Young Writers Society

Chapter Twenty-Two

Max acted quickly. He threw his hands out, grabbing on to his three friends and shutting his eyes tight, letting his energy spill into them. He could feel his power being passed through his arms and fingertips, flowing through their bodies and making them intangible to the horseman’s attack.

The horse ran right through them. Ness let out a stifled sound of fear and shock—she hadn’t realized that Max’s power was in her.

“Run,” Jonas said, looking over his shoulder. The horse had traveled quite a way down the earthen hall. Now it turned toward them, hooves clomping and pawing at the ground.

The four bolted down the hallway. As soon as they moved, the horse’s hooves could be heard—it was in hot pursuit.

They ran faster than they ever had before, taking the banks and turns of the hall in easy leaps and bounds. The horse rumbled the tunnel and insects fell from the ceiling, landing on them as they ran. Ness, ignoring her better judgment, kept running despite the large, ugly beetle that landed on her shoulder.

The hall opened up into a large room with four different tunnels on each side. Each one was darker and more mysterious than the next, and they had no idea where to go.

“This is just wonderful,” Max said, panting. “Which way are we supposed to go?”

Landon looked at Ness, but she was way ahead of him. She opened up her mind’s eye, trying to see what lay beyond each tunnel.

“Hurry up,” Jonas prodded, looking down the hall. “I think he got stuck in all the bends and turns, but he’s gaining on us.”

“You can’t hurry it,” Ness told him, trying to keep her concentration. It was harder to do while under pressure.

Slowly, the fogs of her thoughts began to unfurl. She waited in hopeful anticipation as her mind showed her what lie beyond each of the tunnels.

The first one was a dead end. It ended in a small, circular room—if they went that way, they would surely be caught. The second tunnel looped around to the beginning of the underground passage—if they went that way, they’d have to start all over again.

The third tunnel looked like a giant underground maze with high, thick stone walls. It opened up into the room with the Candle—but what if they couldn’t make it through? It would probably stop the horse from keeping up with them, though.

The fourth tunnel was a straight shot to the Candle. The hall was large, cavernous, and well-lit. It would be the easiest one to get through—but the horseman would probably catch up to them in no time.

“The third one,” Ness decided on her intuition. “Go into the third one.”

The horse’s hooves were loud and close now. They ran into the third tunnel before the horse even entered the large antechamber, and they found themselves face-to-face with the giant maze.

“Wonderful idea, Ness,” Jonas mumbled as they ran. “I wonder what the other choices were that you had to pick the maze.”

“Yeah, like a maze is going to be so hard,” Max retorted. “I can walk through walls, remember?”

“Oh yeah…” Ness remembered. If she had thought of that earlier, the choice would have been much easier. “The Candle is at the end of the maze,” she told them. “If you go straight through, we should be able to get to it.”

Max stood in front of the wall and the others put a hand on one of his shoulders. He felt a familiar tingling feeling as his power spread through him and to his friends, releasing their bodies from the laws of physics.

He started to walk confidently to the wall—but collided with it. His nose scraped off the thick stone. It wouldn’t let him pass.

“It’s not working.” He lifted a hand and tried to phase it through, but nothing happened. He pulled it back and examined it. “I don’t understand.”

Ness looked at the dirt below her feet and spotted a rock. She narrowed her eyes in concentration, seeing the effects of what she wanted to happen in her mind’s eye.

She pictured the rock lifting up off the ground and soaring into one of the walls and shattering into a million fragments. She knew it wasn’t working as soon as she imagined it and nothing happened.

“Our power doesn’t work here,” Landon said. “I can’t read your minds.”

“It’s not Friday, is it?” Ness asked, looking down at her watch again. “How far forward in time did we go?”

“No, it’s Thursday,” Max informed her. “We should still have our powers.”

“And we better get moving,” Jonas snapped, “or else the horse is going to come in here and find us.”

“Well, looks like we’re doing it the normal way,” Landon said. “Let’s go.”

He entered the maze with the other three close behind him. They walked for a long time, hitting dead ends and traveling in plenty of circles.

