Serpent in the Woods
by Esoterica

All Rights Reserved.
(C)2006 by Esoterica

Chapter 1

Sakarra shifted impatiently from foot to foot. She was forcefully being drawn away from the little group here in the Center, and out to the Haunted Woods. It was daytime, and they weren't planned to go until tonight when it was dark, but she didn't care if it was daytime. She absolutely had to go  - and right now! She didn't have a clue where the Haunted Woods were, or she'd just drive herself there – she needed a guide!
She could not believe the others in the room couldn't feel the drawing that was pulling at her very soul. It had come upon her suddenly when she had walked up to the door from where she had parked the car, and it came in a rush as if something that had been held back for a long time reached her at last. She spoke to Rochelle and told her of the urgent need she had to go to the Woods, right then and not wait until tonight.
Rochelle looked at her, then through her, as Rochelle was won't to do, then Sakarra heard her whisper something – probably communicating with her Guides. Whatever they told her must have been in the affirmative, for Rochelle turned to grab her coat, at the same time calling over her shoulder to Mary who was seated at the computer, typing away. 
“Don't forget the camera!”, Mary said, not raising her head and still typing furiously, “And take lots of pictures.” was barely heard as Sakarra had Rochelle by the arm leading her quickly out to Rochelle's car.

Chapter 2

Some of what infected Sakarra must have been transferred to Rochelle for she gunned the little car down North Pine and almost skidded sideways around the turns to get to the Haunted Woods. Before the car was even stopped completely, Sakarra was out the door and running up the path that led to the clearing with the stones. Rochelle followed at a more dignified pace – Sakarra seemed to be able to take care of herself in the woods.
But since Sakarra had never been to the Haunted Woods before, Rochelle was worried that she might break her leg or something, so she hollered after her to “Stay on the trail!”, and hurried faster up the trail in the direction Sakarra had disappeared.
Sakarra did not stay on the trail however, with a few feet of going up a steep hill, she turned to the southwest and unerringly picked a path through exposed stones to a huge rock sunk deep within the cliff face. She looked around rather wildly, then snatched up a twig from the ground and struck the rock with it, softly chanting words that moved with the beat of the twig.
The rock groaned and moved a small amount within its ancient bed, but it was enough for the slim Sakarra to fit through and she wiggled her way inside. It was blindly dark in the sealed cavern, but Sakarra lifted her twig like it was a huge flaming torch and swung it around her head like she was fanning it into flames. A jewel-like glint appeared at the tip of the twig and coruscated into a bright blue-white glow that lit up the entire room with moonlight.
She moved to the center of the cave to an upstanding rock, and as she put her hand out to touch it, something bit into her flesh! She staggered back, crying out at the shock – but there was nothing there! She dropped her torch-twig which instantly went out leaving the only light coming from the slit of the doorway behind her.
She turned and ran from the cave, grating through the entrance passage which thudded back to its original position with her only a breath beyond it. She looked around, confused, no longer so sure of her path.
Rochelle, having lost her trace completely, heard the thud and came running – she saw her standing there holding her one hand with the other. She say Sakarra's hand looked like it was bleeding.
“Oh God, Sakarra!”, said Rochelle, “What's happened to you?!”
“I think it bit me.”, said Sakarra, and collapsed into a heap of dirt-stained clothes.

Chapter 3

Rochelle called Mary, and with her help they pulled and pushed the semi-conscious Sakarra back to Rochelle's car. They took her to the hospital, where she was given a tetanus shot and her hand cleaned and wrapped carefully in gauze. Mary asked Rochelle if she had seen it happen, and Rochelle said that Sakarra had disappeared without a trace almost at once she had gotten there.
“Sakarra said that something had bitten her.”, said Rochelle, and Mary's eyes went wide.
“Where – in the Haunted Woods?”, asked Mary.
“I don't know – she had run far ahead of me and when I got there she was walking around looking dazed and dirty and holding her hand and her hand was bleeding.”, replied Rochelle, adding “And that's when I called you.”
“You know I've been taking pictures of floating serpents out in the Haunted Woods?”, said Mary.
“Yes, you showed them to me. You said they may have been imparting knowledge with their bite, or at least that was one theory you had.”, replied Rochelle.
When describing the accident later, back at the Center, an almost-recovered Sakarra caused quite a stir when she described what could only be an initiation cave underneath the mound-mountain. She had been led straight to it by the pulling sensation, and it had somehow told her how indeed to open it, and how to use the twig as a torch, but she could not remember in the slightest how she had done any of it. She could only just remember the biting part, after which she seemed to have apparently woken up from some sort of dream-like state.
Her wound was a nasty slash across the life-lines on her right palm and even a bit up her wrist, and being right-handed, this put her at a singular disadvantage. A party of a few volunteers, who had been dispatched from the Center to the Woods to determine the existence of the cave, returned empty handed but with the news that her tracks, clear as day, led right up to, and under, a really big rock! The gigantic rock was actually sitting on top of half of one of her tracks in the undisturbed dirt.
A suggestion was made that hypnosis might help her remember, and with Rochelle's guides approving, and a general feeling all around that this was a good thing to do, things were made ready for the attempt. With the party of volunteers providing witnesses, Rochelle put her under, and Sakarra related the events exactly as they occurred – and those listening all came up with differing theories of what and how it had happened, everyone talking at once, and nobody was interested in listening to anyone else's theories as they were convinced that theirs was the correct one.

