by Lucia Ashta
Thom and Kaanra spread their blankets on the ground, and Asara and Anak did the same. They fanned out around the base of the tree, working around its vast network of roots. Of course, they could move away to find flat ground, but none of them wanted to. They were drawn to the tree.
They fell asleep in an instant. They slept deeply and dreamt vividly, until Master Kaanra bellowed a brutal roar.
The twins and Thom startled to immediate alertness. They stood ready to defend themselves, struggling to synthesize what was happening in split seconds. Asara and Anak had drawn their swords. Thom, however, was unarmed, but he looked no less ready to face whatever attacked them.
When they spotted Master Kaanra, partially hidden by the tree’s massive trunk, they ran to help. A man hovered over him, holding a bleeding hand over Kaanra’s mouth, unsuccessfully attempting to clamp it shut after Kaanra bit him. The man’s other hand pressed against Kaanra’s chest, trying to hold the older man down, while he thrashed with the vigor of somebody much younger.
Even though the assailant had abandoned the illusion of crow for his attack, he retained avian characteristics that paralleled those of his animal form. But whereas the features looked fitting for a crow, when transferred to human form, they looked wrong, a distortion of nature’s design.
The man hunched over Kaanra, and pushed his head into the ground roughly, holding him there. With his other hand, the assailant groped and patted him down hastily, assuming incorrectly that the wise old man would be the one to retrieve the doman. Since the illusionist didn’t know what the doman was, not even its shape or size, he searched everywhere on Kaanra’s body indiscriminately.
Kaanra made the task of searching his person as difficult as possible, thrashing and kicking. The dark shapeshifter drew a knife from the sheath at his waist and moved to slit his throat. The threat was one swift motion away, but the light warriors were faster. They were already upon them.
Simultaneously, Asara and Anak beamed light that preceded their arrival. The light wave was unfocused, but it reached the attacker before the twins could. It proved enough to distract their aggressor, buying them precious moments as he looked over his shoulder alarmed.
He thought he should have been able to take the doman before anyone could stop him! But he hadn’t expected such stubborn resistance from the old man. His attempt thwarted, he took to flight, disappointed he didn’t find the doman he believed the light warriors were there to retrieve.
While the light warriors watched, the man transformed his appearance. In a flash of visual confusion, the body of a full-grown man condensed into that of a raven. Then, the raven rose into the tree’s canopy. It was the direct path out of there. His clothes converted with him, but his knife did not. He didn’t have time to return the knife to the place he reserved for it in his calculated transformation. The knife clattered to the earthen ground, a clank of metal and bone hitting hardened roots.
But the raven hadn’t yet escaped. The tree he flew up into was mother of the doman, and she, like all mothers, was resourceful in protecting her offspring. The canopy of branches and leaves knitted into a web that was rapidly closing in on the raven, and would impede his exit and extinguish all hopes of escape.
Just then, however, the light that blazed ahead of Asara and Anak shone on the last open crevice between branches and leaves as it was drawing shut. Without pause, the raven shot through the opening, hurling himself through the choking tree canopy. Finally, the raven reached the freedom of sky, where he flew rapidly, without looking back.
Thom was closest to Kaanra and reached him first. The twins were just two steps behind. They assembled on all sides of the master, checking to make sure he was okay. They were aghast at how close they’d come to loosing the only real father figure they had. It had all happened in moments.
There was blood around Kaanra’s mouth, though it wasn’t his. Bruises were already forming on the old man’s chest, and his body ached from the effort of defending himself. But his throat was unscathed, and he was deeply grateful. He wasn’t ready to leave this plane yet. He had to see through this important victory for the light before departing.
Kaanra didn’t dare stand yet, doubting the steadiness of his legs after the intensity of the attack. He’d been in a deep sleep when his attacker had thrust his body into the ground with such force that it knocked the air from his lungs. He struggled both to defend himself and to root in his body after the drifting of sleep, all at the same time.
