PART FOUR: THE NARROW ESCAPE
The Entity’s twisted smile remained on its face even as it ordered Avery to use the Ancient Tome of Lemuria that had been sired to her, to obtain all knowledge it contained on godhood including how to transcend into godhood as well as how to destroy gods.
Avery knew that such information in the hands of the world’s greatest evil was certain to end in Armageddon and she needed to protect that knowledge by all means necessary. However, the Entity threatened the life of her son, the person who meant more to her than anyone else in the world. She was torn as to what the best way forward was but had already decided that she would not willingly give that information over.
“Oh, it appears that you are deluding yourself into believing that you stand a fair chance against me but let me warn you that such illusions of grandeur are nothing but happy lies you tell yourself to sleep better at night…”
“Do you need further demonstration as to the extent of my wrath? I am not so easily swayed by foolish sentimentality and so killing your precious little son is nothing to me. Your precious baby boy is nothing but a tiny ant to easily be trodden upon underfoot like the pest he is…”
“However, you appear to need a shove in the right direction so don’t mind if I do…” the Entity malevolently proclaimed before overloading Avery’s senses with vivid visions of what it would do to Blaize should Avery become a hindrance to its plans to transcend into godhood.
The visions were so grotesque that Avery could not help but weep and wail and beg for them to stop.
“I’ll do it! I’ll do it!” she stated defeated, wiping her tears on her sleeves.
The Entity cackled victoriously and ordered Avery to stand up within the bonds of the dark circle and recite the instructions for transcending godhood right to it.
Avery obliged, the Tome instinctively flipping through to the pages containing the knowledge she sought. She reluctantly began to recite the instructions contained therein, not pausing in between, but instead, reading through it hastily hoping that the Entity did not get the instructions correctly so that it would be doomed to fail.
Once she was through reading the instructions, she looked up to find curious faces staring blankly at her including the Entity itself that appeared as intrigued as it was annoyed.
“I… I did what you asked of me so let me go,” Avery stated bravely.
“You did no such thing, Protector Alison and if you think that I will not deliver on my threats-“
“What are you talking about? I read the instructions out loud to you. You heard it. You all did,”
“We heard gibberish,” stated a flabbergasted cult priestess.
“What?”
“You spoke in an entirely foreign dialect unlike anything we have ever heard,” Rayan explained.
“I… I did not! I clearly read the instructions in English. What- what kind of mind games are you playing on me right now?”
“It appears that you did not intend on using a different tongue but the Tome instinctively protected the knowledge you sought because it read your true intentions. Your will imposed itself on the Tome so that it hid that which you did not wish to conceal,” the Entity deduced.
Avery was stunned into silence and precious moments ticked away before the Entity ordered her to write down the instructions word for word, with Rayan there to oversee that each word was written in English. Avery was forced into a seat and handed parchment and ink to write down the instructions she had just read with Rayan standing over her watching every stroke of the pen she made.
Avery gulped before settling down and writing the instructions as written in the Tome with Rayan keenly following her progress. Once she had completed writing the instructions down, Rayan was asked to carefully extract the parchment from Avery and read the instructions to the Entity but the very moment the parchment was in his hands, he began to speak in the very same strange tongue Avery had spoken in moments prior which only she could understand.
The cult leaders each tried a hand at deciphering the contents of the parchment with very bizarre results. The first ones to get the parchment spoke in the same mysterious tongue while subsequent readers either began to speak in limericks, got very confused or failed to see anything written on the parchment at all. Eventually, even the Entity tried to read the parchment and it immediately burst into flames the second it touched the Tome.
Over the course of the next few days, the Entity and its agents tried to retrieve the information by all means necessary which all ended the same way. Not even Avery actually willing the Tome to reveal its instructions yielded any forthcoming results.
Another grueling week of grotesque torture passed with no results to show for it but help soon came for Avery in the form of a Defense Department raid which culminated in the capture of at least 6 High Priestesses of the cult of the Entity as well as the death of several key members of the cult. The Entity managed to evade capture but Avery and Leal were successfully retrieved and treated for their extensive injuries at the Department’s Med Bay.
“How did you find us? That fortress was warded up the wazoo by the Entity itself. It clearly did not want to be found,” Avery told the Director.
“How we found you is not important, Avery. What is more important is to understand how you were captured in the first place. We have retrieved Leal’s memories and are expecting a full debrief once he has fully recovered but is it truly to be believed that he betrayed you just so he could keep claiming the glory of getting a drop on the Entity by hijacking his doppelganger’s consciousness? Was this just some kind of memory interference from that Cosmo freak?”
“Director Shaw, I think that question is best suited to Protector Leal himself to answer,”
The Director shook her head. “Then its true. You just don’t want to betray your own father. You’ve grown soft, Protector Alison.”
“Well, don’t you think its about time I stopped trying to compete with the real Ice Queens of the world?”
“That you can fib at a time like this just goes to show how you have made yet another miraculous narrow escape from certain death,”
“Aw, were you worried about me, mom?”
Director Shaw visibly cringed on being addressed as Avery’s mother. She stood up indignantly and walked up to the door.
“You’ll need to testify against your father as the victim of his foolish actions,”
“You and I both know that I’d rather die than do that,”
“He shall suffer the consequences nonetheless,”
“And he shall have my unconditional support for it,”
Director Shaw sighed. “You truly have grown soft. I hope that it shall not prove to be your own undoing,”
“Supporting my family is a source of unbridled strength, Director. It is better to die for a cause than die for nothing, right?”
“Whatever makes you sleep at night, I suppose,” the Director snidely remarked before leaving Avery’s assigned room. Immediately afterwards, Emre came bursting in.
“Why does the world hate you, Avery?” he asked her worriedly.
“It’s karma for all the bad things I have done in the name of justice,”
“Then where is my fair share of cosmic punishment?”
“Oh, it’ll come, Emre so until then, just thank the Universe that everything is alright,”
TO BE CONTINUED…
Thankfully, our heroes have escaped with their lives but what shall happen to Protector Leal? Shall the Entity find out how to transcend into godhood or shall her efforts be thwarted? Stay tuned to find out. Entries in this exciting tale are listed below;
elenaverseblog.wordpress.com 