Chapter 11 The Spirit of Life #4
Kay and Jackson were outside near the woods as if they’d picked a direction already and were waiting on her.
Jackson was still smoking his cigarette as they both faced her.
She’d almost reached them when she saw an expression of horror on Jackson’s face, the cigarette falling out of his mouth before a sudden jolt shot up behind her.
Ella turned in only enough time to see the black webbing of cracks climb up the base of Life, and then spiral up with so much force that it was as if black lightning burst up from the ground.
The sun at the peak of the tower burst into a thousand pieces and then before their very eyes the entire structure crumbled to the ground.
Ella stared at Jackson and Kay. Kay was still staring at the rubble, but Jackson’s eyes were on her.
“What did you do?” Jackson said, his anger clear. Kay was still in shock. Jackson rubbed his face and crossed his arms, staring at the wreckage in a forlorn way, meanwhile Kay had sunk to his knees and in the moment was completely speechless, a very rare occurrence for him.
Jackson kept his mouth and nose covered but watched her closely. Without another word, he yanked Kay up by the arm. “We have to go,” he said, “now!” he jolted Kay again and before long they were running full force back into the woods.
“Where are we going?” Kay asked ahead as they broke through branches and trees. He kept glancing back at Ella who stumbled beside him.
“Away from here!” Jackson said, a rushed urgency in his voice. “We need to get away from here!”
He continued full force for several minutes, Ella and Kay both panting as they sprinted behind him.
He seemed to have a specific sense of where he was going despite not having been here before, but to their surprise he eventually led them out to a small, shrub laden cavern and without another word ran inside.
“Stay close,” he said, removing his lighter and loosening the sword on his back as they walked deeper into the tunnel. Ella noticed words etched on the walls as they kept going deeper, examining Jackson’s careful pace through the cave before grabbing his shoulder and yanking him back.
The force turned them both, Ella stepping back before a hole opened up in the floor, nearly swallowing her. Kay stepped out to catch her, the floor breaking under him as he stepped near her. He fell, Jackson barely snatching Ella before she slammed against the side of the pit.
“Kay!” she shouted in a mixture of concern and pain as her wounded arm jolted against the side of the pit.
“I’m fine,” Kay groaned back, though she couldn’t see him in the darkness below.
“Kay, catch her,” Jackson said calmly, hanging far off the edge and slipping steadily.
“You’ve been here before,” Ella accused, right before Jackson let go.
Ella fell hard in the darkness as Jackson pushed himself back up. He sat and watched them in the pit.
“You knew exactly where we were going,” she accused, panting through the pain. Her head swam as she pushed herself up against the wall.
“Time runs differently here,” he said. “I didn’t know until I saw the lookout but it’s only been about a decade since the war ended.”
“What are you saying?” Kay asked, hoisting Ella up beside him.
“I’m saying,” Jackson repeated, “the war happened in this place that you all call The Quiet."
“That’s impossible,” Kay said, “we have ruins, artifacts, entire walls on our side!”
“From something sure, but it’s not the war, not our war, and you,” he directed his attention back to Ella. “You said you didn’t see anything in my memories.”
“I don’t even know who he is!” she shouted back, “I didn’t even realize it was a Strike!”
“What is happening!” Kay exclaimed, mirroring Ella’s frustration.
The only one who seemed completely calm now was Jackson, and Ella didn’t like what that meant.
“Which one is it? Yun, Avadale, Smith?” Jackson said to her.
Ella was surprised to realize that she actually knew the answer to his question, having an uncanny sense that it had been shared to her without her knowledge, “Lambspeak.”
An immediate coldness settled on Jackson’s face. A tense and dangerous silence ensued, in which Ella sensed something in Jackson’s eyes that made her want to reason with him.
“He started talking to me,” Ella said. “He healed my arm and I forced him to give me the wound back, alright? I’m not conspiring with him. What are you so afraid of?” she said as Kay helped pull her up, “What’s out there?”
Jackson moved to pull something from his belt. “The war didn’t end how you think it did,” he said and threw something down. Ella caught it in her good hand, inspecting the vial of Amnesia before looking up at him.
