The Seal of Oblivion (21 page)

“Someone has to be on the bottom.”

“That’s true, but if you’re their
leader, you’re supposed to protect them not take advantage of them,” Laqiya
pointed out. The tyrant sounded an awful lot like her father…

“People are weak dear. And people
with more power should use it to their advantage. It’s survival of the fittest.
The weak live and die for the powerful,” Sahajah said playing with a lock of
Laqiya’s hair. “You can’t blame a person for that.”

With startling clarity, Laqiya
remembered something, a faint memory where she had come to some type of
realization… No not her.
Sayyida.

“Animals do that,” Laqiya said
echoing her former self.

“What?” Sahajah asked with a strange
calm.

“Animals live by survival of the
fittest. But the difference between animals and humans is our humanity.
Thinking like that isn’t human.”

Sahajah laughed. “That was always
your weakness.
Always thinking about the lesser person.
Always concerned about humanity.
Always afraid of what
your powers could do to hurt someone.”

“If you weren’t concerned, then you
deserved it.”

Sahajah wasn’t laughing anymore.
“Pardon?”

“You’re an animal and when animals
begin to disrupt humanity, they have to be put down. The tyrant and his
mistresses deserved to be trapped in oblivion,” Laqiya said bracing herself for
the tantrum she sensed coming.

The jingle of Sahajah’s chains was
barely a sufficient warning as they wrapped around her and then slammed her
into oblivion’s seal. The seal cackled to life with electrical energy, a
defense against anyone or anything that sought to shatter it. Laqiya hissed as
it jolted her.

“You’re certainly one to talk about
an animal and who deserves to be put down. Look at you. You can’t even control
your own powers. Do you know the things you can do? Do you know the destruction
you’re capable of? There’s no point trying to control it. Nature is
animalistic.”

Sahajah lashed her chain at
oblivion’s seal, near Laqiya’s head. The seal crackled again.

“It makes no distinction.”

The chain wrapped around Laqiya’s
chest.

“It doesn’t give a damn about
friend or foe.”

Sahajah lifted Laqiya off the seal
and pulled the girl to her. She laughed in the girl’s ear and then finished, “And
it doesn’t give a damn about humanity,” Sahajah said slamming Laqiya into
oblivion’s seal.

Laqiya fell to the floor, her
aching body forcing her to keep still. But her mind wasn’t focused on the pain.
Her mind flashed back to the fire she had caused in the museum and all the
damage before that. Sahajah was certainly right. Her powers were animalistic.
When she was scared, or angry, or sad, nature made a way to comfort and protect
Laqiya by any means necessary to eliminate the threat, and that was okay. The
problem was she couldn’t control it. She couldn’t tame the forces… at least,
not on her own. She looked past Sahajah to her bag that had been dropped when
the woman grabbed her, staff pieces inside. She took a deep breath, closing her
eyes again, ignoring her aches as she reached her hand out for it, hoping for
once she could take command of her power, to bring the staff piece to her.

“That’s true,” Laqiya said calmly.
“But you want to know the difference between me and the Tyrant?”

Sahajah didn’t answer, but it
wasn’t like Laqiya gave
her the
chance to as she said,
“Nature may be animalistic, but unlike you and the Tyrant, I’m not. So it
doesn’t matter. I can tame it.”

Sahajah screamed, and in a fit of
rage whipped the chain forward. Laqiya imagined the woman was trying to spilt
open her head, but the second staff piece flew to her hand in the nick of time.
Laqiya raised her hand with the staff and the chain wrapped around it. Laqiya
then yanked it forward and swung the surprised mistress into seal. Again, it
crackled with energy and electricity, this time jolting bolt Laqiya and Lady
Sahajah.

However, instead of just crackling,
it threw both of them away and began to crackle violently, the energy filling
the room and disrupting even the Anaxars, who were forced to back away as the
energy somehow cancelled out their powers. Seizing the opportunity, Laqiya
darted over to help her friends out of their swampy prison while the seal
continued to fill the area with electricity.

