The Guardians - The Collapsing of the Wall (Book 3)

It’s like the clouds tear apart and the sky breaks in half when the demons and dragons come out through the cracks of the Portal, but this time not only near the Base R but also near the Base led by Ray.

The sound alerts all the Guardians, who run at the windows and outside, the ones from Base R, and the leaders from the other Base on the main balcony. It’s darker than usual, and the sand seems to move in an inexplicable way.

“What’s happening?” asks Matt when he gets behind Leonor and Ray.

“I thought it was an accident, that something collapsed, but it’s no trace of dust out here”, says Ray.

Dean, who part of the group of leaders from the balcony, takes a breath and feels a strange smell.

“Burned”, he mumbles.

“What?” asks Matt.

“I smell something burning.”

Soon, they all confirm it, and a sound like a howl makes the floor shake under their feet. The wings are making their specific noise, making them look up, and the shadows make some terrifying sounds when they hit the windows.

“Dragons! Demons!” shouts Leonor running back in the Base to find shelter.

She pushes the panic button, and Ray rushes in the hallway to prepare the Guardians for the battle. Their Base seems to attack from all over the places, but they mobilize fast enough and get out there with an army ready to fight.

“Did you activate the chips? Did you finished the lab?” shouts Ray at Jake while he grabs a gun.

“Yes! Everything is under control! Now let’s not think about this, because we need to focus on the fight!”

Dean is using the bow for the fight, and Matt the sword. It’s for the first time when they are in this kind of situation, and their bodies feel the tension in a specific way. They use their powers to maximum, for their lives are at risk. Taken by surprise, even those Guardians who live every day with the thought that they might be confronted with these creatures can be killed easily if they don’t focus on them.

“It’s true! The others really fought with dragons!” shouts Ray realizing that there weren’t just words what they had heard about the Base R.

“How is this possible? The dragons aren’t supposed to get out unless the Wall’s Portal is broken! And believe me, if the Wall’s Portal would have collapsed we would have known it! Everything would have been darker and louder!” shouts Leonor.

“What if the legends aren’t so precise?” asks Matt.

Before she could say anything else, Ray shows everyone a piece of the Wall where the creatures are coming in, and they are already big, and this piece is larger than the others.

“So? What is this? The Wall didn’t collapse, but something similar happened!” he shouts.

The battle continues, while the creatures are coming out faster, but the Guardians manage to keep up with them, with sweat and screams of hatred, which could make them courageous in their despair.

When the sounds hear around Base R, they all alert quickly. Lily jumps as burned, but she knows that she can’t leave the room. She starts walking around, waiting for someone to bring her a sign.

“Everyone out! Prepare to fight!” shouts Tamara.

“What’s happening?” a Guardians asks.

“Demons and dragons! I can smell those filthy creatures! They will attack us again!”

Brook runs outside accompanied by Leo, Addison, Sam, Mark, and Alice. The last one looks for Isaac, but she can’t see him in the crowd of Guardians pushing each other, so she focuses on keeping her balance.

A sound of broken glass and powerful hits in the walls make the Guardians rush outside, where the battle starts again.

“What if we need Lily? What are we doing here?” asks Artemis when she sees Tamara.

“We won’t! We can fight them on our own! We hit this portal with all we’ve got until it fucking closes! They aren’t so many!”

Lily feels the despair flowing through her veins and she runs at the door, wanting to make an extremely bad decision and get out of her hiding place. But she hears the key, and when she tries to open she realizes that she was locked in there.

“Who is there? Let me out! I have to be there!”

But there’s silence on the other side of the door. In her despair, she hears some thoughts, and she realizes soon that Isaac had rushed to lock her in there because he was afraid that she was going to expose herself and blow up her cover.

“Isaac, let me out! I have to fight! I can beat them all!”

“No way. You will stay in there because we are Guardians and this is what we are trained for!”

“Isaac, don’t you dare leave me locked in here! Isaac!” shouts Lily angrily.

