Page 55 of Legendary

NICK

Iclosed the door to my shared bedroom with Reese and took in a breath. I knew we needed to do this, but that didn’t mean I was any less anxious about it. I could feel sweat developing at the back of my neck. It really was not that big of a deal, but a small piece of me kind of wanted someone else to talk to Natalia through my portal key. I could have and it wouldn’t have been an issue, but I wanted to be the one to do it so here we were back to square one in my ever present spiraling mindset.

“So how is this working?” Dani asked, sitting down on my bed while Reese leaned against the headboard of his own. Elise placed her back against the wall, eyeing me.

“I’ll lay on the bed, and I guess use this to try to communicate with her. I need to be watched since my physical body will be vulnerable.” I plucked my portal key from within my shirt, feeling the texture of it around my fingers.

“And you know what you’re doing?” Elise asked, knowing full well I didn’t. I didn’t give her any type of response.

“We’ll all be here waiting for you to wake up, alright?” Reese assured me. I stepped over to my bed and laid my head on the pillow, feelingincredibly awkward just lying there. Dani moved around so that she was looking down at me. She grabbed the portal key in one hand and my mildly sweaty hand in the other. She wrapped my shaky hand around the tiger’s eye key and smirked. “Remember what she said, you idiot. Close your eyes and think about wanting to talk to her. The magic should do the rest.”

“Let us hope she doesn’t decide to just ignore you. I know I fucking would,” Elise said, chuckling under her breath.

Reese sat down on the side of his bed that was closest to me and I noticed the moment Dani let go of my hand. She placed both her hands in her lap and patiently watched me. I blinked once, twice, then closed my eyes for good. I let my mind wander to the High Priestess who seemed to know so much, but I knew there were things that she was still very much in the dark about. She couldn’t always be an encyclopedia of knowledge but for this, I knew she had to know something of the sort. Most of the Enchanters here knew things, but they were limited. Leah had the pleasure of learning things alongside a High Priestess herself, but others were not granted that kind of luxury.

Isabel had ended up just pulling from willing and unwilling participants when Lilith had Enchanters bestow their magic onto her. Some she had completely drained of their powers while others had just enough left to get by. Their magic was a part of them and trying to coax any type of story from them was daunting enough, especially when you saw the haunted looks on their faces when you realized their eyes had glazed over and they were right back in that moment of no return. There were some that made it out completely unscathed- notcompletelyunscathed- their magic was intact, like Garrett and Leah, but they still had nightmares. They still couldn’t be completely themselves here, even though they had sided with Lilith’s intoxicating words of freedom and the idea of no consequences.

I willed myself to focus on Natalia, on wherever she was right now, and how much I needed to talk to her. I was unsure how I would know when it was working, but I tried to relax. I tried to numb my mind. I tried to focus. Focus, focus, focus. I felt numb suddenly. I couldn’t feel my fingers around my portal key, and I couldn’t feel the bed underneath me. This reminded me of when I found out that Dani was a hybrid, but this time I wasn’t going into the past, I was moving in real time. I heard the crunch of leaves and the grinding of gravel underneath my shoes as I looked down at where my mind had taken me. I looked around, seeing the trees that looked so familiar to Oculus and the precise way the wind moved, making the leaves at my feet dance around.

The sky looked like the sun was starting to rise and the light was causing my shadow to extend further and further. I didn’t know what else to do now,I felt like I was here in the right place, but what now?

“Ah, Nicholas, I was wondering when I would see your face again.” I whirled around to see Natalia walking around a few trees. Her musically light voice echoed around me. Her dark purple dress shined and glittered as she walked towards me, moving with her at every step. Her long dark hair was decorated in a multitude of knots on the top of her head, each one tied off with a golden ribbon to secure it in place. Tendrils of her hair framed her face, the sparkles on her cheeks on full display, her dark skin flawless.

The bangles on her wrists jingled as she smoothed out her dress. Her face turned serious. “I do have to ask, your friends are watching over you, yes?”

