AN~ Callbacks for the Musical are tomorrow! Wish me luck, everyone! And enjoy the chapter. I'll try to update quickly.
"Daphne?" Sabrina called, running in the direction of the scream, "DAPHNE!"
She ran headlong through the dark of the cave, searching blindly for her sister. She almost tripped several times, until she took the time to conjure up a cluster of flames that paced her as she ran. The fire threw eerie shadows on the stones as she continued, still calling her sister's name.
Finally, she ran into something soft that gave as she hit it.
"Daphne?" Sabrina asked.
Daphne turned and gave Sabrina an irritated look. "What, Sabrina? You're interrupting."
"You- you screamed." Sabrina said. "I thought-"
"You thought wrong." Daphne turned back. "Lawrence surprised me, that's all. Now, can I get back to my conversation?"
"Really, Daphne." Sabrina said in exasperation, remembering her fire and snapping it out or existence, "What's gotten into you? And don't you know better than to talk with random strangers in dark caves? Who are you, anyway?" She asked Lawrence, stepping forward.
Lawrence gave her an ominous look. "I am a guardian. And you are trespassing."
"Wha-" Sabrina turned as another figure stepped out of the shadows "Ummm, Daph, I think we should go." She pushed Daphne backwards a little.
"Stop." The second figure said.
"You can't just-" Sabrina said, but she was stopped by the two forms throwing up their hands at once.
Sabrina tried to shove Daphne behind her, but Daphne struggled, and they were both suddenly hit by a blinding flash of light followed by a blackness so intense that it was as if the whole world had been erased, and Sabrina knew nothing more.
"Grimm?" A wavery voice was calling from far away.
Sabrina swam towards the voice, out of the blackness all around her. It seemed to cling to her, enticing her to explore it, showing her flickers of things that might have been images, but she continued towards the voice, breaking out of the sea of blackness after a long struggle. It seamed to still be there, at the edges of her vision, even after she blinked, realizing that she had been unconscious, and that she was lying on the ground in Puck's room, with Puck, Bella, Red, and Wendell leaning over her worriedly.
"Wha- what hapened?" Sabrina asked, rubbing her eyes to try to get the blackness at the edges of her vision to go away.
"You mean you don't remember?" Bella asked.
"I-" Sabrina tried to sit up, but was kept down by a hand on her chest, "I remember chasing after Daphne through the cave, and that you couldn't get in. I found Daphne, and I was trying to get her to leave, but there were these people, and then- Where is Daphne? Is she all right?"
Everyone looked worried and nervous.
"What's wrong?" Sabrina sat up straight, ignoring the hands that fought to keep her lying down.
"We don't know." Red said. "There was an explosion and you came flying out of the cave mouth, but-"
"Daphne's still in there." Puck said.
"We have to go after her, then." Sabrina said, trying to stand.
Puck held her down. "Not yet, Grimm. Something happened to you. Do you feel different at all?"
"My vision's kind of weird, is all." Sabrina said. "It's like tunnel vision or something, but I think it's just from the light and then the dark and-"
"It's not just your eyesight." Wendell said.
"What?" Sabrina asked. "What do all of you know that I don't?"
"Grimm, it looks like you have some major burns or something." Puck said. "Around your right eye, and on your arm, and- on your wings, too. You're seriously telling me you can't feel it?"
Sabrina shook her head. "Not really. It's kind of cold, but- how bad are these burns?"
"Look at your arm." Red said.
Sabrina did, holding her arm up to her face. It was pitch black. She pulled her wings around so she could see them, too, and tried to get a closer look. They were a black so dark and unreflective, it was almost as if they were absorbing everything that headed toward them. You could still see the details, if you squinted, and they didn't look burnt, just- dyed.
"Here." Bella, who had been digging around in her purse, pulled out a mirror. "Have a look."
Sabrina took the mirror with her blackened right arm, and held it towards her face. She had a big black smudge the same unreflective shade as her arm and wings, stretching from her left eyebrow to the top of her left cheek, shaped like a circle with an arrow sticking out of it, the arrow crossing over the bridge of her nose and ending on the opposite cheek, plastered on her face.
Sabrina hissed. "That's ugly. And obvious."
"We could try to cover it up with makeup..." Bella said doubtfully, "But it looks like it'd show through. And with the arrow, you can't really just call it a black eye."
Sabrina rolled her eyes. "I don't care how it looks! We have to go find Daphne!"
"Not so fast, Grimm." Puck said. "You're not going anywhere by yourself, and by all likelihood, Daphne's in that cave. You're going to get us through that barrier before we do anything."
"Right." Sabrina said, snapping the mirror shut with a decisive snap. "Let me up, will you?"
