Traveler - The Price (Book 3)

During that travel, I had realized something. I wasn’t the one who needed to be saved. I needed to be found and appreciated for what I was: total madness. It was my role to keep everyone safe because of what I was. I knew I was wrong in the past, considering myself weak, powerless, and that led to the loss of many people, who were stronger than me. All that mattered at that moment was that I could make a difference, change something, save the world through who I was, and that felt so good. In the end, I was a hero too, but not in the whole book, just in a few chapters. More than that, I was surrounded by real heroes, who had resisted the worst tests. I was proud to have strong people by my side.

I had found out that when there’s no hero in your story, you have to pick up that sword and name yourself your hero. This because you are the only one who could save yourself. No one besides you can become the main character in your story.

I opened my eyes. I was lying on the hot asphalt. The sun was shining bright, and I saw around me a lot of glass, blood, and ruins. A few griffins were on the ground, a sign that there had been a fight. I got up, and I realized nothing hurt me. Every time I was passing through that portal, all my wounds were healing, and I was like new. Only the mark under my ribs remained there.

“Aaron!” I shouted when I noticed he wasn’t there.

I stood up, and I looked around. I was hoping he didn’t let go of my hand because I had no idea where he could have landed. I heard a noise, and I went on alert. I saw him getting up behind some ruins, and I ran at him.

“Are you ok?” I asked him.

“Yeah” he says coming back to his senses.

He lifted his blouse, and he noticed he didn’t have the wounds that had sent him in the Underworld.

“I still can’t believe I’m not in Heaven” he says. “I still think this is a dream.”

“Aaron, everything is real. Come on. We have to find the others. I will explain everything on our way.”

We went looking for our friends because they couldn’t have been too far. I explained to him what had happened since the moment I had fallen from that cliff until I went back for him in the Underworld. He was listening so fascinated that he forgot to walk sometimes and he stopped to listen carefully. I realized how sounded what I was telling him, but that was the truth and I couldn’t do anything about it.

He told me everything that had happened from his point of view, at the time they thought me dead.

“I’m glad that you have moved on and you continued your mission” I said in the end.

“We couldn’t move on, but we knew that you would have wanted us to continue, so we did that.”

We were moving forward while we were talking, but at some point, we heard noises from a store. We thought there were our friends, so we stepped inside without thinking too much. There, we were welcomed by two nymphs who were breaking everything on their way. They seemed hungry. I looked at them, and I felt I was choking because we were unarmed. When they ran at us, Aaron pushed a shelf over them. We rushed out, but they followed us. It seemed like we had entered that world and we couldn’t have one second of peace.

While we were running, we heard gunshots. We turned around to see what had happened because as far as we knew, the nymphs didn’t carry guns. They were lying on the street, and I saw Deby behind them. Then Ivy and Andy appeared. Deby shouted out of happiness, and she ran into my arms. Ivy joined her and Andy approached shocked.

“Aaron? Is it really you?” he asks.

“It looks like Jo doesn’t want to get rid of me too soon” he says.

Andy hugged Aaron, and then the girls were next. We were together again, but I owed them some explanations.

“How long has it been?” I asked.

They looked weird at each other for a few seconds, then Deby took the word.

“It’s been three months and two weeks” she says.

“God… This is insane!” I said.

“Jo… We need some explanation. We are excited to see Aaron, but how is this even possible? Is he a Traveler too? Or what?” asks Ivy.

“It’s a long story, but I will make it short for now, and I will tell you that my abilities of Traveler come with an advantage, so I can take one soul one single time when I leave the Underworld.”

“Only once?” asks Andy.

“Yes, so I hope there will be no need to bring back anyone else because I can’t.”

They looked at me shocked, but I could read the happiness in their eyes.

“I want to hear about you guys. Have you found the place from the map?”

It was again a moment of awkward silence.

“Yeah, that is one of the problems” grumbles Ivy.

“We lost the map” says Andy.

“It was stolen from us” Deby corrects him.

“Whatever. Two weeks ago, we were attacked by a group of crazy nymphs. We put them down, but one escaped with the map. Aura has it, and she’s heading to that place” continues Andy.