But there’s no one on the other side of the door, for he is already on his way outside. Lily touches the door as she used to do in the past, but it doesn’t happen something that she was expecting. She can’t see through it as she was supposed to.

Isaac sees a terrifying image that makes him tremble, but he quickly comes back to his senses and runs into the battle with his sword pulled out. Now he is fighting much better, knowing Lily locked away and safe from this battle.

The time seems to pass too slowly, and when he feels something wet on his face he realizes that a dragon had caught Sam in its claws above him. Gloria was throwing arrows in it, but when she kills it, the dragon’s body falls over Sam on the ground. She and Isaac rush to pull him from there, but a pool of blood appears around him. Isaac feels his heart about to explode in his chest, and he soon sees other Guardians dead on the ground.

He hears Tamara and Artemis fighting over something, and he realizes that Lily is the main topic of that fight. He heads there, and in a moment when he manages to run among the dragons, he notices Tamara that he had locked Lily in that room. She seems pleased, but Artemis makes a contemptuous sound.

“We are losing Guardians!” she yells.

Isaac looks at the opened piece of the portal, and he sees Alice shooting at it. She was trying to destroy it, and she was there for some time.

“We have to close that fucking portal! Then all those creatures won’t be coming out anymore, and we can deal with the left ones!” he says.

“Guardians, cover us!” shouts Tamara.

Helped by Addison, Gloria, Mark, Brook, and Leo, they run to help Alice, and with the help of the Guardians who keep away the monsters, they manage to turn the piece of portal into thousands of pieces. It’s a loud sound when it breaks, just like a broken mirror, only a purple one.

Their joy doesn’t last though, because the dragons and the shadow demons feel the danger, attacking them like arrows, from above, hitting them and the ground, tearing them apart and throwing them aside. They don’t have enough time to breath, and they need to join the battle again, hitting with their swords, their arrows, with all their weapons in all the directions.

“We have to close that portal with any cost!” shouts Tamara loudly.

But the Guardians are busy trying to save themselves and kill the monsters, leaving the portal for later. But Tamara heads to it, defying the danger, and shooting with her energetic gun until she had no power left in it. She is attacked by the shadow demons, which pull and push her from one side to another. Artemis sees that and steps to help her, taking her away from the middle of the danger.

“The portal is weakened! We must destroy it now before it builds up again!” shouts Tamara looking behind.

“We can’t do anything now!” says Artemis.

Alice hears their conversation and rushes to get to the portal, determined to aim it with her arrow. She hits it once, while the monsters turn their attention to her.

Isaac sees that Alice is in a suicidal mission, and he doesn’t understand her choice, but he can’t leave her there, so he runs and hits the portal too, a thing that brings happiness in her eyes. She doesn’t feel alone anymore, and the company is something that she likes.

“I don’t know what you are doing here but, even if it’s not safe, I will not leave you alone!” he says to her continuing to shoot.

Seeing what they are doing, the rest of the Guardians try to cover them, attacking the creatures which are jumping over them with a terrifying lust of blood.

“I’m saving the Guardian’s World! This is what I was trained for! I won’t back off. This is what Lily would do”, says Alice stepping ahead.

With the last arrow, she breaks the portal, turning it into a heap of glassy pieces, which scatter through the sand.

“We did it!” she yells jumping into Isaac’s arms.

“Indeed”, he says hugging her back.

But feelings don’t belong in the middle of the war, and Alice notices a demon, which had escaped from the wall the Guardians formed, running to attack them. She pushes Isaac from her arms strongly, but she releases the arrow too late, and she is caught and pulled by its claws dozens of meters. They leave dust behind them, a dust mixed with blood and screams, a dust with sand and tears, that tears apart like lost hopes with the dust in the air, and Isaac gets up and uses the arrow and bow, hitting the monster in the head.

Around them, the battle continues and the Guardians seem to be winning, and the monsters become fewer soon. Alice had closed the portal and managed to stop the creatures from entering the Guardian’s World. Addison sees a part of what has happened, and when she sees Isaac running like he was chased by the Devil, she knows something terrible has happened. She tries to catch him from behind, but the battle won’t let her go further.

