of the royal line, your moment has come."
Answering, she stood up and made her way to the threshold of the passage. Before she took another step, she faltered, sensing there were eyes watching her. She turned around. Gwen was looking at her, her green eyes wide and fearful. Silently, the redheaded girl raised a finger and pointed towards the middle passage, the only one that had not been taken. Hope sighed, understanding, and walked back over to her, ignoring the voices as they rose in volume. Stopping two feet away from Gwen, she spoke to her calmly.
"No. You don't enter the passage just because Kevin and I have already been chosen. You need to wait until the spirits call you," she said, managing to smile consolingly as she attempted to allay Gwen's fears. "Until then, don't let anything get to you. Hold your nerve, let them come, and answer them right away. Okay?"
Gwen replied with a quivering yet steady nod. Hope nodded back and turned to face the passage again. The voices ceased as she stepped towards it with firm resolution. Once more, she halted before the threshold and peered over her shoulder at Gwen. Already, the girl had resumed her meditation and was in the process of attaining control of her breathing. A smile formed on Hope's lips and she privately wished Gwen the best of luck. Then, focusing on her own path, she ascended up the passageway and ventured unobtrusively into the darkness.
: * :
Immediately upon making it through to the other side, Hope was thrust into physical combat inside a warzone that was long forgotten. The site was the same as ones that would be fought in the future; her future. But this was not a battle she fought in personally, that much she knew. What she was thinking it was was a different process altogether. Taking the time to draw in the situation around her, Hope guessed with a plummeting feeling in her stomach which battle it was.
Unsure whether the whole thing was an illusion the temple had created or it had really dropped her into the past, Hope avoided the attack of every stone golem that charged her way as she cleared a path across the ramparts of her ancestral castle, trying to recall everything she remembered being told. Shreds of proof about her guess appeared here and there, but none of it was concrete enough to be a definitive answer.
Arriving at an entrance leading into the castle's interior, she encountered the proof she was searching for. There he was, her father Spellbinder, blocking the way in as he confronted Adwaita, the very enemy she would contend with in the years to come.
With an icy chill, she realised her worst fear. It was that battle. That day. The first irrevocable change of her life. The day she and her uncle abandoned Ledgerdomain. The day she lost her parents to the monster.
Hope tore her eyes away from the fight and gazed at the open doorway. Somewhere downstairs, Hex was emptying the library and the potions vault into a pocket dimension and her mother was tending to the wails and cries of the childhood version of her. A strange maternal instinct overcame Hope; she wanted to go inside and find her other self, to comfort her and tell her that everything would be alright in the long run. A twinge of guilt shot through her. How could she say that even when she herself didn't know how the story was going to end? Tell a young girl that despite all the hardships she would suffer because of this day, she would meet the future love of her life in the most ironic of circumstances and spend years more battling him and his cousin until it finally struck her just who he was meant to be to her and commence a wonderful relationship with him, only to have him die in her arms later? With the chance of bringing him back being incredibly slim? Yeah, that wasn't likely, Hope thought bitterly and she returned her attention to the fight in front of her.
The outcome was known to her, although she was never there to witness it. The battle with Adwaita would drain her father's powers until her mother sensed that he needed aid and left her daughter with Hex with orders to get the both of them to safety. Hope blinked back tears as she estimated on how soon that moment would be. She never saw either of her parents again after that. She was not even sure if her mother ever made it up here in time to save her husband. All Hope knew was that she did not want to see it come to pass.
"It doesn't have to end that way, you know," she heard the voices of the temple speak to her. "You can save him now and take on Adwaita together."
Could she? If this really was the past, could she save her father and change the future by destroying Adwaita? Hard as it was not to think about it, the temptation was powerfully strong. A long time ago, she would not have refused any opportunity to have her family back with her, to have the happy life Adwaita had denied her. But that was the Hope, the Charmcaster of the past; she was the Hope of the present.
She allowed the what-could-have-beens to flit through her mind and please her heart; being able to grow up with a healthy childhood and family, raised to adulthood as a princess to be the queen in the far distant future, taught magic comfortably by her uncle, and meeting some handsome stranger who would one day become her husband. But that stranger wouldn't be Ben. If Adwaita fell that day, she and Hex would never go to Earth. She'd never meet him.
