The next day after my unsettling nightmare, I tried to pretend I was alright. I made breakfast and took Adesewa to school. Although that nightmare kept trying to rear it's ugly head, I still tried my best to focus on my work. By my lunch break, I was a lot more fatigued than I usually was.
So when I saw Elijah, I really wanted to hug him but I restrained myself.
"So I reached out to my friend runs a security company." He started. "He's trustworthy and he worked in the US military before retiring and moving to Nigeria to start a business and settle down with his family. He sent me a digital brochure of his services, did you look through them yesterday?"
"Yes but I didn't understand a lot. What do you recommend?"
He moved to stand closer to me," do you want him to send someone to follow Adesewa and your friend? Or do you want him to just send security to monitor activity around your house?"
"I know I sound insane but what if I have another Enemy that appeared in my dreams and tried to force me to stay there forever?"
"What do you mean?" He asked.
I hesitated for a second but remembering how much that nightmare had bothered me all day long, I decided to just spill the beans. If he thought I was insane and laughed at me, I will tell him I was joking.
After making this decision, I told Elijah about my dreams. The ones I had about him, the ones I had as a child, the images that sometimes appeared in my sight when I was looking at CCTV footage and then disappeared. Then I went silent, waiting for him to laugh but all that was on his face was solemnity.
"Elijah?" I asked after he was silent for a while.
His brows were furrowed returned to stare at me.
"Say something." I insisted.
"Follow me I'll take you to see someone." He said after meeting my gaze.
Then he grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the doorway that led out of the rooftop and unto the staircase.
"Are you sending me for a psyche evaluation?"
A smile formed at the corner of his lips, "No, I'm taking you to somewhere so you can realize that you don't need a psyche evaluation. You may be different from regular people but you're not alone."
I stared at my hand clasped in his, "So my dream was real? I'm not insane?"
"Yes." He said, turning back to meet my gaze with a smile.
Many jumbled thoughts flew through my head as I thought of the things I'd inadvertently saw several times but pretended not to see because I knew how ostracized people suspected to be witches or mami water were treated in my village.
Before I could think more, Elijah took me to down the stairs to the nearest floor which was empty. Instead of moving right where the elevator that led around the office building was, he led me to the left until we stood in front of a brick wall.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"Don't freak out." He warned, turning to the side to meet my gaze again before he pulled a shiny pen out of his jacket and used it to write something on the wall.
The strange thing was his pen didn't touch the brick wall and his worlds stood in the air until his pen stopped moving. Then thr world in a shiny bright color mix that was predominantly light blue drilled into the wall.
With a ding sound, the brick wall parted like an elevator door exposing an elevator.
I was a Nigerian and I was very good at handling shock but my jaw still dropped as Elijah pulled me into the elevator.
"You have magic?" I asked after I'd taken a few seconds to calm myself so I didn't act like a village girl seeing the world for the first time.
He smiled and nodded, "Yes."
His smile became strained when I remained silent, "Are you angry that I didn't tell you?"
I looked up to meet his gaze and shook my head sincerely. "Of course, if I were you I wouldn't tell myself either so why would I have thought you would tell me?"
He chuckled and nodded, "Well, I'm glad you're not offended."
"But where are you taking me to? I can only see things but I don't have magic." I said, peering at him.
"We can't be sure until we test you." He said.
"We?" I asked.
"We're not the only ones who have these gifts. There are several people in the world like us, discovered and undiscovered." He said as he pressed the number seven on the elevator's buttons.
"So will I be able to do what you just did now?" I asked, staring at him eagerly.
"Probably. It depends." He said.
I felt a little frustrated because I couldn't understand why he was being cryptic. "Depends on what?"
"On what kind of Aegion you are." He said as the elevator stopped and slid open to a large rounded hallway with several screens on the wall.
There were people gathered in the hall in groups of twos and threes staring at the different monitors.
"Wow!" I couldn't help saying as I stared at the large glass walls on the side.
"Elijah?"
"Who is this? Why are you bringing her here?"
"She's an Aegon and the Daegons found her and are hunting her." He said.
Everyone turned away from the monitors they were staring at when we arrived to stare at me. Although I wanted to hide away from their scrutiny, I was too curious about them, who they were and what they were doing in the room to hide away.
"What is an Aegon and who are the Daegons?" I asked.
"We're Aegons and unlike regular humans we are gifted with the ability to wield positive energy, also known as Angelic energy." A man without a single hair on his head asnwered, his curious gaze fixed on me before he moved to Elijah.
"She doesn't even have positive energy about her? Are you sure there are truly Daegons after her?" He asked Elijah.
Elijah turned to me, "Would you please describe your dream to them? The most recent one."
I stared at him wondering why he'd rushed to clarify that I describe my most recent dream versus my all my previous dreams.
When he nodded the second time to urge me to speak, I nodded, took a deep breath and narrated my nightmare as calmy as I could while trying to keep how scary and torturous every minute of that nightmare was from my voice.
"That's impossible." A woman said when I reached the end of my narration.
Another man with cornrows nodded, "Someone we can't even feel a spark of energy from shouldn't be able to use positive energy as a weapon."
"And yet, she has." Elijah said.