“This would be a lot easier if the walls weren’t connected to the ceiling,” Max mumbled. “The we could at least try to look over the tops.”

“Yeah, I wish,” Jonas agreed.

“You know, I don’t like this,” Ness said quietly after twenty minutes of searching for the exit.

“Yeah, why does it seem that in every movie or book they always have breadcrumbs or string when the characters end up in giant mazes?” Jonas asked.

“I wasn’t talking about that.” Ness laughed despite herself.

“Then what are you talking about?”

“This…feeling. I don’t know…” Ness stumbled over the words, not knowing quite how to explain it.

“Powerlessness,” Landon supplied. “This is what it’s like to be a normal person.”

“It sucks,” Max said bluntly. “I don’t like it, either.”

“What are you saying?” Jonas asked. “You want to save the world and risk our lives just to keep the powers?”

The other three fell silent, thinking about what Jonas said.

“Well…” Ness began.

“Come on.” Jonas stopped walking. “You can’t be serious.”

“Think about it! It’s going to be hard adapting to life like this,” Ness told him. “Sorry to break it to you, but you’re going to be lost.”

“I’d rather be lost than dead,” Jonas mumbled.

“Would you?” Landon asked.

Jonas was quiet for a moment, but then he said, “So you guys want to keep doing this kind of thing.”

“Walking blindly through a giant maze while trying to get our hands on a candle that could possibly determine the fate of the world?” Max asked, shrugging. “Sure, why not? It’s better than sitting at home on a Thursday night playing video games.”

“Yeah, well, now you’re in the video game,” Ness said.

“Ah, another dead end,” Landon muttered. “Turn around.”

“This is pointless. We’ve been walking in circles for—” Jonas checked his watch. “A half-hour already.”

“We’re not going to get anywhere without our powers,” Max mumbled.

Landon sighed. “Alright then, what do you suggest we do?”

“Go home?”

“No.”

“Give up, then. Or turn around…”

“Oh, come on. We’ve come this far,” Ness said with forced joy. “We can get through it. I hope.”

“Could you at least fill us in on what happened while we were time-traveling?” Jonas asked. “I’ve still got a whole day to make up for.”

“Alright. Where should we start?” Max walked forward and peered down one of the long, narrow corridors that made up the maze.

“Right when you guys got taken,” Ness told them.

Landon thought back. “Well…when the ground split, the things that jumped out on us weren’t demons,” he began. “Do you remember seeing them?”

“Yeah. Two of them grabbed you guys, and I grabbed Ness and we were supposed to go back in time, but we ended up going forward instead,” Jonas said.

“They don’t work for Satan,” Max explained to Jonas and Ness. “They were actually the Archangels.”

Ness stopped walking. “You’re kidding me.”

“Nope. Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. This guy is actually a real angel,” Max said. “They knew that Jonas was trying to turn back time, but they knew it wasn’t the right thing to do.”

“Their power can override ours,” Landon explained. “If they don’t want us to do something, then they can stop it. If we’re trying to do one thing with our power, they can change it around and make it do something else. That’s why you couldn’t figure out that the house had angels in it instead of demons, Ness. They made it so no one can tell.”

“Anyway, they took us to the house on Westchester Drive,” Max continued. “Just for the record, the fake Camael really had us going.”

“How so?” Ness asked.

“That place was run by Good the entire time—even when we went in it the first time to get the Candle, it was filled with Angels,” Landon said. “The fake Camael wanted us to go and get the Candle for him because he was going to give it to Satan. Apparently, he can make the Apocalypse come whenever he wants if he gets his hands on it.”

“But then why were all of them wearing black robes?” Ness asked. “Shouldn’t that be a symbol of evil?”

“Actually, no,” Landon said. “If they wear black, it helps them protect themselves from other kinds of powers reading them. What I mean is, that’s one of the reasons you couldn’t see if they were evil or good—because the black on their robes blocked your mind from Seeing it.”

“And what about Jordan Mackey?” Jonas asked. “She lives there, right?”