Isaac lifts Alice on his arms, but she barely can open her eyes. She realizes that the healer can’t help her, and she feels injustice and anger in all her being. She tries to talk to him, but he stops her because he has no idea how he can answer to what she would tell him.

“Don’t speak”, he says without keeping his tears inside.

“Isaac, I have to tell you…”

“I know”, he says hugging her.

She is lost for a second, but he continues:

“You saved everyone today. You are the hero today. The history will be about you. The legends will tell your name.”

“I don’t…” she continues, trying to make him understand.

She didn’t want any kind of title of hero, she didn’t want respects, she just wanted not to die with her heavy soul. She feels a huge pain all over her body, and with the last wince, she grabs Isaac’s arm. He catches her head between his palms, and he gives her the kiss she had always wanted. Her tears mix with his, right on her cheeks, and she feels his soft lips like a relaxing oasis in the pain. She breathes released, the pain slowly disappears, and she finds the strength to whisper.

“You knew…”

“I was an idiot and I realized too late, but I want you to know that I feel the same way, Alice.”

She gives him a warm and sincere smile, just before she closes her eyes and takes her last breath. Her head is now heavy in his palms, and the view makes Addison burst into tears, for she had watched all of it from behind Isaac since the battle had ended. She kneels next to him, touching Alice’s head.

“Oh, no!” says Brook running next to the lifeless body of her friend.

Gloria comes near them and, soon, the Guardians look around them insecure, at the bodies left behind the battle. They are fewer now, the losses bigger, but they are still determined to fight because this is what they are doing after all.

Dean wipes the blood off his face and returns to the Base, throwing the weapons on the floor. The battle had left them without many Guardians as well, for they had never been trained with real dragons in their lives, neither with shadow demons, and this had been their first real fight. The damages were huge, and their work has been half destroyed, the reason for Leonor to throw things around. She and Ray had taken part in the battle, but not that much as they were supposed to, but enough for them to save their lives and don’t start suspicions around them for, after all, who would follow some leaders who refuse to fight?

Matt looks around lost, putting the healer on his leg to heal a wound. He meets Dean’s unpleased look, but he doesn’t get the chance to get close to him, for he hears a conversation between Ray and Jake.

“The chip laboratory is fine?”

“Yes. There are just some weak spots, which I will fix in one day”, he replies.

“So, everyone is under control”, says Ray.

“It seems so.”

Matt changes his facial expression and feels like he is about to throw up because of their conversation. He wonders how is it possible for Ray to still think of total control after a battle like this. He puts his hands on his head and walks away from them, for he doesn’t want to let them know that he is not on their side anymore.

They had closed the portal from where the creatures were coming in, hardly, it’s true, but now they truly believed in those legends, for they had seen them and fought them.

Isaac opens the door from the room where Lily is, and she jumps from the floor on her feet when she hears the noise. She sees her brother covered in blood, and she jumps into his arms, hugging him, just under the eyes of the Guardians who were with him.

She feels his body trembling in her arms, and she takes a look at their friends. She sees their disappointed faces when she asks what happened outside.

Isaac wants to answer her, but instead of words comes out a sound of pain, which he swallows fast. That sound makes Brook burst into tears, and Addison takes the word with her trembling voice.

“Sam and Alice… they’re gone.”

Lily sees black in front of her eyes for a couple of seconds, and she doesn’t hear the other names of the Guardians who had died in the battle.

“The dragons and the shadow demons came from a portal and attacked our Base… again.”

“I should have been there! None of these would have happened!” she says guilty.

“I locked you in here, so it’s not your fault. If someone is to blame, that’s me. Anyway, I would have done the same again, for I would never risk to put you in danger”, says Isaac as if he was disappointed by the words coming out of his mouth.

He starts weird looks around him, and then he gets out of that room without any words. Brook ties up her hair and takes a deep breath, but that sound is more like a sigh from the bottom of her heart.