“What’s going on?” Laqiya yelled over
the sound of the seal cackling before screaming as the roof began to cave in on
them. Chasity Pearl shielded her with a wing.

“I think between you and Sahajah’s
powers you’ve made the seal unstable, and it’s trying to repair itself,”
Nightshield yelled.

“Is that a good thing?” Adria
asked.

“Yes and no. Good it’s repairing
itself, but this would be the perfect time for someone to shatter it,”
Plainshield replied as they all inched back from the electrical energy that was
starting to fill the room.

Hearing Plainshield’s words, Laqiya
looked around the room for where Sahajah had gone. The dark mistress was
swinging her chain, and with one swift wrist movement, the weapon had turned
into a sword. She made her way right into the heart of the energy storm, seeming
not to be bothered by it, with the sole purpose of shattering the seal of
oblivion.

“Darn it,” Laqiya got up, heading
directly into the storm.

“No,” Isis said grabbing her arm.

“Yes,” Laqiya snapped. “Get out of
here right now. I’ll hold her off, but I have a feeling…”

“No,” Sakura and Adria added
stubbornly.

Laqiya smiled. “You all are great
you know?
Even when I was running away and making things
difficult, you all stayed by me.
I feel like you’ve been with me longer
than these six months, like I knew you before and maybe I did… Maybe Sayyida
did.”

“Laqiya…” Adria trailed off.

“Nightshield, Plainshield,” Laqiya
said looking at the two. “Take them out of here. It’s not a request.”

Nightshield and Plainshield didn’t
hesitate to guide them out, even though the other three girls and their bird
woman companion didn’t protest. They were too shocked. The guardians never told
her, but it was implied, something of an unsaid right, that the two were
obligated to obey her every command, but Laqiya never did so.

Assured that they were gone, Laqiya
turned her attention back to Sahajah who was now being protected by the Anaxars
as she used her sword to hack at the seal causing it to become even more
unstable. Laqiya grabbed one of the nearly forgotten staff pieces and took a
deep breath before leaping right over the Anaxars and Lady Sahajah, landing
neatly between them and the unstable shield. Laqiya used the staff piece to
block the sword as it came down and said a brief prayer. She only had one shot
at this. Before any of them could react, Laqiya cried out, “Wind!”

Wind had always been an easy force
for Laqiya to control without much effort but with all the strength and force
put behind the words, a maelstrom of wind picked up in the room, the whole
house actually.

“What are you doing?” Sahajah
yelled.

“Defeating you.”

“You’ll kill yourself!”

“And take all of you with me,”
Laqiya yelled, the wind overpowering and then neutralizing the energy from
oblivion. Its power suppressed again, oblivion disappeared, but Laqiya had lost
control of the maelstrom, and it had now engulfed the entire house, threatening
to swallow it whole.

Sahajah and the Anaxars tried to
get away, but not only would the maelstrom not allow them because somehow it
cancelled out their ability to teleport, but neither would Laqiya who grabbed
hold of Sahajah, not
intending
to let go. She was so
focused on it, that even though she saw the staff pieces glow, she wasn’t quite
aware that it had happened.

“Damn child. We’ll all be killed at
this rate.”

“That’s the point,” Laqiya said as
the walls came down on top of them. The house didn’t cave in like she thought
it would, but front left corner from top to bottom caved in on top of them and
the Anaxars, burying them all in the basement.

Chapter
Sixteen

The
White Rose versus Lady Sahajah

“Oh man,” Laqiya moaned as she sat
up and tried to remember what was going on. After rubbing her aching head, she
sat up and looked around. She wasn’t quite sure what had happened, wasn’t quite
sure where she had been, but she knew she hadn’t been here.

In the distance, she could see
Al-Rana palace, and because it looked so different from this angle, she guessed
she was seeing it from the back. Slowly she stood to her feet and looked
around. How did she get here…?