Water, Kaanra whispered, and Thom ran to retrieve his canteen. When Thom handed it to Kaanra, already opened, he didn’t drink from it. Instead he used the water to clean the blood from his mouth. Although he was anxious to rid himself of his assailant’s blood, this wasn’t a hasty cleansing. He took great care to honor the water that was washing the blood and the earth that was accepting it for transformation.
Blood was a powerful vehicle of energy. Because it was a carrier of life, a person’s blood was indelibly marked with his way of being. The substance of the person—whether light or dark—was contained within his blood. This particular blood was dark since extreme wickedness corrupted its host.
“Thank you for cleansing me of this dark,” Kaanra said to the water while he used it to scrub his mouth. “Thank you for purifying the darkness of this blood and taking it away for transformation, so that it may once more hold the essence of light.”
Kaanra was on his feet now, steadying himself by leaning into the tree trunk. He let the watered-down blood splatter from his face to the ground around the tree. This was a very powerful tree, and Kaanra knew she could guide the blood through its course of transformation into light.
“Thank you for soaking up this blood,” Kaanra said to the tree and to the earth beneath it, “and filtering it of all darkness.”
The water, the tree, and the earth guided the blood to rediscover its intrinsic nature.
Next, Kaanra and the twins looked toward Thom. Thom gingerly held the knife, which the illusionist dropped during his shape shifting, between his index finger and thumb not wanting to touch the darkness that roiled off it. Thom knew they must retire the knife from its dedication to darkness and hide it so no one else would find it.
Something like this, used in ceremony to carry out the will of the forces of darkness, accrued power within itself. If an object was used enough times and with enough focus to carry out the purposes of dark—or light—it was imbued with that energy. This knife could be dangerous in the wrong hands. Unless cleared of the remnants of darkness, it would urge its new owner to wield it as its original possessor had.
The four warriors formed a circle, and held hands. The knife oozed iniquity, but there was no fear among them. Each of them was strong enough to overcome it. Still, this wickedness repelled them.
They closed their eyes, and each connected to the tree they stood under and to the earth they stood on. Were the tree and the earth willing to receive and cleanse the knife?
The tree and the earth consented to the job. Over time, the darkness the knife carried would dissipate. It would intermix with the light of the earth and its plants. Like all energy, whichever was prevalent drew the lesser energy. And so the darkness would gradually transform into light.
The light warriors crouched down among jutting roots. Thom held the knife aloft while Asara and Anak dug with their hands. The twins dug as deeply as they could within the interlocking system of roots that extended far beneath what was visible above ground.
Thom moved forward to lay the knife within its final resting place. Wait, Kaanra said. The moonlight had flickered across the edge of a weathered engraving on the knife’s hilt. The hilt was made from bone, and it was well worn and molded to its owner’s hand. Even so, the engravings that had once been prominent revealed just enough of their secrets to give the knife’s owner a name.
Kaanra could make out the barely-there letters of an almost-forgotten name. Brazzon. Kaanra said the name in a soft whisper, astounded awe on his breath. Hi
s attacker had been the infamous man who frequented legends. He was a man many feared, and with good reason. Kaanra remembered hearing that the man had killed his own father.
Kaanra never met the man before, but he imagined he was very old. He had to be; the people of Arnaka had been telling stories of his misdeeds for a long time. But Kaanra’s assailant was young and possessed the strength of youth. If this was indeed the man Kaanra suspected he was, some dark magic was at play.
His name is Brazzon, Kaanra repeated.
Asara and Anak gasped. This name was one of the most dreaded in the stories their parents told them as children.
Brazzon means ‘wrath of darkness,’ Kaanra expounded for Thom’s sake; Thom didn’t know the words of Arnaka’s language. Without an explanation, ‘Brazzon’ would mean nothing to him—even through telepathic communication that reconciled language differences.
