Dear Jesus,

The first thing Mike did when the tremors began was to wriggle his hand out of the occultic bracelet he'd been wearing.
In the heat of the battle for dear life, I had no moment to spare for looking at his signature accessory.

Mike tried to get back on his feet fast, but he groaned in pain and had to do it slowly.
Of course, after the physical whirlwind torture his former demonic parasite had inflicted on his body and the fall, he was bound to feel the pain of sore spots and hurting bones.

"Are you okay?" I asked, concerned. At the same time, I had to shield my eyes from the shower of dust that was darkening the space even more. I had switched back to physical display only.

"I'm fine," he said through gritted teeth. With the way he staggered when he stood, he was perfectly fine indeed. 

"We have to leave now. It's the curse. Since no sacrifice was made, the altar would be marred."

He made his way down the altar, went to a corner where a table I hadn't noticed before was, and pulled out a long robe with many pockets which he used to cover his bare body.

I used that time to go get John so we could leave together.
He was growing weaker by the minute, sliding in and out of unconsciousness and he couldn't stand upright anymore.

By then, the shaking and crumbling had gotten more pronounced. Larger chunks of rocky stalactites began to break and fall. It was only by your grace that we weren't ground to mush.

I began to cough. John stiffened and fainted.

I tried to revive him.
"John? John! Stay with me. Wake up, John."
It was no use.

This was bad.
How were we ever going to get out of this place fast with an unconscious body?
You bet John was as heavy as an oversized sack filled with large tubers. I mean, what had he been eating? Maybe working out had its disadvantages too.  

Mike came to my side and handed me a wet cloth to cover my nose with just like he did.
I was suspicious at first but didn't have the time to even protest and it was a great relief from the gulps of dust I had been inhaling.

He then paused, remembering something.

He ran back to the altar where his uncle was sprawled on the ground in the initial state of Rigor Mortis, looked at the dead man with sad eyes and knelt by him. He rummaged through the man's waist. I don't know where exactly it was, but Mike came up to us with a bunch of keys and a handy flashlight.

He and I heaved John upright. With Mike on the right and I on the left, we moved at Mike's leading towards the only entrance at a snail's pace.
The way out slightly sloped downwards so we had to be extra careful to get our footing.
Oh, I never knew John weighed so much! Maybe it was because of exhaustion on my part.

The intensity of the rumbling, and the fact that we had to dodge many flying stones and cover our eyes from dust, made the movement excruciatingly slow. We all sustained scratches and bumps but nothing too major.

We were a few metres to the entrance when bam! A giant rock right above the entrance got dislodged. It missed hitting us by just a hair's breadth. The giant rock then rolled down and effectively blocked the entrance, cutting us off from the outside world.

Mike utter a foul word under his breath and kicked a stone. The guy still has a lot of unlearning to do.

"Don't panic," I said, trying to sound brave, "Isn't there another way out?"

"There's no other way out, Radiance. Even if there is, I was supposed to discover the deeper, more intricate levels of the Scar labyrinth only if I had been coronated tonight. What are we going to do?"

I pursed my lips and breathed out.
"We have the greater power, remember? Let's pray."

I had to make the prayer straight to the point because my shoulders were killing me. John owes me one. Hmm-hmm.

"Lord, please light our path and lead us out of this place," I said aloud with my eyes closed.

I think I heard a grunt of 'Amen' from Mike. He was probably sceptical because he was new to this whole believe-in-God thing. Well, well, he'd have to get used to it.

My cross seals flashed, and when I opened my eyes, everything was multi-dimensional. Quickly I scanned the area.
Gloria and the guardian angels of Mike and John were in tow.

Your Spirit revealed to me all the doors in each cardinal point of this space. There were secret codes to open them and each led to a different outlet.

Look at the far right.

I turned to my right. When my eyes locked with Mike's, I heard him gasp and saw his eyes widen.

"Your- your- your eyes. It's lit up like gold in a fire!"

Wow! Really?
It'd been a long time since my eyes physically glowed up my spiritual gift.

I shook him out of his dazed look and said, "Uh- Mike, I'll explain later. Now's not the time. Let's get going. Follow my lead."

And so, dragging John together with him, I went to the further right corner of the wall.
With my free hand, I felt the wall. Physically, it felt like an ordinary damp wall of earth, but spiritually, it was a door.