Chapter 4

Sakarra sat cross legged on the large Manitou stone running her fingers lazily across the tiny blue quartz crystals embedded within its surface. It had been two weeks since she had had her accident right over there on the downward slope to the southwest in the hidden initiation cave beneath the mound-mountain. There were many of the large manitou stones scattered about the mountain by the ancient catastrophe that destroyed the ancient earth-energy temple.
Uta, the blue shaman looked out, watching down the path, the faithful sentry, timeless in his post. Her hand was mostly healed, with a red scar still showing across the lines that supposedly told her life's path. She had been infected that day of the trauma, not by some earthly bug, but by a strange knowledge that bubbled and twisted inside her brains.
There were things in her memory that simply weren't there before the accident - she was absolutely sure of this fact, for she had tested herself before and after it happened and the results were startling. She now knew about the struggle between the positive light and the negative dark, and her part in it – she had found certain keys that unlocked strange doors in her mind - doors that she did not even know were there until she had found the keys.
She had allied herself with the side of Light that very day in an impromptu ceremony on the side of a grassy hill. She had given herself over, and was accepted, but only for who and what she was - she was no fire-wielding miracle worker, more a simple healer than any warrior.
She arose from her rocky perch and stretched like a big cat, and nodding at the Blue Shaman's questioning look round - she walked to the oldest tree in the grove, keeled down and lay hands on it in affectionate greeting.
“Father.”, she said, then reaching down with her injured hand and touching a bare spot of earth upon the ground - “Mother.”, she spoke aloud in greeting. She sat there a long time on her knees in now silent communication with her real parents, then she arose and left the woods for the last time.
As Sakarra headed for her rental car, something shot out of the trees to her left and struck her hard on her left knee.
“Ow!”, she said bending down and rubbing her knee and looking for what had hit her. It was a bluish-white stone about the size of her palm, and it had a silvery sparkle to it as she picked it up and rotated it in the sunlight.
“Wha?”, she began to ask when there was a quiet giggle and she saw a misty shape standing in the clump of trees. It was relatively human shaped and she was bewildered that she couldn't see it clearly - then the knowledge just appeared in her head that this creature was shifted from the standard frequency that we normally see in, and to view it she would have to shift her frequency of vision.
She tried to shift her frequency of vision to better see the creature, but she didn't have a clue as to how one would do such a thing, when, as she was squinting her eyes and attempting to squish them together somehow, she got a fleeting view of the creature!
The red-brown-yellow stringy hair and the soft furry pelt – the wreath of flowers about the neck - one dark-yellow-skinned hand raised, palm out, in greeting - this was Chewbacca from the Star Wars movies! Then it dawned on her that Chewbacca the Wookie was an archtypical symbol for something even more ancient - the Bigfoot, Yeti or Sasquatch - the First People - apparently brought into our time-space strand from their far more ancient one by the manifesting gate of the vortex. 
She too raised her hand, palm out, in ancient peaceful greeting, and saw with a smile that there was a whole family group there, living just slightly out of physical sight range - then the knowledge came into her mind again that these were the caretakers of the forest and her true brothers and sisters.