I nodded. “Yeah, don’t worry.”

Her shoulders seemed to relax. It was sweet how much she cared about my well-being.

“Are we in Oculus right now?” I asked, taking another look around.

She hummed thoughtfully. “Yes and no. When I heard your call, the way I answered was by creating the setting to speak to you in. We are in Oculus, yes, but it’s cloaked, so we are in our own bubble here. I will tell you though, Zane wasn’t a fan of me whisking myself away to speak with you, but I made a promise to be here so he will have to pretend like he has any say over what I do later.”

I chuckled, thinking about the hulking man who clearly always had her best interest at heart, even if it was a bit overbearing. “Hopefully this won’t take long, and you can get back to whatever you were doing. We are just a little lost on something at the moment.”

She nodded and started walking past me, then turned around to face me again. “Okay, well start from the beginning. I’ll help as best I can.”

I inhaled deeply. I told her everything I could remember from the very beginning of our arrival in Purgatory, to the fight with Lilith’s shadow demons, and the meeting with Leah and Garrett. I tried to be as detailed as I could be when it came to my reiteration of Leah and Garrett’s story. There were obvious pieces I didn’t understand generally and then there were parts that I knew I didn’t understand due to what I was. I was an angel who considered loyalty as one of the pillars of my entire existence. It was something I never quite understood about their story or really when it came to any of the Enchanters. Even though Jonah had kept things from me, Markus was a snake and Ariel was just a power hunger dick, I still wanted to be loyal to where I was from. I couldn’t comprehend leaving someplace that gave you nothing but the best for a temporary solution. I didn’t know Natalia’s mother, but I had a feeling she was altogether a gracious and kindindividual. Enchanters had traded that for Lilith and her tempting words.

I couldn’t help but judge, yet I knew it wouldn’t do me any good now. The Enchanters that resided in Purgatory regretted their choices immensely and all they really wanted to do was be back in their home, following Natalia.

I peeked up at the High Priestess when I was finished speaking and she looked at me so intensely, those honey-colored eyes soft but commanding. “Are you finished?” she asked politely. I nodded.

She raised her head towards the sky. “Isabel has been quite busy hasn’t she.” It wasn’t meant to be a question; I knew that much. “There is a small part of me that wants to help her, pull her over to the better side of things. Then there is the part of me that wants her to burn for what she’s done.” Her voice sounded far away, like she was deep in her own thoughts.

“I know hearing I’m sorry is probably pointless right now and coming from me it likely doesn’t mean much, but still, I’m sorry nonetheless.”

“Oh, Nicholas. Don’t worry, I’ve shed my tears and moved on as best I can. I really can’t let someone like her get in the way of what I have to do here. That gives her too much power over me and that’s not fair to me nor my people, hmm?” She was right as per usual.

She shook herself off and gave me her attention as if her thoughts about Isabel were so easily thrown away. “Back to what you were saying. You want to understand why Lilith would need Isabel to help with the shadow demons?”

“Yeah, I mean what exactly could Enchanter magic even do for her in that situation?”

“Well, Isabel’s magic is more enhanced than any normal Enchanter. And from what you’ve told me Lilith can’t seem to fully control those soulless demons as she would like to. If I were Lilith, I would be using Isabel to focus them, help them gain more structure, but some things are too far gone to give any structure too. With no foundation it’s hard to understand where to start.”

I put my hand over my mouth, sliding my fingers across my lips as I started to think. Natalia continued. “I’m thinking that Isabel anchored them enough to have them travel to The Skies during that fight at the meeting, so they didn’t go off and just kill anyone and everyone, but that is it. It was quiet over at The Skies after that because she had Isabel dispose of them. I don’t know any of this for sure, but that’s my best guess. It’s one or the other with this sort of experimentation she’s doing. You either have creatures like Dani and Elise who have souls and a conscience, or you have creatures without souls and nothing to ground them, that’s not even something Isabel is able to fix.”

“Is it because she isn’t powerful enough?” I questioned.

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