Prophecy Girl (The Five Orders Book 1)

by Holly Roberds

  “Okaaay.” Emma drew the word out. “Still don’t know what that means.”

  But I did.

  “No.” It came out just above a whisper, ripping its way out of my throat though I wanted to scream at them. It felt like I was falling into an abyss. My stomach clenched as if it could stop its invisible descent but I kept plummeting.

  Emma’s hand tightened on my bicep, frustrated to be left out of the conversation. “Tell me.”

  Even the thought of it tore my heart in two. “The reckoning is punishment for those who have turned away from the Light.”

  Regina’s head snapped up. “It is not a punishment as they would have you believe.” Her chin rose with haughty pride. “It is an honor bestowed upon the bravest warrior in the gravest of times. It gives the warrior strength to defeat the darkness by becoming it.”

  Emma said carefully, “Uh yeah, I don’t think I want to become darkness.”

  I turned to Emma and held her gently by her shoulders, belying the tension wracking my body at the very idea of what they were suggesting.

  “They will lock you in chains and call forth a malevolent spirit from the Stygian. It will pass through you over and over again, giving you a taste of its hell, infecting you, until you are driven mad by the darkness.”

  “It is not an infection.” Phillip frowned. “It shares its energy, its powers with the chosen one.”

  Without turning away from Emma, I said, “It will strip her of her humanity. She will become a savage beast, an unholy weapon as you put it. Correct me if I am wrong.”

  Silence fell.

  I licked my lips. They were suddenly so dry, it was hard to speak. My voice was as hard as a cold stone at the bottom of a river.

  “I have seen it with my own eyes. A member of our Order had been found a traitor to the Light. Though I did not know his crimes, we were all made to watch his reckoning. For his crime of choosing the darkness, the Luxis proclaimed they would grant him passage straight into hell, since that was what he desired.” I closed my eyes against the memory of his screams as the dark spirit passed through him over and over again until his eyes had turned wild and red. When he was no longer human, he snarled and hissed, lunging when they tried to move him, attempting to rip the guts out from anything and everything. They confined him in chains in a shack at the edge of the jungle. After three days, they found him dead, having chewed off his own arm to escape, he bled to death in the process.

  A giggle broke through the silence. Then another louder one, until soon, Emma was doubled over laughing.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  When Emma managed to get ahold of herself, wiping tears from her eyes, she managed to speak through the last few unhinged giggles.

  “So let me get this straight. My options are to either die to save the world, or to stay alive and be tortured until my humanity is ripped from me.” Her voice hit a hysterical pitch which made Travis’s face flash through my mind. “All so I can keep the darkness from coming, whatever that means. Which, by the way, no one has ever said what it means.” By the end, she was shouting. Two tears rolled from her eyes and raced each other down her cheeks. Her arms hugged at either elbow as if she was afraid she would blow away into pieces at any moment.

  Phillip’s eyes crinkled in wariness of her strange behavior. “Well, it certainly doesn’t point to anything good, does it?”

  Emma’s voice had dropped, her words coming out hoarse now. “No, I suppose not. And you want Calan over here to become a murderer so he can get rid of your Order’s problems?”

  Regina’s small hands balled into fists, blue veins along the tops of them protruding from her tight grip. “They have treated him abominably. The Luxis have turned him into a weapon against us.”

  Emma snorted with derision at Regina, as if she were lower than pond scum. “You’re just pissed he wasn’t your weapon. Hell, you want to make me into a weapon. Let’s everybody be weapons,” She waved her hands around, then dropped them to her sides. “You don’t care about him as your son. You just want one more soldier for your ranks. You want to use him to make the Luxis suffer.”

  I took a step back, the words slapped me in the face, disorienting me. When I came to my senses, Regina and Phillip looked at me pleadingly. They could see Emma’s words had affected me. They seemed to recognize it before I did, but following the shock, realization came like pile of bricks upon my head.

