Chapter 14

The Dormant Doorway

∞

At least not where they were. Their transformation was instant. One second they were with their group and the next second they were inside of the cave, standing before an oval shape, carved into the correllium wall. The frame of the door was thick and contained carvings. The carvings seemed to be mostly of circles as if the ancient Prim were infatuated with them. Some of the circles were separated and varied in size, but many of the circles were connected, some twice, some more than twice. Along the top there were many circles, all of them intertwined, all of them the same size. An infinite, never ending connection, starting from one end of the chain, circling through to the other end, and then turning back toward the other side.

The center of the oval wasn’t exactly empty. The air was thinner there, like ice, half melted, but still intact.

I don’t think I can go in there with you, Argimos thought to her, I think only a Prim can enter that doorway.

Jo-Laina nodded. There was no time to waste, no time to prepare herself or to draw courage. She could hear the Shooktah in their frenzy, panicked by her and Argimos’s sudden disappearance, and they were no longer waiting around for their quarry to come out and fight. They were doing everything they could to bust through Belimos’s shield. If all of them began pressing their staffs into it, then Belimos wouldn’t last very long at all. Argimos had strained to keep his up when the Shooktah they were fighting pressed into his.

She stepped through the doorway and into the grey.

“I’ve been waiting a long time for this day,” she said to herself.

However, it wasn’t herself. She knew that right away, because the person that was speaking to her was much, much older and yet it was an older likeness of her. She knew that it was the Jo-Laina from the ancient times, and she was surprised that they looked so much alike, but like Argimos had said. Anything was possible.

She was dressed in a long, white dress, her hair, long and flowing, dark, like her own and slightly curly. Her eyes showed shiny and silver and her skin was fair and elegant, without a single scar, the signs of a true Prim, winning battles, but taking with them evidence of the skirmish. She was holding a box in front of her. It wasn’t big, but it was big enough. It looked heavy, and yet it didn’t. She carried it easily, but it took effort. It was somewhere in between all of those things. The box was made of wood, finely crafted with skilled fingers, having metal along the corners to hold it together, with insignias on it, which she didn’t understand.