Red reached out a hand to Sabrina, who took it and used it to help herself up as Puck removed his hand. After a brief struggle rising, Sabrina headed for the cave entrance, searching for the barrier. She looked around for several minutes, still getting used to the odd blackness around her eyesight, but didn't see any barrier.
"That's funny." She said.
"What is?" Bella asked.
"It's not there." Sabrina responded.
"Are you sure?" Puck asked doubtfully. "These things don't usually just disappear, you know."
"Look for yourself." Sabrina said, gesturing towards the cave entrance. "There's nothing there."
"I believe you." Red said quietly.
Sabrina smiled at her as Puck walked to the cave entrance and felt around for the barrier. Suddenly, the tunnel vision was enhanced, then it lightened up and she was seeing Red someplace else, a dark place, surrounded by trees.
"That's funny." Puck said. "I could have sworn there was a barrier here before."
Sabrina blinked, and, with another flash of black, returned to the here and now to find Red looking at her worriedly.
"Told you." Sabrina said. "Come on, guys. We need to find Daphne!"
Puck led the way, with Sabrina following, closely watched by Red. Wendell and Bella brought up the rear, as Bella checked her face in her compact one last time.
"I still can't get used to the fact that she's an everafter." Wendell muttered to Bella.
"It takes a while." Bella replied, rubbing the underside of her eye briefly. She closed the mirror and moved forward with everyone else. "But she hasn't been doing much with it recently. School and all."
"Hasn't been doing much of anything, from what Puck says." Wendell said dryly.
Sabrina stopped listening to Wendell and Bella's conversation when she realized Red was trying not to look like she was watching her.
"What?" She asked irritably. "Did Puck make you watch me or something?"
"Well... yeah." Red grinned a little."But I would have anyway."
"Why?" Sabrina asked. "I'm fine! A little dizzy maybe, and it's still hard to see, but there's nothing wrong with me!"
Red winced but continued anyway. "You got this funny look earlier, when I told you I believed you. First you were fine, but then your eyes got all black, and- it was like you were looking through me, not at me."
"It was weird." Sabrina said. "My vision like, blacked out or something, and then I was seeing you, but you were someplace else. It was dark, and- and then Puck said something and I snapped out of it."
"Maybe it has something to do with what happened in the cave." Red said.
"Great." Sabrina groaned. "More weirdness. Hey, you won't tell anyone, will you? About the dizziness? Or the tunnel vision?"
"I'd promise, but..." Red said, "it might be serious. I won't tell unless it gets worse, though. Or doesn't go away."
"Guess that's all I can ask." Sabrina said dryly. "Nice that you're more mature than I am already."
"I'm older than you are." Red said. "And I wasn't crazy the whole time."
"I think I may have known that." Sabrina said thoughtfully. "I don't know how, though."
"Guys!" Puck called. "There's a light up ahead!"
Sabrina, Red, Bella, and Wendell hurried up behind Puck quietly. They were just beginning to sneak forward when someone stepped out of the shadows to their right.
"Stop doing that!" Sabrina complained.
"Come forward." The figure gestured to her.
Sabrina took a few steps forward, and the hooded person grabbed her. and pulled her through the wall.
"Hey!" She protested, then stopped, momentarily halted by her surroundings.
She was in a brightly lit room with glassy walls, and she could see the area she'd just come from quite clearly. She spent a few minutes watching Puck's shocked face through the wall before she turned to study the room in general. It was quite comfortable looking, with wall-to-wall carpeting, a small table, several easy chairs, a kitchenette, and a T.V.
"Where am I?" Sabrina asked, clutching her head as diziness swept over her.
The figure pulled off his hood, revealing a young, handsome enough face, with black hair and a scar that matched hers on his left eye. "I am Lawrence. My counterpart, Lucia, is with your sister at the moment. You recovered much more quickly than she did. I take it you are the more resilient of the pair?"
"Sure..." Sabrina said warily. "But getting back to my first question, where am I? Also, why am I here, what's with my face, why do we match, and when can I leave?"
Lawrence gave off a dark chuckle. "Perhaps we should sit." He gestured to the chairs.
Sabrina took one, greatful for the opportunity not to have to try to stand straight without falling over anymore.
Just then, a girl, about the same age as Lawrence with pure white hair and a white mark, the inverse of the one on Sabrina and Lawrence's faces, walked into the room.
"She's still asleep, and will stay that way for another half an hour or so." The girl said. "Hello. My name is Lucia. And you are...?"
"Sabrina Grimm." Sabrina said.
Lucia took a seat and chuckled. "Well, that's ironic. I suppose it's only fitting that Grimms should be the guardians, as it was placed in their hands."
Lawrence growled.
"Don't mind him." Lucia told Sabrina cheerfully. "He's almost always angry. It's part of being the Janus. We balance each other out."
"The... the what?" Sabrina asked.
