In the midst of the glow was a figure with a vaguely human shape and human features, but it seemed to be fashioned from white and brightness and golden light. Was it some sort of shifter I hadn’t met before? I blinked and took off my glasses to rub my eyes. By the time I’d replaced them, I saw a man standing in front of me. A man who looked fairly normal, except for his strange clothes and the wings on its back, but the wings didn’t surprise me much. After all, the first shapeshifter I’d ever seen that long ago night in the Costas’ courtyard, when my innocence of what was really out there had been cruelly stripped away, was a winged griffin. Either I was inured to the sight of shifters and the supernatural by now, or I was too weary to be frightened, or else I was actually still asleep and dreaming. Whatever was happening, I surprised myself by not freaking out to see a random stranger a few feet away.
“Eleanor.”
The man spoke. His voice was deep, sending a thrum through my pulse. “Eleanor,” he repeated. “You have been heard. Lift your eyes to the hills. Help is there.”
The hills?
I couldn’t remember seeing any hills. Only water, the beach, the endless forest…
“You haven’t much time,” he went on. “You must find help for him. He is the Repairer of the Breach, and you must save him.”
I didn’t know what he meant by Repairer of the Breach. Was he talking about Carter? He had to be, but what breach was Carter supposed to repair? How would he repair it? How could he do anything if he didn’t wake up?
“I-I don’t understand,” I stuttered. “What breach? I don’t even know where we are. Wh—what place is this?”
“This is the other world,” the stranger explained. “One of many, but the one from whence came the Talos’ kind. If war is to be prevented upon Earth, war between his kind and yours, the breach must be healed. He alone can complete it.”
My overawed, fuzzy brain struggled to think. Did that mean—where had Mr. Costas told me shifter and shifter magic originated? Atlantis? I’d sort of written it off as a joke or a fairytale at the time. But if what the visitor was saying was true, could the portal have actually brought us to Atlantis? I guessed it made sense, in a strange sort of way, that the magic of the Stones would have drawn us back to where everything began. However, what this creature was saying still didn’t make sense. It almost sounded like a prophecy—like a real prophecy. Like Carter, the Talos, had an actual job to do or destiny to fulfill.
As if reading my mind, the creature said, “His destiny is in his blood. The blood will unlock all. The blood is the key.”
“The key to what?”
No change of expression, but I got the feeling my visitor was staring at me as if I were really stupid.
“The blood is the key,” he said again.
With that, he drifted backwards, as if preparing to go.
“Wait!” I exclaimed. I shot up, holding up a hand. “If the blood is the key, if Carter has some important job to do, then he can’t die here, can he? How am I supposed to help him?”
“Lift your eyes to the hills. Your help will come from the hills.”
“What help? What hills? What—”
“No more!”
The creature’s voice rang with a power, an authority that made me shrink. He raised his other arm, displaying a staff that had been hidden by his wings. Even as I scrambled back, unwilling to be near him but also unwilling to leave Carter, he stretched out his staff, touching the end to a large stone lying nearby in the sand. Fiery warmth curled from the end of it, setting the stone ablaze. I covered my mouth with my hand, watching the stone melt down, its rough grey form dissolving, softening into a different shape: a jug, a covered box.
“Here is strength,” said the creature. “Take it and eat. In the strength of this meat you shall go. In its power, your eyes will be opened. Find him the help he needs. Help the Repairer of the Breach.”
More questions filled my mind, tumbling around my skull like snowflakes in a snow globe. Before I could voice them, the visitor’s wings gently flapped, raising him off the ground.
“Wait!” I tried to insist, but my tongue wouldn’t cooperate. The arm I tried to lift refused to raise itself. I blinked rapidly as I fought a wave of nausea, fatigue. All of the sudden, my head was too heavy to hold up. The strength in my limbs liquefied. I felt myself sliding down onto the Talos’ cold, motionless form. My head sank onto his chest. My eyelids obscured my vision. In my head, I heard a final word—“Help has come, but now you must rest before the approaching conflict.”
I didn’t know what that meant. I didn’t know what any of this meant, but it didn’t matter. My dreams were calling me. I surrendered and slept.
Chapter Three
How much time passed before I woke up again, I had no idea. The day didn’t seem to have changed much, as far as light and dark were concerned. Either I hadn’t been out long, or night and day worked differently here. I didn’t waste any time trying to figure it out. Instead, my first thought was Carter. He was still in his Talos form. Should I be concerned about that or not? What if he was permanently stuck as the Talos? Or was it the Talos form keeping him alive?
I felt at his mouth for breath, my own hitching in my chest until I made certain of his.
