This is going to be a hell of an author's note so...

To start, I would like to offer my apologies for this chapter taking so damn long. Summer came and went in a haze of humid heat, debilitating back trouble, (which had me laid up for months) vacations, family visits, firing and hiring homecare for my grandmother, autism therapy and finally, transitioning my sweet boy into kindergarten. This chapter was also difficult to write as there was a certain way I wanted to present it, but "how" eluded me, I was tangled up in tenses and tripping over timelines.

With herculean efforts of editing and support from Twiliteaddict and Gasaway Alley, I would slog away, picking it up and making a stab at it when I could. They always cleaned up the crime scene without complaint. Viridis73, frol and Minna Koda were terrific pre-readers and very encouraging. Writing is lonely. Most times you feel like you are all alone, but my little coven of talented writers pushed me through. Thank you ladies from the bottom of my toes to the tips of my fingers. I couldn't have done this without you all.

Thanks to my new validation beta angelicwish. Most importantly, thanks to my readers for their patience!

Chapter 2

There was a time when I didn't dream.

My dreams left me the day my vampire love did. Edward Cullen left me in the woods when I was eighteen with the devastating lie he did not want me. A part of me died that day. The part that was joy, passion and purpose. I was a hollowed out husk of the person I used to be, a broken doll with a thousand yard stare. Sleepwalking through the next nine years of my life, I married my childhood friend Jacob and settled into complacency.

I was never meant to be complacent.

I didn't know it then, but I was meant to run with Legends.

I didn't know a lot of things then. I didn't know Edward never really left. I didn't know Jacob knew he was there all along. I didn't know Edward was my imprinted mate. My destiny. It was not much wonder I was so stricken when Edward left, my soul truly was cleaved in two with his absence.

I didn't know anything about who I truly was and meant to be until I started dreaming again.

The dreams began in earnest when I was finally reunited with Edward whom I found stagnating in a deserted cabin deep in the woods behind my house. Love returned like Spring showers, soaking the dry, dessicated earth of my soul; awakening something very powerful within me. In a moment of crisis, to protect Edward from being killed by an enraged, jealous Jacob, I instinctively manifested my latent powers to save him.

It turns out I was descended from a long line of witches and shape-shifters. True ancestral magic courses through my veins - a very powerful blend of magics.

Magics powerful enough to call down lightening and nearly strike Jacob dead when I discovered that I had been lied to about Edward. But that was just the beginning of the betrayal. Jacob had known my true heritage; that I was descended from a very ancient and revered line of Striga witches through my matriarchal line and shape-shifters through the patriarchal line, tracing back to the great Taha Aki himself.

Even my father had lied through the sin of omission by not telling me about our ancestry; keeping me from my Grandmama Marie who would have told me everything she knew when she was alive. Death took her when I was very young, but she came back to me when the dreams did. With her careful spiritual guidance I learned how to Dreamwalk; to lift the veils and walk between the worlds of dreaming and waking, jumping through time like it was a schoolyard game of double dutch.

From my great uncle Xandru, also known as Alec of the Volturi, I learned I was prophesied to bring down the evil coven who governed the vampire world, who were the lethal enemy of Striga and Shifters. Aro, Caius and Marcus would have stopped at nothing to eradicate every supernatural being who did not bow down before them and they had their sights set on my families, both wolf and vampire. Xandru worked with me to harness my magics and helped us stage a coup when the Volturi arrived en masse to murder my loved ones.

Riding a riptide of great power siphoned from Mother Earth and the spirits of my ancestors, I awakened my shifter roots, transmogrifying into a Phoenix of Fire; bringing down an entire army of Volturi vampires with supernal flame to protect my loved ones and fulfill Adrastea's prophecy.