"I command every ancient door to be lifted in Jesus' name!" I said with authority, pointing at the exact spot where the spiritual keyhole was.

Our three guardian angels each pointed their weapons of light at the door, and like a fog slowly dispersing, a carved opening lifted, the mechanism creaked and groaned as though it hadn't been used or lubricated in a decade.

"Woah!" Mike exclaimed. His jaw grazed his neck. 

"Come on. I'll go first. I'll pull John after me and you'll push him in before you. Come on! Hurry!"

It was a dark tunnel but I was sure this was the way out.

"Are you sure about this?" Mike asked, eyeing the tight space suspiciously.
I crawled in, ignoring him.

I turned back and raised an eyebrow at him.
"Got a better idea? Wanna stay here?"

"Okay, okay!"

Don't let me begin to recount the stress that it took to enter the tunnel-like space with John to deal with.

When we entered further in, we were able to stand upright after crawling and pushing and grunting a few metres in.
It was dark and cold physically—I could see Mike using the flashlight to illuminate his path, but I was having no trouble seeing thanks to my guardian angel's light.

The sound of falling rocks kept sounding behind us.

Following our angels' lead, I, Mike and John slugged on. Just up ahead was an opening with scent ascent to climb out. 

Eureka!

We came out to a wet, wild forest. My spiritual vision went off.
Thankfully, Mike recognized the trail up from here so he was able to lead the way.
We broke out from the thicket to a dirt road and a pickup truck was in view. It was his uncle's.

After we lay John in the back seat, and I had sat in front because there was hardly any space left at the back, Mike slid into the driver's seat and drove out of the thick forest through a path.
I was surprised to see that he could drive so fantastically, but I didn't have the liberty of expressing that as I was worn out and shaken from the events that had transpired in that hellhole.

"I thought I was doing right, getting the justice against nuisances," Mike suddenly began after a moment of absolute silence in the car.

"I didn't know I was deceived. Then, I began clamouring for power. Oh, the evils I supervised and have seen done..." he trailed off.

I didn't speak.

"And yet, He found me. The Jesus I hated and fought against for so long still showed me mercy!"

He began to sob and soon had to pull over. He wept like a baby, hunched over the steering wheel.

As I was awkwardly doing my best to speak soothing words to pacify Mike, John groaned at the back, startling us.

We both looked back, and I was alarmed to see him battling shivering in a high fever.

I grabbed Mike's arm hard and said, "We've to get going. NOW!"

"But where to? He needs medical attention and what explanation are we going to give for our state?"

Lord, what do we do?

Suddenly, without a shadow of a doubt, I knew where we were to go. The Great White Wall.
There were other tiny bits of this battle equation that had to be balanced.

"You know the tallest building on that hill in McCheynne?" I asked Mike.

He nodded. "Yeah, I think that was where we had our first interaction."

"That's where you must drive to!" I announced and opened my door.

I came out, went to the back seat and squeezed myself in. I had to place John's head on my thigh. He was burning up.

As Mike started the vehicle and made for our stop, I held John and began to pray vigorous to you for mercy for his life.

"You love him don't you?"

My face heated and I shot my head up. Mike was observing me from the rear mirror and he had a knowing, amused look on his face. Uh-oh!

I opened my mouth to dispute but no intelligible word came out.

Geez, was I that obvious?

He simply smiled and nodded as if he was talking to himself.

"Does he know?" he said again.

"Hey, hey, don't get the wrong ideas now, Mike..."

He gave a rueful smile. "Yeah, all that talk about being engaged to Jesus? And the two of you are just family friends? I get, I get! But, I say, two of you will make a mushy couple. I mean, he being kidnapped wasn't supposed to happen. You were the only target. Did he just happen to be with you? No, he was your knight in shining armour from that embarrassment in class." Mike let out a chuckle.

My face went chilli red and there was nothing nearby I could use to stone Mike.

I looked at John's face and sighed.

"I have no idea what he thinks of me now anyways," I muttered.

In about thirty minutes, we got to our destination. By then, John's fever had spiked considerably.

I motioned for Mike to wait for me in the car. He obliged.

As I had suspected the reason you'd asked me to come here first, I wasn't overly surprised when I began to hear the sound of female voices blasting in tongues.

