"No! No!" I frantically grunted while I scrambled to get a good grip of the sharp stone edges of the hole I had managed to fall halfway into while maintaining my grip on the channeling spear. I was slowly losing the battle, and gravity tugged my body further into the hole, while the metal point of my spear scraped pointlessly against the stone.
"Mistress? Do you need our help?"The three voices whispered in my head in unison.
"No, I want to keep dangling here until one of those monsters decides to pop my soul into one of its drolly mouths like a piece of popcorn, of course, I want help!" I snapped.
"Of course, we know you want help, but we can't help until you release us. You just don't remember that we're here, so we must remind you to ask for help."
"Ah, sorry it's not that you're forgettable or anything, it's just when I need your help, I'm usually under a lot of st-"
"Do you realize that we can read your mind?" they all said dryly, and I winced at their tone.
"Okay, you got me, I forgot you all for like a split second, but I can't even feel you, so it's easy to forget you're there. Anyway, please help me! I release you!" I cried. I could feel my fingers giving up one by one, and suddenly I felt a very cold pressure on my arm, and I was being pulled upwards till my body was lying flat on what remained of the roof.
It was only when I was lying sprawled out on the roof under the sun, like some dead sea creature on the beach, that I remembered that I had other people to worry about.
I pushed myself onto my hand and knees, ignoring my protesting, overly exhausted muscles, and when I did, I saw that Arnold's creatures were still perched on the side of the building. They stared down at me, unmoving, with their small glowing white eyes that weren't much more than slits in their red stone heads. If their small chests weren't moving up and down, I would mistake them for being dead.
I wasn't sure whether their presence indicated that Arnold was still alive, or that they simply stuck around long after their creator died. Despite how tired my mind was, I still wondered if the creatures did outlive their creators, but for how long? In my world, many of the creatures had glowing white eyes just like Arnold's creations, including the nine-tailed foxes, water spirits, and a variety of gnomes that lived in the Pink Stone Mountain.
I slowly rotated my body, so I was now facing the giant circular gash in the roof. Carefully, I crawled just close enough to the wall to peer over to the edge of the hole and looked down into its depths.
It was dark down there despite the sunlight streaming in from above and through the high windows in its interior. I couldn't see much, and the dust swirling around in the air below from the recent cave-in wasn't helping. What I could see was several pairs of glowing white eyes looking up at me from below, the eyes of Arnold's dolls.
"Deception? Hello? Anyone?" I called down below. There was no answer, and from somewhere in the dark came the sound of a dragon in distress. I felt relief wash over me; at least Deception was alive. But that relief was short-lived when it was joined by a new sound, though, besides Deception's cries. It was the distinct sound of twigs snapping that signified that one of the soulless was close to me.
I looked up and swore softly under my breath, while a soulless man with gray hair in a purple shirt pulled himself over the side of the building opposite to me. He eyed me hungrily with his cloudy white eyes before he began to inch his way around the hole on all fours towards me.
I quickly scrambled to my feet, a hard thing to do in my state. My muscles were so tired. I hadn't been exaggerating when I told Amber I was exhausted because I was. Every muscle in my body begged me to rest, and I was very close to collapsing, but if I did that, I would be soul food for Mr. Hungry in the purple t-shirt. He was almost to me now.
I pointed my channeling at the thing, and black mist swirled with its crystal ball while sunlight glimmered off its sharp metallic tip. Then the thing lunged at me, and... energy was suddenly invading me. And suddenly I felt like I was no longer the one controlling my body.
"Be gone!" a voice hissed out of my mouth, except it wasn't my voice, but it was a familiar voice. It was the voice of the little voice inside my head that I thought I had mostly quieted. It turned out I was wrong, that I had weakened the other me that lurked deep down inside my being. The other me had only been gathering strength in silence.
But while I watched on, the soulless man simply collapsed on the ground and remained unmoving while I stood there, staring on wide-eyed at the now motionless body.
