Guardians of the Watchtower: North

Chapter 16

Ivy stepped back away from the wall, spacing her feet a little like Adaliah had she concentrated, it felt kinda like flipping a switch in her head, and she could feel a warm fuzzy feeling like a thousand butterflies were flying in her stomach. She gathered her powers up looking at her palms as they began to shimmer and glow. The ivy that made up her pentagrams began to look like it was alive, the circles moved like they did when she was blessed by the Goddess. Ivy turned her palms away from her body and began making a circle in front of herself faster and faster. Her hands moved leaving behind the same iridescent circle in its place, as she willed her power into her hands. She could feel the power crawling from her center down her arms bringing a shiver from her, it was breathtaking feeling her power for the first time like this, and they flared to life. Like second nature she knew where her hands went to form the five point star,both hands moving in opposite directions, crisscrossing and back down as her voice rang out from her throat with more force than she thought she had.
"Hail to the Guardians of the Watchtower of the North by the power of earth I summon you forth to witness this rite and to guard this circle."
Her voice rang out the last words, and her hands came together to complete the pentagram. Ivy felt the most powerful surge of energy she had ever felt since touching the Goddess crawl down her arms, like a million caterpillars and set the pentagram in a blazing emerald green light at the same time her pentagrams in her palms came to life. Vines of ivy poured out of her hands as the pentagram she had cast flipped up and came back down to land around her like Adaliah had, but the ivy didn't stop it kept going. The vines of ivy began crawling toward the doorway to fill the wall, scared and not knowing what to do Ivy screamed for Adaliah's help.
"Make it stop. I didn't even do anything!!!!"
Adaliah just laughed amusingly, "Will it to stop."
"What??"
"Will it to stop and it will, it's your energy. When there is more than one guardian our powers grow, that's why Dovarian is trying to kill us. He's trying to stop the prophecy and become the God to take the Goddess' life, so there won't be anyone to keep him from bringing the Shadow Walker world to be the only world ....."
"So just will it to stop??"
"Yeah!"
Ivy tried to concentrate and think stop growing and with that final thought it stopped spreading, the last leaf pulled itself from her palm shaking almost like it was hurt. She didn't want it to grow more as it curled up next to the other vines that already had built half a wall alongside the doorway. Looking at her palms in wonder, never in a million years did Ivy think this is where she'd be, in this place as a prisoner to a brute, that's for sure. He was planning on killing her and Addy.
"okay so I can make my powers do things, I can control the earth, make things grow and build things?!"
"Kinda..... things like that, armor, protection stuff,glamor, little things that are in contact with you... yes, but big things like attacks or spells on others, no. You have to do the incantations to make them work."
"Armor?"
"Yeah as guardians we each have a set of battle armor."
"Battle armor...what are we battling?"
"The shadow walkers!"
"Oh!"
"Did no one explain any of this to you?"
"No, I was taken from my birthday party right after I ascended."
"Oh so you don't know how to use your powers or why they need us... anything at all?"
"I know a few of the rules that's about it ...oh and how to cast my circle now."
"Great......" Adaliah sounded irritated now.
"Will you help me?"
"I don't really have a choice, if we're both gonna get out of here, we gotta help each other cause I can't do this alone."
"I'm sorry. "
"Don't apologize, I was new at this once too ...when I was a kid...."
"You grew up knowing you were gonna be a guardian?"
"Yeah, my parents started preparing me when I turned twelve."
"That must have been great!"
"Not really, people treated me differently, my mom had to use glamor on me every day so people couldn't see my eyes and to hide the scars that looked like scales. "
"You have scales??"
"Yeah, not a lot, they're on my hips on both sides in the shape of tridents, they are birthmarks."
"You have one too! "
"I have scales?"
"No, you have a marking of your element."
"I don't think so....I mean I've never seen one."
"it doesn't come out till you ascend, not a scar or birthmark till then."
Ivy's hand went instantly to her hair, she felt the baby ivy that was intertwined with it now.
"Yeah, that's your birthmark....yours was hidden by your hair that's why you couldn't see it."
"Why can't Dovarian see it?"
"Because the Goddess stripped him of his powers so he can't see the light anymore, only the darkness, that's why he's trying to force us to tell him."
"How did he know it was us?"
"I'm guessing someone in the MoonWalkers is a double agent and is aiding him in hopes of gaining more power than what the Goddess has blessed them with...."
"That's low!"
"Tell me about it."
"What's the prophecy you keep saying?"
"It was said that when the three moons eclipse and line up to create the triple phase, five girls, one for each element would come and stand together as a sisterhood, as a coven to stand to face the great darkness, to create the ultimate weapon and give the world hope or doom all life."
"So there's five of us?"
"Yeah, there will be, the others haven't ascended yet, or I would have already found them. I was on my way to find you when I was captured. I think that's how they found you so fast cause they were following me."
"But we don't have three moons."
"The moons of the shadow world, the moonwalker world, and the human world."
"Oh, so we have to find the other three girls?"
"Yeah, we have to escape first then find them before Dovarian does!"
"If one of us dies were all doomed because the prophecy needs all five of us to work, right?"
"Right, that's why we gotta get out of here because Dovarian will kill us. He detests the Goddess and will do anything he has to do to kill her, including killing all of us in the way."
"But why? I mean after seeing all the people in his court, a lot of people have lost their powers because of their own doing. Why would he have such a grudge against the Goddess?"
"Because he thinks the Goddess turned her back on him when she didn't protect his daughter."
"He has a daughter?"
"He does, she was kidnapped, and he's angry because he feels that the Goddess could bring her back, but won't.We can't break the laws of our world for selfish gain."
"Is that how he got banished?"