Kathy, Pris, Uluir and Portia came into view when I entered the clearing where the white wall stood.
They were sweating, each at different positions groaning in the spirit.
It was a comforting sight, Lord. I was never alone in that battle. This is what I call real backups.

Kathy snapped her eyes open and gazed at me for a few seconds as if she thought she was dreaming. She must have heard the sound of rustling leaves.

"She's here!" Kathy squealed.

The rest of the girls stopped their prayers and looked at me.
A thousand questions were in their eyes.
Kathy was the first to meet me and give me a bone-crushing hug. They all swarmed around me and songs of praises began to float out of their mouths.

"You look horrible, BFF!" Kathy cried.

I sniffed away my happy tears—I was seeing my wonderful friends again when I thought I'd be dead—and said in a wobbly voice, "I know, girl. I know. And so do you all."

Kathy's curly locks were so tangled that one would think she'd used them to mop the cold grassy floor. 

Their eyes were red as though they'd been crying for hours and hadn't gotten a wink of sleep throughout the night, which I strongly suspected and later confirmed was the case.

The questions began to roll in, left, right, front back and centre.

"What happened to you, Ray?"
"We called you a million times after we saw the viral video of your um... humiliation."
"How did you come here?"
"Oh my God! You're wounded!"
"And what in the world happened to your dress to make it so torn and dirty?"

I calmed them with the motion of my hand.
"It's a long tale, but I sure thank God for making me come through the valley of the shadow of death to you guys alive."

More hugs and tears followed.

I had to interrupt the reunion.
"Please, I still need help. John's with me! He's in bad need of medical attention."

"You say! Now I know why God asked me to bring..."—Uluir ran back to the wall and picked up a medium-sized duffel bag and began to ransack it and pull out all sorts of medic stuff.

"I literally dumped all the content of my first aid kit into this bag. It was absurd while I was doing it, but I didn't question God. Besides, I was in such a hurry."

"Same here. I also see why I also felt the urge to bring some of your clothes," Portia said. She pulled out one of my gowns from her backpack and handed it to me. 

"Thanks, Portia. But my appearance will have to wait. We have to go now! John's unconscious," I said, then spun on my heels and headed back the way I came.

"He is?" Kathy asked, her brows etched in concern as everyone plodded after me.

I simply nodded as I increased my pace.
"And we've got company."

"Oh!" Portia said as she saw the pickup truck.

But, Mike wasn't in the truck. Disturbed, I frowned and called out, "Mike?" I scanned the vicinity but I couldn't find him.

"Hey, the door's open. I'll attend to John," Uluir said and slipped into the back seat while Kathy and Pris stood to help her.

Portia came closer to me, and with a frown that looked like she would burst into tears any minute, she said, "You brought some guy to our sacred place? Don't you know he might be with the enemy?"

"He was with the enemy before, Portia. He is a new creature now. Jesus saved him just like he did you. I saw the transformation with my very eyes. And yes, even though it was a risk, it was one I was ready to take because God asked me to and I had no choice."

She sighed but her voice and stance bespoke scepticism. "Well then, where is he?"

That was the question swirling in my brain. My flesh began posing unnecessary questions.

Where was Mike?

Had he lured me out here just to know our spiritual stronghold? Did he disappear to strike again?

His spirit's transformation when he professed Jesus as his Lord was real. Much more the instruction I'd received for us to drive down here.

Gasp! Or could he be in danger?

I was confused and a little scared.

If either of those things happened, then it would be my fault.

⋋✿ ✿⋌⋋✿  ✿⋌

Author's note: Aren't you glad like I am that Radiance and her trapped crew escaped unhurt?💫 Well, yeah, John had a major bump and it seems Mike has vanished into thin air.🥺

It's almost a wrap, guys. In a few chapters we'll be saying goodbye to ACSD and we'll be beginning a new book in this series.🥰 I know some of you don't want this Radiance story to end and neither do I. So until God puts on the red light that says stop, we'll keep going. 🥳🥳🥳

I really want to appreciate God for bringing me this far. Seriously, without Him, it would have been impossible. 💯

Oh, what's that I see? You wanna do three things now?
Vote, comment and share. You're a darling. How could I refuse such a nice gift? 🤗❤️

I love you, my cheery reader. 😘😘😘