The bald man moved closer to me. "You said, you saw that daegon before, that is, the man with reddish tinted skin and symbols on his face?"
I nodded, "While I was going through CCTV footage here. It seemed like a kind of trance but he turned from his fight in the footage and smiled at me while licking his lips as if I was a meal of fried chicken."
The man nodded, his movement elegant and grouped with his bald head made me feel like he was some kind of monk. "Let's test you first. If we confirm that you're an Aegon, we'll consider all other factors."
I could tell from the way no one argued that the bald man was the leader of the team so when I peeked at Elijah and received a subtle nod from him, I also nodded at the bald man.
They took me past the large hall with monitors to a long corridor until we stood in front of a door.
Everyone went silent in front of the world as the bald man wrote a symbol with his finger on the door just like Elijah had done earlier.
The door didn't swing open like a regular door, instead it slid open into an hidden ridge in the wall. I couldn't help staring at the door to search for it's hinges as we filed into the room they'd brought me into.
"Come." The bald man's calm voice startled me out of my thoughts lost in figuring out the dynamics of the door.
I nodded and walked forward to meet him at the center of the room.
Elijah and the people in the main hall that followed us in didn't follow me and the bald man into the center of the room that was actually as large as the main hall. They stood at the fringe of the room, some staring at us and some staring at the floor.
I followed the gaze of those staring at the floor and finally noticed the patterns on the floor.
The first thought that slif through my brain was the possibility that I had encountered ritualists which were people in Nigeria that kidnapped people for their glory, life, or body organs, etc in order to sacrifice them. Most ritualist exchanged people's glories or organs for power and money for their client.
"What is this?" I asked in a shaky voice, a little fear sliding into my heart as my gaze moved to meet Elijah's, looking for any sign that he'd brought me here so that his friends could hurt me.
"This is a testing web." The bald man was the one who answered me.
He gestured toward me to join him at the center of the hall and the center of the round web that only the two of us werw standing within while everyone else was standing at the edge of the room, beyond the reaches of the web's patterns.
I stared at the bald man cautiously.
"Don't worry, we're not ritualists." He reassured me.
"How did you know what I was thinking?" I couldn't help asking.
"I've tested several Nigerians in several testing webs. We are all superstitious people, several of us know about the existence of powers and principalities. Several people have seen the web and called me, their tester, a herbalist, juju man and ritualist." He said with a small smile in his eyes.
His smile somehow calmed me down and reassured me that this was not some kind of diabolical ritual circle.
The bald man turned to the side abd I finally saw the waist high pillar on the floor.
"I'm going to leave the pillar to stand up there." He said, pointing to the side at a staired platform with what looked like a pulpit. "From there, I'll be able to see how far your light can go through the web. How far your inner light goes will tell us your Aegon energy level so we can understand what kind of Daegon and demon is after you. Do you understand?"
I had so many questions but I could see that they needed to test me before they could tell me what the hell was truly going on so I simply nodded.
"Alright, wait for me to go up that platform. When I get there, I'll tell you when to put your hand on the stone. When I give you the signal, you need to picture the light inside you and push it into the stone."
I nodded and he went up the platform.
When he gave the signal, I placed my hand on the stone and tried to picture the light within me before remembering that I didn't know what light was within me. I closed my eyes ABD tried to reach for an imaginary light in me but I was interrupted by the voices of the people at the edge of the web.
"See? No light. I already said I can't read any energy off of her. She just has an ordinary human's positive energy levels." The woman who had denied my narration of my dream.
"How do you explain her dream then?" A young man that looked like he hadn't lived past his teenage years asked.
"Maybe she just has a wild imagination or she's just telling lies to get attention." The woman insisted. "I reckon that..."
"Silent!" The bald man admonished and everywhere went silent. "Um, you, forgive me because I don't knkw your name. Try again. And remember you're reaching for the light at the heart of your very being."
"I don't know what that is..." I said, staring up at the bald man.
"Lola, you...imagine that you are back in your dream and you need to defeat that man with symbols on his face. Imagine that the stone is that man and lash at it the way you did in your dream."
I nodded and then closed my eyes again. I tried to remember what happened that night but I couldn't summon that light that bled out of me again.
Sweat was starting to wet my brows when Elijah said, "Do you remember when that man threatened Adesewa? Inject the rage you felt into the stone."
Instantly, an echo of the previous night filled my head.
"You're going to die here if you don't surrender and your daughter will be left all alone at the mercy of your husband and his family."
Something like a fire lit inside me and slid into the stone.
"Wow," I heard the man with a teenager's face say.
I opened my eyes and saw that the lines of the spider web-like circle were no longer gray but lit up like something out of a fantasy movie.
"Am I doing this?" I asked, feeling just a littke breathless.
"Yes." Elijah answered with a smile.
"Wait a minute, the light is receding?" The woman said and when I look down, I noticed the light moving down the lines of the web back toward the stone.
The light moved until there was nothing left.
"What's going on?" I asked as I looked toward the edge of the web's circles where everyone was staring at me with dropped jaws and wide eyes.
The blonde woman with blue eyes smiled and answered me. "You're an unstable. Now, the Daegons and demons hunting you makes a lot of sense. Welcome to the world of Aegons."