Chapter 5

Sakarra was back home again in the big city far away from the haunted woods where so much had happened to her that was out of the ordinary. The brick and ocher paneling of the apartment complex where she lived in her ground floor apartment seemed so familiar yet also somehow a little strange - considering her experiences of the last few days she could easily understand why.
Inside her apartment, she looked out the window first thing - something she had never done before, since the window didn't even open for security reasons. There was a screen of trees and brush there – not really what you'd call woods, but, with her altered consciousness toward the earthly environment, she could see the linkage with the rest of the growing things on the planet.
She retired early to be ready for work early the next day - she enjoyed her work and took pride in her job as shipping clerk for a major manufacturing firm. The next morning when she arose, she straightaway broke her normal morning routine of the past, went to the window, and said good morning to the woods outside.She noticed there were squirrels and birds in her woods - she certainly didn't remember seeing them there before.
When she returned home from work that night she felt dirty, so she showered and cleaned her skin as best she could of any shipping container dust and non-natural odors picked up at work, then walked out the patio door which she had never used before and until now had been triple locked and even bolted shut with extra-thick and heavy bolts.
The patio door opened onto the side of the woods and she went up to the edge tentatively. There were empty bottles and all sort of trash dotting the ground - almost as if someone wished to intentionally befoul the cool green earth of the woods.
She moved gingerly within the outer branches of the trees, worming her way through them, not wishing to break even the smallest branch or disturb the tiniest dweller. Once past the outer screen of entangled branches, she came into a clearing where the crowded growth of tree and the intertwining of branches and vines in the canopy had not allowed any life thicker than grass to grow through the carpet of leaves below them.
The grassy glade was not more than five feet across but was covered thickly with coarse short dark green grass, and there was no trash here. Directly across the glade from her was the most ancient tree she had ever seen, its spider-like limbs bending low from the crown down toward the ground.
She came forward and knelt before the tree, laid hands upon it and said "Grandfather.".
She saw images of dust and many, many, many children and war and the field-clearer's axes and bulldozers, and felt a sincere rush of thanksgiving from the tree to the heavens that life had continued long enough for the tree to meet her.
She too felt gratitude that the tree had withstood so much, to be still standing today, and she promised the next time she came, and soon, she would bring some morsels that would help feed the ancient tree and its many, many, many children that were living in the tiny woods that had somehow remained untouched for centuries.
She stayed a while there, sitting cross legged on the grass in the glade, in silent communication with her new friends, then slowly returned to her apartment smiling both outwardly and inwardly. As she went, something nagged at her inner thoughts and she remembered the rock she had been given by the Sasquatch family in the haunted woods. Tomorrow, when she brought the treats for the trees, she would bring the rock and, for some reason not yet clear even to herself, she would bury it in the center of the glade.

Chapter 6

The next morning she found herself wide awake at dawn, Standing at the window watching the sun rise over her woods and the ancient tree. She was amazed that the grassy area was completely invisible from the apartments, at least once you were inside the screening edges of the children trees. She saluted the sun as it arose with eye-burning brilliance, using the same palm out salute she had done with the Sasquatch.
The blue stone sat in the basket by the door, and there was plenty of time before she had to leave for work, and the rising sun had given her an idea. She hastily grabbed some raw eggs from the fridge, put them in the basket with the stone and hurried out the patio door. The other apartment dwellers were apparently still sound asleep, busy getting a few moments rest before starting off on their own work day, and she reveled in the freedom she felt as she wiggled through the vines and branches of the screen.
She greeted the tree happily, just as it greeted her, and laid out her bounty, letting the tree decide what to do - it came to her in a flash to bury them whole as a lingering meal for both the tree and its many, many, many children. She buried the eggs in a star-shaped pattern close to the edge of the glade, then dug deeper and dropped the stone in the exact center of the grassy circle.
She brushed her hands together to remove the dirt that clung to them from her digging - the task had been way to precious to use any tool - and she rose to begin her new day.
Work was the same as ever, just a lot of challenges that she had to hurdle to keep her job.
That night the full moon was as bright as Sakarra had ever remembered it to be - she could actually see the waves of energy coming down to earth from it. She waited until it was just dark enough, then she opened her patio door and darted into the woods. This was the most dangerous time, when those of the apartments were up and coming and going, not like the morning time when the whole world appeared asleep in the pre-dawn.
She managed to slip through the screening children successfully, and went to her knees beside the ancient chestnut oak. She sat before the tiny mound of earth where she had buried the stone from the Haunted Woods, and she began to sing, not without, but within.
Inside her head the notes crept up the scale, and when they reached a feverous 8th octave, they passed beyond the range of human ears - but they were still there and she continued to add frequency to frequency until even in the vastness of her mind she could climb no higher.
The ground began to shimmer before her - eyes appeared out of a mist rising from the ground – it was Uta, the Blue Shaman – then it was Mary Sutherland's face, and Mary was in the Haunted Woods - and, Oh! She was conducting a tour!

The vision faded, but once the shock of contact wore off some, Sakarra was able to re-establish it and tried to speak to Mary, but then Sakarra noticed that there was no sound on her end either, just a clear picture of Mary conducting a tour in the Haunted Woods..

She tried to put her hand through the mist into the Haunted Woods, but encountered only misty air and warm earth.

She racked her brains and tried to think of every way she could to send or receive anything through the vision, but in the depths of her despair at making physical contact - the knowledge popped into her head again - suddenly she knew that only energy may travel through the vortexes, and her heart was quickly calmed and her breathing slowed.

She focused on the image in the mist - concentrated - then shot a beam of light through the portal.

Mary jumped! "Did you guys see that?", she asked the group.

Some had, some hadn't.

Mary had a distinct feeling that there was someone there, but she could not decide who (or what) it was.

She though for a moment that it almost felt like Sakarra, but she had gone back home to Kentucky.