"Yeah, he took the life of the leader of another coven. Taking a life for a life wouldn't bring her back to him, but he thought the other leader knew where she was and wouldn't tell him. The Goddess found out, stripped and bound him forever, never able to do magick again because he took a life that was not his to take."
Ivy sat down on the stone floor pulling her knees to her chest and laid her head down on them. Thoughts flooded her mind about what it must feel like to have a child, love the child with everything in you and have your child taken away from you. Feeling so helpless because you can't do anything to bring your child back. It must feel like losing a part of your soul. Wondering if you could have done something different they would still be there. It almost made her feel sad for him because he wouldn't be like this if his child wasn't gone, she bet.
"Who was he before his powers were stripped?"
"He was a high priest of a coven from a different element"
"What element?"
"I don't know my mom would not tell me. She said after Dovarian was stripped, the Goddess knew his anger was going to consume him. so she spread his Coven over the Wastelands. She stripped only the ones that had aided him in his mission to bring back his daughter, which was practically every one of them."
"So all the people who were attacking and spitting on me where like us?"
"Yeah they were, when the Goddess banished them here she scattered them, but they found their way back to each other. "
"Why can't the Goddess see us here?"
"When she created this place it was part of the promise she made to us. If we walked in the shadows of ourselves, she would leave us here to find ourselves. It's part of the punishment not to be near her or to be loved by her. Feeling the Goddess is like every happy moment in your life wrapped up in one,every fiber of your being wants to be near enough to touch her. "
"Tell me about it. It's like electricity in a bottle."
"So where is this place exactly? Because last I checked we were in the middle of corn feed America...."
"Technically we are, and we are not. We're on a different plane of being, that's why we need the portal to get back."
"So then how do the banished people get back with no powers?"
"The veil between the worlds lifts during all the major equinoxes. So when they have proven to be worthy of being in the grace of the Goddess again, she gives them back their powers and lets them come back to our world. As long as they haven't taken any life, if they have they're banished, forever. "
"Why doesn't she just kill them?"
"What do you think is worse, a quick death or being made to live here, in nothing with no powers? Keeping in mind that we don't age like humans do and one year in our world is like ten in the human world."
"I see what you mean, how long have you been here?"
"A few months I think, since you've been here it has been a few weeks."
"Wait? I've been here a few weeks?"
"Yeah, I counted the moons since they brought you in."
"Why hasn't Sylar or John come for me??"
"Who's Sylar?"
"Oh, uh, he's well he's my friend, that's a boy......it's complicated."
"We obviously aren't going anywhere."
"Well he hasn't asked me out yet, but we've kissed and have spent a lot of time together. He was my date at my birthday party."
"Ivy and Sylar sitting in a tree k-i-s-s-i-n-g first comes love then comes marriage, then comes a baby in a baby carriage!"
There was a split second of silence before they both erupted in laughter at their silliness, Ivy and Addy both leaned against the walls of their cells mirroring each other as they put the fingers through the opening interlacing them together as their laughter died back down.
"It's gonna be ok Ivy, we'll get out of here together. I promise I won't leave you behind."
"I promise I won't leave you behind either."
"We're sisters, we may be from two different places and grew up different, but we were meant to be sisters, you bleed I bleed, you hurt I hurt, we protect each other."
"I've never had a sister, I've never had any siblings before."
"Well you have me now."
"And you have me, were gonna get out of here one way or another, together"
"Have you tried to make anything with the ivy yet?"
"No, I didn't even think to try it."
"Try and will it to make a bed of vines, on the top of that bench they call a bed."
"I'll give it a shot."
Ivy stood up pulling her hand from Addy's, unlocking their fingers. , Dusting off her clothes and hands she walked over to the bench slowly. When she walked across the beam of light that was coming through her little-barred window, the warmth on her skin made her stop, for just a second as she let it wash over her. She missed the sun more than she ever thought she could, but its warmth was a drastic change from the cold stones under her bare feet, stealing any warmth she had away.
"I miss the sun too, trust me anything is better than this place Ivy."
"Ivy pulled her arms into herself as she tried to hold on to the moment for a second longer, but the sun slipped below the horizon of the window, casting its loving beam up towards the wall. It's light only within reach of her fingertips as it slid away to the nights beckoning for his chance to shine. Ivy sighed to herself as she took the last few steps to the bench. Holding up both hands she tried to concentrate on making it go it only came out making a knotting rats nest of a pile near her.
"Clear your mind. Ivy, in order for our magick to work the right way, we have pure thoughts and a pure heart. , We can't just force it to be, we have to let it be, think of one of your happiest thoughts."
Ivy cleared her throat and took a minute to let her mind just wander. It was like a little movie reel playing in her head. She was sixteen years old again, and her mom had to work all week. It was almost Halloween and Halloween was always a really big deal to them. This Halloween it was different, her mom had planned a day for just the two of them to go shopping at a local rocker goth chic boutique that was close to their house. It was a day she would never forget , her mother actually acted like her mom again. They were best friends and talked,laughed, tried on clothes together and in the end, her mom had surprised her with a brand new pair of boots. Her first real pair of boots. Her mom's philosophy was if you wanted them you gotta lace them up, not the zipper crap, so they were knee high, laced and buckled boots and they were perfect. The day was perfect, and as the image of her mom hugging her so tight filled her eyes with tears, her hands flared to life again this time the vines flowed out of her effortlessly, neatly layering themselves. Ivy willed the vines to stop, and they did, but she didn't move, she just stood there as tears flowed down her face, splashing the stone at her feet.
"Ivy,are you ok sweetie?"
"I'm just tired, Addy, I'm gonna lay down for a while."
And with that Ivy crawled onto the newly made bed pulling her arms and legs into herself as she quietly cried herself to sleep.