"So, since Greta was your mom, does that make her my grandmother?" I asked. The question had been rolling around in my head for the last couple of minutes.
My mom shook her head without looking up at me. Her bright blue eyes were focused on the wall while she opened up another entrance by the light of my floating ball, "No, it does not," she answered.
"You know that she showed me a vision of her slitting your throat; it broke my mind for a second, allowed her to gain almost complete control over me."
"And that's why she disowned me as her daughter, and I disowned her as my mother, because she's capable of doing things like that. She breaks you on the inside without breaking your body, and sometimes that's a lot more painful than if every single bone were to be snapped in half. She's the reason I'm so messed up in the head, but I'll make sure that she never does that to you again. There are tricks, and I know all of them. Trust me, if you were a teenager having as much... never mind, but I learned effective ways of keeping her out," she said and stepped through the entrance.
"I don't think we have to worry about that anymore," I said and followed her.
"Meaning she's dead?"
"Yeah," I said.
My mom didn't say anything; instead, she went to the next wall and pressed her hand against it. Instead of another hallway or room opening up under her touch, we were greeted by the orange and pink rays of sunlight of a sun sinking below a horizon not visible to us. I extinguished the ball of light.
"At least it stopped raining," my mother said softly, and there was so much sadness in her voice, but not just any sadness, defeated sadness.
"Mom, I-" I began.
"She wanted to control the world and do so by forcing it into a mold nothing could fit into, because she never really had any control over her world. She had to die, she was evil," my mom said quietly, "Yet when I was a little girl, she was an okay mother, and I still loved her..."
"And the reason why she died was because of me," I said, "and I won't lie, say I'm not happy that she is currently pleading out on a floor. And I killed Dad with my own hands. And no matter what the reason was for, it's in human nature to be resentful for far less. So after this is done, and I mean done completely, there's something I have to take care of; it might be best if I put some distance between us."
"I think you're right," my mom said in the same soft, sad voice, "But not too long because I love you way more than I will ever be able to resent you." She looked away from the sky and smiled at me, and reached and touched my shoulder. The weak rays of sunlight eliminated her blonde curls and made it look as if she had a golden halo floating around her face.
"I probably would've lost my mind permanently if you had died, and even Santana couldn't have even pulled me back to myself."I thought while I smiled back at her.
I let my eyes drop to my neck, and I pulled at the gold chain around my throat, and the gold whistle emerged from under the blue fabric of my dress and brought it to my lips and blew it, hoping I would get a response. I wasn't even sure Deception was able to fly with two people on his back, or heck, even fly, but I could think of no other option. How else were we supposed to get off the ground from thousands of miles off the ground?
But then there came the beating of wings, and for the third time that day, my heart leapt with joy. The first was Emily walking down the aisle, the second was seeing my mother with a throat that wasn't slashed. And the third was seeing my companion of 400 years.
"Deception!" I cried happily and rushed over to the wall and in front of my mom and stuck my hand out into the windy opening. Deception bounced his snout gently off my outstretched hand.
I craned my head so I was looking over my shoulder. "Can you make the opening bigger?" I asked my mom, and she nodded and expanded the opening so Deception was able to fit his black body through the opening. But he wasn't the only dragon who flew through the entrance; a slightly larger blue dragon entered, too.
I jumped back in surprise at the seemingly intruding dragon, but then relaxed when I realized who it was.
"Oh, thank the gods!" Henry breathed from the top of Nessie's back. He quickly undid himself from the saddle straps and slid his way down Nessie's side to the hard floor, "I saw Deception flying around this castle like he had mad scales and thought the worst," he said while he walked towards me.
He opened his arms to me soon and soon had me in them. I buried my face in the crook between his neck and his shoulder and breathed in the mixture of pine, leather, and bonfire that made up his scent.
Deception began to nudge my back gently, and I turned from Henry, who let me go with some complaint, and I put my hands on either side of his face and pressed my forehead up against his scales and closed my eyes.
I felt a light tap on my back, and I turned around to come face to face with Henry once again.
"Is this about the portal that opened up on the ground?" I blurted out, and Henry nodded his head.
"Not even going to ask how you know that. I'm just going to assume that Greta got some control of you for a moment and got some control over all of us. It did stop the fighting, and whoever has a little bit of control over us right now is continuing that temporary cease-fire, that and no one on both sides is marching through that portal into the other world."
"It's Santana, and I know she was sending people through. I was balancing the souls until I wasn't. There are at least a couple dozen of those monsters, like the one we encountered in the other world are there right now."
