Watg her white magic flow like water from her palm, Tatum let herself have a moment of peace as she protected her friend. “I always knew you’d e back, Heather.” Her soft voice echoed and sounded a long distance away. A thin streak gently flowed to Tatum’s id pulled out the oed a month prior. “Read that once you have returned from the realm…You know the risk, other than your body bei don’t you?”

  Imagining a suit of angelic armor, Heather’s own palm fred to life with a brighter energy flow than she remembered having. One heavenly steel feather at a time yered itself around her body as well as Carrie’s tiny form. “I missed this, Tatum.” Heather ented in the exact same hollow voice as the elder mage. Spidery little strands of white reached out and plucked some of the kyanite from Tatum’s pocket ahe blue gem’s power through the webbing and quickly absorbed. “I will need more kyaatum…and yes. I recall the dangers.”

  Many nights while alone, Heather had heard Derek enting that there was more to going bad forth to the darkrealm than ‘The Loved One’ let on. Recalling that most nights that he had an excursion into the cloudy realm, he returned exhausted and a little less himself. Through his bed fessions, Heather had learhat Derek felt like he was being fed from or on the worst days that Derek was being part of the shadowed realm. It was shortly after hearing that he was losing himself that Heather instituted the fifteen-minute rule for the rest of the Awakened, approved by their loving leader.

  “I haven’t actually ever crossed into the realm before, Heather.” Tatum finished her spell and watched as white streaks went in a long oval arouher and her infant. “I might be exposing a little more about Denise, but you have to know that she went there often and before she created the Awakened.” Walking over to the er of her basement, Tatum grabbed a gnarled long wooden pole with a fist-sized pearl attached. “I suspect that is how she learo bee a lich.”

  “She was a what?” Heather finished her own spell and appeared much like an angel sent from heaven itself, plete with a white-gold halo. “A what?” Heather repeated herself aated to summon her simucrum. “That’s why she was always immuo the effects, wasn’t it?” Looking down at her infant daughter in her little pink warm sleeper, Heather hesitated to cast her spell. “Derek was right, wasn’t he?”

  It was the slow nod that Tatum gave as she headed up the stairs. “Whatever yoing to do, you o do it right now.” Almost as though it were a prediultiple howls of chaos and hateful glee echoed above Tatum. “I will keep them off of you as best I .” She patted her side, “I have a little bit of bloodstone. I just hope your pn works.” Tatum saw Heather open her mouth and held up her hand. “Don’t tell me, just in case.”

  Slowly ahodically Archaios Enas drove Elle’s big bck Victoria right up to Tatum Bckwell’s small home. Memories stolen and provided by the former owner of the body she inhabited gave the white shadewraith all the information she needed. A hint of nervousness pulsed as Archaios Enas felt the initial her host once had.

  -Wele back to 1777 Palm Way rotten-shell. Your usefulness is done. Yes, feed me with the st vestiges of your horror and fear.-

  Archaios Enas eo the st fragment of Elle Miller’s g and sorrowful existence.

  -Yes, hic..your thoughts of your lost love bees my power you pathetic being.-

  Archaios Enas’s diamond eyes went bck for a split sed and she ed the st portion of Elle that she’d kept imprisoned and tortured for days. Power coursed through Archaios Enas' white ghostly form, abs the remains of terror and fear like twisting a spoil every drop of water had been removed. “Angelie…” She whispered to herself as she jammed the car into park. “...Such power in lost love.” She cackled and forced Elle’s body to open the car door.

  While Archaios Enas could easily discard Elle’s body at this point as it was little more than a shuffling zombie with coaguted brackish blood draining from different parts of its skin, she chose to keep the body for one reason, fear. F the body to walk to the other side of the car, Archaios Enas stood at the edge of the sidewalk and studied Tatum’s home. A shell-like barrier of pearl white covered the ey of Tatum’s property. “Ah, the leader of the pabsp; A lovely magic-shell.” She ented, her voice malevolent and gravelike. “That’s right, make this a fight. Every little stitch of failed magic is fuel.” Archaios Enas poio the handful of young mages on the wn. “Their fear is already feeding me, Miss Bckwell.”

  Standing defiantly on her front porch with her light-brown hair blowing in the breeze, Tatum stood with her arms crossed glowing a calm blue. Clear that she needed a way to stall for time, Tatum decided to try and bolster the fidehin her udents. “Don’t listen to her, she ’t do anything with a rotting body and our bined shield up. Gaia has blessed us.” Tatum kept a silent t in her head and deep within herself, felt the touch of Heather’s spell still being woven. “Focus, and I will handle her.”

  Time and experieh the many facets of both the living and unliving had given Archaios Enas a great insight into most motives and after studying Tataum a few seds shook her nearly skinless head. “Cute magic-shells.” Archaios Enas decred and reached into her ash-grey stomad pulled a handful of little balls out and tossed them into the air. With a fre that was inteo shake the few ihe barrier, she ughed and announced. “y beloved, take your form, spread your shadows. Show these magic-shells what they are going to suffer.” She watched as her inky shadewraiths all started howling and darting close to the barrier. “Feel it my beloved, their fear is stroake it…” Archaios Enas went silent.

  {“Do not touch the shell. Split yourself into doubles to fuse them and join me…I want half of you to stay in sight, the other half underground with me. The fool didn’t make a bubble.”}

  Watg the shadewraiths suddenly begin ughing with more vigor, Tatum did her best to track the myriad of bck objects as they passed over the shield they’d erected. It was only after she saw the pool of dead flesh and blood where Elle’s body had been, that the old mage knew her mistake. “Oh, god.”

  {“Archaios Enas delivers unto us more to feed, more to e. We will rip them apart.”}

  A soft and calming voice echoed iher shadewraiths mind, Archaios Enas kept firm trol over her beloved.

  {“No, we he magic-shells. Torture and e slower than you ever have. Lock their spirit away and feed on their panibsp; I will take their leader. Atta unison.”}

  {“Archaios Enas has spoken.”}

  Growls of aowledgment echoed from the shadewraiths into Archaios Enas, feeding her with their own residual chaos.