"Yes, true. But you would be free of every mistake in your life, every sin you've committed," the voices reappeared. "And Ben would be safe. He would be alive. What if you fail this trial? What if the others fail theirs? What if Gwendolyn fails hers?"
"She won't," Hope replied to him. "Whatever disagreements we've had between us, she cares about Ben. I trust her on that."
"But you don't have to. Save your father and you can avoid all that. Why suffer all the pain and torment you've led in your current life to have just one bout of happiness when you could be happy all your days?"
Hope exhaled softly, resigned. "Because it's not a guarantee," she said definitively. "If I save my father now, I could have that happy life or I could have a bad one. I don't know whether I'll truly be happy or not. Another enemy could come along and destroy my family then. Adwaita might even survive. Ghostfreak could get powerful enough to openly attack us. There was a time in my childhood on Earth that I thought Uncle Hex might have been conspiring to take the throne for himself if Adwaita hadn't; who's to say that won't happen because - - -
Because Uncle Hex and I wouldn't have bonded so closely, she finished inside her head. I would have had my parents to raise me.
Inexplicably, the scene around her changed. The tumultuous cacophony of war turned silent, subsiding as her surroundings transitioned away from the battle of the past and plunged back into darkness. Hope glanced about suspiciously, calming and focusing her mind. Clearly the temple had decided to switch tactics on her. She prayed to herself that it did not choose to change the trial also.
Her answer came a second later as a white light materialised underneath her feet and spread out into a small circle. Some metres ahead, another circle appeared. A thin beam of the same pale hue shot out from the second circle and connected to the first, bridging the two together.
Looking across it, Hope wondered if she was supposed to go to the other side. She heard no voices telling her what to do. It was all on her to choose. Steeling herself, she walked over the length of the beam, her eyes watching for anything that might rip away from the shadows. Nothing came, so she was permitted to reach the second circle.
There she stopped and waited. Without warning, behind her, the first circle and the beam switched off, causing her to flinch as the darkness grew stronger. Then, as she was expecting, came a voice. What sent a chill down her spine though was how familiar the voice was.
"When did you get so weak?" it accused.
Hope looked down, knowing she would find the person it belonged to glaring up at her from her chest height. A pair of purple eyes were the only visible sign the person was standing right there in the gloom.
"Well?" the figure persisted as she stepped into the light, her arms crossed over her chest as she waited impatiently for an answer. The initial surprise fading, Hope reconciled with staring into the face of her fifteen year old self. She had forgotten how arrogant and demanding she was at that age, but that was before she and Hex had perfected their relationship.
Slowly, Hope took a breath and asked with quiet maturity, "What are you talking about?"
The young Charmcaster balked with disbelief, widening her eyes and uncrossing her arms to let them fall to her sides. "You know exactly what I'm talking about," she exclaimed. "When we split from Uncle Hex, we set ourselves to one rule. Look out for number one."
"Times have changed," Hope spoke earnestly.
"No, no, no!" Charmcaster trembled with childish rage. "You don't say things like that! You let Uncle Hex get into your head."
"You and I had no idea of the pressure he was under back then," Hope reasoned. "He was trying to gain enough power to take our home back, with us in tow."
"It didn't help much, did it?" Charmcaster argued. "He gave up."
"Because he realised how impossible it was to keep control of Ledgerdomain."
"Don't be stupid! You were doing just fine on your own, until you started making all those ridiculous mistakes."
Hope sighed. "What mistakes?" she asked, determining to remain patient.
"First, you let that parasite Michael into your life and blindly let him sap away our powers, not even spotting how much of a narcissist he is."
"Fair enough."
"Then you asked the Tennysons and Levin for help in getting our home back. I mean, it's okay to work with a team sometimes, for what good that's done us. But them?! You actually chose to rely on the little thief that stole our spellbook, her idiotic cousin, and her oaf of a boyfriend."
The anger Hope was keeping under the lid intensified upon the mention of Ben being labelled as an idiot, but the teenage version of her went on speaking without taking notice.
"You even entertained thoughts of a friendship with her. Honestly, are you sure you're me?" Charmcaster muttered in disgust. After a moment, the girl frowned completely. "But that's not the worst thing you've done, is it? You fell in love with the cousin!"
"Your point?" Hope asked in a low voice.
