THERON OF EVIL

FROM ENEMY TO VILLAIN

Finding our way through to Homer in the Lost Valley wasn't a difficult task this time as well. The only difference between the first time and this time was that somebody had recently been around here. We could tell because there were footsteps and tracks made by a human figure, as well as a black inked marker was used by the person to mark the trees probably to prevent him or her from getting lost in the woods. "Maybe we should have taken a camera with us to record every bit of this adventure, you know, like how these ghost hunters do as proofs" Jason speculated. Finally, we had our destination in sight, I sat down on brick to relax, "Just say you want to show off your ' sparkle finger' " I teased. "Guys check this out!" Elena echoed, squatting next to us to show us a picture she had just taken of the building, "I'm not sure we'd even have a video to show if we brought a camera" she added. The picture taken, was having glitches and kept changing colors till "what the hell?" I exclaimed, the image had deleted itself after a series of glitches. "I bet that's our ' farewell ' bid. We might not return home again" Jason agonized, " whatever, let's go " Elena commanded sounding much more confident than ever. Just then I noticed someone try to sneak into the building through the door. "Hey you! Hold it right there!" I shouted. My friends looked at me with raised brows, as though they did not believe what I said and probably thinking I made it up. "You guys should believe me" I convinced, "there was a girl about our age, and she slipped in through the door right when I shouted at her" "Come on A, don't you think you are making it up, it's not like someone would come all this way when nobody has been here in the last fifty years." Elena retorted in distress, I frowned at first but calmed myself down to be in her shoes, she must be thinking I'm scared and want us to go back. "Okay!" I gurgled "let's not argue, we can go in now." I said, picking myself up and commenced walking. As we drew closer to the door I noticed that it had not been fully shut, but I kept it to myself and slowed down for the other two to notice it on their own, 'maybe they will believe me now', I thought to myself. "Someone is here" Jason whispered, signaling us to not make a sound. I smiled and picked out my torchlight, and turned to look at them, "We stick together" I echoed, "no matter what". We walked in silently as we could, surveying around us each step of the way. There was an awkward silence everywhere, we communicated using our fingers to give directions. Unlike the first time when we followed the staircase downstairs to the underground where we found the prison, we had Elena, the seer with us, every now and then she'd shut her eyes and point her torchlight in the direction we were to go then we'd follow. Upon her directions, we had gone through several doors, just in straight left, if someone were to tell me a building not so big on the outside, could be this huge on the inside, it would be absurd. But moving on, we came to a door, a black one, it was also slightly opened and whenever we pointed the torchlight to it we would notice a thick black smoke or cloud boiling on the inside. As we drew much closer we noticed flashlights moving in irregular patterns, just then we heard a loud noise from the inside followed by numerous voices roaring together in unison the word "yes", one of them was dominant, and I heard it say "at last, my friends, now is the time to hunt, to dominate, we take possession of all there is!". I cannot tell if it was on purpose or not, but just then, Jason trying to hear much clearly and was leaning against the door slipped causing the door to open wide. As we were trying to catch him from falling by holding on to his shirt, we all fell, one on top of another. It didn't take long for us to realize that we had crashed a party. "Oh, guests have arrived" I heard, voices say, "we have been waiting for you" . "Perry?" I heard Elena say as she got up, "My apologies" I heard a familiar voice say, that of Perry's "our name is Legion now, Perry was weak, so she aligned herself with us and now everyone will bow before her." The roaring voices replied,it sounded like the voices of ringing bells. "No! This is not who you are" I persisted, "enough of this human weakness and foolishness" the voices screamed, right then,the thick clouds split up into multiple skeleton - like shapes of clouds, and one after another they smashed into helpless Perry, as she spread her arms and begun laughing aloud, with a roaring voice. "This doesn't look good" Jason whispered. "What about we show you what will happen to your world right after here..." , my heart began beating so fast as the skeleton shaped clouds turn in our direction, with orange flaming eyes, thick as a magma, and began advancing towards each one of us, "now would be a very good time to say some spells Aires, they're going to eat us" Jason chickened, "shut up!" I replied in freight, "I don't know anything, if you don't do something now, we all die, come on they have orange eyes, you have flaming fingers.... just do something". As we kept on arguing, all of a sudden Jason lifted up his fingers all ten of them and boy was I glad to see them flaming, thinking that would instill some fear in our demons, but my dreams were crushed when it did quite the opposite, their roaring laughter increased, and that got me shivering. Jason then stretched out his fingers towards one of the three, shouting "back off" he said, as he begun swaying his hands from left to right, hoping to keep them away, at least for a split-second they didn't swallow us up or try anything, until he formed a huge sized fireball and threw it at one of them, they certainly did not take that lightly, as they raced towards us in a godspeed, I then closed my eyes as hardly as I could from the fear of getting killed or possessed. But somehow just like before, like my friends had claimed, I began to utter some strange words which if I could remember clearly, were "gaan weg van ons, julle bose magte van die duisternis." All of a sudden I felt a light flash over my eyes, and in less than a millisecond it was gone, the i saw a shield covering us, I could see the creatures standing outside it try to get in but failing each time, Elena was holding up her hands trying to push back something I could not see with all her might. I don't know if I caused that shield, or she did, but whoever did, saved our lives. Before their departure or her departure, I heard Perry hollering, "do you think you're special? Look at them, they think their little shield can protect them from us, watch how we will destroy your world and recreate it in our own image. Join us and you will survive", "No!" Elena screamed aloud, sending echoes, sailing everywhere. Suddenly the room went dark, our flashlight went out, there was nothing to see, the place was super quiet and the last sound we heard was the door slamming.

