Crisanta Knight: Eternity's End

CHAPTER 2 MY LAST FIRST DAY-1

even dragons darted across the sky, breathing fire. The largest was Lucky. My dream changed with a flash and I was walking up the grand white steps of our realm’s Capitol Building—my parents to my left and my eldest brother Pietro on my right. Another flash.

Dream me floated underwater alongside Blue, Jason, our mermaid friend Lonna, the queen of Adelaide (formerly the Little Mermaid), and a half-octopus girl I didn’t know. She had bronze hair, peach skin, and six pinkish-red tentacles instead of legs. Another octo-woman with silvery hair, indigo-gray skin, and purplepeach tentacles floated in front of us, flanked by two mutant shark monsters.

I observed the scene from the side of the undersea cavern where they all gathered. My two schoolmates and dream me had shimmering turquoise neck gills and webbing between our fingers.

“I hear you like to make deals,” dream me said to the octowoman, who could only be the infamous Sea Witch from The Little Mermaid. “So do I.”

The dream started to fade.

“Pause,” real me said. And just like that, the scene froze.

I drifted around the cavern, inspecting those present. The Sea Witch concealed a jagged dagger in one of her rear tentacles, visible only when I went behind her. More concerning was the additional trio of shark monsters approaching from a tunnel behind my friends.

My eyes narrowed. “Trying to get the jump on us, huh?” I said to the frozen Sea Witch. She obviously couldn’t hear me.

The scene flickered and started to fade again. I was running out of time.

Pure Magic wielders had the power to see the future in their dreams. The stronger the Pure Magic, the stronger the holder’s capacity to see, understand, and even control the visions. One of the outcomes of being tortured by the antagonists was my development of these nocturnal abilities. I had walked through dreams as an observer plenty of times, but now with enough focus I could temporarily pause certain visions and move through them like I was actually present. I couldn’t change anything—I hadn’t teleported to the future; I only had access to what would be there eventually. But that meant I could learn from and interact with what was around me.

I hastened to use whatever time I had left to get additional information from this vision. I swam up to the cavern’s bookshelves and scanned the titles. Then I darted to dream me. Floating around her neck was my SRTracker—part enchanted lanyard that kept a person clean and part magic watch that allowed me to navigate across realms.

As the dream slipped away, I grabbed the SRTracker and brought up its holographic map display, which confirmed my suspicions; we were near the underwater kingdom of Mer. I also learned the date was October 23rd.

The vision vanished and I found myself in a familiar unending white void. I decided to take this opportunity to try and contact Natalie Poole again. With a deep breath I channeled my magic. My form glowed softly and splashes of color started to appear in the distance. They grew brighter as shapes formed and expanded to create a window to another world. It was like someone had taken a bread knife and carved a scene out of one reality and placed it here.

That bread knife was me. And I was looking for a slice of Natalie Poole’s future.

I became surrounded by a blur of cerulean blue. Graduation caps fell from the sky as gowns of matching color danced around me. Among the hundreds of students in the crowd, Natalie Poole and Ryan Jackson came into a distant focus.

Natalie was special in the inconvenient way I was special. We each held potential that made us valuable to the antagonists and could destroy us, as well as our worlds. While my “specialness” had led to direct persecution from my enemies, Natalie’s had resulted in a life of being tormented behind the scenes. I guess we could both blame Liza, the Author, for that. The prophecies she came up with were the result of her crazy-advanced Pure Magic dreams of the future.

Long ago, Liza used to create protagonist books for people in other worlds, in addition to Book, and she’d had one for Natalie that indicated she had the potential to open the gate to a legendary construct outside our universe called Eternity. In this place, inhuman guardians watched over the magical balance of all dimensions—i.e., the balance of dark versus light and evil versus good. Their job was to ensure that no world ever became overrun with dark magic, which could then infect other worlds like a virus, spreading from one to the next.

In places like Book and other enchanted Wonderlands, magic was easy to understand. On Earth—where Natalie was from—magic was not measured with spells or surreal abilities. Power in that dimension came from the energy people felt and expelled into the world. Liza called it “aura magic,” magic that you couldn’t see or touch but could feel around you nonetheless.

Dark magic on Earth was created through acts of evil, including feelings of hatred, revenge, heartbreak, cruelty, and malice. Good magic on Earth came from feelings of pure, wholesome, complete belief—belief in another person, belief in one’s self, and belief in the world at large. Natalie’s prophecy foretold that she had the potential to generate enough dark magic energy to dangerously tip the scales of Earth’s magic ratio, and that would trigger the opening of the Eternity Gate.

The opening of the Gate was the beginning of an evaluation period when the keepers of Eternity decided if the offending world was worth saving. If during this judgment period the people of the world proved their capacity for good could outweigh their capacity for darkness, the keepers would return the realm to its magic equilibrium. However, if not redeemed and darkness won, the world would be destroyed.

Why did the antagonists care about this?

They actually had no interest in Earth or what would happen to it if Natalie opened the Gate. The poor girl was simply their means to an end.