Feeling like she had missed something, Mary appealed to the spirit to speak, but naturally Sakarra couldn't - not through the vortex anyway - and eventually Mary carried on with the tour after taking picture after picture of the area.

Sakarra's evening turned into true night and she was forced to abandon her vigil at the misty vortex.

She wanted so badly to have spoken with Mary, but she couldn't get anything but energy to go through the portal.

Not knowing how to turn the portal off, she put some leaves over where the stone was buried and that seemed to at least muffle it a bit.

Sakarra called Mary later on that night and Mary was astounded to hear that Sakarra had created a linked portal, and that her own idea that it may have been Sakarra trying to communicate was correct!

She was confused on hearing that only energy could travel through the portal when she knew that physical things like animals and ufo's and creatures like bigfoot or reptilians used the portals to get around.

She went to bed that night late, and woke up late, and had a bad day at work seeming to always be 'behind the flow' so to speak. It seemed that she couldn't get anywhere on time.

Her watch was even slow.

She hoped she hadn't hurt it messing about in those woods - but maybe it just needed a new battery.

The next day wasn't a workday and she slept in - trying to 'catch up' on her sleep.

Mary's pictures that she had taken of the contact point showed nothing but solid white, but she smiled knowingly and nodded.

Chapter 5

Sakarra returned from her weekend trip to her Aunt Jane's that afternoon, and she couldn't wait to go to the circle.

She hurriedly changed her clothes, but when she got to the patio door - something was worrying her - something didn't feel right.

There was a heaviness to the air and it dragged down at her spirit, which of late had been so up and bubbly that she couldn't understand for a moment what she was feeling.

And it was coming from outside.

She cautiously opened the door and looked out but could see nothing.

It felt like a cloud of blackness had descended over the whole area of her woods.

She crept out and headed for the circle, attempting to dismiss the frightening vision of the black cloud from her mind.

She reach the outer wall of children trees that guarded the inner glade, and something had made a total mess of the place.

There was trash and beer bottles everywhere and the grass was torn up from footprints and bicycle tracks.

She smelled something awful and noticed someone had even gone to the bathroom on the ring of trees - she felt the anger rising in her at the thought of such defilement.

She felt violated, as if something had punched her hard in the solar plexus and cut off the air to her lungs.

She ran back to the apartment and stood, clothes and all, in the shower with the water running as hot as possible to remove the bad everything that had attached to her in the grove.

After a moment or two the bad feelings subsided as the scented aromatherapy soap cut through the black fog and the heat and water stopped the screaming inside her head about the wrongness of it all.

She changed and dried off, then wearing her bathrobe she went and keeled in front of her 'quiet place' - an old antique trunk that belonged to some long-gone relative that she had taken a liking to.

She lit a candle because she liked the smell of it, and began to rock back and forth on her heels, crooning a lullaby of sorts - it eased some of the pain, so she extended it for the poor circle outside and hoped it would clear some of the darkness.

The anger came again and she bundled it down, trusting in the light which she felt would take care of her, and the teachings she had had in the past in church of healing everything with love

She strove to reach for love, but the blackness came again and then the tears and she began to cry with a sadness that wracked her very soul.

The knowledge that she had received in the cave in the haunted woods came slowly into her forethoughts, banishing the sadness, the blackness and finally the tears.

She suddenly knew that she had a choice - to take the knowing that the knowledge had to give, or to go on trying, by herself, stumbling through such a world where such anti-life darkness could even exist.

She hesitated for almost a full minute, sort of holding on to and cherishing the person that she was and knowing that if she accepted the offer of the knowledge then she would be changed.

And then she agreed and asked for the knowledge to come.

It was like someone running down the hallways of her brain, kicking open long-locked and hidden doors - her brains spun around in her head, and the room went around like she was on a carousel - up and down and in and out and even outside-in and inside-out - then she fainted in a heap.

Sakarra slowly opened her eyes - she knew she was in the living room of her apartment but it was dark - obviously sometime long after sunset - she smelled a candle that had burnt itself out and wished she had one now that she could light just to see.

She crawled, disoriented, and found a wall, then a table which seemed familiar and finally made it to the light switch.

As she went to flick it on she had a distinct feeling of deja-vu and saw herself standing in other clothes than the bathrobe she was wearing, reaching for a light - and there were far more than just one - there were hundreds of 'her's reaching so, possibly even thousands!

She shook her head to dislodge these visions of her other lives, for she knew exactly what and who these shades were.

The knowledge she had so recklessly called had made itself at home, then burnt itself out just as had the candle she had lit - she smiled.

She knew that she was changed - first of all the blackness she was so desperately afraid and revolted by before was nothing more to her now than a fleeting cloud of negative energy left in the wake of some negative action - she knew it could not harm her unless she allowed it to.