For a couple of hours or minutes, I can't tell for sure, but after sometime I woke up in a familiar place, beneath a tree where a beautiful garden full of flowers had been planted. "Homer" I whispered, as I picked myself up from the floor. It was really it, the Homer where I had come after the trip sometime back in a dream and met the fairy. But this time I didn't come alone, I came with my friends. I was the last person to wake up from my sleep or passing out I could tell, as the next thing I saw was Elena and Jason, surveying the place where they had come for the first time, "we're in safe hands" I smiled at them, "this is what I was talking to you guys, the place I came to visit in my dream where I met the fairy, this is Homer, the real Homer. Come on let's go in, I bet she's waiting for us, probably we were in danger that's why we passed out" I bragged.

I led the two to the door, and begun knocking, but there was no response for a while, then we saw someone with a watering can, coming out from behind the house. "Why are you behaving like strangers" she asked, " this is your home too you know, come on, go in, make yourselves at home". "We would, but then, the door is locked how do we get in?" I replied, with smiles over my face, "oh wait, ' open ' " Jason commanded, the familiar command, caused the door to open and the beautiful smell that greeted us was heavenly. As we got in to find seats to rest on, shockingly we found none, so we begun checking out the rooms to see if we could find out how they were originally designed to look like. To our surprise, there were so many rooms than we could count, and their sizes were a sight to behold. But they all had one thing in common, they were filled with books. "But why books?" I asked my friends, "this place sure looks like a beautiful place but not a fan one " I laughed as I grabbed one from a shelf on my right. "Why do you say so?" The fairy interfered, popping up out of nowhere, "these are written books about the lives of those who once lived here, everyone wrote something, and anytime they wrote about their lives, they mostly thought about helping humans, so they write the Other Books, the books of spells. Not just because they love to write, but because even they being magical creatures, have their own battles they fight from behind the scenes to protect the people they have been born to protect, who happen to be humans. You might be wondering that if their job is to protect you, then why do you stumble, get robbed and other things, they do not protect you from these things, they protect you from spiritual attacks, because those are against the law, no super natural being must interfere with human lives. So, moving on, the books in golden belts, are the ones written about the fairies themselves, their life stories, and the ones with silver are the most important of them all, they are rules that must be memorized by every fairy that aspires to become a guardian, what you call in your world as 'fairy godmothers', not every fairy has the opportunity to become one, it takes discipline and a lot of others to get there....", "And the black ones?" Elena interrupted, "I was not done talking, but since you're in a hurry to know, the black ones are dark spells and the other spells, spells that can be used to capture forces of darkness to a place where they can never return unless summoned. So like the ones that tried to attack you earlier, it would have been easier to fight them by capturing them into an abyss." "Wait, you saw what happened?" Elena frowned as she asked, "I see wherever she goes" she responded, pointing to me "but you did nothing to help us, we could have died" "Lena!" Jason, held her back as her level of rage was heightening, "I have a protective spell over the three of you and that's why they could not possess you, and like you said, young one, I did nothing to help you, that's because I wanted you guys to see what I meant when I said doom, and it turns out you all are not ready, your job Aires, is to study the book I gave you, and you failed, it has everything you need to protect yourself and your friends." She explained. "Do you have any seats here? My butt feet hurts?" I complained. She then clapped her hands together, shouting "seats". Out of nowhere four suspended seats showed up, she hopped and sat on one and requested that we do same to continue the conversation, I was beginning to love the place even more.