“We have to say goodbye to Misty,” I said thinking of the little girl who I knew hated me for abandoning her. It wasn’t my choice, but when you are a child being given a silver spoon by a snake, well I couldn’t blame her for what Datha preached to her. Yet I still remember the scared girl released from the Morgan spell looking at me with big round eyes. That’s how I remember Misty.

  Jonah grunted when I hit him. “We’d have to follow the Resistance to their new place. That’s where she is right now. Better to leave unnoticed.”

  I smiled vaguely. If I had Lesley, I could sneak around unnoticed, but I don’t have him. I felt a tingle on my hand and watched as my index and middle finger disappeared but nothing else. Elated I tried again but met a block in my psyche.

  Maryanne: “Can’t you three make yourself useful?” She was reclined on her seat with Jack’s black ball of shadow abilities before her. She was an expert in runes and was diligently breaking the arrays and matrices around the ball. The others were watching.

  Strength: He shrugged. “Come on! I want to see what Jack got!”

  Mark: I agree. It's fascinating what you seem to be doing. He lay against a few cushions and was taking extensive notes.

  Jack: “It's a little unnerving being poked and prodded. You know that thing is a part of me, right?” He was wearing a hole in the white floor rug. Every time he stepped, he left a black smudge behind, before the rug absorbed his darkness and went back to being pristine white.

  A familiar laugh echoed down the halls and for a minute Lesley was visible before vanishing again.

  Strength blinked. “Okay, that was creepy!”

  Jack stopped pacing and ran to the subconscious which was a sea of black bubbling and frothing. “It's unsettled. He dipped a finger in and hissed. “I'm not jumping in any time soon. It seems something is happening inside, and I have an inkling it has to do with the other voices.”

  “You mean they are trying to escape?” asked Maryanne as she glowed a deep gold and green.

  Jack sighed. “I’m not sure.”

  I stood glancing at my fingers before Jonah snapped in my face. “You’re really lost today.”

  “I…I think my other voices are trying to ‘be’ again,” I muttered while holding my head, everyone had retreated to the safe common room.

  “What do you mean by Be?” he asked, holding my arms and pulling my hand away from my head.

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  I faced him. “It means I don’t have to visit the temples to get them back, Jonah. Whatever keeps them locked away is failing.”

  I ran a hand through my hair and gestured to him. “If we use your shadows, no one should know about us. We can sneak in to say goodbye to Misty. She should still be in the caravan going north from the hideout. I can hide as a normal slave in the caravan, and you can be a guard.”

  Jonah’s eyebrow quirked. “Really? I’m supposed to be in the final group. I’ll just hide as another slave.”

  I glanced at him. “You’re too…regal for being a slave.”

  “I’ll pull it off, promise I might even win an Oscar,” he said, winking and I blushed slightly laughing at his antics as he made to get up on a stage, in this case, a box, and grab an imaginary object. Instead, he tilted the box and went crashing which put me in stitches.

  I hurried to help him from the floor and noticed several particular scrolls rolled out. One was large the other palm sized. Both carried the name Tasha Rainsfield 2nd Era of Sapherine. They had runes keeping each closed.

  “Could these be?” I wondered gazing at the dusty scrolls.

  “Are these really from her?” asked Jonah picking one up and blowing on it, inspecting it.

  I took one reverently and watched as the writing on the scroll shifted to Only the true savior can open this, before swirling back to the original writing. Three runes were engraved. Courage, power, certainty, I had none of these, but Datha did!

  “Surely, Datha would be able to open them?” I questioned counting the scrolls. Eight. Each with a different set of runes as the key. I felt tied to them somehow.

  Jonah gasped. “Myra, look at this one! You can read this one if you accept yourself. I already opened it, but it wasn’t for me." He waved it at me. “Go on and try.”

  “Im not a savior that’s probably why it didn’t open up to you.”

  Maryann: We are a savior, the oracle said so!

  Strength: Yeah!

  Mark: I believe Noali.

  Jack: If it weren’t for whatever is stopping us, we’d be the bomb again and you know it, Myra.

  Jonah rolled his eyes. “Already told you, it opened for me but closed saying I wasn’t the intended recipient. Go on open it. What could it harm?”

  He tossed me the ancient scroll, and I nodded, pressing my thumb on the only rune there was. Slowly, like when a mother first shows her baby, it opened. Piece by piece was revealed to me in shiny runes speak. The ancient language of runes. It was like a Mandarin scroll and very close to Mandarin in the way it was written right to left and in columns instead of rows. The runes glowed a golden color waiting to be touched.

  Curiosity took hold and I placed my hand against the writing. It swirled and became English.

  Welcome to level one of the Universal Energy scrolls. While I can teach only you about this, you can teach others, and I encourage you to do so. These scrolls will only open to a true savior in need. I was desperate when I found them, and so too are you if they have appeared to you. Your first task is to find the one that sees linked to thee. They shall appear when the full moon is full. Take Heed! Once these scrolls are opened you may never go back. You have one day to decide, Then Lesson One will begin.

  The scroll snapped closed and when I tried to open it , it held fast. I frowned and turned to Jonah who was patiently waiting while I read the scroll. “ It gave me a day to think about it.”

  “About what?”

  “Knowing what and using, Universal Energy.”

  Jonah’s eyes widened. “Using What! Do you know how rare a chance this is Myra? I mean Datha is more likely to settle down and leave you be, than anyone ever learning how to do something like this again. It's the lost practice of rune masters and the Kin in Sapherine. Hundreds of years ago only one person knew it. Tasha Rainfield.”

  I tapped my nails on the scroll I had just read. “We’ll collect them all and take them with us.”

  Jonah nodded and started to pick each up. To our amazement, they all swirled and joined clipping to each other and making one big scroll with the identifying runes down the center.

  Jonah whistled. “Now that was awesome. Now if I could get my room to clean like that!”

  I laughed. “You’d be set?”

  He laughed and helped me wear the scroll. “Hey, you said it, not me.”