She knew that all energy has two sides, positive and negative, and that the doorway she had created within the circle was just a doorway, and also an energy source, to be used or abused as the user desired.

She knew that she herself had used such portals, not only for the links to the earth energy that they were powered by, but also for traveling in both the spirit and sometimes even the physical, although there must be a really good reason for the latter as it was both dangerous for the traveler and required such intense power from the vortex as to endanger the physical existence of the gate itself.

She raised her hand and in a sweeping motion urged the negativity away from the door and out of the apartment back into the circle where it flowed from out the ground of her linked gate like the gushing of a new found oil well.

With a thought she closed the portal that some half-taught black wizard had left hanging open and then formed a barrier over the whole apartment, including the patio and living room doors, to prevent any unwanted intrusion of uncalled forces.

She made some really strong hot coffee and sat cross legged on the bed, head up, shoulders back - relaxing and breathing in the way she had been taught - when? - a hundred years ago? - or maybe a thousand? - perhaps even a hundred thousand? - or even more? - her opened memory seemed to stretch back forever.

It was her memory, she knew that, and she knew that those thousands of lives both in the past and in the future and across the multitude of dimension were also her.

They were aware of her - and she welcomed herself, the new-born one in this time and place, back into her real whole self.

Chapter 6

Sakarra was back in the cave under the haunted woods where she had gained the knowledge - there was a stone, a standing stone, in the center of the cave and she floated over to it.

She could see the deep-set carving of the serpent upon it, even in this poor light.

Its yellow-orange gemstone-glinting eyes regarded her intently and its mouth opened just enough to let the forked tongue slip out and feel her aura.

Sakarra raised her scarred right hand, palm out, to the serpent and it hissed in recognition.

The injury was her own, of course, the serpent of wisdom's bite left no physical marks upon the bitten, only affecting the subconscious barriers to the injected knowledge.

And it was only a mere coincidence that the future laid out in the lines of her right palm be changed when she scraped her hand across the jagged surface of the serpent stone - the quartz pieces in the stone had sharp edges where they were was exposed by time and the working of the stone.

The serpent smiled and she returned the compliment.

She whipped out and away from the cave, her spirit finding flying easy and free, even better than when she had flown in her dreams as there was no boundary the dreaming mind must cross.

She approached a populated gathering spot, and saw the spirits here were from another place and even other times.

She landed in a patch of daisies, and spoke long and quietly to a group of three who stood apart - three who greeted her happily after deep and piercing looks and slight shock as to her standing there in front of them.

The fourth she knew would never come to that sunlit meadow, for she coursed the night - things howled in her darkness, using and abusing her negative energy for their small pleasures and tasks.

But she was one of the four alright, the full sister of the three-in-one - she had been ignored and shut out, but without her there could not even be the three.

Hers was the starry darkness, and in her time she traveled the earth just as her sisters, the three-in-one, did.

Sakarra greeted the fourth of the three-in-one, then swept herself back home.

She awoke into the darkness of late nighttime, the moonlight glancing in through the patio door and falling bright upon her face, her body sitting stiff on the bed and still in her bathrobe, and she was no longer afraid.

Sakarra went to work the next day a changed person - she may have looked the same on the outside, but her inside was now whole again.

She sat in her cubicle, amazed that anybody could even stand under the huge pressure being put upon the workers to raise productivity, just to have it raised again as a matter of course - you could see it as a crackle in the air and hear it groaning from the very beams of the building.

But it wasn't her problem - her problem was the mission she had been given, or rather that she had accepted, at birth into this particular strand of time - a mission that she had just now remembered that she had - this wage-slavery job was just a barbie's footstep on the path to her fulfilling the mission - one had to have money in this world.

She suddenly stopped what she was working on and raised all her inner and outer shields as one of the women at the office came by talking about 'her cancer' just as she always did almost every day - and sakarra could see a huge black leech-like thing grinding away at the flesh and bone where the mass had apparently been.

She longed to poke it with something and watch shrivel and die, but left it where it was, for she knew very well that it was absolutely no use and might make it worse, as she could remove the parasite a thousand times, and the woman would just call it, or another of its kind, back to her by her constant talk of sickness and focusing on being unwell.

Sakarra knew that if the woman really wanted to healed, she would have to come to accept the fact that she herself was the one in control of her reality, then she would have to determine for herself that she wasn't going to be ill anymore, and then she must stop acting like she was, and then the mass could then be removed without a danger of recurrence or more.

She felt compassion and sent the woman a dart of pink healing energy through a tiny little hole in her shield - the black thing gobbled it up eagerly - just as it was dining sloppily on the emotional energy of the lady listening to the woman droning on and on about how it had been so bad.

Finally the sick-minded woman wandered away, carrying the alien bioform squashed up against her like some giant fanny pack, still working its toothy jaws deep within her flesh.