Charmcaster rubbed her eyes vigorously in frustration before she carried on with her verbal rantings, walking left to right and back again. "I can understand if it was just some fling. After what happened with Michael, any person would want to experiment with someone nicer, someone more on the selfless side. But you...you...you've been hooked to the worst degree. You fawn over Ben, you hallucinate dreams of marrying him, you break down and clam up at the least thought of him being harmed, and now you're risking your own life to see him brought back!"
She rounded on her older counterpart. "Why did you let yourself go this way? Why have you gotten so weak? So...pathetic?"
For a moment, Hope did not respond. Her emotions clouded with simmering fury, she fought to maintain her composure. Gradually she came to remember that the young girl standing in front of her had yet to go through seven more years of tragic errors and hard-earned lessons. She eyed her younger self with a patient, understanding expression.
"When we chose to look out only for ourselves, we didn't know what we were getting into. Sure we learned more about magic, sure we got more power. But even with all that, we still ended up as the one thing we hated being. Alone," she said consolingly.
Charmcaster flinched, taken aback by the confession. Hope could tell from memory that tears were threatening to flow from her eyes but the girl was holding them at bay, forcing herself to hide her emotions. Hope continued.
"In the time it's going to take you to get to where I am, we made so many mistakes, actions I wish we could take back now. But we can't. We hurt people, especially those who wanted to believe there was good in us, who saw the good in us before we ever did. And yes, Michael was one of the mistakes, but that was made because of how lonely we were."
"I get that, okay!" Charmcaster burst out in reply. "But why Tennyson? Why couldn't you have found someone more - - -
Hope smiled briefly. "Because first impressions aren't always the right ones. To truly know someone, you have to look past the surface. Ben can be immature, he acts silly, he's messy and has a few questionable habits that are hard to overlook, but underneath that there's someone else. A warm, caring, dedicated, selfless guy who wants to open his heart, to trust, but found it difficult to do that with us because we never allowed ourselves to be vulnerable around him. We only ever let him see the power-hungry, heartless witch."
"I don't understand," Charmcaster said emptily, unable to say anything more.
"One day, you will. And when you do, you're going to find out we're not weak. We're happy and stronger than we've ever been," Hope answered reassuringly, both for herself and the girl before her, not caring if she was an apparition or not. "We may not be forgiven by everyone we've hurt, but when you end up wanting the life I have, you have to make the effort yourself and keep making them. I never did everything I've done to make up for past wrongs just to impress Ben. I did them all because after I started, I didn't feel alone anymore. Because Ben was the first person I really opened up to in years, he finally saw the real me and he allowed me to see the real him. I finally connected with someone and we fell in love. I may be the one walking this path, but if I ever falter, if I fall, I know he'll want to be by my side to get me going again. And I will move on again, for me and for him. I love Ben Tennyson. He's why I'm leading a new life. He is my partner, my support and my guide, and I will never turn my back on him."
Hope looked at her younger self, wishfully expecting that her words had been enough to sway the girl's opinion of her change of heart. Strangely enough, the girl was smiling, but not in the way Hope had imagined she'd be expressing. It was not even the snide, unimpressed smirk she usually wore at that age. It was an enigmatic, all-knowing smile that seemed as though it belonged on another person. In the next second, Hope realised it did as when the girl opened her mouth to speak, the many voices of the temple spirits came out.
"That's all we need to know," the girl said. She snapped her fingers and everything went dark.
: * :
Without the other two around her physically, the chamber felt unnaturally hollow to Gwen, almost as if a cold piercing gale was preparing to billow through the empty space and encompass her in its terrible bite. Nervously, she tried to meditate again but without the company of Kevin and Charmcaster to relax her, her attempts failed. Instead she chose to wait, ignoring with her utmost will the oppressive sense of loneliness thundering at the weakening doorway into her soul. For a long unknown stretch of time, she wondered if the temple was ever going to bid her to enter the remaining passage. What if it never did, she thought as her fears spiked. What if the spirits thought she was doomed to fail whatever test they laid out for her?
She immediately banished the idea from her mind. That was not what Charmcaster said. A test would be found for her. She returned her focus steadily to the task at hand, determining to wait for as long as possible. At last, she managed to drift into a light tranquillity, tapping into her mana and allowing her sense to open up. The loneliness that wanted to invade her was still there but it was without feeling, as though it was surprised Gwen had permitted it to come inside her. The temple no longer felt barren. While there was nothing near her, Gwen sensed the spirits active and wild in the shadows of the three passageways and, although she could not pinpoint where they were, she caught onto both Kevin and Charmcaster's presences. Gwen breathed out quietly, enlightened by the confirmation she was not as isolated as she presumed.