“Drink it and I’ll pull you both out.”
Provided with the ultimatum, Ella realized that he’d probably known about these pits all along, hence his sudden willingness to share the truths he’d realized about the world.
Clasping the vile, she broke away from Kay and eased down against the wall.
Jackson backed away from the entrance of the pit, Ella imagining that they were both settling in for a long wait.
“What have we gotten ourselves into?” Kay said, pacing back and forth in the dark, but there was little else to add. “We have to get back,” he whispered.
Minutes extended out and she and Kay sat across from each other, Kay’s expression eventually morphing until his eyes broached the request timidly.
“Ella,” he said eventually, “Maybe it’s for the best. Ever since the embolism, you’ve been struggling. Something just hasn’t been…right.”
“I used to be an addict.” She didn’t have to elaborate.
Kay knew enough about her early years on the streets of the Imperia when her mind was arrested in the sea of emptiness that Amnesia created.
That was a long time ago, and she didn’t feel the need or desire to bury herself in that place now, but she needed Kay to back away from the suggestion, back so far away that he could only sit there speechless.
“I know.”
She knew it was all he could say in response.
She stared back with an unrelenting refusal.
Instead of speaking, she pulled Mark’s lucky coin from her pocket and turned it over and over in the silence.
Soon, she rolled it over her fingers, back and forth as if it were enough to entertain her for the next few hours.
Kay watched the coin like it carried the weight of all of his concerns, balancing precariously as it flipped from one finger to the next.
Between each turn, she could see Kay’s gaze across from her until the fullness of the coin eclipsed him again.
She couldn’t think.
She was too full of too many things and she could hardly decipher her physical state from her mental and emotional state.
Every part of her was suffering and full of so much noise.
Her focus on the coin felt like the only stability she had left until one more flip in her fingers eclipsed her vision a final time.
When she looked past the coin again, she didn’t see Kay, but the white table, now accompanied by two white chairs.
She dropped the coin and it clattered against the floor as she gasped and pressed her body back against the wall.
Her heart throbbed in her chest, chest growing tight as fire burned across her brain, blurring her vision.
All of the feelings she’d experienced in the embolism returned, as if spilling from some thinly bandaged crack in her psyche, and she gasped for air as the white table waited without meaning in front of her.
Light cascaded off it from a nearby window, and footfalls echoed from behind her before Kay’s voice broke through the illusion and shook her back to reality.
Kay was standing over her.
“Ella,” He pleaded, and when she jolted back into reality he shook his head and in a panic said, “Something is wrong. Ella, you have to take it. We have to go back.”
She swallowed and tried to form an objection, but her mind was still flooded with intense emotion that burned through her entire body.
Before she could even consider her next move, she heard footsteps in the tunnel, not just one, but multiple. They both looked up as a head peered over them before withdrawing. Another head came back, and then another, causing Kay and Ella to ease to their feet.
“Jackson?” she asked, swallowing the tremor in her voice. No response.
A few minutes later a rope ladder rolled down into the pit. Kay urged her up first, holding the ladder taught at the bottom as she climbed up with one arm.
Hands helped her up at the top, Ella watching the four scouts waiting at the top, armed with knives and swords, but positioned so that they didn’t seem to be anticipating a fight.
“Welcome to The Quiet,” one said with an accent and a light smile.
He stood ahead of the rest, a different symbol than the others stitched onto his shoulder.
“My name is Hollow. I’m a representative of The Quiet.
You’re going to want to avoid asking too many questions,” he added, “unless you’re planning to stay for good. ”
Jackson was nowhere to be seen.
The war didn’t end how you think it did , Ella rolled the words through her head as the scouts walked them out. She struggled to digest them through the fresh wave of fear that had consumed her only moments ago.
It felt like she was falling apart.
“We’re going to take you to get patched up and fed,” Hollow said as they left the cave, “and then send you on your way home.”
Ella exchanged glances with Kay. She searched the forest for Jackson as they started on their final hike outside of the cave.
The war ended here ten years ago. Jackson’s words rolled through her brain.
His skepticism of Peter’s death now made alarming sense. Nothing else did.