“The idea is that we have an advantage because I memorized the map and I know the way there. I mean I have this thing… some premonition. Just like that, after I saw it, I knew the way” says Ivy. “More, we memorized the spell too, then we burned it, to keep the advantage. Aura doesn’t know the spell. Even if she gets there, she had nothing else to do besides to wait. She doesn’t have your blood either.”

“The perks of being a prophet” grumbles Deby.

“The only way Aura can get there is by foot or by car because, otherwise, she can’t find the place. It can’t be located using magic or spells. This is another thing we had found out when you were gone. If she uses her powers to get there, she will miss the place, says Andy.”

“How do you know this?” asks Aaron.

“Ema enlightened us. She explained to us why she joined them and why she did what she did. To protect us and to induce Aura in error. Ema has Aura’s sources, and this helps a lot” says Deby.

“Well, we were at one step not to get all these information” grumbles Ivy.

“I wasn’t going to kill her!” shouts Andy. “I just wanted to scare her and to teach her a lesson, the same way she did with us!”

“What have you done?!” I shouted.

“Andy took her pretty hard… When he saw her, he jumped at her with the sword, and I thought he was going to kill her. But he did the right thing because it was the only way we could have contact with her, without any suspicion” says Deby.

I listened to that story very nervous, and I couldn’t believe how many things had happened in three months and a half. Aaron and I couldn’t believe the map was stolen from them. We were together again, and things were about to get easier for all of us. Or not.

“I think it’s time to find that place” says Aaron standing up.

“I agree!” I supported him.

“I’ve missed you so much!” says Deby.

“We can’t say the same because I was gone for a day technically, and Aaron for two” I said amused.

“Shut up! I know you missed us!” says Ivy. “But I don’t understand a thing. If you have stayed one day there, the last time you’ve been there, and here have passed three months, how do you explain the fact that Aaron has been there longer but the time has passed in the same way?”

“I think it works only with me that way” I said confused.

“What matters is that you’re here!” says Deby.

“We are here, and we are ready to finish this!” I said certainly.

I was very confident. I just knew that, in a way or another, things were going to work out for me. I felt that. I felt healthy, fresh and ready to go. I had a lot of energy, and I decided to believe in myself.

“I had a feeling…” says Ivy when she remained behind.

“About what?”

“I thought you’re never going to come back here or that you were going to do something stupid.”

“There’s nothing wrong in the fact that I have brought Aaron back!” I snapped.

She looked at me in a disapproving way. After all the joy that I had felt when I saw them again, I felt a mad rage, that was about to explode inside me. I was feeling weird because I had never had that feeling until that moment. I looked Ivy in the eye, and she stepped back. It was like she was afraid of me.

“Jo…” she says.

“Shut up! You have no idea how it is to lose so many people and how it’s like to feel the happiness of bringing at least one of them back! Of doing the right thing!”

“Josephine Elena!” she shouts and grabs me by the shoulders.

Everyone turned around to us. I felt that rage leaving my body, mind, and soul slowly. What was happening to me? Joana had told me something about some consequences. I looked at Ivy, and her eyes terrified me. She tried to look calm, to handle things, but she couldn’t hide the fear.

“Let me go” I said in a whisper.

I grabbed her arm too because she had no intention of letting me go. I felt her goosebumps under my palm.

“What’s going on?” asks Aaron.

“Everything’s fine” says Ivy letting me go.

Aaron came close, and Ivy left my side. He put his arm around me, and we continued walking. The sun was going down in front of us, and the dust was floating in the air. I was feeling it when I was breathing, but it wasn’t disturbing me. I was getting used to things faster now. Before I had a hard time adapting, but this life made me become another person. The only question that remained was: what kind of person was I? I felt a shiver every time I was thinking about that when I had met Eva for the first time, the only thing that I had killed was a mouse, and that by mistake with my car. I had not enough fingers to count all the creatures that I had shot, beheaded or God knows what else I had done to them. And that town that I had burned to the ground. Then the people who had attacked us. If I thought about it for a while, I had done all those things for a reason, to save myself or others. I hadn’t sent in the Underworld any creature that was good, but on the contrary, only criminals, witches, griffins, nymphs, and other odd beings of nature. Some of them didn’t even belong to our world. That was the excuse that comforted me every night before I fell asleep.