“You’re not really here. This is
just a memory.
My memory.”

Laqiya turned around to face the
person, a woman with long black locks falling to her waist and a long silk
dress. It was uncanny because except for her black locks and less delicate
features, she looked just like Laqiya.

“Memory.
That means you’re Sayyida?” Laqiya asked though she really didn’t need to. She
asked because she recognized this woman. “You were there that night. You were
the one who told me to remember that…” Laqiya still couldn’t admit it.

“Yes,” Sayyida said in a guarded
tone as she looked at Laqiya from head to toe. “I don’t remember being as young
as you are. Then again, this is the first time this has been done.”

“What has been done?”

“
That two White
Rose’s
have met.”

Laqiya didn’t try to hide her
shock, nor did Sayyida try to hide her amusement at Laqiya’s reaction. The
older woman smirked as she took a seat on the grass.

“Surely you didn’t think me and you
were the only ones. The history of this Earth is vast. There have been many
before us and many evils like the Tyrant and his mistresses.”

“But… You mean you aren’t even my
first life?” Laqiya asked.

Sadiyya scoffed. “God wouldn’t be
so cruel.
 
Even souls get tired and are
put to rest just like bodies.”

“So we’re like prophets or something?”

“More than prophets,” Sayyida
replied. “We are the embodiment of what we control.
 
We are Mother Nature incarnated, and when we
die, it’s our function that remains. You just happen to be my reincarnation,
and it’s only fitting. I never finished the Tyrant like I should have the first
time and our soul was restless. We had to be given another chance.”

Laqiya sat on the ground next to
her and said, “It’s been you with me all this time. You’ve been helping me.”

“When I had the strength,” Sayyida
said. “There’s a reason souls that go through things like we have aren’t
reused, at least as Mother Nature again. We go through a lot in a lifetime, and
quite frankly I’m tired but I can’t properly rest when our soul is at such
unease so I have to help you finish this when I can find the strength.”

“No,” Laqiya said to her.

Sayyida was the one surprised this
time.

“No?”

“You’ve helped enough. That’s why
you were reincarnated right? That’s why I’m here to do what you didn’t finish.
You’re the part of me that’s supposed to rest. I’ll figure everything out, just
like you did. You rest. You’re tired. Please, find peace knowing I’m making up
for what you couldn’t finish.”

Sayyida huffed. “I can’t. I have to
help you. Otherwise...” Sayyida trailed off as she sighed at the look on
Laqiya’s face. “I didn’t think you would be ready, when I found out how easy
and simple a world you’d be born into, how young you’d be. Maybe I was wrong.”

“Sayyida…”

“Laqiya,” she said standing up and
holding out her hand. The staff appeared in it, no longer three pieces, but
whole again. “This is yours now. It served me very well in the past when I
finally received it.”

Laqiya stood up and grabbed hold of
the staff with Sayyida.

“I want to apologize in advance. My
past is going to come back to haunt you, but you’ll cross that bridge when it
comes. Are you ready?”

Laqiya raised an eyebrow. “Is that
a trick question?”

Sayyida let go of the staff and
said, “You are now the new White Rose.”

It was a terrible sight to see
Sahajah rise up angrily from the rubble of the bottom corner of the house, hair
disheveled, skirt torn and jacket hanging halfway on her.

“Where is she?! Where’d that damn
child go?” she screeched. “Delsaream find her.”

“She may as well be dead in this mess,”
Delsaream said throwing a piece of rubble aside.
“Too bad
really.”

“I don’t care!”

Aurian shrugged.
“Tough
luck.
We couldn’t do anything if we wanted. Whatever that girl did
effectively neutralized our powers.”

“Damn it. Find her!” Sahajah
yelled. “Or at least kill those girls and those guardians. Do something.”

Sahajah looked around and then saw
poking out of the ground the third staff piece. She huffed and went over to it
to pick it up.

“Weak child.
The staff wouldn’t even react to her,” she said as she started to touch it.

