CHAPTER TWO
A few days later, I was back at P3, helping Elise, my then-boss at the paper, set up for the auction. I was missing Jason dreadfully and Elise thought maybe I should actually bid on a bachelor or two then tell her all about my date! Looking at some of the hunky guys roaming around, I was seriously considering taking her up on her offer, when I nearly dropped my teeth! Your Aunt Paige orbed in! Right into P3 with all those people around! I couldn't believe it! We've always been so careful about not exposing our magic, especially after what it did to your Aunt Prue!
When I called Paige on it, she apologized, but hurriedly explained that something really big was up and I should put on the warm coat she'd brought along, because we were going now! Nephew mine, I barely had my arms into that coat when I felt the tingle that meant we were orbing and next thing I knew, I was no longer boiling hot--I was freezing cold!
We were up in some mountain range or another with snow and wind and everything! Just about the time I started grumbling, she spotted some scorch marks. Chris, your Aunt Paige wanted me to try to get a premonition off those marks when she hadn't even brought me any gloves! But I did anyway, risking frostbite, I'll have you know, and saw two very huge people coming out from the ice-cold mountain! Paige was certain that it all had something to do with all of her strange dreams, and again I began wondering about my baby sister!
We later tried to find those very large people in the Book of Shadows, when Leo orbed in, telling us that a Whitelighter was missing! I sadly had to admit that Paige was right and I better drop out of the auction, while Leo thought he and Piper should drop out of marriage counseling (yeah, that's how badly it had gotten! Had they separated or divorced, we never would've had you!), before Leo orbed back Up There.
When he got back, he was very concerned--the Elders also thought something big was up, but wouldn't even tell Leo what it was! Now that's scary! But whatever it was, it was big enough and bad enough that they wanted all Whitelighters to stop orbing once Leo had returned to us--that whatever it was, the threat could follow orb signatures! That was enough to scare all of us, especially when Paige found our two very huge people in the Book of Shadows--the Titans! The very ones that the ancient Greeks used to base their mythology--the ones that their ancient gods beat by trapping them in that ice mountain that I saw them break out of!
But why would they go after Whitelighters? We figured it was must be because they needed healing or something. We knew we'd have to vanquish them, so Paige put together the strongest, deadliest potion she possibly could, then handed one vial of potion to me, while keeping one for herself.
When I wanted to know how we'd find the Titans, she figured that there was just one way to do that--bring them to us! I wanted to know how to do that, and she figured that was simple--she'd just orb and they could follow her signature. I always wondered about your other aunt, nephew mine. Now I knew she was nuts!
CHAPTER THREE
A/N: This chapter is based on Scifi's "The Ties that Bind". If you want to read "The Ties That Bind", check out scififantasychic's homepage! Due to the size of both this and the previous chapter, I decided to post both of them together.
If only we knew then what we would find out much, much later. Not too far away from us, someone was eavesdropping on our conversation by magic, a witch who had been doing that off and on for a good couple of months, ever since he walked through a portal from the future. He wanted to know everything about us before he made himself known, but once the weather started changing, he knew the time was coming up soon, so he'd kept a close ear on our conversations. Hearing us talk about the Titans told him that his moment was coming up fast.
Just the night before he'd had a horrible nightmare, a nightmare that reminded him of why he was doing that--a reason that I'll tell you all about later, nephew mine, along with describing the nightmare. But he'd also found out that a guy who he thought he was helping had used his words to justify killing his own wife, almost killing his children, and then attempting suicide! Well, that someone was really beating himself up over what a terrible angel he was.
Right at that moment he heard me and Paige talking, and knew that his moment was popping up much quicker than he thought it would. But how could he do what he knew he had to do when he was feeling the way he was feeling? What would you do in that situation, nephew mine? I don't know about you, but I probably would've done exactly what this guy did--cast a spell on myself and make all those feelings go deep inside where no one can even guess that I'm feeling them, so that I would look calm, in charge, knowing what I'm doing, even if I felt anything but! And that's exactly what this guy did.