He is among the darkest men who’ve ever lived. Few see him and live to tell about it. I don’t know if a soul remains in his body. He has been lost to the shadows for too long. There may be nothing human left within him.
As one, all of them glanced at the knife in Thom’s hand. Thom hastened to give it over to the earth. Under the dappled moonlight, layers of old blood revealed themselves, caked around the edges of the knife’s hilt. Thom placed the knife as far within the earth as the hole allowed, and then the twins filled in the cavity.
The warriors crouched quietly, supporting the intention that the knife release its darkness. The silence was alive with magic, and with sadness. Kaanra, Asara, and Anak, who knew the stories of Brazzon, lamented that the world of shadow had claimed this man. The darkness extended its tentacles to any who was open to its temptations of power.
The hole closed now, Thom rubbed the palms of his hands in the dirt, calling on the earth to transmute any darkness that remained in his touch. The earth responded to his request readily, and by the time Thom stood back up, it was done.
Somewhere faraway above them, a raven screeched. The light warriors turned their gazes skyward, where they got lost in the dense covering of the tree canopy. No one could see past it, and nothing could see within it, not even a desperately circling raven, driven almost mad by the proximity to the doman he failed to capture.
The light warriors packed their blankets quickly, preparing to journey, but then they took their time in saying farewell to the mother tree. Her trunk was wide enough to afford each of them a sense of privacy while they shared their respect and gratitude.
Then, as each emerged from behind the tree, they assembled and took off. Without a care for direction, they followed their heart’s desire; it led them deeper into the forest.
Chapter 25
That night Lena and Paolo zipped their separate sleeping bags into one. With this new sleeping arrangement, Lena drifted toward her edge and Paolo toward his. Knowing she could reach over and touch him at any moment was sufficient for Lena.
Sitting Bear stayed up with the fire after they went to sleep, but eventually even he closed his eyes for the dream world. He slept directly on the earth close to the fire so it would keep him warm during the chill of desert nights.
At least three pairs of eyes watched. One of the men was so focused on the opportunity to catch the threesome off guard that he remained unaware of the others.
But he discovered their presence rapidly when he moved to attack. Before he could reach his first target, the second man and an animal pounced, taking him down in what seemed like a coordinated maneuver. The defense was so ferocious that the attacker couldn’t readily tell which was man and which was animal until the man’s hands wrapped around him and held him down. The animal bared his teeth, lips pulled back, daring the prowler to attempt to hurt Lena.
In the pale moonlight, the intruder couldn’t make out the animal’s sleek silver coat or the rippling muscles beneath it. But he could hear the threatening pitch of the coyote’s growl. He felt the strength of the man’s arms that restrained him, and resigned from any further fight.
Awakened from the trained light sleep of a warrior out in nature, Sitting Bear rushed to Coyote’s side, knife in hand. Once it was clear that man and animal had the situation under control, Sitting Bear relaxed his stance.
Lena and Paolo startled awake too, but realizing the threat had been neutralized, they watched from the confines of their sleeping bag. Lena recognized Kel as the man that constrained her would-be attacker. And her heart thumped as she saw the silver mane of her coyote friend. She’d shared just one, powerful interaction with each of these souls, and yet they’d come to their rescue.
“Thank you,” Sitting Bear said to Kel, his voice gruff.
Sitting Bear turned toward Coyote next. He gave Coyote a meaningful nod of thanks while looking the creature in the eyes. Coyote accepted Sitting Bear’s gratitude, and then Coyote looked at Lena. After meeting her eyes, he turned in the opposite direction and stalked off. Before long, not even the silver light of the moon could find his mane; the night had swallowed him.
Paolo searched inside his backpack until he found what he was looking for. Then he walked in bare feet over to Kel, who still held their would-be attacker down. Sitting Bear looked at the rope Paolo held in his hands, and he tentatively reached for it. Paolo handed the rope over and observed Sitting Bear expertly tie first the man’s hands and then his feet. Finally, Sitting Bear bound the man’s hands and feet together so there was no chance he could break free.