My final display of power nearly turned me into a sacrificial lamb as my human vessel was too weak to survive the flames of retribution delivered upon my enemies. Edward saved me, braving the hell fires I had created to get to my broken, burned body, and infused me with his venom to bring on the change. With the last vestiges of my power, I partitioned my mind to free it from the horror of the carnage that was my charred flesh knitting itself back together with the restorative necromancy of Edward's venom. With my conscious mind tucked safely away, I escaped into a dreamworld to avoid the dreaded intensity, the burning agonies of my change into vampire;

In this dreamworld I was running...

Running so fast I felt like I was flying.

Running from the soot in the air, the cremated bones of my enemies beneath my feet, into a lush forest dreamworld...

Electricity charged the air, warning of the approach of a cleansing storm. Above the canopy of trees, the deadly beauty of the darkening sky boiled and rolled with twilight hues, dusk creeping in with inked fingertips, bruising the edges with midnight blues. It was a beautiful, dark oasis where I felt alive, pain free. Most importantly, Edward ran beside me in the gloaming.

Forever frozen at seventeen, his beauty knew no bounds. A face that would make Michelangelo weep, stole glances at me, elation and love crowding the amber depths of his eyes. He ran in a strong but graceful lope beside me, his sleek, chiseled lines of taut masculine power stirring up those hot twinges of primal possessiveness and need deep within my belly.

Silently, we kept running, chasing the edge of midnight into daybreak and back again - the stretch of time between night and day passing quickly in a fluid rhythm. Our otherworldly surroundings must have finally punctured the blinds of Edward's joy in me being alive. Breaking his stride, his eyes clouded over, the brilliant smile faltered and he stopped abruptly.

Grabbing and pulling me into his embrace he crushed me to him. I could smell the crisp bite of wind in his hair, taste his sweet beguiling scent enveloping me like a preying incubus intent on seducing me. Burrowing into his chest I sighed with relief as his body pressed against mine. My rock, my anchor.

My Sire.

"It's happening!" he exclaimed in hushed awe.

I looked down at my arms, the veins turning golden beneath pale iridescent skin which caught the light in winks and shimmers.

"My venom is changing you Bella." His eyes darkened slightly, regret wavering for a flicker of a second as he looked down. Thunder rolled in the distance.

"I almost lost you," he whispered, tucking into the curve of my neck, placing apologetic kisses there.

My heart no longer beat for him, yet I felt it's ghostly thrum. His venom rushed like coolant through my veins, changing me into a stronger, better being than I was before.

What was I?

Witch. Shifter.

Vampire.

Three Become One.

"It's okay, Edward, it is the only way for us to be together, after all, I was dying." His arms tightened around my body, wrapping me in a net of security. Even in this netherworld his touch sent waves of excitement to the core of me.

"You are right. I couldn't bear losing you."

Holding me in his strong embrace he let out a sigh, muttering my name reverently over and over as he stroked my hair. Pulling back, his eyes left mine just long enough to examine our surroundings with a more critical eye as all around us the view began to change. The panoramic setting of the forest began slipping away like a sidewalk chalk drawing on a rainy day, the trees melting like diluted watercolors before reforming into an impressionist version of our beloved meadow.

"What is this place?" he whispered reverently. "Is this heaven? Are we truly...dead?"

Somehow, I knew this was not death or a final resting place - I knew only the most valuable parts of ourselves resided in this plane while our bodies lay in stasis back on the earthly plane.

Realization struck me hard and I beamed,

"You DO have a soul. It's the only way you could follow me here. It's the imprint...our souls are entangled, fused together for Eternity. There is no place of existence that could ever separate us."

As our souls took refuge in that In Between place, our bodies on the Earthly plane awaited our return. There, I was nearly blind and immobile as my body healed. The bones and organs that had been shattered and pulverized upon impact were mending, hardening into timeless marble. My skin, hair and nails regrew at an alarming rate. Edward lay next to me, curled protectively around my body, still as stone in suspended animation within our frozen opaque womb. Within that tightly enclosed space, my body went through the most traumatic metamorphosis of it's existence, with Edward as my sentinel. We had little concern for our bodies' claustrophobic confines since our minds could stretch and roam the dreamlike expanse of the In Between.

