Chapter Twelve - The Talk
“Where are the others” I ask, grabbing my stomach.
“This is it. Kyle mentioned that he doesn’t trust any—are you okay?” Tom asks, noticing my face getting paler.
Walking through portals isn’t something that my stomach agrees with. Plus add in everything else that has been going on, my stomach, nerves and mind are on edge.
Kyle appears from the portal and the portal vanishes into thin air.
I walk straight over to him, “Who the hell are you?”
Before I can say anything else, I gag onto the ground. I guess it’s a good thing that my stomach is pretty much empty right now. My head feels extremely light headed and I start to hear a high pitch sound in my ears right before passing out.
The sheets feel warm and soft against my skin. I roll over onto my side in the soft bed, adjusting my pillow as I do so.
My thoughts drift to the idea that I’ve forgotten something. Did I forget to study for a test? Wait, that can’t be right, it’s Spring Break, isn’t it? My mind starts to panic as I try to figure out what day it is.
I jolt awake in the bed to see a brown haired guy sitting in a chair across the room.
“Crap,” I say.
“Feeling better?” Kyle asks.
“So not a dream?”
“Afraid not. You passed out shortly after going though the portal,” he tells me.
“So where am I now?” I ask, leaning my back against the back of the bed.
“We’re underground on the same planet that I brought you and Miles a few days ago. It’s the ruins where we met Russell, this place used to be a castle. The ruins and the underground catacombs are the only things left of it.”
“What about the bed?” I ask, looking around the room to see a desk, dresser and a computer. For a rundown castle, it is well furnished.
“I brought everything here from Earth over time.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Off and on since 1987,” Kyle answers.
“Who are you?”
Kyle doesn’t say a word for several minutes. I cross my arms, waiting for a reply. He looks down at the floor before speaking, “I guess I should start at the beginning?”
“Yep,” I say, wondering what Kyle means about ‘beginning’.
“I was born on Earth and had a normal life for a kid until I turned four years old. I started to have these vivid dreams that wouldn’t go away. I started to become paranoid, like someone was after me. My parents started taking me to see a psychiatrist. They were worried that once I hit six and started to go to elementary school that if I talked about my dreams and that I see a doctor each week, I would be made fun of. That’s when I started to keep to myself and I wouldn’t talk to the other kids. Then one day, on the playground I found a small portal tucked away near some bushes. Of course I had no idea what it was back then and I was curious, so I walked into it. I ended up in a lab where there was a lady in a white coat and she had black hair. I guess me walking through a portal triggered something and somehow she knew who I was.”
“And this lady was Ozma, right?”
“Yea. I didn’t know what she wanted and I didn’t want to wait to find out. Thankfully a portal opened up under my feet and brought me back to the playground. I guess they were still trying to find ways to open up portals in different locations and they didn’t have all the kinks worked out yet. A couple months later Ozma sent two robots after me. They came through a portal that had opened up in my parents’ house while we were eating dinner,” Kyle pauses before continuing. “They killed my parents. I managed to slip past them and ran into the portal. Instead of taking me back to that lab, I ended up here, on Crystaltina. Something about this place felt so familiar to me.”
“I’m sorry,” is all that I can say to that. I had no idea that Ozma is reasonable for his parents’ death.
“Don’t want to talk about it,” he says, quickly.
“Okay,” fair enough. Not many people would want to talk about something like that but if Kyle has been alone pretty much for this entire time, he really should talk about it. Respecting his wishes, I ask instead, “Then why didn’t Ozma know who you were and how did you figure out how to travel between planets?”
“No idea why Ozma didn’t know or maybe she did and she was playing it off. Maybe she wanted to find out what you knew. As for the portals, I found a room that has shelves and shelves of potions and books on how to use them. They’re all premade save for the key ingredient. In order to teleport to another planet, you have to add something from that planet to the potion. Since I was a six year old kid at the time, of course I had dirt from Earth on my shoes and in my nails. I also found a room with information on the family that last lived here,” he pauses. “What did Ozma want with you? Did she say anything?”
“She wanted to know who brought me here,” I tell him.
“And you said…..?”
“Nothing but then she shot me.”
“Are your seri—-“
“Then I got fed up with her asking me the same question so I asked why she wanted to know so badly. Ozma said, why me.”
Kyle says nothing and I’m pretty sure he knows where I’m getting at. I just have to wonder how much he knows about the past.
“At first I couldn’t figure out what the hell she was talking about but thankfully she had knocked me out and I had this strangest dream. After awhile, things started to click,” I say, turning to sit on the right edge of the bed, my feet on the floor. “What I want to know is what do we do now?”
“I think it would be safer to stay here,” he slowly says.
“First off, that’s not going to happen and second, I meant am I supposed to be this different person now that I’ve found out that I’m some reincarnated princess?”
“I don’t think you need to change anything and you just need to be who you already are. Things are going to get complicated from now on, though. Hopefully those two guys back on Zerron will buy us enough time to vanish but that won’t stop Ozma.”
“But what does she want?”
“Hopefully she doesn’t know who you are and she’ll just be after me.”
“Yea, about that, I think she knows. I sorta blew up the room.”
“That was you?” Kyle asks, amazed.
“Yep. I’m not even sure how it happened.”
“Don’t worry, you’ll learn.”
“Huh?”
“Training.”
“You can’t be ser—-“
“If Ozma knows then we all need to be ready.”
“I’m not hiding around here. I want to go home,” I cross my arms. “If she knows who I am, then the first place she will look is Earth. Someone needs to stay on guard there.”
“Fine,” Kyle stands and walks over. “You cannot use your powers around anyone other than me, okay?”
“Fine, but, just one more thing, what does Ozma want with me?”
I start to get a sinking feeling as to why she’s after me. Could there be a possibility that same entity my past incarnation had is now living within me? I don’t want to hurt anyone.
“I really don’t know—-“
“Honestly? You don’t think that there’s a chance of some freakish evil spirit living inside of me?” I burst out, hands shaking.
Kyle looks at me for several minutes before saying anything. He can tell that I am genuinely worried about the potential of having something inside of me that I might not be able to control.
Kyle then bends down in front of me and place his hands on top of mine, “Trust me, we will find a way and I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”