In the next moment, that all went away.
"Gwendolyn Tennyson of Earth, born human with the powers of the Anodite race. Your moment has come."
Summoning up her courage, Gwen drew in a single gulp of air and stood up. Once more, she held the central passage delving down beneath the ground and walked over towards it. She stopped at the precipice, halting to stare into the shadows obscuring whatever there was waiting on the other side. A momentary lapse of judgement took root in her mind, telling her she was not ready and that she should turn back and wait until she was. Then it passed, with Gwen reminding herself that the temple had deemed her ready enough to take on the trial it had set for her.
"No," she spoke aloud and she ran down along the corridor.
: * :
It was like she was caught in a literal maelstrom. As soon as she lost all sight of the chamber behind her, Gwen was swept up by a mighty wind and carried further through the passage. The gale took her into a large, well-lit spacious room that plunged even deeper into the ground than the corridor did. Before Gwen could fathom its existence, the wind twisted her around and dropped her. She fell, screaming.
Another gust caught her, blowing her over to the opposite wall. Gwen threw up her arms the moment she was within reach and scrabbled hard against the surface, trying to get a firm hold. She could not, and she fell again. By the time the thought came to her to conjure a platform of mana, she landed inside a vortex.
Down and down she went, tumbling head over heels at a violent speed, helplessly following its direction as it circled the room on a tornado-like spiral until, at last to her great relief, she reached the floor and was tossed out of the vortex onto her back. Releasing a groan, Gwen rolled slowly to her left. Dazed, she waited for her vision to clear before she did anything else. Even when that faded, there was still a sickening feeling in her stomach. While that ebbed, she gazed up at the vortex and wondered whether if it was real or an illusion presented by the temple. Judging by the way she felt, it was hard to determine the right answer.
Finally, her ill feelings passed and she got up off the floor to take in a real look of the room as she steadied her balance. There was no exit, no doorways of any kind. There were no stairs to take her back up the way she came. Gwen gulped. She was trapped in a mile-deep pit.
Maybe her trial was to find a way out of there, she thought, investigating the walls with scrutiny, asking to herself if she had to scale them all the way up. After a careful survey, she knew that was going to be impossible. The walls were too smooth, too finely chiselled for climbing. She moved her attention farther upward and calculated the width of the vortex tunnel as it spiralled up to the distant ceiling. There was enough space in the middle of its coils to craft a series of platforms to get her there.
She raised one arm and willed a platform to appear. Nothing happened. Dumbfounded, she tried again. Nothing happened. She made a third attempt. Still nothing happened.
Gwen lowered her arm in disbelief. Were the spirits preventing her from using her magic and, if they were, then how was she supposed to get out?
Not met with an answer, she sat down on the floor to meditate. If her physical senses were not going to help discover a solution, then a journey through the astral plane would. She remained there, frozen, attempting to block out the shrill breath of the vortex as she prepared to transcend. Gwen almost immediately got the hint something was wrong when the process took a minute longer than it normally did. She increased her focus, but that too ended up resulting in nothing.
Her mind began to be troubled. It wasn't working. It was taking too long. Again and again she tried, determined, but the determination wore itself down with every relentless failure.
Puffing out in frustration, Gwen gave up after her hundredth try. The puff turned into a hoarse panting as she struggled to remain calm when it became clear that her access to the metaphysical realm had been cut off. She was without her magic in every sense. What kind of trial is this?, she asked furiously. What am I supposed to do?
She'd never admit she was nothing without her magic; she had talent enough in other areas. But Gwen knew, as she lapsed into a saddened form of relaxation, why the loss made her feel so terrible. When it came to combat with aliens or enemies of her family, magic had long been her primary choice of fighting back or going to the aid of others. She had never relied on any of her other abilities much as she truly started mastering the spells from her books and studies, in fact if at all.
"Is magic really the problem or is it really the reason you liked to use magic to begin with?" she heard a disembodied voice whisper in her ear.