We are Air.

~/~

In the hollow stillness of our earthly confines, Edward and I spoke telepathically to each other with ease. There was a connection that could not be broken independent of any plane of existence simply because I wished it so. My newly acquired ability to read his mind enabled me to be privy to our surroundings in the physical plane where I was nothing but a vulnerable transubstantiate pupae.

Edward's first question was laced with trepidation for the answer,

"Are you in any pain?"

I expected burning with the change yet, there were no razing, rusty needles of piercing agony. No burning. Perhaps Fate decided I had burned enough.

We had all burned enough.

Too much of my ancestral blood had boiled dry on the spit, stake and pyre. The Volturi had chased my kin through the halls of time hiding behind the skirts of Christianity, delivering biased judgment with the napalm of The Inquisition. Turning the tables, it was I who lit the last fire, and now the entire Volturi army lay in ash and ruin outside our icy tomb. I burned them all, hundreds of vampire souls snuffed out. I was Death.

Karma is a bitch, and I was her unrestrained ire.

I carried no guilt for the lives I took in defending my loved ones, and I never will.

"No, it doesn't hurt at all, love," I whispered to him, feeling peace for the first time in months.

~/~

Alice was the first voice Edward heard. Pained. Small.

"They're over here! Oh God... Jasper, hurry."

Our family was quickly assembled; anxious sentries around us, Carlisle and Jasper stepped up to the edge of our crystalline encasement, their shadows looming over our space. Their voices sounded slightly muffled as they pushed through the thick barrier of ice.

"I can feel 'em alright. They're just fine everybody, so ease up on the tension, I can't handle y'all with Alice so..." he trailed off, his concern mounting. "Alice, darlin' are you alright?"

"I...I'm sorry, I'll be fine, it's just, too much all at once, she must be going through the change...I can see..., I can see so much now, I can hardly makes sense of anything."

"Why are they covered in ice?" Emmett asked.

Jasper slapped his hand upon our glacial cocoon like an affectionate pat given to a favorite horse.

"It's gotta be Bella's doin'. Probably to protect them from the heat while she went through the change. They didn't make it far from the blaze...Edward just got to her in time. The earth is completely scorched in every direction around them."

"This entire field is a char-pit wasteland. Our girl here packs quite a punch." The respect and admiration in Emmett's voice was palpable. My soul flared with pride.

"We need to get them out of here. Take them someplace safe." Carlisle's voice was thin and drawn. For the first time I actually believed he was over 400 years old.

Esme's voice softly directed the family to take an edge and pick us up to transport back to the house.

That's when my body went through it's first spasm of brutal pain.

An excruciatingly cold lick of electricity shot through me, the intensely frigid sting akin to frostbite bloomed painfully then dissipated slowly into the aching cold numbness from the frozen block of mass surrounding us. As my physical self reeled in shock and agony, my mind again sought refuge in the In Between, but there was no escaping the omnipotent powers of Creation;

As I cowered in Edward's embrace, the soft light in our meadow darkened, - our world became very quiet, still as death. A brutal blast of wind rode in like a banshee and tore him from me, his features etched with surprise, hands clawing, reaching desperately as he was blown backwards by the magical mistral. Lightening flashed out of the sky, striking me in the chest, the electrifying current a voltaic connection harnessing me to the menacing storm cloud which was filling the sky. Brilliant bursts of blue and silver light strobed and pulsed within that terrible tempest like a heartbeat, seemingly transforming it into a living, breathing beast of dark light and shadow. Forcing its brutal electric kiss of power upon me, the raping gale of unfiltered, powerful magics devoured me whole. Primitive energy raged and roiled, seeking out remnants of my humanity, ripping it apart and reforming into something ageless...endless. I was Creation. I was Chaos. The power I was being infused with was completely different from the power I wielded as human. It was wild. Fathomless. It had secrets it wasn't ready to tell me yet, and even if it tried, I don't know if I could've handled what it had to say. My paradigms were shifting painfully.

