"Tadashi and I can go look for Erik. We'll find him no problem, won't we buddy?" I was thrilled with the idea of leaving the Cathedral. Everything felt...wrong. Tadashi gave me a disapproving look, but what else is new?

  "He doesn't want to be found. Clearly he's trying to distance himself from us." My sister pointed out for like, the hundredth time. She crossed her arms and looked irritated, but I could tell it was a defense mechanism.

  "Who cares? He's our leader. And our friend." I shouted back, more excited then angry. Sometimes, I didn't realize how loud I was being. Tadashi and Sis both shot me glares and I took to tapping my foot impatiently, so that I wouldn't explode. I was as eager as anyone to find Erik, but I had to get out. Whatever darkness was haunting me couldn't follow me out there. Could it?

  "As much as I want to, I think maybe we just leave him be on this. I got the back doors working for the Order database, but if anyone finds out, I'm gonna be in big shit." Orion added. Now Amelia was glaring at him instead of me.

  "He's not thinking right. He probably needs us." She huffed. After everything that had happened between her and Erik during our summer trip, I'm surprised she's so quick to jump to his defense.

  "I agree. We should hunt him down and bring him back, before he gets too far ahead of us." I told them. For a long while, I really looked up to Erik, but he had made a lot of stupid choices lately and that's coming from the guy who got himself impaled. I scratched at my chest reflexively.

  "Erik has acknowledged his failure as a leader. Allow him the time he needs to find himself again." Tadashi said quietly, trying not to look directly at me. It was unlike him to be on a completely different page then me. It still surprised everyone when he spoke, and when Sis and Orion looked at him, he shrunk away. Its was kinda cute how timid he could be. I wished he'd come out of his shell more often, so they could know him like I do.

  "So, if we vote, we stand at two for, and two against." Orion said, looking around the Rec Room. Kalysta stood off in the corner, looking just as unhappy as my sister. "Umm, I guess three for..." He gulped nervously. "Wait, where is Dyson?"

  After a quick search of his usual hiding spots, we realized we had lost the emo kid as well. It seemed like everyone was just as eager to leave this place as I was. I could have sworn there was something watching me up in the Bell Tower, but I couldn't make anything out. The wind up there gave me a chill I couldn't shake. Or had I always been this cold?

  "Damnit, this whole place is going to shit." Orion kicked over one of the plastic chairs in the Mess Hall.

  "Hey! No kicking the furniture." Orion's mom came wheeling around the corner. Talk about Mom-senses tingling. She stopped at the door way and looked us all over, hands on her hips.

  "What's got you kids looking so down?" Andrea asked, almost amused.

  "Erik and Dyson are gone." Orion told her.

  "What?" She shouted. First she cursed in what I assume was Arabic and then again in English. "I thought there were fewer of you. Do you know where they went?"

  "Chase is gone too, and Anders is still not back yet. Everythinggoing to shit." Andrea said, as she kicked the same chair Orion had, across the room.

  "Mom!" Orion called out and Andrea turned red.

  "Sorry kids, Auntie Andrea is a little stressed out." She chuckled. "Anders brought us out of retirement as help, but it seems like this entire place has fallen on us." Andrea motioned as if her husband, Hector was beside her.

  "Where are the children?" Tadashi asked, and I suddenly remembered that there were two young kids running around. Andrea laughed to herself.

  "Hector is watching the girls. But I think Astra is supervising." She said, mentioning her own daughter.

  Tadashi shook his head. He rested a hand on my arm, and looked deep into my eyes as if to tell me not to do anything stupid. It felt like he wanted to say more, to tell me something deep inside, but he turned and left to go supervise the kids.

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  "So what are we going to do?" Amelia asked, bringing all our attention back to the matter at hand.

  "It's probably best if we wait here. The boys may just come back on their own. No sense rushing off." There was a finality in Orion's mom's words. Finality that only a mom putting her foot down could express. It was something I remembered about my own mother. She would scold Amelia and I constantly, but it wasn't until she really put her foot down that we took her seriously. It seemed like my plan to hunt Erik down was dead in the water, and now, we were also missing Dyson.

  Amelia looked between Orion and I and scoffed, before heading out of the room. Soon, everyone left and it was just me, sitting in the empty Mess Hall, staring at the cement walls. I bolted up right when the shadows started to move on their own again. I swear I saw red eyes peering out at me, so I got up and ran to my room.