  “No, no, son,” Phillip implored. “We need you, we have missed you. You just have to do this small task, then we can take you back into the fold.”

  “To do what?” Emma growled at them, which was unnerving considering her slight frame. “To force him to continue to play spy against his old Order? How long before you send him back to kill another one of his Masters? How long before you send him into the Temple, only he knows so well, to steal things your Order needs? Your loyalty is entirely to your Order. It’s not to your son. He’s just an afterthought. Your Order is just as manipulative as the Luxis.” Her face screwed up in disgust. “It is actually almost worse that you are so openly honest about it.”

  “Do not speak of the order of Veritas in such a way.” Phillip’s voice boomed through the small wooden house.

  My heart sank into my stomach. Phillip looked at me, realizing his mistake. He showed where his one true devotion lie.

  “She’s right,” I said, the words soft to my own ears. “I am just a tool to you. Just as I was to the Luxis. I’m something you can bring to your Order as an offering of service. Revenge for what was taken from you.”

  Regina rushed up to me, and Emma stepped back allowing it. My mother reached up, clutching at my shoulders, forcing me to look down into her perfectly matching blue eyes. How I could have ignored the familial resemblance before seemed preposterous to me now. “You can come home. You’ll have a home. We can work together. We can be united in our hate for the Luxis. Don’t you want revenge?”

  “No.” I gently removed her hands off me. “I know what I want now. I don’t want to fight anymore.” I looked up at Emma. She swallowed hard and set her chin, she knew my pain. She always seemed to know my pain.

  Regina’s eyes darted back and forth between mine, looking for a shred of give, but when she did not find it, her expression hardened, bringing out all the lines in her face. “You may not have a choice.”

  “She is wrong, my son,” Phillip said, not done trying yet. “We do care about you.” His voice was strained, and his eyes too hungry all of a sudden.

  “Then what is his name?” Emma asked softly.

  I turned to look at her, and saw she stared at my father with open disappointment.

  “His name?” Phillip asked, perplexed.

  “You haven’t even asked what his name is.”

  “You want us to call him by the name they gave him?” Regina spit the words.

  I worked to clear my face of any emotion and pulled my shoulders back. “I named myself. They do not give damned, soulless children names, we are merely wards to the Masters. So we gave them to ourselves after our third mission in the world.” Before Regina could open her mouth again, I said, “I will not fight this war anymore. I don’t want any part in your squabbles. I just want Emma and me to be left in peace.” I nodded to her, to indicate we were leaving. Emma stepped in closer to me. “Don’t try to follow us, or I’ll be forced to show you the true nature of single-minded fanaticism.”

  Regina’s face cooled like a lake freezing over, smoothing itself of any lines or emotion. Phillip squared his shoulders and came to stand next to Regina, only the crude table between us. “I’m sorry my son, but surely you realize we cannot let her leave. The Propheros must undergo the reckoning. It is our only hope.”

  I saw his hand move to his belt toward his knife, while my mother reached into her pants pocket. Her fist was closed around something, but through the fingers I saw pale green, glowing light. She had a sacred object with her, just as I carried moonstones.

  I looked down at Emma’s face. It
was etched in defiance toward my parents and I could have kissed her right then just to feel how alive she was, and for courage, but I resisted. Instead, I flicked my eyes behind us toward the large window opening. Her lips tightened and I knew she understood.

  “Well then,” I said slowly, turning to face my parents again while taking a few steps backward with Emma. They advanced in kind, but they were too late. “You better figure out a plan B,” I said, mimicking the informality in which Emma and Travis spoke. With that I grabbed Emma’s arm and yanked her along with me as I dove backward out the open window.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  I heard the sound of someone tripping over the table and watched as a green light zoomed just over my body as we fell away from the treehouse. It came so close, I felt a numbing tingle emanate from it. It was meant to paralyze me, but they were too late. I felt rather than heard Emma stifle a scream as we fell. I grasped her hand harder before letting go. I spun in the air until I was falling face down, then closed my eyes, and waited for the inevitable.