While Sitting Bear and Paolo focused on their aggressor, Lena looked at Kel. She met his gaze as she had Coyote’s. Then Kel, like Coyote, retreated silently into the night. By the time Sitting Bear was satisfied his knots would hold, and the two men looked up, the person who’d come to their rescue was gone, engulfed by the dark of night.
Lena stayed where she was. Even though their attacker looked normal in his appearance, she felt darkness hanging over him, and she looked away.
Sitting Bear and Paolo did a good impersonation of the good-cop-bad-cop routine, but they received no answers from this middle-aged man who looked like he drove an average car and lived in an average house in the suburbs. Neither Sitting Bear nor Paolo was willing to use violence to elicit information. When the man didn’t respond to their intimidation tactics, they decided to turn him over to the police instead.
They weren’t sure if they were allowed to be camping there, and they especially didn’t want to bring any unwelcome attention to the pyramid, so they loaded the man into their car and drove him to the police station. Paolo offered to drive the man by himself, but neither Sitting Bear nor Lena considered that a good idea. They still didn’t know anything about this man or why he’d been all the way out here in this isolated setting plotting to attack them.
After all the out-of-this-world experiences they’d had over the last many months, Lena didn’t want Paolo riding with the man alone. If all three of them were together, they had a higher chance of coming out of the situation in a better way.
Sitting Bear volunteered to sit in back with the prisoner. He stuffed the man in the back seat next to him, which was no easy feat because Sitting Bear refused to untie the man’s hands from his feet. Instead, he just loosened the rope some so the man could hobble the distance to the car, but the slack wasn’t much.
There was something terribly off about this man. There was an imbalance within him that showed all the way through to his eyes. He was dark, and Lena didn’t like it.
She lowered the window of the passenger seat to the cool, crisp air of the desert night. She breathed in the clean air until she completely filled her lungs with it. Then she released the air slowly. She closed her eyes and focused on expanding her light. She pulled light in through the crown of her head, and then she moved it all the way down her body, letting it go into the metal shell of the car beneath her feet. Eventually, the light found its way through the metal and into the earth. Lena connected to the earth and to the heavens at the same time. After all, she was a creature of both.
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nbsp; In the back seat, Sitting Bear noticed a faint yellow glow encompassing Lena’s entire body. A similar radiance surrounded Paolo—he’d been doing the same thing.
As their luminescence grew stronger, the man, previously silent, began to thrash, kick against his bindings, and scream, all at once. Neither Lena nor Paolo turned. They held their connections to the light strong.
The man, possessed by darkness, retreated from their light in desperation. He sniveled. His eyes revealed inner torment, his eyebrows cinched down in fear, and his nostrils flared. Lena, in compassion, began to speak softly, but her words steadily grew in volume and in strength.
“I call on the divine healing light of unconditional love of Creator to fill and surround this man, this perfect child of Creator who’s lost his way. I call for the light to extend down to the core of the earth and carry away any worries, any concerns, any anxieties, any doubts, any negativities, and transform them into pure energy of the universe. I ask for a super bubble filled with light to encapsulate the demon attached to this man.
“I command in the name of Creator that the demon attached to this man release its hold on him and step away now,” Lena said with a calm strength that sent a shiver down the full length of Sitting Bear’s body. “I call on Archangels Michael and Uriel and the Mighty Warriors of Light on Earth to take the demon to the place of confinement, to the womb of transformation, now.”
Sitting Bear saw the demon’s desperation flash through the man’s eyes as the demon struggled to keep its hold. But faced with Lena’s invocation, he couldn’t. Even in the dim back seat, Sitting Bear watched the demon leave, and the man’s eyes change.
“I call to Archangel Raphael and the angelic realm to come heal any harm or damage to this man’s mind, energy body, and physical body, done by the demon during the time it was attached.”