Sakarra could not succumb to empathy - that's why she had been so quick to raise her shields - she was not even close to the vibration level she needed to be to complete her mission, and she needed every tiny ounce of the strength within her to raise her frequency and extend her awareness.

She also knew that she had made a good start on that mission, even though she hadn't remembered it yet (she felt a bit of pride for her old self at that thought) but her success in the circle of getting the stone to function as a link to the large vortex of the haunted woods was but a start - a spark before the smoke of true fire.

That morning she compressed time as much as she could, eager to be gone from her job, but as she actually enjoyed the challenge of what she did there - and it was indeed a challenge - so her days pretty much flew by anyway.

She was tired when she returned home that night and meditated for a bit before going out to the circle - yep, there he was, at it again with his wanna-be friends, the half-baked black wizard that had trashed her circle and left the portal hanging wide open.

He saw her coming through the screen of the children trees and made to run as the rest of his gang scampered away - but then turned as if a better idea came to him.

"Well, well, well...what are you doing here?", he said, smiling silkily with slitted eyes and flashing the white teeth in his handsome brown face - there was no recognition in his manner, despite the intimation of his statement, but she couldn't be sure.

"I've come to talk to you.", she said , standing still as he walked slowly about the grove keeping his eyes on her.

He suddenly made as if to lunge for her - but she didn't flinch or even blink - and he just as suddenly stopped, licking his lips nervously, his eyes darted from her to the way his friends had gone.

He straightened himself up and raised his nose so that he looked down it at her - "About what? And who are you to want to talk to me?", he asked, still smiling, but a cloudiness had covered his eyes.

Sakarra could feel the mind-dulling blackness seep out of him and lick against her shield.

"What you've done to this place.", then her voice got stronger, more demanding of obeying - "I want this mess you've made cleaned up - and I want you to stop trashing it." she concluded, looking piercingly into his eyes, which made him flinch.

She turned away to leave, even against every horrible thought he threw at her to shock her mind so she'd stay and succumb to his vile wishes, but they just bounced off her shield.

He sent even worse thoughts after her like bats disturbed from feeding in a broken graveyard vault - red coals against the black sky - and still he expected her to stop and turn and come to him.

He send the evil thoughts so strongly at her she should have been able to pick them up if she were on the moon, not just a few feet away - unless she was a total dead-brain - Darkness knew, he'd had plenty of those lately!

And still she went - she didn't stop or even stagger under his attack - and that just-sweet-enough, bad-boy smile disappeared from his handsome face, to be replaced with so deeply set a frown that it resembled a fu-man-chu mustache framing his mouth and chin.

She went into the patio door of an apartment - and he made mental note of which one - he'd get the little bitch later.

Chapter 7

It is considered by some cultures to be a curse to live in 'interesting times', but Sakarra knew she wouldn't trade this time for any other. 

There was the marvel of computer technology and cars and airplanes and everything that made this time so different from her ancient past, plus there was the added bonus of helping out in a crisis - and the coming one was huge even by her memory. 

When the gates collapsed and the weather went wild during the last shift, the very core of the earth was twisted and the energy network that powered the earth ran amok - there were those that lived through that awful time, but she hadn't made it. 

She remembered dying so very vividly, yet the shock of it had worn off after a few seconds and she was more angry that she was stopped before she could complete her mission. 

This mission was easier in a way and yet harder still - what with all the positive energies being stopped from coming through the portals - it would be far harder to locate and remove the filter from each one, and she could see no way, even with her great strength of will, to extend her scope to do all at once.

She suddenly thought about him again - the handsome faced devil with the flashing eyes and bad boy smile. 

She had to watch that - a loose thought like that could be seized upon and used, and not for good purposes either. 

They had met before, of course, in this many layered war of positive and negative forces - and had collided in battle many times - she still bore the scars of such battles, not on the outside of this new body but on the inside that nobody saw. 

If she could have, she would have killed him, but its almost impossible to kill a soul - the energy never dies just reforms, or is eaten by something, and she didn't fancy him for lunch. So what was he doing here, and now - she could guess - in the long running dispute he was her nemesis and had obviously been dispatched to stop her from her mission. 

She wondered if he remembered who he really was - she didn't know - he didn't seem to anyway, acting more the punk kid than the powerful dark god - of course that may have been to impress his followers, the son of the suits who are always looking first to the dark side for a quick fix to quench their thirst for something to hold on to and be a part of. 

He'd promise them the moon then take it for himself, for the dark is nothing if not all for self. 

If he had no knowledge of his true self that could be both a bonus and a hindrance, for the unknowing sometimes come up with the unknown in their desperation, and the unknown was always a scary proposal. 

She was evenly matched with him as he was in the past, but a unremembered child could come up with something new and really nasty, just as the negative forces had in the past when they came up with their doomsday weapon and had no memory to draw upon for caution to stop them from using it.