Instinctively I fought against the surges at first, the demanding undertow of immortality pushing me to evolve into something much, much more powerful than a vampire. I felt like a kite tossed about in a violent wind; but I had a very long string. At the end of that string I pictured Edward. I steeled myself. My anchor would never let me go. He would ground me.

We are Earth.

Images flooded my field of vision; a terrifying female creature with fangs and leonine eyes bathed herself in a river of blood; a wild red haired woman stood before the Volturi brothers, chanting in a strange language before Aro ripped her head from her body. Hundreds of fierce warriors, shirtless, screaming, covered in blue paint - runes and symbols crudely drawn across their bodies were running into a thick mist to fight a foe they could not see. Their brave war cries morphed into screams of terror as the mist swallowed them.

I screamed with them.

The electric connection then broke as violently as it came, and Edward was instantly there, catching me. My screams still echoed in the air around us as he held me tightly to him, rocking and crying softly into my hair.

The gentle sway of Edward's hold on me in the In Between melted into the smooth lope of our family carrying our icy casket home. For the first time, I felt fear.

What exactly was I becoming?

~/~

I did my best to curb the pain the change was putting me through by visualizing tantamount control over it on both planes. In the celestial, the ferocious bite of the lightening was less vicious if I focused on channeling the painful charges of power overloading my system into tests of endurance; sharpening and pushing my mental stamina to it's limit. I thought of myself as a bottomless vessel, hollowed out and shaped to receive all that was meant to be given.

In the physical, my body remained perfectly still despite the spastic surges of pain ripping through me. I had yet to even crack the ice in our casket. I was especially proud of that. I doubt it was simply a high pain tolerance though; I had a feeling the magic I used to create the encapsulation of ice around us would hold true until I was ready to shake off its protective layer.

My mind's eye pictured Edward lying still as stone next to me, his mouth unmoving, eyes fixed. Through him I could clearly hear the noises of our physical surroundings. We were being transported in some type of vehicle. Wheels hummed, turning over the road beneath us, a low monotonous chant of sound. The occasional rock or crack in the pavement caused a skip in the record, the needle seamlessly righting itself to continue playing the same toneless drone. Silently I asked Edward where we were going. How strange it was that his voice resounded so perfectly in my mind, the precise feel of him a memory burned into my soul that summoned as strongly on the celestial plane as the physical;

"They are moving us to Denali. They are worried you will be...too much for just us to handle." We were standing on a sharp cliff overlooking a vast indigo ocean in the In Between.

"I guess I should expect that considering it turns out I'm not your average human." I turned into him. Electricity arced, surged like Tesla's coil between my outstretched fingertips as I ran one lightly along the softness of his lower lip, I then tipped his chin, kissing him deeply - riding the edge of pleasure and pain. He whispered into my mouth breathlessly before our kiss spun out and deepened,

"Striga blood or not, you could never be considered "average" Bella."

Edward's aura surged with an intense burst of need, flaring brilliant golds, and oranges. A warm blast of heat covered me, the ardent fires of Edward's love was my oasis of comfort from the cold depths of pain and fear.

Soul to soul, breath to breath, body melding to body, we plummeted into the depths of our passion as if we jumped over the very cliff we had been standing upon. Laying me down in the soft moss, his hands roamed over my body, bringing it alive with want. Thunder seemed to resonate from Edward's chest when he growled; pushing, needing, taking whatever I had to offer. Lightning launched from the sky once more, only to hit a flaming field of resistance around us.

In the dark cube van, while the miles slipped away from Forks to Denali, the ice crackled, whining pitifully for a split second before tiny branching shoots splintered across our enchanted frozen enclosure.

We are Fire.

