The Bewitching - Book 1

Chapter 23 - Cleaning Up the Pieces

For the next few moments there was only darkness. It felt like she was awake and yet there was nothing around her. In many ways it felt like the seconds after her kiss with Dantes, but there was something different about it. She wasn't falling, and yet there was nothing underneath her feet. There were no memories or anything else passing by for her to view. It was as if she was in some sort of purgatory. An empty void with no start or finish, where nothing outside of her own thoughts and body existed.

"Hello?" She called out. She waited for a reply that never came. Carefully she took a few steps forward.

"Hello?" She yelled a bit louder only to be greeted by her own echoing voice. As she raised her arm to brush her hair from her face it became caught on something. She glanced down and noticed what appeared to be a thin cord or string running along side of her. How odd she thought.

As she looked more closely at her surroundings she realized it wasn't just one string. She was surrounded by them on all sides. Some were thick and others barely existent, but they were all there criss-crossing in crazy patterns before her. There were billions if not more of them, all shimmering here and there in the surrounding darkness.

She ran her finger along one and it twanged a strange sound. It didn't sound like a string being strummed, at least not in the musical way that she may have expected. She leaned in closer as she twanged the cord with her finger again. It sounded like murmurs. The closer she moved her ear the more she was was able to make it out. They were voices, conversations of people speaking to one other. She strummed one of the thicker cords. The voices were even stronger and she could make out the conversation.

She began running her fingers along more of them, causing them to vibrate in the air. It was like listening to hundreds of telephone conversation at once with people all speaking to one another. Some were filled with anger, others with sadness. Some conversations would overlap others as she noticed that at various points around her the strings overlapped. It was one of the most amazing networks of communication she had ever seen.

A coldness suddenly crept over the area. She could see her breath in front of her. The voices she was listening to started to fade, and were replaced with others that were more familiar to her. As her surroundings began to disappear, she heard a whisper in her ear as if someone was standing beside her.

"We're all connected..." The soft words, from a voice she didn't recognize, dwindled into emptiness.

Her eyes fluttered open at the sound of the familiar voices surrounding her as they became stronger. It took a moment for her vision to focus and the first thing she saw was Dantes' caring gaze as he looked down upon her. He smiled warmly. The others were standing not far away, looking over with concern.

"Are you okay?" he asked gently.

"What happened?"

He looked around at his surroundings with a sheepish grin on his face before turning back to her.

"I'd say you kind of blew everything up," he said jokingly. She looked around and realized that everything around them was in shambles. There was no roof, and most of the walls too were gone. It resembled a war zone now instead of the beautiful space it had been. It's elegance had been stripped away and replaced by the destruction of battle.

"And the other one? Did he get away?" she asked as she glanced around. There was an eerie yet peaceful quiet to the area now. Slowly she lifted herself up to her feet.

"I took care of him."

She nodded as Annette and the others walked over and gathered around her. Each one greeted her with a long hug, and Tobias nudged up against her leg, rubbing his head affectionately. Dantes noticed how Leo's hug lasted a bit longer, and appeared more comfortable than he would have liked. It wasn't like Leo to stick around after a battle. Dantes sensed there was something more than he himself was aware of between the two of them.