"The Janus." Lucia said. "It's a title passed down from the Greek god of choices, of looking forward and back. Sort of the god of prophecy, too, but mostly Apollo got credit for that. They did need him, after all."
"Wait, back up." Sabrina said. "The Greek gods were real?"
"All the mythological gods were." Lawrence said. "They weren't gods, of course. They were the much more powerful predecessors of everafters."
"So..." Sabrina said, "What happened?"
"They fought." Lawrence said shortly. "Fought to the death over what started out as petty differences. Janus- a two-headed boy at that time, with the marks we all have on either of his heads- and Apollo, working in conjunction, saw it coming. Apollo and his wife, Artemis, chose to go into hiding, because it was one prophecy too many, and he didn't want either of them to be used for evil. Especially when he saw how his sister, Diana, would be killed in battle. the Janus, on the other hand, took a more active approach. He didn't want the world destroyed, so he decided to siphon off the magic of his counterparts and place it in two vessels- a sword and a book."
"Would you like some food?" Lucia interrupted.
"I'm good." Sabrina said.
"Anyway." Lawrence continued. "It wasn't hard for Janus to siphon off the magic, because the 'gods' were already leaking it out all over the place. Fairies were the first to gain it, they were originally called nymphs- naiads, or Faerie, and dryads, or Fae. They were the best outcome. Sometimes the magical leakage created things like hobgoblins and such, which, as the earliest true everafters, still fell into the category of the fairy kingdom. Janus simply pulled off more of that magic and stored it in the forward sword- which we have here- and the backwards book- which we don't know the location of."
"The backwards book?" Sabrina asked.
"We think it might be written backwards, but it may just be that it looks backward in time," Lucia said. "I never opened it, so..."
"He couldn't fit all the magic in those two, even changed as they became when he worked with them." Lawrence kept going as if there had been no interruption. "So he stored the rest of the magic in people- locking it away so that it wouldn't become loose until after the war, long after the 'gods' were dead. This magic birthed the everafters you know now. He siphoned off enough magic that they wouldn't destroy the world, and then he took his own magic and put it into our predecessors, then went off to fight the war."
"They watched over the sword and the book for a while, but the forward Janus had seen what was coming, and they dumped it on us as soon as they could, with no explanation." Lucia interrupted. "The only reason we know this is because Lawrence saw it."
"Saw... like, saw what had happened?" Sabrina asked.
"Yes." Lawrence said. "You will be able to do this, also. Control comes with time. Until then, be careful what you touch. You may find out more than you planned to know."
"Watch what you look at, too." Lucia said. "You're already an everafter. This will mess with your development considerably."
"Wonderful." Sabrina said dryly. "Just when life was complicated enough."
"And trying to block your sister will cause problems." Lucia said, glancing at Sabrina' arm. "You shouldn't have done that."
"What sort of problems?" Sabrina asked warily.
"Can't tell." Lucia said. "It's against oracle rules."
"So... back to my questions." Sabrina said, deciding to deal with the secrecy for now, since her head was starting to hurt.
"You're in our house, you're here so we can explain things to you and give you the sword, and also so you can retrieve your sister once she wakes, the mark on your face is the sign of the backwards Janus, or the one who looks backwards in time, or sees the past, we match because I am the previous backwards Janus, you're my replacement, and you can leave once your sister is awake. I explained what was going to happen to her already, in the cave." Lawrence rattled off, ticking the answers to the questions off on his fingers.
Sabrina blinked, "Will I be able to do that?"
"Eventually." Lawrence chuckled. "Any more questions?"
"Can I have some Advil or something?" Sabrina asked. "I don't feel very good."
"Sure." Lucia got up and rummaged around in a cabinet for a time, returning with a cup of water and two pills.
Sabrina took the pills and swallowed them, then said. "Thanks. Now, you're everafters, right?"
"Yes." Lucia responded, taking a chair and sitting. "And, to answer the question you were going to ask, your sister will also be one."
Sabrina blinked. "Well, now I won't have to worry about her dying when I'm still young. Are you two in any fairy tales?"
"No." Lawrence said. "Unless your story qualifies. Then, yes."
"However." Lucia said, "While we are everafters, now that we have passed on the Janus, we will no longer retain our immortality."
"So... will you age normally, or will you get old all of a sudden?" Sabrina asked.
"We will die very soon after you and your sister leave." Lucia said. "It will be nice, to finally head to the afterlife."
"Can you see what heaven is like?" Sabrina asked.
Lucia shook her head. "I can see my death, but no further. And the picture is becoming less clear by the minute. It is a sign that the gift is passing to your sister."
Just then, there was a moan from the other room.
"She's waking up." Lawrence said, rising. "Now we can go show you the sword. It's time to claim your inheritance."