Post by StoryGirl83 on Aug 27, 2008 23:42:07 GMT -5
Chapter Ten – Good? Bad? Neutral?
Aka and Toby stopped at the front door of a house. Toby was panting. “Next time we don’t walk.”
“I was not risking it,” Aka informed him. She wrapped on the door. “I can’t see that thing when I’m orbing. That thing could kill me if I orbed through it.”
Toby sighed. “Point taken, but walking? Wasn’t there some other way to get here, a car or bus or something?”
The door opened and Devia peaked out. “Oh, hi. Come in. Either of you know first aide? Brianna’s clueless.”
Toby looked at her, concerned. “Why do you need first aid? Did Max show up unannounced?”
Devia’s eyes widened. “She’s that mad at him?” She opened the door all the way to allow them through.
Toby chuckled. “Oh, yeah, she’s that mad at him.”
“Not Max though is it,” Aka commented as she entered through the opened door. Not waiting for directions she headed through the house to Brianna’s bedroom. Seeing Brianna’s sponging the face of man on her bed she stopped. “Care to explain, what’s going on.” A whitelighter, she realized as she looked at him closer.
Brianna looked up. “I don’t know. Uncle Steve kidnapped him or something. I don’t know what’s wrong with him, but he’s got all sorts of bumps, bruises, and broken things. I don’t know who he is or how to fix him, or if he’ll live.”
Aka frowned. “Well, to start with, the only way he’s going to die is if I figured out how to conjure a bow, because he’s not exactly alive.”
“A whitelighter?” Brianna looked at her surprised.
Aka nodded. “Yeah. Right now, I really wish mom was one of the good guys. I should really like the ability to heal.”
“Be that as it may,” Brianna sighed as she looked down at Jamie, “we do with what we have.”
“No spells?”
“For healing,” Brianna asked sarcastically. “Not hardly. It would be too easy. Besides, most witches have a whitelighter.” She gave her friend a wry look. “The elders seem to take offense in the fact that father married a warlock, so none for me.”
Aka smiled as she looked down at the whitelighter. “He looks young. I wonder how old he was when he died.”
Brianna looked down at him, surprised. “I hadn’t thought of that, but judging by him, younger than any of us.”
“Other than Dev.”
Brianna shook head. “Dev is not one of us, Aka. There is still too much of her father. I wish that were a good thing, but Uncle Steve is not a good man.”
“Mmhm.” Aka replied, distracted as she remembered back to what she had seen when she had been with Toby in the park, what may well, have put this whitelighter in this state.
“What’s the matter, Aka?” Brianna asked, attuned to the change in her friend.
Still distracted, Aka muttered, “An anti-orb zone.”
“A what?” Brianna asked confused. She had never heard of such a thing.
“An anti-orb zone,” Aka repeated, this time realizing that her friend was listening.
Brianna shook her head, bewildered. “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
Aka frowned as she considered this. That was something she had never thought of before. Something with that kind of destructive potential was bad right? But no, it had the potential for healing, too, since it could reverse lost powers of orbing and such. “I suppose it depends on who you are.”
“Well, aren’t you cryptic today. Care to explain?”
Aka sighed. “It scares me, you know. That thing has the ability to do so much damage and yet.”
Brianna looked at her surprised. “Scares, you? Nothing scares you, Aka.”
“Not so that I would admit, but that thing,” she shuddered and began to pace the room. “The stories that are told and the reality of them. An anti-orb zone is not something to toy with and someone called it there. Some insane person called an anti-orb zone here. That’s great magic of its own. They can heal some of their own damage, but most don’t stick around long enough to find out.”
“What damage? What do you mean, Aka?”
“If you enter one you lose all ability to transport out.”
Brianna stood and walked over to where her friend paced. “All ability? Meaning I couldn’t blink, you couldn’t orb, Max couldn’t shimmer, and Toby couldn’t do anything?”
Aka laughed at the reference to Toby’s unique ability to use two different forms of transportation due to being half demon and half darklighter. “That is right, but the reverse is true too, if you return into one, you will regain those abilities. The thing is, if you orb into one or try to orb out, you will be forced back down and unless you are a whitelighter or darklighter the normal way, you are unlikely to survive.”
“And you got all this from looking at one?” Brianna asked, half impressed.
Aka laughed. “Na. I just identified it by looking at it. You know the auras only tell me what something is.” She sighed. “And this is what made it more confusing. Its aura was neutral. It’s not bad, but neither is it good. It just is.”
Brianna was about to ask another question when Devia entered the room. Her little cousin had a solemn expression on her face. “How is he?”
Aka took the opportunity to exit the room.
Brianna watched her go for a moment before turning to answer her cousin. “He hasn’t awoken yet, but Aka declares that he is a whitelighter, so he will.”
Devia walked over to the bed and sat down on the edge near the end. “Is she sure about that?”
Brianna laughed. “Trust me, Aka is never wrong about these things. If she says he is a whitelighter, then he is a whitelighter. People,” she searched her mind for the word she wanted. With a sigh she simply said, “People look different to Aka than they do to you or me.”
Devia frowned. “If you say so.”
On the bed next to her, Jamie stirred, drawing the attention of both girls to himself. His eyes opened and he looked at them. “What happened?” he croaked.
The two cousins looked at each other. It was Brianna that answered, her voice cautious. “You were almost killed. We kept that from happening, but if you think you can manage, you’d best be on your way. I imagine you were in the middle of something.”
“Be careful,” Devia added. “I can get a sling for that arm. It looks kind of weird.”
Jamie looked down at his arms. He quickly saw what she meant. For some reason he was numb to the pain, which didn’t strike him as a very good thing. “My charges,” he began.
“Unfortunately for better or worse, that has likely resolved itself,” Brianna admitted. “It’s been more than an hour since we found you. Let us bandage you up and then you can be on your way. We don’t have magical means of healing, but we can do a decent job with mortal methods.” With a conspiratorial wink at her cousin, she said, “Right?”
Devia grinned. “Right.”
For the moment, Brianna felt that all was well, but she knew as soon as Devia was back with her dad, his influence would start once more to pull at her cousin. The war for her cousin would be a long one and she didn’t know who would win.