Gwen considered the question. It was true when she first learned she was capable of magic that it made her feel special. Before she became Lucky Girl when she was ten, she worried often that Ben would go off into battle against a foe without thinking and getting himself hurt, but when she got better at handling magic, those worries were forgotten as her growing skill meant she was more able in helping her cousin out of a jam. And ever since, she'd never let him go anywhere dangerous without her, often reminding him of the risks if he went alone. Sometimes, Ben would joke that she didn't really trust him to look after himself.
Her heart sank slowly as she remembered every one of the moments he said that. Until now, she had never fully acknowledged just how close to the truth those quips were. She kept on seeing it as her responsibility to ensure Ben made it out of every scrape unharmed and reacted badly when she failed at that. She panicked whenever he got so much as a nosebleed or a tiny nick in his skin that she consistently doubled in her resolve to protect him until, somehow, she had subconsciously taken on the perception that he could not do a thing without her by his side. Gwen reeled internally, clutching her head as the reality struck her like a careening truck. She had lost faith in Ben and his own ability to judge without knowing she had.
Desperately she searched through her memories, hurrying to find where and when that could have started. As far as she recalled, she always trusted her cousin ever since he rescued her from the river. Everything else afterwards had generally been for show. Her search drew on as she pulled all the times she and Ben argued for real, every time she called him out for making the wrong judgement call and she attempted to override his decisions, and whenever she pressured him into doing something he was reluctant to do, to the surface. It was when Gwen collated them together that she realised what it was she was looking for.
There was no single event. No tragedy or accident she took to heart. No occasion where Ben was imminently about to be harmed or lost to her. The mistrust was born when it all began, manifested from the worry and fear that she could lose Ben if she failed to act. Gwen froze as the revelation gave her thoughts a much wider field. It was not just with Ben.
It was with everyone. Afraid that Kevin would go back to his old ways, she had done everything to make sure he wouldn't. Playing therapist with Julie, she'd hear her out and then nurture her back towards Ben. When she had got over her original enmity with Charmcaster, she endeavoured to give the sorceress a second chance at every turn. From all of that, there developed an attitude that when provoked, blinded her to see only one worldview. That she was right and everyone else was wrong.
Whenever she was challenged, she debated with Ben, gave Kevin the silent treatment, rejected Julie entirely, and cast doubt on her belief that people like Charmcaster could change for the better. She always did everything, for everyone, herself when she was in that mood. Horror swept through Gwen. For the first time, she saw how much power she'd given to that dark side of her nature lately. She'd given up on Charmcaster, all but exiled Julie from her life, pressed her will onto Kevin and others, and assumed she had control or at least a joint power in deciding what was best and safe for Ben. And along the course of her recent actions, she had taken all the adults around her for fools, accepting only what she alone understood as reality.
She had never really trusted anyone. Gwen shook her head in response. No, that wasn't it. There was one other factor that was much worse. She had lost her faith in everyone she loved.
Overwhelmed, Gwen nearly slumped to the floor. Tears streamed endlessly from her eyes as her thoughts went to Charmcaster, namely all of her attempts to reform the sorceress. Time and again, those attempts were rewarded with little result to none to completely negative. Not once during each of those times did Ben make a real effort or proffer any belief that they could work and yet on the one time he did, the one time she didn't even try, the one time she wasn't there to witness any change in Charmcaster, Ben succeeded where she hadn't. And what was more, they developed a close bond between them and fell in love.
Gwen could not hold it in anymore. It was time to confess, time to accept the final truth for herself. With all she had seen after Ghostfreak had betrayed her, it was rapidly growing too difficult for her to keep up the struggle and deny it. Every one of her friends and family battling for Charmcaster's very life. Charmcaster diverting Ghostfreak away from Uncle Carl and Aunt Sandra. Ben taking the deathblow Ghostfreak meant for Charmcaster. Charmcaster's distress with Ben dying and later her lashing out at Gwen and taking advice and consolation from Kevin.
There was no spell. There was no manipulation. It was all real.
The tears she was crying slid out in the palms of her hands as she brought them up to cover her face. For the first time since her entire crusade to split Ben and Charmcaster up based on the presumption it was all a lie began, Gwen decided to do the wise, mature thing she had been told by everyone else to do. Once she, Charmcaster and Kevin had the Totem in hand, returned to Earth and restored Ben to life, she was going to take a step back and watch from the outside rather than get involved.
"She's changed. They're in love," Gwen admitted. She closed her eyes and held her hands together, bowing her head almost as if she were at prayer. "I believe. I believe."
tbc