She capped the portal with a thought and a word - lets see just how much he remembers.

It took him three days to reopen the portal after that hag bitch has closed it on him - he needed the strength he could draw from it to keep his hold on his gang - they would get rebellious and look elsewhere for their enlightenment if he could not keep their awareness at bay - and he enjoyed their tasty emotions far too much to let that happen.

The hag bitch was certainly going to get what she deserved all right, but he had other things he had to attend to first - more important things than some hag bitch - he had to find someone to carry out the next part of his mission. 

He found a bum and gave him some money and a bottle of booze to deliver a message to the big white building at the head of the road - the note gave the time and date for a meeting, and he knew they would agree to it as they had no choice. 

Theirs was a closed world, and he could no more enter there publically than they could come openly to him, so their secret meeting would be held at a respectable place they could both be seen entering with no suspicion aroused. 

That night he made his preparations and slept very well. 

He went to the big hotel in a 'borrowed' parking attendant's uniform jacket- the jacket got him easily inside the front door of the place without anyone even noticing him - and he went up to the suite of his contact without the slightest eyebrow raised. 

Now this was the life - he looked around and wondered how long it would be before he too got to live like this - all the amenities and none of the worries - and plenty of money too, to spend on whatever he wanted not just bills and food. 

Gathering all his energies to himself, he knocked on the door and it was opened to him - and he was led into a plushly furnished apartment-sized room decked out in red velour and yellow and black curtains. 

The political bosses sat around a coffee table like tribal counselors huddled around a fire. 

He gave them his best smile, and they smiled back with the same coldness in their eyes that he had.

These were his mission - to help them in any way he could to keep the human cattle under control. 

He had been closing the positive energy flows from all the portals he could find as he had been instructed, but it appeared that it wasn't fast enough for the bosses, who upped the ante on him yet again - he protested but to no avail, they just weren't interested in his problems. 

Flawed tools could be replaced as well he knew, and he didn't like his prospects for his future if he couldn't find a better way than his spotty solution.

They smiled and smiled, and gave their orders and warnings about being judged a failure, then ushered him out, showing their pointed carnivore's teeth and vertical slit eyes so he'd better understand they meant business.

He wondered where they kept their tails in those skin suits, then sniggered a giggle at his own cleverness.

Still, he must find a way to do a better job at what they'd set him or they'd eat his soul and maybe even feed his body to the human cattle - those crocodiles would stop at nothing once the fate of a soul was known and found to be condemned

He fell into deep thought and suddenly found himself at his house.

As he opened the heavy door, he noticed the fringe of children trees that surrounded the circle in the land his family had sold to the apartment builders - the apartments where the hag bitch lived.

The damn portal was closed again.

The hag bitch had meddled for the last time - she would get hers - tonight!

Chapter 8

Sakarra sat inside the apartment with the lights off, waiting. 

She felt his presence, coming closer. She was going to have to come up with something clever, because she knew that he was probably going to kill her this time. 

He moved like a deeper shadow through the blackness of the night, baring his teeth as he skirted the circle where the hag bitch had closed the portal - he had just reopened it to get the negative energy he so desperately needed. 

She walked quietly to the patio door - she knew it wasn't locked she had made sure of that before she had turned the lights off - he was almost here. 

She picked up an fragrant oil lamp from the table beside the door and held it like a bat. 

There was no sound but she saw movement outside the door. 

He slithered up to the apartment door, moving silently as was his nature. 

There were no lights showing - perhaps she wasn't home. She raised the lamp over her head to smash him with it when he came through the door - but the stupid thing came in two - showering her with fragrant oil and making a slippery mess on the floor. 

He heard the clink and the splash - he moved as fast as he could and stopped with his hand on the doorknob of the patio door. 

She grabbed the patio door handle with her oily hand, attempting to open it to face him, but it slipped in her grasp. 

He had the door handle too, but it wouldn't open. 

They both kept trying to turn the knob, but as they were both turning in the opposite direction - it couldn't open!

She saw his yellow-red eyes as they lit up with the inner fire of anger.

He saw her her blue-green eyes fire with stubborn refusal to succumb to his will.

At first, neither of them saw the red and white and gold and black reflections within the window of the patio door they were both trying to open.

Then they noticed it, almost at exactly the same time - it was like feathers - and then the sound of the thunderbird's cry - "Chup-RO-noh" - ripped time and space apart.

They both clung hard to the doorknob, the one and only physical connection to reality they still had as they were snatched up in a whirling, bucking bull-ride with total absence of light and dark and anything of substance - each appearing as a bar of light - she blue-green and he yellow-red.

His brain whirled even worse as all the memory doors were all blown open at once by the power of the portal.