“She’s an angel,” Max told them.

“Of course you’d say that,” Jonas said.

“No, for real. She’s an angel. That thing between her and Greg in the hall wasn’t staged. She’s never been on the other side.”

“What did Greg want from her, then?” Ness asked.

“He wanted the key to the Candle,” Landon explained. “Whatever it is that can shift the balance of power from Good to Evil…he wanted it, and he thought that Jordan knew what it was.”

“But she doesn’t.”

“I don’t think so. She wasn’t telling us, anyway. Actually, all of the angels there were really mysterious. They wouldn’t tell us too much, except for the stuff that we really needed to know.”

“And then all these Dark angels started to storm the house,” Max told them. “We went outside to see what we could do to help, but most of them had gotten in by that time. Then the roof was on fire…and you know what happens after that.”

“If Good had the Candle the whole time, then what are we doing down here, trying to get it?” Jonas asked. “Is it really necessary for us to be here?”

“Good doesn’t have the Candle,” Max said. “No one does. This place is neutral ground; the Candle’s up for grabs. The angels built the house on Westchester Drive overtop of the Candle to try and protect it.”

“They probably built this entire underground maze to keep the Candle safe, but now Satan wants it to bring on the Apocalypse,” Landon continued. “And he has his demons in here, trying to get the Candle out.”

“So why don’t the angels in the house come and get it, if they built all this protection? Shouldn’t they know how to get to it?” Ness asked.

“They were very mysterious about why they wanted us to come and get it,” Max said.

“Really, those people do more harm than good. You really want to strangle them after about five minutes of talking about this stuff,” Landon muttered. “You would think that they would help us get through all this and everything down here…but no.”

Ness held back a laugh. “Is that all?”

“They don’t know what happened to the real Camael,” Max told them. “They didn’t even know he was missing. He appeared to us and told us our destiny…and then they never saw him again.”

“You would think they’d start to worry, especially around now,” Jonas criticized.

“Gabriel said that he does this kind of stuff all the time. They didn’t know that it wasn’t him here, guiding us. The imposter even had them fooled,” Landon continued.

“Alright, now I don’t feel so stupid,” Ness mumbled.

They walked on in complete silence. No one said anything for a full ten minutes other than mumbling different directions or cursing when they hit a dead end. The giant maze had an eerie quiet surrounding it: there was absolutely no noise made by anything inside. Therefore, when the four heard the sound of a struggle, they knew something was very wrong.

“Shh. Do you hear that?” Ness asked.

“Yes,” the boys replied.

“What is it?” Jonas asked, straining his ears.

“If it’s coming after us, we’re pretty much screwed,” Max said in his normal, pessimistic tone. “We don’t have our powers, remember?”

“It’s not moving,” Jonas told them. “It’s not getting closer or farther. Listen.”

The other four strained their senses; Jonas was right.

“I think it’s coming from over there,” Landon said, setting off toward the rustling noise.

“It might be the exit,” Ness suggested. “Let’s go.” She headed off in the direction of the noise; the boys looked at each other and shrugged.

“We’re already lost as all hell…why not?” Landon said before taking off to follow Ness.

They followed Ness through the twists and turns, trusting her instinct even if their powers were completely useless. It turned out that Ness didn’t need her strange intuition to find her way to the noise.

At first, none of them even realized that they found what they were looking for. It was pure shock to see what was in front of them.

Camael was tied to a wooden pole in a small clearing, bruises covering his face. Large welts and long, deep scratches covered his arms, and one of his magnificent white wings was bent at an odd angle.

“Oh…my…God…” Ness’s voice was barely audible through the heavy shock filling the air.

“No, that’s not me. You’re looking for someone else,” Camael said absently. He was trying hard to unbind his hands from behind him, and his unbroken wing was flailing as he did so, causing the loud rustling noise.

“Camael?” Landon asked, taking a step forward.

The angel jumped, looking up into Landon’s gray eyes. “You four! I was wondering when you’d get here. I was praying that it was before Friday.”