~/~

Snuffling, sniffing and a few rude snorting sounds reverberated through the perimeter of our space before I came to the conscious realization of what Edward was telepathically showing me; - Jacob and Leah!

Their large lupine shadows paced around us a few times. I wanted desperately to scratch away the ice that separated us and tell him I was alright. I wanted to ask about the rest of the pack and how they fared after the battle, but it was not time.

"This is the last time I help you move Bella." Jacob joked awkwardly after he shifted back to human form. Leah shimmered, shrunk and straightened alongside him. Her arm swung out and nailed him hard in the shoulder.

Jacob grumbled a fake "Ow" then sobered quickly and clammed up. It was so Jacob to hide his anxiety behind humor, then brood darkly if the humor didn't work. I knew of course he would fear for my well being but I never gave myself time to think about it. Experiencing it was a lesson in guilt and regret for making those I loved worry for me, feel pain because of me. Edward told me to look at the bigger picture; Jacob and Leah came through the battle unscathed and would be together as it was meant to be. Before Jacob's brooding silence could taint the air like a bad stink, Leah surprised us all by speaking up for him in an earnest and hushed tone, as if she were talking to my tomb in a cemetery;

"Everyone made it through the battle Bella. Not one life was lost. I was never so proud to be a part of this pack. Sam and I seemed to suffer the worst with a few broken ribs, and everyone else had only slashes and gashes which healed have healed overnight."

I could picture her fidgeting in the quiet of my inability to answer. I imagined her cheeks were colored and she probably mentally kicked herself a few times for talking to a block of ice with vampires inside. A large part of me rejoiced in how far Leah had come in regards to how she felt about the Cullens. The fact that she was talking to me so openly in front of them was incredulous. I was probably the only female friend Leah ever had, yet even growing up our relationship had been fraught with difficulty. She was always rather guarded with me, tough and full of sassy sarcasm. Her soft center was revealed in her strong connection to Jacob and her family, in her constant worry that I would break his heart time and time again. Which I did. It seems all of my transgressions were forgiven when her and Jacob's imprint could finally take hold like it was meant to, once the curse Leda had placed upon Ephraim Black's line was lifted.

"That was one hell of a fight Iz. You are in our legends now." She hesitated before continuing, "Jacob wanted..."

"...to make sure you wake up okay." Jacob interrupted. His voice was thready as he struggled for control to get his words out, "It was hard to watch you burn up like that, Bells." His sincerity made my heart heavy as I recalled with bittersweet nostalgia the boy who was my best friend growing up, and the man who was never meant to be my lover - but he tried anyway, even when I shut myself down and crawled into the depths of despair after Edward left. "I hope...I hope you aren't feeling any more pain." His large warm palm came to rest on our icy casket, searing a three dimensional brand of his hand print into the ice. The tiny drips of the melting flow had hit the wooden floor in a steady staccato rhythm.

Jacob had risked so much in helping us bring down the Volturi; his pack, his imprinted mate...his very life. That I didn't consider the effect my death could have had on him made me feel selfish and sad. I had been so wrapped up in saving our families and trying to figure out my new powers, I had given no thought to what would happen if we failed, if Edward couldn't get to me on time to change me. Failure simply wasn't an option. I had also given no thought to what I would be like after my change. I knew this bothered Jacob almost as much as it bothered me. Would I still be the same Bella? I knew I would be different...how could I not be considering...but how much of the Bella Jacob grew up with would have be lost when I was finished becoming...whatever I was becoming? Would I be able to control myself and still remain, me? As I was pulled under by the riptide of my melancholy and trepidation about the aftermath of my change, Edward's connection to me tightened, keeping me afloat. Buoyed.

We are Water.

To help ease the waves of pain which continued to ravage me, I would meditate upon the secure comfort of being surrounded by family and friends who anxiously awaited my awakening. Their love and positive energy never left us, a beacon of hope in a perfect storm of change. I was protected. Sheltered. All that could be done now was to wait for the storm to pass.