Legend said that when the Gate opened, a powerful energy surge would echo through every realm in the universe—temporarily shutting down all forms of “normal magic.” That was a setback for all realms in our dimension, as they were full of magic, but it was particularly a problem for Book. Normal enchantments such as those produced by the Fairy Godmothers who protected our land, and In and Out Spells like the one around Alderon, would cease to work. Even worse, Pure Magic wielders would not be affected, which was great news for me, but I was a rarity. All the witches and warlocks who’d been corrupted by Pure Magic Disease were in Alderon now. If the spell went down, they would walk free and come after protagonists alongside the other villains and monsters gunning for our extinction.

Hence why Natalie mattered so much.

I pushed my way through the celebrating graduates populating my dream void. Their features sharpened and the colors of the world refined with every step I took. The dream got clearer as my glow pulsed stronger. Natalie jumped into her boyfriend Ryan’s arms. Her maple-colored, curly locks covered her face as he spun her around.

She was about my age in this vision, but with our time zones being so different (Earth moving twenty times faster than Book), I’d been dreaming of Natalie since before she even existed. It’d almost always been hard to watch.

The antagonists had been tormenting Natalie throughout her life, priming her with pain so she’d be ripe to open the Eternity Gate on her twenty-first birthday as Liza foretold she could. This slice of Natalie’s future I experienced now was a high school graduation, which meant the day in question was still a few years away for her, but only a few months away in Book time for me. That was terrifying.

A graduate bumped into me. Pivoting slightly, my eyes grew wide and I leapt back. It was Tara, the antagonist who had formerly possessed Mauvrey. She didn’t notice me. This was my dream after all—she was just a reflection of the real thing. Nevertheless, seeing the face of one of my greatest enemies, and captors on Earth, was so jarring that the whole vision vanished before I could progress any further.

Dang it. What a waste.

I shook my head in scolding. I shouldn’t have been so surprised to see Tara. From other visions, I knew that she would eventually enroll in Natalie’s high school to torment her in the traditional mean-girl manner and would be responsible for the death of Natalie’s parents.

Poor Girl.

I stood in the void and tried to concentrate on finding her again, maybe even more directly. When Natalie was also asleep I could kind of communicate with her through her dreams. Powerful Pure Magic wielders were able to contact people in that way, and I’d gotten better at it over the years. Unfortunately, this time, the wrong person answered the call.

“If it isn’t my favorite magical princess,” said Merlin. The midsixties wizard from Camelot strode across the barren white landscape, dragging his velvety robes. “You never call. You never write.”

“Sorry, my prison wasn’t on Earth’s post office route,” I said, crossing my arms. “Can you go? I was trying to reach Natalie.”

“Why? Is your brilliant plan for finding and saving her not as foolproof as you hoped?” He stroked his trimmed, close-cut beard.

“SJ told you?”

“SJ is my potions apprentice. She is fabulously skilled; I am fabulously skilled. We have an unspoken bond of trust.”

“Yet you speak about it constantly.” I rolled my eyes. “What I said to my friends is foolproof, Merlin. I’ve learned a lot about Natalie’s life through my dreams and those visions confirm that when she’s nearing twenty-one I will journey to Earth to find her and protect her. I know about the college she attends, what city she’s in, and a timeline of events that will play out around her birthday. While I was on Earth, I also reached out in my dreams enough times to plant warnings in her head so that even if she’s spooked at first, when we eventually meet, it will be easier for her to trust me. Which is what I’m trying to keep doing now. So again, if you’ll excuse me, you’re blocking my signal.”

I started to glow.

“Crisanta . . .” Merlin said kindly, holding up a hand. “I know that you and I have had a colored past—”

“By colored you mean messed up.” My glow stopped, heart inadvertently beating faster and fierier.

“You’ve helped me push past certain magical and personal boundaries, Merlin. I appreciate that, and I respect how you’ve eluded the corruption of Pure Magic and have dedicated your power to protecting Arthur, Camelot, and its people. But I know you don’t trust me. We most certainly do not have an unspoken bond. You told me outright that you’re wary of what my magic can do. So the reason I haven’t reached out to you since I returned is simple. I know you—like so many people around here—are concerned about what my enhanced power has turned me into. But unlike them, you are merciless. I am big enough to admit that I am afraid of you and what action you’ll take if you decide I am too much of a liability.”

“Is that how you see yourself?” Merlin raised an eyebrow.

I stood my ground, feeling perturbed. “My faith in myself has been on trial enough. I’m entitled to keep my heart to myself once in a while. Just because prophecy made me an issue for all our realms doesn’t mean I have to answer to them. Or to you.”

“Trust is a two-way street, Crisanta. I wish that as my unofficial magical mentee you weren’t afraid of me, but what you said is correct. Like you, I am committed to protecting what’s good, and I would not hesitate to bring down anyone who threatened that. I know you feel the same way. So let’s proceed with that understanding of each other. Hopefully trust will one day be a side effect of what we accomplish together.”