I felt the energy rush out of my body abruptly, and I crumbled to the ground like a puppet who had its strings cut. All the energy had been drained from me, and I knew that even if there was one of the soulless leaning over me, I wouldn't be able to do anything about it. I needed to rest and then find a way off this roof and down into that hole so I could help them. I could still hear Deception crying from the depths of the darkness below me, and it was sending waves of anxiety through me.
Suddenly, I heard something land on the roof with a thud. NO, not another one! I had to get up, or it would be all over. I wasn't sure I even had the strength to stand, but somehow I found it in me to climb to meet and face my next opponent.
He was dressed in his usual black clothes, and his spiky black hair poked out the top of a white rag that was wrapped carefully around his head.
"Henry," I said softly, and with the feeling of danger gone, I felt my body being dragged towards the ground once again.
I heard Henry mutter a curse under his breath and step toward me, and his arms went around my middle, while he slowly lowered me to the ground, where he knelt on the red brick and cradled my body gently. He looked down at me, and I saw that his mouth was set in a firm frown.
"Why aren't you in your hospital bed?" I asked him, still trying to comprehend that he was here with me. It did occur to me, for a split second, that he could be a hallucination, but his arms felt too warm and solid not to be real.
"Because you went through the portal without me, so I had to wake up and follow you in!" he barked, his eyes were still concerned, but his voice was full of anger and undertones of fear as well as the same concern he held in his eyes.
"Because I didn't have time to wait for you to wake up! Soulless monsters were destroying this world, and I had to help them!"
"So you came here alone with that kid!" Henry yelled, his voice shaking! "He's dangerous, Violet, and I don't want you anywhere near him!?"
"Henry-" I began and reached up to rub my hands across his face, which he flinched away from, and I lowered my arm back down to my chest while I continued to stare up at him.
"Even your father contemplated killing him because he was alarmed by his element and his quick development in his power and his strength!" he continued, "That kid could use his element before sixteen, and now he's more powerful than the two of us combined! Now, where is he? I was able to find you because of the little monsters he left on the roof," Henry said and pointed to the stone creatures that were still perched on the roof behind us.
My eyes shifted to the hole and backed up to him, and Henry seemed to understand because he said, "I'll go down in a second and find him, but I'm sure that creepy little bugger couldn't be killed by something that easily. Now answer me, why did you bring him with you?"
" I brought him with me because of a hint that Lacy gave me. I figured out he would be a person who could help me, and I was right," I answered." And yeah, come to think of it, it is weird that he hasn't turned sixteen and can use his element, but it happens in rare cases even in the regular four, so no need to get upset about it. Come on, I barely paid attention in the Elemental Basics, and I still knew that one, and I'm sure you did too!"
"Just promise me you won't go anywhere alone with him, especially to other worlds."
I rolled my eyes at him, "Is this because he told me he thinks I'm going to have his future baby and he can sense it inside me?"
"No, he didn't tell me that," he said icily, and his frown deepened. I could tell by his expression that it was a mistake to let him know about that.
I decided at that moment that maybe it was better if I changed the topic right about now, "I didn't come along with Arnold, I came with..." I trailed off, and my eyes flew to the hole less than three feet away from where we sat, and dread filled my stomach. I had been distracted by Henry's sudden appearance that the need to know the fates of Arnold and Amber had taken a momentary back seat in my mind.
"Violet...who else came with you?" Henry said and removed his arms from under me and quickly walked over to the hole and peered over its edge."
"Your sister," I said softly, and his head snapped back towards me, and his eyes widened in alarm.
Without a word, he raised his two fingers to his lips and blew on them hard. A couple of seconds later, a blue sparkly shape came bounding over the side of the building.
Its claws clicked against the red brinks before it came to a screeching stop in front of Henry. In one fluid motion, Henry hauled himself onto Nessie's saddle and gathered the reins in his hands.
Once they were securely in his hands, Nessie and Henry plunged into the hole.
After a couple of seconds of silence, I couldn't take it anymore, I called out, "Henry, are you alright!? Do you see them down there?" I called out with no reply. There was nothing but silence. Horrible silence.