The Awakening of a Soul Reaper

Chapter 25. Lunch with the Grandparents

The next morning, they meet up with Tyler whom is anxious to hear what Emrys had to say about his transformation.  Clarise explain to him that Emrys said that he shouldn’t be concerned at this stage.

The rest of the school day goes by without a hitch except for gym class, when Clarise won the rope climbing competition beating the current champion Willow.  After school Willow keeps on insisting that Clarise tells her the truth that she used her powers to beat her but Clarise keeps on denying it.  “Even if I did use my powers, I had no knowledge of it” she tells Willow.

Willow asks her about the mugger if she also used her powers to overcome him, she nods yes with a smile, but she also explains that when she did it she only realized afterwards what happened it was like someone else was controlling her emotions, she explained.

Everything is still new and sometimes frustrating she tells them about the training she did with Emrys, and she want to go again but she has too much homework that she needs to catch up.

That night after her dinner she goes and sit in the backyard, she takes a pencil and a piece of paper and start to draw a scythe on one of the pages and start to draw some modifications.  She comes to realize that the weapon she has, have so much to over it can be a weapon that can stab, slice and she can use it to defend herself. 

After a while when the pesky mosquitos start to irritate her, she stands up and goes inside up to her room.  Once inside she concentrates on the image that she has drawn and she conjures the scythe out of thin air, it looks much different from the other ones she conjured.  The head of the scythe is a dark purple color, the long blade is more in an upward angle and is long and thin, the short blade on the other side, is wider and about half the length of the long blade.  On the tip is a metal spike like that of pike sticking out.

Around the neck of the scythe hangs an emblem of a stag's head on a small chain.  And at the bottom of the hilt there the same insignia also appears.  

The following day is Friday after school she goes again to Emrys to go and train with him.  When she reaches his keep, she finds him sitting on a small wooden bench on the side of the courtyard.  She walks towards him and asks him “what’s wrong you look a bit pale.”

“Nothing that fire couldn’t cleanse” he looks at her with a smile. 

“Oh yes, Ignus mentioned that you are a phoenix druid”

“Oh, he did, did he? What else did he mention to you?”

“Just that you have lived a very long life” she replies.

“Did he mentioned that I was one of the druids that bind him to the pendant that you are wearing?” he asks.

“Huh, no he didn’t say anything about that” she takes a seat next to him.

“Yes, we were quite a few druids then, now we are only a handful scattered all over the world, trying to maintain peace and tranquility.  With the fall of kings, they were not the only ones to fall, kingdoms vanished into states and provinces, druids became doctors driven by greed and self-love.  But enough you are here to train, go and stand in your block and start to warm up with a couple of shots over to the barrel again. “He stands up and walks over and picks the barrel up and move it to the place it stood.

She takes her place and conjures her new scythe, Emrys looks over at her and smiles “you know I wondered when you were going to customize your weapon.  Since early days warriors customized their weapons even today, if you look at fighter planes and sometime even hand guns that hare modified for beauty”

She takes her time and fire away, the first shot she hits the barrel and it goes flying to the side.  She does these exercises another couple of times and then he stops her.  “The same way you do that you can also do it with your weapons blade, jump up and swing your blade concentrate on the sharp side and let it go with a swing.  She jumps and swings it from below her forcing her essence to rip through the ground, she hits the barrel and it burst into a thousand little pieces.  “You used a little too much power there…” he puts his hand on his forehead.

She smiles embarrassedly, “I’m sorry, I thought I only used a little bit.” It’s because you used your essence to lift you in the air, when you pushed essence into your blade you inserted essence that was still remaining from your jump also. Come with me.” He leads her to an old metal basin; he pours some water into it.  “We need you to have more control over your essence and the amounts that you use, the following exercise comes in two phases, one you will put your hand in the water and using your essence you will make it flow up like a fountain in the middle of it, then you are slowly going to move away while maintaining it.  Once you can manage that I’m going to ask you to conjure your scythe, once you can do that without letting the water drop you are going to shoot essence into the air. This will teach you to control and stability.”  She puts her hand in the water and she starts to concentrate, after a couple of seconds a fountain shoots up in the middle of the basin.