The staff began to glow faintly,
and Sahajah pulled her hand back, a smile forming on her face.

“Now this is about to get
interesting,” she said.

“What’s happening down there?”
Sakura demanded from Isis who had an oddly confused look on her face.

They had made it outside the house
just in time to see the corner above the basement collapse on top of Laqiya and
Lady Sahajah. If that hadn’t been horrifying enough, Lady Sahajah just had to
climb out of the rumble with no Laqiya in sight.

“That’s odd… It’s almost as if
someone else was down there,” Isis muttered.

“Not that. What’s that?” Adria
asked pointing to the glowing third staff piece.

Before anyone could try to answer
the wind picked up in not just the house but the entire neighborhood, nature
stirring at some phenomenon.

“Who’s doing this? Is Laqiya…?”

“Look,” Nightshield said calmly
even as the wind whistled. She raised her hands up in the air and caught
something;
rose
petals, white rose petals.

Lightning cracked in the sky and
all the girls screamed as the wind picked up, just for a brief moment, and then
ceased, rose petals scattered about the ground. Now, where the staff piece had
once sat, someone else stood with a white cloak on, roses embroidered onto it
with silver threads, the hood hiding all her features. For all they knew, it
could have been some type of shadow monster underneath the cowl.

“Who is—Oh look at
me!
” Sakura said jumping to her feet. “I look good!”

Everyone looked at Sakura who was
now wearing a new outfit, rather simple, but certainly more distinguished than
the one from before; gold, with an off shoulder long sleeved fitted cotton top,
tucked into denim jeans, with a rose embroidered denim vest, and ankle boots.
Finishing the look were studded earrings with the eye of Horus on them,
representing her power, and braids tied into a ponytail, hair pinned around it,
and out of the way.

“You guys looked good too!”
 
Sakura said to Isis, who sported an outfit
identical to Sakura’s, and Adria who was wearing a pale lilac color and whose
gold studded earrings had the swirls representing wind.

“No fair!” Sakura said crossing her
arms. “How come she gets a cloak? I want one!”

Nightshield huffed. “It was hard
enough to get that glamour spell to stick as it was. A cloak would have just
been more complicated.”

“Can’t say I’m impressed,” Kailash
said. “So what she’s wearing a cloak
now.
”

“Well, it makes her look prettier,”
Aurian
said,
a smirk on his lips.

The White Rose shrugged off her cloak,
the item disappearing in thin air, revealing her white outfit, golden staff in
hand, and hair pulled up in a bun, a few strands hanging in random parts of her
face.

“Still not impressed,” Sahajah said
and something passed between the dark mistress and the White Rose, almost as
though there was something to be settled. Sahajah swung her sword low, and
White Rose blocked it, though with much more effort than she was trying to
show.

“Now, now little
girl.
We don’t want this to get ugly.”

“I’d like to get home before
morning. I have school Monday,” White Rose replied and Sahajah growled as she
brought up her sword in a series of complicated movements. White Rose met her
blow for blow.

“When did she learn to fight with
swords?” Sakura asked.

“She didn’t,” Isis said biting her
lip. “Come on. We have to help her.”

“Not so fast,” Delsaream said
appearing in front Isis, who jumped. She had forgotten about them. “I know
you’re eager, but this isn’t your fight to fight.”

“Yeah,” Aurian said running a
finger across Adria’s cheek. “We wouldn’t want these pretty little faces to get
hurt now would we?”

Adria rolled her eyes slapping
Aurian’s hand down, “You know I am so tired of you—”

Adria last words came out like a
battle cry-which made Sakura gasp and say, “Adria! That was rude!”-as she swung
her arm in an uppercut at Aurian, the wind seeming to follow the motion putting
much more power into the hit than it would have had on its own. Aurian went
flying into the part of the house that was still standing, causing it to
shudder and show how unstable it was.