“Alice saved us. She closed that portal with the price of her life. She deserves something special, just like the others.”

They all approve and walk out from Lily’s room. Just Addison remains there, making sure that everyone was gone. She approaches Lily and whispers in her ear:

“Alice had saved Isaac. She saved all of us, but especially him. And if you can go deep down in my mind now, you will see what I saw, for I can’t explain you in words. I don’t think that the others saw it all, but I want you to know that this secret is safe with me.”

She grabs Lily’s hand tight.

“Look at what I want to show you.”

Lily closes her eyes, and a mixing of pictures and images pass in front of her eyes. She had never done this before, but she doesn’t hear just her thoughts, she sees what Addison had seen, but more, she feels what she had felt. She feels what she feels now, and she grabs her other arm by an instinct. They are now standing face to face, caught up one in another’s arms, with the tears on their cheeks flowing without control, with their eyes closed and their fast breaths.

They sigh at the same time, and they open their eyes. They look differently at each other now because, from the lack of experience, Lily couldn’t hold back her emotions, and she had passed them on to Addison. This way, Lily had seen her entire life, but also the other way around. What they had seen shocked them, but Lily was the one who had no idea about what she had just done.

Addison gets up insecure, her lips are trembling, she nods her head, takes a step back, and Lily looks lost at her when she runs and slams the door. She hits some shelves in her rush in the hallway, and she doesn’t see Isaac when he asks her what is going on. She hears a loud hum, and she can’t take out of her mind the images with Lily.

She finally arrives at her room and throws on the floor, with her hands holding her head. She pulls her hair until the pain makes her come back to reality. She looks shocked at the hair from her hands, and she rushes to the sink and puts her head under cold water.

When she looks in the mirror she sees a cruel and bad person, one who had judged a lot of people without knowing what was really going on. Now and here, looking deep into her own eyes, Addison decides that’s time for a change, for she has a lot of mistakes to repair.

She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and then she falls again on the floor, with a hand in her hair, sighing. She had felt the pain Lily felt, and she was wondering how she could be alive. She had wondered this before, but now this was a huge mystery for her, taking into consideration the things she knew.

But she feels a lump in her throat when she remembers the Dragon’s Sign, and she realizes that she is not only the Great Guardian but also the Marked One who will change the course and faith of the history. The room starts spinning with her, and she knows that she can’t tell anyone about this, as deep as she keeps scattering through memories. She sees Claire explaining to her daughter how important it is to keep it a secret, and she sees Lily telling it to Dean and Brook. Isaac has no idea about what his sister is, but she never wants to tell this secret to anyone, even if she is frightened when she thinks about it.

“Who the hell put me to do this?!” she wonders while pulling her hair. “I judged her, I hated her, and then I respected her, I feared her, and then I admired her, and now I feel I am one with her. What the hell was I thinking? Why did I go straight to her to tell her a secret? Couldn’t I just sit back? This is what I needed? A bunch of mortal secrets?”

She sighs again and she is covered in despair, every single time an image from Lily’s life passes through her mind.

A knock on the door makes her jump frightened. What she had seen and experienced makes her agiler now, reacting fast at every sound.

“Who is this?” she asks clearing her voice.

“Isaac. Open the door. What’s wrong with you? What happened again?”

She looks in the mirror, getting up fast. She sees how she looks and she can’t find a good explanation for Isaac if she opened that door. Even if she wants it so bad, she sighs and shouts:

“I am in the shower now. I am fine. I just need some time alone.”

“Are you sure?”

“Why the hell are you interested in me now? Didn’t you tell Alice that you loved her? Shit, I didn’t mean to think that! I am a mess…”

She didn’t want to think all those things or at least she didn’t want them to sound like that, but they scratched her brain when she had thought of them, so she slaps her forehead.

“Yes. I will come to the library in the evening… to help with the cleaning…”

“Fine. I will be around.”

She hears his steps on the corridor, and then she steps into the shower and lets the hot water flow on her this time, cleaning the dirt, the blood, and the tears.