She keeps the fountain flowing for quite a while, and then she lets holds her other arm out straight and she conjures her scythe, but as soon as she does that the water drops.  She tries it again and again but she keeps on failing.  She watches as Emrys takes a seat on the wooden bench; he doesn’t seem to be feeling quite right.

The rest of the day passes without her managing to perform both tasks, frustrated she returns home.

Her Aunt Belle is busy in the kitchen, she joins her there, and the two sit and chat about work and the good days.  Aunt Belle is relief to see that Clarise is adapting so well, she never thought that shy, lonely girl would come out and blossom like she does.

“When is the last time you heard something about your grandparents” Aunt Belle asks.

“Well, I received a message from Will yesterday, they were a bit ill but both of them are better now.”  Replied Clarise with a smile.

“Well tomorrow I think I’m going to close a bit earlier than usual, so I want you to invite the both of them for lunch.  I think dinner is too late in the night and for old people to travel that time of the day is exhausting; or what do you think.  Its only if you want to?” her aunt asks.

“I have been meaning to ask you if we can invite them on day, thank you Aunt Belle, you are the best” she jumps up and gives her aunt a big hug.

She gets out her phone and phones Will, he immediately says yes.

The next morning Clarise start to clean the house she makes sure that everything is in their place like they should be.  After cleaning the house from top to bottom she goes to the grocery store to buy a list of things that her aunt of her.  When she returned home Aunt Belle is already home and busy preparing a feast.  As time goes by Clarise feels more and more anxious until the doorbell rings.  She jumps up and rushes to the door, she meets each one of them with a big hug and then she invites them in.

She introduces her aunt to them and the four of them goes and sit in the living room, after a couple of minutes Clarise disappears upstairs and returns with a photo album that her mom kept.

As she opens it up, the very first photo is photo of her mom holding her the day she was born.

After Clarise goes and shows them their room, she glows from happiness with a smile running from ear to ear.  She picks up a sweets rapper and her pendant slip out and hangs from her neck, Anne immediately sees this, and pokes Will in the stomach with her elbow.

“What is that, you have there?” he asks pointing at her pendant.  She goes closer to them and shows them the pendant with the stag's head.  Will goes and sits on his bed and drop his head into his two hands.  “Are you okay?” Clarise walks closer and puts her hand on his shoulders.  “We so hoped that, that think wouldn’t find you!” Anne replies walking closer to the both of them.

“Does your aunt know…?” Will asks putting his hand over Claris’s hand on his shoulder.  “Do you guys know what this is?” she looks astonished at them.

“It’s Ignus’s pendant!” and it’s also the think that caused your dad to get murdered a tear runs down Wills face.  “How did you find it, dear?” Anne asks her.

Clarise goes and sit on the bed and she tells them everything, from where she picked it up to the point where she pulled Tyler into the veil.  She also tells them about Emrys and that he is busy teaching her and as soon as Tyler is ready then he will join her.

“There is something else you should know!” Will turns his body towards her.

He starts the story with “your dad was a loaner and he found this in the forest near their home one day and he was so excited to have a friend.  They first thought that it was an imaginary friend, but then one day he showed us some of his abilities, we were astonished at what he could do.  Then he started to go out on the search of souls to help them to pass over.

Then one day your dad came home, he was pale and just sat in his room, when we ask what was going on he told us something that, scared him, and if it could scare him then we were afraid.

He told us, when he was battling one of the Vanus, it tried to possess him.”  Clarise nods her head “yea I have seen one possess a person in a car that caused an accident.” “Well apparently if one of them manages to possess a reaper, it would have catastrophic consequences and there is apparently only one of them that is strong enough to do so.  That is why your dad went to the town where your mother lives to follow a lead.  We don’t know what he found out, but please be careful maybe your friend Emrys can share some light on it”.

The three of them stays up in her room for another couple of minutes and then make their way down.  After having a last cup of tea with biscuits Will and Ann says their goodbyes.