ENTER-WORLD: The Dark Age

CHAPTER 2 - PREDESTINATED (part 2)

It was a surreal situation, everything seemed to stand still, Logan was petrified. The man who had appeared moments earlier looked confident, had black hair, although a few white hairs could be seen, wore a gray raincoat and gave the impression of being in his fifties.

"You shouldn't be here, Black," the swaggering man said.

"The boy must come with me, my master will not be satisfied with failure," the dark individual replied.

"This is not your world, Black, you have no hope of defeating me here."

"We'll see about the Guardian," Black replied.

"Boy, get down," Logan did not let that be repeated twice and found a place to hide.

The two men faced each other. Their fight was quite unusual, neither of them used weapons or fists. Their hands glowed and emitted a powerful energy, with which they created shapes similar to ancient seals. Each seal used had a different power, including the power to fly, to move instantly, and even to hit the enemy.

 Logan could not understand how that was possible, obviously the two men were fighting with magic, but the boy noticed the shapes better: they looked familiar. The battle raged on, neither side showing any sign of retreating, until the man in the gray raincoat created a red seal. Suddenly, a huge crack opened in the middle of the field, grabbed the dark being, and threw it into the crack, sending it back to where it came from. The man later created another seal, this time green, and time returned to normal as if nothing had happened. Chloe searched the entire school for him, but it was as if he had disappeared. A few seconds earlier he had been standing near the football field, but then they could not find him. They wondered where he had gone, even calling him on his cell phone, but to no avail: he was gone.

Dazed, Logan found himself on the banks of a river in complete silence, not knowing how he got there. He realized that he was on the East River, the river that flows past the borough of Brooklyn. He saw the man who had been protecting him; he was there with him and was surely responsible for this move.

"You okay, kid?" the man said.

"Yeah," Logan replied, startled, "who are you?"

"My name is Gate," he replied, "I know you must have a lot of questions, but unfortunately I can't answer them right now." For a few minutes there was absolute silence between the two, then Gate said, "It is of the utmost importance that you tell no one what you saw today," Logan nodded without saying a word.

"Don't worry boy, everything will be fine," Gate said in a fatherly tone, "if you want answers, be at 125 North Lake Street tomorrow afternoon."

Then he used his magic to open the portal and went through.

Logan, still in disbelief, decided to go home. It was the middle of the night and on his way home he saw all the calls from his friends and his mother and realized that he had missed the whole game. When he got home, his mother, who was very worried, was waiting for him on a leather chair on the porch of their house, as soon as she saw him, she ran up to him and hugged him, asking him why he was late. Logan decided to lie to her, saying that he had been with Mike after the team's win and had not realized he was late.

His mother pretended to believe his lie, but she could tell when her son was lying.

Logan went back to his room and noticed the notebook he had left in his room before school and began to read it.

It was now April and Franklin High's spring break had begun, which would last a full week. Knowing about the upcoming vacation, Logan had stayed up all night trying to decipher his father's notes on the notebook, and the boy had noticed something familiar in the symbols drawn. Suddenly, he remembered the similarity between the symbols in the notebook and those he had seen during the fight between the two mysterious men. He decided to get to the rendezvous point with Gate, so he took his bike and rode along State Route 678 toward Manhattan.

The sky was cloudy and a cold wind was blowing, Logan was afraid of what he would discover, but at the same time he was intrigued and wanted to get to the bottom of it. Arriving at the address provided by Gate, he discovered that it was an old, long-abandoned church with boarded up doors and windows and sagging gray plaster on the exterior walls. Logan double-checked the address sheet first: "125 North Lake Street," this dangerous building was indeed the meeting place; he decided to go inside anyway, inside Gate was waiting for him.

"You've finally come," the man said.

"I'm just here to find out what happened yesterday."

"All right, but you will never believe me," Gate warns him, "The truth is that I am a Guardian, a man whose job it is to protect our universe from the Dark World, a parallel world where dark magic reigns. Guardians protect this universe through the Intraworld, a middle realm between the two universes."

Logan was confused, he was beginning to think the man in front of him was a madman, how could he believe him.

"That's the most absurd explanation I've ever heard," the boy said in a sarcastic tone.

"I knew you wouldn't believe me," he admitted, suddenly Gate's hand glowed and gave off dark orange trails. The ring on his finger looked ancient and the inscriptions above the heirloom, in contact with those mystical arts, glowed with a green light, Logan was shocked in front of this vision, he sat on a pew in the abandoned church then asked incredulously, "Who was that man, in the school that day?

"That man, Black, had come to capture you on behalf of the Dark Lord," he replied, "you are destined to become a Guardian like me and protect the Earth from darkness."

"What did he want from me?" asked Logan fearfully.

"You are destined, a human immune to basic magic, that's why you were immune to the Seal of Time, he wanted to prevent you from becoming a Guardian, that's why he wanted to capture you."

Logan returned home and tried to assimilate all the information he had learned, he also thought about Gate's proposal: that he go to the Intra-World with him to be trained and become a Guardian, a proposal Logan initially thought of refusing, but he had to ask himself what the alternative would be, would he have to watch his back for the rest of his life and endanger his friends and family? He had to accept his fate.

The next morning Logan went down to the kitchen and his mother was waiting for him, wanting to talk about what was happening to him. The boy reassured her, telling her not to worry and that he would be leaving that afternoon to spend the holidays with Mike at their mountain home in Minnesota. Logan picked up his father's notebook from his desk and left. On his way to Manhattan, he ran into Mike.

"Where were you last night?" his friend asked.

"I had to come home, I wasn't feeling well," the boy admitted.

"If it's because of Sarah, I'm sorry, I thought I was helping you."

"Do you think it's because of that?" said Logan, "thanks to you I spent some time with her and I was fine, but then I had a setback, I think it was dinner."

"Okay, so it's okay?" asked Mike.

"Sure," Logan reassured him. He got back on his bike and rode to Central Park where Gate was waiting for him in front of the pond.

"Before I go, I need to ask you a question," Logan said.

"Let's hear it."

"The symbols you created that day in front of the school look like drawings in my father's notebook, do you know what they mean?" asked Logan.

Gate smiled and said, "In due time I will answer that question, right now we have to go."

"All right," the boy resigned. So the two of them walked through the portal and disappeared.