  ~*~

  I stared at my digital clock as the numbers slowly changed; I felt restless and anxious. There was too much going on, and not enough being done about it. A knock at my door made me shoot up, terrified. Was it the shadows playing tricks on me, or was it Tadashi come to visit?

  "What?" I called out, my voice chalked full of horror.

  "It's me. I need you to do me a favor." Sis said, opening my door and stepping inside. She eyed my nightlight, and shook her head. I wanted to tell her to piss off, but she was my sister and I loved her to bits, even when she was annoying.

  "What's up?" I asked.

  "I think we should go after Erik. Like, just the two of us." She told me.

  "Why?" It escaped my mouth faster than I could think. I was so unsure about where she sat with him. One minute she couldn't stand to be around the guy, the next minute we were planning a rescue mission.

  "It's the right thing to do. He would come looking if it was us missing" She stared at me with those eyes, the ones we shared as twins, but hers were so full of wisdom.

  "I'll grab Tadashi." I said, renewing my previous excitement about leaving.

  "We can't afford to have anyone else leave." She said quietly, patting the air, trying to calm me down.

  "Maybe you shouldn't go either than." I told her. "Maybe, this is something I can do on my own." At least this way, it was harder for anyone to stop me, but it did look like another Chosen was just, running away.

  "I don't understand. You don't want me to come?" She asked, raising an eyebrow.

  "Like you said, we can't afford to have anyone else leave. Orion's parents have their hands full. If I can find Erik quick, then I can tell him just how messed up things are here. He'll come back with me fast." I didn't fully believe I'd be able to find him easily, especially without Orion's tracking stuff, but I had to make her believe me.

  "Okay, I trust you Ethan. Just, please don't get yourself killed. Again." Amelia said sadly, wrapping her arms around me, hugging me tightly. I hugged her back, patting her head.

  "You're really cold, you feeling okay?" She asked. I just nodded. I couldn't tell her how I'd been feeling since we got back from Greece. How every shadow made me jump.

  When she left, I started putting together an adventure pack. I knew she would explain everything to Tadashi and the others tomorrow. Erik had already been gone for days, and I'd lost so much time already. As I finished packing the essentials, I moved to the Training Room to grab some Ambrosia, just in case. When I got to the top of the spiral stairs leading to the above ground part of the Cathedral, I saw Kalysta standing by the door to the fake office. She was sitting on the desk, flipping absently through fliers promoting the "youth group" that we claimed to be. I tried to ignore her, and give her space but her bident shimmered into existence, blocking my path.

  "You're going after Erik then?" Her voice was cold, and her green eyes seemed to pierce into my soul, like an unblinking cat.

  "You aren't going to stop me. Someone has to do something around here and I'm sick of sitting still." I told her. She stared at me for a long time, trying to scare the piss out of me. Finally she smiled, and moved the bident.

  "I'm coming with you." She said suddenly, hopping off the desk and knocking the fliers to the floor.

  "Huh?" I was baffled.

  "I have my own reasons for leaving too. I'm not just going to look for Erik, so we'll split up part of the way." She told me.

  "Are you going off by yourself too? What is it with you people?" I groaned. She shook her head and pulled out her phone. On the screen was a map, with a little beacon going off. Another one was a fair bit off to the left, and moving towards the other, or at least close to.

  "I don't get it." I scratched the stubble where my beard was desperately trying to grow in.

  "I stole Orion's back door hack. The beacon around Wales is Chase's cell phone. This other one here is Erik's." She explained, pointing at the map.

  "Creepy. But I suppose that's easier than breaking into the Vault and trying to find some kind of Artifact to use to find them." I admitted. "Sometimes I forget that technology exists when we have so much magic." Kalysta rolled her eyes at me.

  "Can you see where Dyson is?" I thought out loud. Kalysta scrolled the map down, showing me our location at the Cathedral.

  "Unless he's hiding in the walls, he likely left his phone in his room before he left. With all the talk of databases and tracking, he probably doesn't want to be found." She shrugged.

  "I guess we'll just have to make do with who we can find and hope the others come back." I said, sighing heavily. I was eager to be free of the horrors haunting me here, but I also knew I would miss my friends and my sister the minute I was too far. Aside from our trip here, my sister and I hadn't travelled a lot, and from the looks of Kalysta's map, this was taking us to Europe. I wondered what Erik needed to go to Europe for.

  "How do I buy plane tickets?" I asked Kalysta. I heard her growl and sigh in frustration as she walked on ahead of me.