The Guardians - Between the Worlds (Book 2)
Chapter 7: Freedom has a price

Time stops and Lily realizes soon that it’s not happening just to her, but everyone can see it. The sun remains still, it doesn’t set anymore, the wind stops blowing, the light remains like it is, pale, somewhere between disappearing and brightness, and only then Lily has the courage to climb down from Dean’s arms. She looks back, where all the looks are headed, and where the sun is not going under the horizon anymore. It is just stuck there, without any explanation, without any sound or breeze.

“I think that we’ve upset something…” states Alice.

A loud sound, like clouds breaking apart, hears from everywhere, and the pieces of the portal rise up in the air, lightening up in all the colors, rebuilding the portal piece by piece, from where come out, in the end, the two energy fields which look like two whips. They head straight to Lily, spreading energy and light around.

“Run!” says Dean pushing her away, and stopping one of the whips with his sword from the waist.

It breaks into dozens of pieces, and Isaac quickly follows his example, and he breaks the other one without thinking too much about it. The wall continues to shine, and it starts spreading energy again all around, trying to hit Lily. Soon, the two energy fields rebuild themselves and search for Lily again. She runs forward, but the sky seems to break in half, everything lights up in thousands of colors, the ground cracks, stopping her run to the Base.

“It wants its tribute! It will not stop until it gets it!” shouts Alice getting up from the ground.

“So, let’s give it a tribute!” says Earl rushing to hit Dean with his sword.

Lily starts shouting out of fear, and she jumps in front of her father, catching his hand and taking away the sword, with a speed and a strength she had never had before.

“I’m the tribute!” she yells angrily.

“Too well”, says Earl getting away.

He turns around and changes his running direction straight to Isaac, attacking him. Again, Lily yells at him but, this time, Claire is the one who blocks his way. sᴇaʀᴄh thᴇ FɪndNovᴇl.nᴇt website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

“What the hell are you doing? It will kill our daughter if you don’t let me give it another tribute!”

“You won’t send my son as a tribute! Only if you send me first!” shouts Claire.

Even if there are weird sounds around, no one says anything when they hear Claire’s words. They connect the visions they had seen in their minds, and they realize that Liam is Isaac. What they don’t understand though is why Claire had called Isaac “her” son, but she knew that well. Isaac feels the earth moving under his legs again, Lily the same, and Earl makes a sharp sound.

“What do you mean yours?!”

“You heard me well! Only mine, because I’m tired of living in a lie!”

Earl sees black in front of his eyes, puts his hands on his head, tries to process the situation, while Lily bursts into tears.

The moment of weakness is this one when they’re all covered in feelings, and the energetic field grabs Lily’s legs, pulling her to the portal. She starts screaming loud because she can’t focus on anything around her anymore. She fights to escape, but nothing helps her get her strength back.

Dean runs after her, grabs her by the arms, he tries to cut the energy field with his sword, but all he does is to hurt himself for the field electrocutes him and he can’t hold Lily any longer. Earl wants to take Isaac by surprise once again, and he sneaks behind his back. Claire runs after her daughter, but Dean manages to grab her hand again, and to hold her as long as possible, holding with his legs on some ruins.

“I got you”, he tells her.

“Don’t let me go!” Lily screams as desperate as she never was before.

“I won’t!” he says holding her tight.

But he realizes that they can’t stay like that for long because Lily is grinding her teeth from pain. When she looks up, she sees Alice running at them, and Dean sees Claire near the portal, with her sword in one hand, trying to find a solution to the biggest problem. Isaac gets closer to them when Alice starts screaming terrified:

“Isaac!”

Lily sees how her father attacks him with the sword, ready to end the madness.

“No!” she shouts letting go of Dean’s hands.

No matter how much he tried, he couldn’t hold Lily without her help, and she is once again pulled to the portal. Isaac turns around and jumps aside, falling and rolling over. The sword hits the ground when Claire decides to throw away the sword and run to the portal.

“No! Claire, what the hell are you doing?” asks Earl.

Lily turns around in time to see her mother jumping in the portal, and the energy around her legs disappears, setting her free. The energetic wall disappears as well as if there was nothing before, and time starts again, for the sun instantly sets, leaving only darkness behind. The ground reshapes, and after the disaster are left only fallen Guardians and crying.

Ear gets up and attacks Isaac, hitting him strong. He fights back, but Earl is stronger than him. Dean rushes to help Isaac, while Alice is lifting Lily from the ground, who is still shocked by what had just happened. She runs to the place where the portal was, but she passes by it easily now.

“No…” she whispers.

“Lily…” Alice tells her.

She pushes her away, lifts up her mother’s sword, and she runs straight to the fight of the three men. She hits Earl, who had already put down Isaac, forcing him into a fight. But in her madness and strength, Lily pulls his sword. In the fight, she remains without a weapon, but she uses her body’s strength to put him down, and hit him with her fists.

“It’s your fault! She never loved you, and you didn’t truly love as well, and now you wanted to prove her one more time that her feelings for us don’t matter for you! That’s why you wanted to kill Isaac! The same you did with me! You would have never done what would have been the right thing to do!”

