There was only one thing i could do, and i had my mind made up. I jumped out of the bed and put clothes on my body. my hands were a blur trying to accomplish this in a short amount of time. I was in my car and driving to the woods where i could sense the magical energy at. It took two and a half hours to get to the woods where Shadow city was located, and one hour to get to the wall. When i arrived at the wall i could feel the destruction inside the wall before i saw it.
I climbed over the wall as quick as i could. When i dropped down from the ladder on the inside of the wall, i was amazed and more than shocked. i looked towards the sky and it looked normal, just a plain blue night sky, the trees were gray, mist was all throughout the city, cottages were lit on fire and people worked with all their strength to quiet the flames. Shadow City was burning to the ground. People ran around in circles screaming, they looked so completely lost. Tears ran freely down my cheeks. I didn't know if i could stop the fire from destroying the city, but i had to try. I can control water, i reminded myself.
I could feel the flow of a river not too far from here. I whispered to the water. I begged it to come and wash away the flames.
I had just about given up hope on water ever coming to my rescue when i felt the water hovering above me. I looked up and saw a river in the sky; it lowered itself slowly until it vanquished the fire. Finally all was calm. People stopped running in circles and stood there awkwardly, as though they were lost and confused, many had tears in their eyes and some were dead. The ones that were dead had nasty burns all over their bodies; i prayed that they had safe travel to the next world, and blessings for their new bodies.
I ran through the crowds of people who stood there staring at the sky in shock. I asked every face i saw where Blaze was, i got no response from any of them. All was quiet in Shadow City. Finally after twenty minutes of searching for Blaze i decided to go to the Magic room. Maybe the elders would know where Blaze was. I needed to talk to her. When i reached it it reminded me of a decorated house on Halloween, the color on the doors were faded. It seemed to me that Shadow City now looked ancient. I opened the doors and ran to the stage where the thrones are. Ash, Ivy, Sage, Bone, and Blake, were all asleep, they were slumped over in their seats. I ran up to Bone and tried everything to wake him, nothing worked. I tried waking the rest of the elders but my efforts all failed.
“Sarah is that you?"
I turned around and saw Blaze sitting in one of the pews; her eyes were red as though she was crying.
"Blaze!" i ran toward her and she stood up and ran towards me and threw her arms around me, i threw my arms around her and we hugged each other tightly. “Please, tell me what happened here."
"Sarah we are doomed,” she said softly while sitting back down and putting her head in her hands.
"What do you mean we are doomed, where did this fire come from? Tell me why the trees are gray and the sky looks so unlike the sky i usually see."
a few weeks ago i would have said that the sky in Shadow City was an abnormal sky, but now that i thought about it, Shadow City is truly my home, i belong here, there isn't anything abnormal about it at all.
"I wondered the same thing, i walked to the library and searched book after book for an explanation, when i thought i found the reasoning for this disaster happening, i rushed to the Magic Room and found all the elders asleep. That’s when the fire began," Blaze said.
"Well what did the book say?"
"Here, read it." she reached in a bag she had laying on the pew she was sitting on and pulled out a leather covered book. The cover read, in gold colored ink, The Lost Village. I instantly got chills while reading the cover. I sat down next to her and opened the book.
Centuries before, when gifted people were called witches, Shadow City used to be just an open field in the middle of the woods, when the field was discovered by several witches who had been ran out of the town they had lived in, a village was created. The leader of the village was named Benjamin. He had powers beyond any other gifted person. One day in the dead of night a hay stack had caught on fire, no one knew how the fire started, but the fire was quickly downed by water. Miles outside the woods a guy spotted smoke and alerted the group who took care of the witches. They set out on a search for the runaway witches. The next night the group had found the little village of the gifted people, they gathered torches, guns, and anything they thought would kill the witches. Soon the village was filled with screams, people lay scattered throughout the village dead, tents were lit on fire. After a while the screams soon died out, but not all the witches were dead. Benjamin and his wife Sasha had run when the first chorus of screams had started. They ran to a river not far from here, and hid until daylight. The humans had left the village, Benjamin and Sasha had traveled back to the village in search of survivors. There weren't any. Benjamin was looking for any injured witches, Sasha sat on a tree stump thinking, she knew that the humans had killed every single one of the witches in the village, she also knew at that moment that the humans would do everything in their power to kill every last witch alive. Sasha was tired of running, so she whispered the spell that set her soul free. She fell to the ground as Benjamin rushed to her with tears in his eyes. After his wife had taken her last breath, he made a blood oath to take vengeance on the humans who destroyed his village. He blamed them for the loss of his beloved Sasha; he would kill them for murdering her. Benjamin had the gift of death, any person he chose to kill, would die. He set out that night planning to kill all the humans he saw, after an hour of running through the woods he reached a city. Humans fell one after another; a grin grew wide on his face. A livid hate grew within him, a hate so strong that nothing could stop him from accomplishing his mission, to kill all humans, except for one man. The sun was due to rise any minute when he was facing the last human in the city. The last human was a man who was very thin, he was bald and wore rags for clothing, he looked like any other man. Benjamin wanted the last man to see the destruction that humans caused his kind; he took the man in chains back to the destroyed village. He forced the man to stare at the ruins of the village. He told the man the tale of what the humans did to his village; the man shed a tear when he got to the part about the humans murdering his wife. “It is time for you to die," Benjamin had said. Benjamin was wrong; it was not time for the man to die. Benjamin tried to attack him but instead the killing curse was aimed at himself instead of the man. Benjamin soon found himself lying on the pavement. With his last breath he said, "I will return." his last image was of the sun rising in the sky above him.
I set the book down next to me. Blaze was staring at me with defeat written all over her face.
“He came to me in a dream, it is true. He has returned. "
"How can we defeat him? The man in the story died ages ago, no one has had his gift since, he wrote this story before he let his soul go. He saw how the humans stopped chasing witches; the name witch finally was lost. Gifted people lived among humans hidden; soon there were very few gifted people in the world. He knew what was going to happen. Benjamin is going to kill the gifted as well as the humans because of the man who killed him. We will all die, no one can stop him."
Blaze saw a gash on my cheek, she reached over and pressed her palm to my flesh and closed her eyes. Within seconds the gash on my cheek was healed, she slowly opened her eyes.
"Thank you," i said.
"Sarah, how did you come back here? How did you even remember Shadow City?"
I told her everything i had just learned. i told her that i was different from all the other gifted people, that when Blake erased my mind, it didn't erase my mind like it would have any regular gifted person, there was only a wall blocking my memories and i needed someone to unblock it, they weren't gone like they would have been for anyone else. I told her about Lyle, and Annabella. When i got to the part about Benjamin, the look of defeat only grew on her face. After i was finished telling her that i used water to put the flames out in the city, we were both exhausted. We fell asleep laying on the pews.