  We hit the sticky net hard, but it was rigid enough that it dipped less than ten feet under our weight before springing us back up. By my estimate, there were still thirty feet between us and the ground. The web had only two corners, giving it the appearance of an oversized hammock. Having deliberately fallen toward one of the two taut corners of the web, the spring had been less giving and my body immediately bruised from the hard impact.

  The web was wet, hairy, and sticky, which aggravatingly itched my bare arms. The powerful stench of formaldehyde burned my nose. If I pulled hard enough, I could get unstuck, but I wouldn’t be able to move fast enough if my plan was to continually unstick myself while moving toward Emma to get us out of here.

  “I can’t move,” Emma said, panic climbing in her voice but I could hear her fight it. Indeed, we could not, the net was fiercely viscid and my clothes, neck and face were adhered to it. The covering of the tree tops blocked out any light, so even when my eyes adjusted to the pitch black, I still couldn’t see much.

  “Don’t worry,” I said with a grunt. “We won’t be here long.” When I had turned around in the air, I brought my sheathed sword to the front of my body. With my hands wrapped around it, I was able to pop the hilt up with a sharp metal scraping sound and use the exposed bit of blade to cut at the gather of web that led to one of the trees it clung to.

  “Your parents are coming down,” Emma said.

  They descended toward us, my mother’s fist still emitting a pale green light, slightly illuminating the web as I worked on it. She would be moving slower, expending a great deal of energy to keep the power active.

  The web was as thicker than a three-strand rope, but I kept sawing away with my sword. “Yes, well, didn’t think they would give us up so easily, did you? After all, if they go back, they will have to tell their elders the truth,” I mocked.

  “Did you almost make a joke just then?”

  I paused very briefly but went right back to cutting through the thick sticky strands. “Yes, I believe I was in danger of it.”

  “You know, for a second there, I thought maybe we were jumping out a window to… to jump out of a window. But then I told myself you would have a plan, if I just trusted you.” She seemed to be talking to calm herself down. “And you did have a plan. Well one that didn’t involve killing ourselves rather than be taken alive. Oh hey, I got my arm off…. aaand it’s stuck back down.”

  The net moved underneath us. It was too soon for my parents to have reached it as it would require a careful climb down several trees to reach the net. When I’d caught sight of the web as I gazed out the window of the treehouse, I had also noticed they had cut away most limbs of the nearby trees to keep anyone or anything from climbing toward them.

  I kept sawing, but lifted my gaze to see what had gotten on the net. “Yes, but I’m still not sure you’re going to like my plan.”

  “What do you mean? Man, you must be cutting away at that thing. But hurry, your parents are halfway down.”

  “I have good news and bad news. Which would you prefer first?” I’d heard the expression used twice before and felt it fitting for the moment. Beads of sweat popped out on my forehead as I doubled my efforts.

  “Good news. I could really use some good news after all this bullshit, right about now. Lay it on me, hot stuff.” She was doing her best to sound bold, but she couldn’t keep her voice from trembling.

  “All right. The good news is I’ve almost cut through an essential corner of the net.”

  “Good, because they are really booking it our way. Damn, you got this thing shaking.”

  “You see, that is where the bad news comes in. The bad news is this is an oversized arachnid’s net and he’ll think we’ve come to be his dinner.”

  Emma swallowed audibly. “Then I guess we better get the hell out of here before it gets home.”

  “I should have mentioned the bad news has two parts. He is home. That is what’s making the net shake so badly.” I was able to just make out Emma’s head tilt in the direction of the creature straining the net. I was sure in the dark she could still make out long, hairy legs about five feet long, and she may have been able to see some of the fat, purple body. But even if she didn’t, she could definitely see the thirty, milky yellow eyes blink hungrily at her.

  “Okay, time to go,” she shouted. “Time to go, right now.”

  The creature shrieked back at her, making me wish I had use of my hands to cover my ears.