"I'm sure the people over on the other world can handle them just fine," Henry said.
I shook my head violently, my mess of black curls flying all around my face, "Henry, there's something about those things that I just can't put my finger on," I said.
"Well, let me help you put your stubby finger on what is bothering you," an all too familiar cynical voice purred, and in a blinding flash of light, I was in the room alone once again while Lacy stood in front of me.
"You've got to stop doing the light flashing thing," I said while I tried to blink away the dark spots now dancing in front of my eyes.
"Congrats, ditz, on lasting ten minutes without being mind-controlled," Lacy said and gave me a couple of weak claps before she dropped her hands and smirked at me. She began to circle me slowly, and I could feel her eyes sizing me up, but for what exactly I wasn't sure.
"I would like to see you try and last three minutes," I said dryly, and she stopped right in front of me.
"No, in all sincerity, thank you for heeding my warning and not agreeing to work for her because that delayed her for three minutes and three more minutes, and you would've had 103 soulless monsters creating chaos, and instead of 43, which is just the manageable number you and whoever or whatever you chose to take over with you can handle. Hint, I said whatever you chose to take over, which means creatures dead alive, or others. And hint, hint, think about how and with what you used to kill that first monster the first time, and bring it over with you."
"Okay, so obviously you know what is going to happen," I said, letting annoyance saturate my voice, "And how to stop it. So it would be obviously easier if you just told me exactly what to do and stop being so cryptic."
"And that would be the obvious solution," Lacy said she tilted her head back and shouted, "But that would be too easy!" then she lowered her head and looked back at me, "Let me tell you the great beyond is a pain in my oh so holy now rear end, but its more interesting being a guardian angel and working for it, than being a soul at rest and peace," she said, her voice at a normal level. She shrugged her shoulders, "But I am allowed to tell you the 101 on these soulless dolls, so listen closely. So LISTEN closely," she repeated, putting a lot of emphasis on the word listen.
"Okay, okay, I'm LISTENING," I said impatiently, "You don't have to repeat it twice!
"Oh, but I do. You see, you don't have a really good track record of being a good direction follower."
"Just tell me all the information you can! The more time we waste, the more damage those things are probably doing." I said impatiently. I wasn't sure how much damage, but I was sure it was a lot. That I knew for certain.
"And have you really not noticed? Wow, no freaking time passes when you are talking to me!" she said loudly and rolled her brown eyes, much to my annoyance.
"Anyways," she continued, "these things don't just have no souls, they are vacuums for them, and they suck souls out of others by biting them and breaking the skin. You see, their bodies crave souls, because theirs's is missing, but no soul but theirs's will stop their craving, so once they realize that is isn't their soul they have sucked in," she made a whooshing sound and gestured upwards with her hand, "Out the acquired soul goes but the soul doesn't go back to its original body, oh no, it keeps revolving around the body of the thing that stole it like the planets around the sun, and the body it got stole from becomes a soul sucking monster too. Not as bad as the original soul-sucking monster, but still bad. But unlike the original soul-sucking monster, their condition can be reversed if the original soul sucky monsters, meaning the people that became soul sucky monsters from our world, are killed, but don't feel too bad about killing those shells of people. They can't be helped anymore; their souls are stuck in purgatory forever.
"So how do we kill these things? Like in head decapitation, burning, heart removal..."
"Well, haven't you become a little morbid?" Lacy said, raising an eyebrow at me, "But I was right when I said you don't listen well. I said to think about how you kill them and with what." she said.
I thought for a second, "The channeling weapon. When I plugged it into its eye, it stopped dead in its tracks, no pun intended, considering that without its soul, it is pretty much dead. Even deader than the army I just raised from the soil, because for a brief time, their souls come back to them."
"Okay, don't really need the info on your creepy hobby," Lacy said and flickered her red hair over her shoulder, "And one more thing. When your boyfriend tries to argue that it isn't your problem to get rid of these things, tell him that once those monsters have freed every soul from their body in the other world, because channeling weapons don't exist over there, they are going to claw their way here, and life in both worlds will cease to exist. Now toodlese, got to run! Unheavenly heavenly duties have to be done!" she said, and in a flash of light, Lacy was gone, and I was back in the room with Henry, my mother, and the two dragons.
"I looked at him. We have to help them; they can't handle those creatures themselves."
"And how is this our problem? This might sound harsh, but Greta is the one who caused this, not us. Why should we risk our lives any more than we have to today?"
I opened my mouth and told him exactly why.