“Let’s get you out of there,” Landon told him calmly, moving around to the back of the wooden pole.

“No, wait,” Jonas interrupted. Landon stopped. “How do we know it’s really Camael this time?”

“Because I nailed the other guy to a tree with a dagger,” Ness told him. “Trust me, that guy is dead.”

“Yeah, but who knows how many other shape shifters are on their side—”

“Power doesn’t work in the maze,” Camael told him, cutting in. “Haven’t you noticed? If it did, I wouldn’t be stuck here.” His arms gave another fruitless yank behind him.

“He has a point,” Landon said, taking another step toward Camael. His natural, helpful state was taking over—Ness could see it in his eyes. Landon went behind Camael and disappeared completely behind his great white wings.

“How have you been doing this past week?” he asked the other three.

“Well, we haven’t been doing much, actually,” Ness told him, kicking at a feather that was lying on the earthen ground.

“You haven’t?” Camael’s voice was surprised.

“Well, since we had some guy impersonating you and trying to get us to work for the other side…no, we haven’t been doing anything helpful,” Jonas informed him.

“You’re kidding me.”

“No, not at all,” Max said. “He really had us going. He tried to get us to go and steal the Candle so that he could give it to Satan…he even had all the other Angels fooled.”

“I guess that’s my fault,” Camael mumbled, wincing as one of the ropes fell to the base of the pole. “Who was impersonating me?”

“I don’t know,” Ness said, shrugging. “He looked like a snake, though. Yellow eyes, that creepy smile…”

“Damien,” Camael muttered, saying the name under his breath.

“Damien?” Jonas let out a laugh, unbelieving. “A guy like that is named Damien?”

“That was his name when he was human,” Camael explained, shaking his head. “I can’t believe it…”

“Wait a second,” Landon interjected from behind Camael. “That guy was human once?”

“Not only that…he was a Mortal Angel. He was part of one of the best teams this world ever saw, but that was seventy years ago.” Camael sighed deeply. “He was something remarkable, that Damien.”

“There’s been other Mortal Angels?” Max asked.

“Of course there’s been Mortal Angels before. A lot of them.”

“What’s happened to them all?” Ness wondered out loud.

“Some quit after their trial period—you know, the week where you decide…I like to call it the ‘trial period.’ Has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? But anyway, some stuck with the job and finished what they were needed to do at the time…” His voice trailed off.

“Does that mean that the world has threatened to end before?” Max asked.

“Eh, once or twice,” Camael told him. The final rope dropped from around his wrist, and he slowly pulled his arms in front of him, wincing in pain. “You know—ow—it really hurts to be in the same position for five days.”

“What happened to you, anyway?” Landon asked, coming out from the other side of the pole.

Camael fluttered his wings, his face twisting as the broken one moved. “After I told you about your destiny last Friday, I thought I was getting a call from God…that’s why I had to leave so quick. But…well, that wasn’t God, let me tell you.”

“Who was it?”

“Ganelon and a group of his Dark angels,” Camael informed them. “Usually, I can take a few of them alone, but that day…there were at least ten of them. I was too outnumbered…they hit me with a blast of dark energy and I was gone.”

“Do you know how to get to the Candle from here?” Jonas asked.

“I think so. I helped to build this. I have to see about getting this thing fixed…honestly, I don’t know what you mortals do without power,” Camael mumbled.

“We were just wondering the same thing,” Ness said quietly.

“Alright, this way.” He began to limp down the earthen path, his broken wing twitching. “Uh, Landon? Would you mind doing me a favor once we get to the Candle?”

“I’ll heal you,” Landon replied.

“Good man,” Camael said, winking. “Let’s go.”

The way that the angel took them made them completely backtrack the path they took to get to Camael. They passed the exit close to the beginning of their journey into the maze, and if it hadn’t been for the angel, they would have been wandering in it for days.

The path was very well hidden, so they didn’t feel too naïve for missing it. Camael’s great wings barely fit through the narrow passage that opened up into the final stretch to the Candle.

The large, cavernous room where the small glass ball was kept hovered right in front of them.