He was - who? - he was The Hunter, and men had once growled His name in the darkness - no, he was The Butterfly, and bloody fingers had held up still beating hearts for his admiration in hopes he would reopen what was closed - no, he was The Fallen, and humans of all sorts worshiped him in secret to further their selfish plans.

They each noticed that whatever moved them through this nothing place - it suddenly picked up speed.

They hit something soft, which then became hard and rough, then they woke in total blackness, not of dark, but the absence of all things - almost like the void of deep space.

His head was still spinning from the many memories cluttering up his brains - he was here, wherever this was, and with the hag bitch - had she done this to him? - oh how she would pay if she had, but he doubted it was her.

Sakarra moved and knelt on her heels - this was like nothing she ever knew or even remembered - and him here - his darkness seemed dimmed by the nothingness around them - there was no Darkness here - but where was the Light?

She felt empty inside, like an empty water bottle, and with as big a thirst to know what was going on.

She finally let go of the doorknob - the door was gone, but they had apparently both kept hold of the metal bit that had run through the door between them - perhaps that was the linkage that brought him here - she felt the sticky mess of the lamp oil on her clothes, but couldn't smell even the slightest trace of the overpowering scent the oil contained - then she noticed there was no heat, or cold, or sight or touch.

He had noticed the same, and was wondering if this absence of senses was because they were dead - when there was movement in the nothingness - how he knew it since he couldn't sense anything he had no idea, but as hard to admit as it was, he was glad the hag bitch was here with him right then.

Red and white and black and gold motes began to swirl around them and electric sparks lit the nothingness.

Into that cloud came visions - sight and sound - the absence of everything was still upon them - the vision was not seen with their eyes or heard with their ears, but appeared totally in their minds.

They were way up high, in space itself, looking down on the solar system - the vision swooped in - that was the Earth looking little different from the pictures they had seen in science class.

And that was Mars, but it was much changed from what they had seen in school - all yellow and red and green and blue - there was great life there and great science and that great science was used for things that troubled some - but those who did it were blinded by the great things that they were accomplishing in their desire for experimentation in the name of science alone.

The Earth was pristine and off-limits for the use of only the greatest of the (M)'Arians and those they would send - and there was another place on what Sakarra recognized as Venus, but this was smaller and clung to life against the harshness of the planet.

Many things happened in their vision, but there was one centered in the vision - one who was called Prince, but he called himself King, and he had those behind him who wanted to be the new greatest ones - they rebelled, and the depth of anger of their rebellion shocked those two who watched it without seeing it, and the weapons they used deafened them even there was no sound, and then they watched, helpless and very much afraid, as the rebels fled to Earth.

They watched the rebels come through the portal - the Prince coming first in a stolen protection suit emblazoned with the seal of the King - his securing the portal and bringing the rest through - then sending back the bomb that would stop any pursuit by destroying the portal at the other end.

They watched it go through the wormhole and blossom its cherry red fire at the very instant it was appearing in the portal room on mars - mind-blinded by the resulting flash as that explosion loosed the wormhole on mars, leaving it to run amok with everything on the planet - even to the atmosphere and water.

All of the lives and all the science and all that they had built, all the way down to the bedrock itself, were sucked into the black hole, but at the end there was no more food and the eating stopped, and the wormhole withered and died away.

The vision's perspective suddenly changed and they were looking at something like a rope with a frayed end around a bubble - the fabric of space-time had been split and torn from that moment of destruction on - and time had begun.

Sakarra knew without being told that the resulting mess was a very unstable situation, this time and dimension bubble that their cosmos had been ripped into - and the vision showed the multiple universes beginning to cool and slip into dead ashes - but there arrived into it many beings and energies who's whole objective was to restore the balance and reunite the strands and stop the collapse into oblivion.

She saw herself and him, being recombined into one, and realized they were part of the same fragmented soul, forever split and opposite, and there were more of them to be pulled together - and they must come together if the balance was to be restored and the multi-verse saved.

The fighting for supremacy still raged on the earth, the battle for full control of the planetary energy, and the repowering of the portals - each of the sides were vying for the major mass - and each of the sides was wrong.

He suddenly knew why the negative side - his side - needed the negative portals opened and the positive portals to be closed forever, but he also saw the futility in this, as why bother if the universes would die in the process of his side winning - obviously his bosses didn't know - or just didn't care, as long as they won.

The past balance of negative and positive, darkness and light, had swung wildly from one to the other, and they each now knew that it must be restored to the middle point and the true balance.

Hands sought each other's in that nothing place, and warmth met warmth in senseless contact.

They vision twisted and they fell like raindrops out of a clear blue sky.

The ground was soft, then went to hard again, and they lay where the landed, still senseless.

It was dawn when they awoke - groaning together with aching heads- and again the visions flowed through their bruised brains.

They sought each others hands again, just as the sun peeked over the horizon ,and turned to face a united front to the righting of the unbalance.

The End (or is it...)