He pushes her away with his legs, sick by her hits. Dean catches her by her arms, while Alice runs to check Isaac.

“Do you think that I would have let you die?”

“If you would have understood me for a second, you would have known that I would have never wanted people I love to die for me! Look what you have done! You killed her!”

“Not me! You did this!” he yells at her in an access of rage.

Lily feels like she’s about to explode, but Dean makes sure that he’s holding her tight this time.

“You didn’t let me offer the Guardian another tribute, and it’s just like you pushed her in there! You should have thought that she was the only one who would have truly sacrificed for you!” shouts Earl getting up.

“You are a wreck! I don’t want to see your face ever again! If you come near me or them ever again, I swear I will kill you!”

“My own daughter threats me with death. Such an education you received from your mother!”

“Go to hell!” shouts Lily with the tears blocked in her throat.

When Earl is far away from them, Lily takes two steps aside.

“Lily…” says Alice, who was the only one capable of making any sounds.

“No! Shut up, please!” she says and bursts into tears once again.

Brook is coming close to them, and she doesn’t really understand what had happened there, but she knows something is not good because she can feel it in their energy bond.

“Lily?” she asks.

When she hears her voice, Lily walks straight between the three Guardians, as if they weren’t there, and goes right into Brook’s arms.

“She jumped into the portal”, she says between tears.

“Oh, God, Lily!” she says putting her arms around her.

The bond between them helps Lily not to break down, for they are sharing the same pain now. Isaac falls on his knees, not only because of his wounds but also because of the shock he had lived during that day. Alice approaches him, touches his shoulder, and Dean just stares at nothing. In different ways, they had all lived the biggest shock of their lives or, at least, the most intense day until now.

Soon, Lily walks away from Brook’s arms, looks lost around her, she meets Isaac’s eyes, which says more than he could possibly say at these times, then Dean’s, who wants to calm her somehow, but all she needs is quiet, not kind words.

She walks heading to the Base, long-faced, crawling her legs and all her body, as if she was made of stones. Irene passes by her, staring shocked, envious somehow, but Lily doesn’t notice her at all. Soon, Tamara appears too, but she doesn’t see or hear her either. She walks forward in the Base that’s different now, for the metallic walls are painted in warm colors now, which tried to give the impression of “home” just a little. She can see the windows now, and they show a calm view, but she knows that the red sands from the Guardian’s World are not even close to the nature in Human’s World or to the green from the World of the Sun’s Children.

She wanted to share with the others all that she had lived, but she doesn’t have the strength anymore. She has no idea where her room is, if she has a room around here, she doesn’t recognize anything, so she heads to the last floor, between the eyes of the curious ones, who realize that something terrible had happened to her.

She walks slowly, without noticing much around, but at the same time enough not to feel a stranger. She was tired of crying, but she couldn’t hold inside so much despair. She runs to the rooftop, and she doesn’t stop until she reaches the edge of it. It’s not a big change up here, and her mind quickly sends her signs with the reasons why this place hadn’t changed so much. She leans on the edge with her hands, and her body slowly falls stuck on the wall, and she remains there, lying with her face covered by her palms.

She is here, and her mother is not, just because she wanted to give her a chance to happiness, to life, to love, for Claire knew well that Lily was going to sacrifice herself to save the ones she loved. She had chosen to give her daughter the chance she was born for, to save the Guardian’s World, and she truly believed that Lily was able to do that. And when she had found again her son who she had thought dead for so long, she had realized that Lily and Isaac needed each other, even if they had no idea about that yet.

But now, Lily has torn apart, and so was Isaac, who was sitting sad and depressed inside his room from the fifteenth floor. Dean had given them the rooms, so they all could have their intimacy and privacy. Isaac doesn’t notice Alice in the doorstep, but he finally feels her touch on his shoulder.

“Why are you here?” he asks her hopeless.

“Where should I be?”

“With Lily? She’s your friend…”

“You are too, and everyone is looking for her. I understand her pain, but I consider that she is given all the attention from everyone. You need someone by your side too, and I choose to be here.”

“Thank you”, he says sadly.

But his thoughts fly far away, to Lily, to his contradictory feelings, to his inexplicable love for her, to their broken hearts when they found out they were siblings. Alice doesn’t dare to ask him what he feels about that, for she doesn’t want to start a fire in his heart again.

The Guardians give others indications with the places they saw Lily, but no one is heading to the roof for the moment. She was staring at nothing and, as usual, she couldn’t think only about the pain she was feeling, but she was feeling also guilty for what she has said to Earl, and she was wondering what was inside Isaac’s heart, because she knew that he was as unstable as she was right now.

The voices of the Moon and Sun’s Children are fresh in her mind now, and only at this moment, Lily understands what had really happened there, and why she had been sent back with such a sacrifice. More, she understands that they knew a lot more than she could have thought of, and she realizes that Isaac was the one who couldn’t have carried along with this mission. The truths are revealing one by one, and nothing seems impossible or incredible, not the idea of being the Great Guardian, who will protect the worlds as the voices of the other creatures from her journey.

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