  I was glad it wasn’t light enough for Emma to see its gaping maw filled with tiny jagged teeth. I only knew what it looked like from when I had encountered its horde during my trials. However, I had spotted them first and knew to go around their den.

  Two more bounces came from the opposite side of the net.

  “Quickly, let us help you,” Phillip said. “We’ll get you out.”

  From the bounce of the net, I knew they were hurrying toward Emma, though the arachnid stood between them. I wasn’t sure how they could walk on the net but my guess was they had attire equipped to use these webs as a means of travel when they were empty of their owners. The creature whipped around and screeched at the intruders interrupting its dinner.

  “The point was to get you in,” I said. With a final grunt, I cut the last thread of the net’s corner. One whole side dropped, slamming the remaining net and us against a tree. My cheek slammed into the rough bark, knocking the wind from me. I heard Emma’s oof somewhere above me on the net. Where Emma and I were still stuck to the net, my parents bellowed as they were dropped down and out of sight, the creature screaming as it fell after them.

  “Oh god,” Emma breathed after a few heartbeats. “Are they dead?”

  “No,” I said, managing to angle my head down. Glowing green light was being hurled at the creature below. “I just needed to give them something else to focus on other than you.” If the creature was violent before, it was positively incensed now. It wouldn’t go down without a hell of a fight.

  Slowly and painstakingly, I pulled myself off the web and started my way toward Emma. “What do you say we get out of here?”

  “I say if you get me out of here, I’ll let you do anything you want to me, stud muffin.” Her voice was shaky despite her half attempt at humor. I couldn’t say her incentive didn’t speed up my efforts.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  “There.” I pointed for Emma to follow. A break in the trees aimed the full moon’s glow directly onto a cave entrance. She weakly nodded next to me, likely to agree with anything I directed us to do at this point. “I’ll go first,” I murmured before holding her by the shoulders and dropping a kiss on her head.

  Emma closed her eyes at the contact, her arms wrapping around each other as if it was all she could do to hold herself up. I crouched to crawl into the cave through its small entry, which I noted would also make it harder for predators to get through. It opened into a larger cavern that was just right for the two of us. It had long
been abandoned by whatever had lived there. Probably eaten, no doubt. The cave would be safe for us tonight.

  “Oh my.” Emma breathed after she ducked in after me. Her eyes turned upward as she took in the unusual sight. The cave’s interior was engulfed in soft blue glow. Countless blue slugs clung to the walls, emitting the soft light. Emma mused about their bioluminescence.

  I would have asked her to explain what that was, but I was too tired, positive I was unable to absorb any more information for the day. Maybe for the rest of my life. The center of my bones ached, and my throat begged for cool water.

  Emma sat against a side of the cave not covered in slugs, arms wrapping around her knees. The blue light on Emma’s face enhanced her appearance of being closed off. Since we escaped the web, it was like she switched off the valve to her emotions. It disturbed me more than I could say. I feared she was hardening from the inside out.

  I sat next to Emma and wrapped her up in my arms. Instantly she released her knees, leaned into me and closed her eyes. I sighed in relief when reached back for me.

  “It’s just too much. It’s all too much,” she murmured.

  I ran my calloused fingers through her hair. Even the tangles from running through the jungle didn’t detracted from how soft it was.

  “What is?” I asked, not truly paying attention. My mind was in a fog, and all I wanted to focus on was the feel of Emma curled safely into my side. Inhale the faint vanilla of her hair, mixed in with sweat, and her unique, intoxicating scent that was imprinted on me for all of eternity.

  “Everything is. Me being the Propheros, you losing your powers, being lied to by your Order your whole life, everyone hunting us down,” her words slowed. “Travis choosing to side with the Luxis.”

  Again, I was confused as to the depth he had wounded her. “Are you so bothered by what he did because you have feelings for him?”

  Emma’s head reared back and off my chest to shoot me a look of disgust before swatting me on the chest. “Ew, no. Gross. Besides, I thought I made it very clear who I have feelings for.” She blushed at the end.