Seeing this, White Rose leapt up to
the part of the first floor that was still intact, which wasn’t a hard feat
since all she had to do was climb the rubble.

“Running away?”

“I’m not stupid is what,” White
Rose yelled just as Isis and Kailash crashed into the house causing it to
shudder again. It wouldn’t hold long, and once it collapsed, it would be darn
near impossible to get out the basement.

Sahajah followed White Rose into
the main part of the house, now angered by White Rose’s insult.

“Wind,” White Rose called, and a
powerful gust blew Sahajah’s way.

The woman held up her sword and
thrust it forward in a jab at the wind causing the wind to curve back at White
Rose and send her flying back into one of the walls of the building. Having not
acquired the grace to recover from an attack
 
that knocked the wind out of her like she had seen the Anaxars and her
guardian’s do, White Rose took a little time to gain her bearings again, and
Sahajah took the opportunity to lunge at her with her sword. Still trying to
get her breath back White Rose was barely able to bring up her staff to block
it. She doubted she’d be able to hold it for long, but she didn’t have to.

Isis grabbed Sahajah’s wrist and
pulled it back. Sahajah twisted her wrist out of Isis’ grip and swung her sword
at her. Isis narrowly missed the brunt of the attack but ended up with a long
gash in her arm. White Rose got up and got in front of Sahajah’s sword.

“Are you nuts?” White Rose asked.
“You can’t fight without a sword.”

“And you can barely fight with a
staff. So we’re even,” Isis shot.

White Rose glared at her and then
said, “You fight, and I’ll cover you.”

Isis nodded and between White Rose
using the staff to block Sahajah’s sword attacks and Isis attacking her, they
made a halfway decent pair against Sahajah’s expertise. But White Rose was
becoming more and more aware of the dark mistress’ boredom, more so with Isis
than her. The dark mistress was only toying with them. Sahajah backed out the
way and twirled the sword in her hands and over her knuckles before slashing
the air with it, creating two curved black streaks of energy. White Rose and
Isis were barely able to comprehend what Sahajah had done before Sahajah thrust
the energy forward, forcing them both to move out the way in different
directions. White Rose belatedly realized that was exactly what Sahajah wanted.
The dark mistress attacked Isis, and with much effort, Isis moved out the way.
White Rose cursed the fact that Isis couldn’t outwardly channel her powers. She
needed something, a weapon to help her channel it. Isis needed her own sword.
It was then White Rose caught sight of something on Isis’ back, a small
holster. White Rose raised an eyebrow. That was certainly interesting,

“Isis,” she yelled. “Reach behind
your back and don’t ask questions. Just do it.”

Though Isis looked like she
wouldn’t have questioned her if White Rose hadn’t told her not to, she reached
behind her and seemed surprised when her hand grabbed hold of something. She
pulled it from behind her and in her hands appeared a sword, much less bulky
than Sahajah’s and was in fact very feminine to begin with. The hilt was flat,
slim, and gold with the eye of Horus at the bottom and there was something
inscribed on it in ancient Aramaic characters. The blade, while shorter than
Sahajah’s blade, was made to appear longer because of how slim it was. It
looked a lot like Isis and was obviously made with someone like her in mind,
for someone who liked to be agile and not be weighed down; light, yet durable
and very flexible.

Isis only had a moment to glance at
it though, before she had to use it to stop Sahajah’s sword.

“Well that plan didn’t work,”
Sahajah said dryly.

“No fair!” Sakura said coming down
the stairs. “I want a sword!”

White Rose felt the electric tingle
in her spine as she looked at Sakura who was so upset that she didn’t have her
own sword that she didn’t notice Delsaream’s vines shoot out the ground and try
to trap her.

“Sakura!”

“Whaaa…” Sakura screamed realizing her
predicament.

Wind came from two directions to
blow her roughly out the way. One gust had come for White Rose and the other
from a furious looking Adria, who was making her way to Sakura after the vines
crashed into the floor.

“Pay attention you ditz! This isn’t
a game.”