Black...

Matt...

Where is he? Is he alright?

Black...

What's going to happen? Are my parents okay? Will I ever see them again? Will I ever see Matt again...?

Black...

Am I going to die? I don't want to die just yet...

I want Matt! I want him to make everything okay!

Black...

When I finally opened my eyes, I saw a blue sky. I sat up and I immediately recognized Baron's meadow.

I was still asleep!

And then Baron walked towards me.

Oh shit!

But his face didn't look like it had the last time I had seen him. He didn't look furious.

The expression on his face was completely new to me. I was use to Baron being arrogant, and amused with me, always thinking he was better, brighter, faster, stronger. I was used to having him looking at me with his possessive eyes, thinking I belonged to him in some way. But right now he didn't look arrogant. He looked worried... no, he looked frightened.

"Hello Jasmine" he told me, his voice almost trembling.

Was this a trick?

He probably knew I knew about the key. Was he only trying to change my mind so he could attack me again?

I mean even though Baron had attack me earlier, he hadn't always been like that. Usually he was nice, annoying maybe but nice nevertheless... He had been my confident for a while and even though I had always believed he didn't exist, I still cared for him in a way...

"Ja- " he started to say but his voice broke, and his hands circled around his throat like something was choking him.

His eyes were pleading; they were pleading me to give in.

But I wouldn't.

Hadn't my mother said I couldn't trust Spirit, and that HE was one!

He had lied to me! After all this time. He always had the answers but he had never given them to me! He had kept everything important from me!!

I looked at him in the eyes and shook my head.

And then he ran towards me, but something like an invisible wall stopped him. He ran in it and then his fists were hitting the air.

He kept trying to shout things at me but no sounds could escape his mouth for they seemed to be trapped in his throat.

But all the while he was doing that, all the while he was fighting against that invisible wall, it didn't look like he was struggling to get to me so he could hurt me, no it seemed like he was trying to reach me to help me...

What was going on?

I was so confused right now...

Black...

"How could you have hid this from us? After all these years? After everything?" a deep voice said beside me.

"She was simply a baby..." another sweet melodious voice said, pleading... a voice I could recognize...

"Seventeen years! She was left alone for seventeen years! We do not abandon our pairs! And we do not let them vulnerable to outside dangers and dark forces!" the deep voice said, his tone commanding and full of power.

I wanted to listen to more but then there was a loud siren in my head and I almost wanted to press my fists to my temples but decided against it.

I didn't want them to know I was awake yet...

I didn't want to be awake yet.

I heard coughing. Deep from the lungs cough.

"Jasmine..." I heard Matt's voice whisper like it was my own.

"Shit!" he cursed and then he coughed again and I could hear him moving.

"SHE'S LINKING!!! STOP HER!!!!" the deep voice beside me yelled so loudly that it covered everything else.

I opened my eyes and found myself face to face with an old man with white hair and white bear and eyes so light blue they were frightening.

He was staring at me as he yelled again "Who is she trying to reach!?!"

I couldn't feel Matt's presence in my head anymore and I felt desperately alone and terrified.

"I don't know" the melodic voice said and when I turned my head to where it came from I saw my mother for the first time in the flesh.

She was as breathtaking as she had been in my dream.

"What do you mean you don't know?!!" the old man said.

"I can't tell... It feels like a human... but the signal is weak... I never came across anything like it..." my mother answered without looking into my eyes.

"What's that supposed to mean!!!?!"

"Look I stopped her, that's all that's important alright!"

"Camellia! You are not allowed to speak to me this way" the old man said in a calm voice but it only frightened me more.

Where was I??

What was happening??

"I'm sorry" my mother answered, bowing her head.

"You can go back to your quarters now" the old man said and stared at me with his piercing eyes.

"But Basil, she's my dau- " my mother started to say but he stopped her.

"You are dismissed Camellia. Do not make me say it again" he ordered sharply.

Who was this man?? Was he in charge or something?

My mother stood up, bowed her head again, without a look at me, and left the room.

As she did so, I registered what kind of room I was in. It wasn't some dungeon, or a prison cell, like I would have guessed since I had kinda been kidnapped. The room was simple, with beige walls bare from any decoration. The only piece of furniture there was in were the small bed I laid in, a wooden working table with a matching chair, and then another chair by the door, where my mother had sat and another one by the bed, where the old man was sitting. I could feel the cool freeze coming from the open window, making the light-green curtains fly up and down, a cool salty breeze.

"Hello Jasmine" the old man said to me, his face stoic.

As I looked into this face, I knew what I had to answer. The man before me was named Basil, and he was powerful, the most powerful, and I was nothing compared to him and I had to do what he said because I was nothing compared to him.

This made me uneasy. This wasn't a dream, yet I knew I had to answer the same way I always did... but this was weird. How could I know who stood in front of me just with a simple "Hello Jasmine"?

"Hello Basil" I whispered and my head bowed slightly without my control.

"Your mother has been very disobedient of me Jasmine. She has hid you from your own kind and for what? What has she told you about us Jasmine?" he asked me in a low hypnotic voice.

"She said that because I had called for help you would come for me... but she didn't say much... She said I was unique" I whispered.

I don't know why I was telling all of this to this man. It's like the words were pouring out of my mouth without my control again...

"And do you know what you are?"

"She said I was half... half Immortal, half Spirit"

The second those words escaped my mouth I wanted to pushed them back again. Wasn't I supposed to hide this?

"Not only that, my child. You are the FIRST half Immortal half Spirit... You're more than unique Jasmine..." he said as he kept his gaze locked with mine.

He frightened me with his light blue eyes... they were too light... they didn't feel human... Because he wasn't...

"What are you going to do with me? Why did you attack me and my parents?" I asked in a little voice.

"Whether you want to believe it or not we weren't the ones who attacked you, my child. Colin and Athena reached you just in time, before the Spirit got their hands on you." Basil explained.

When he said Colin and Athena, I could see the mohawk boy and the girl with the braids and the swords...

"What do you mean?! You attacked us!!! There was this storm... and you burst our windows and my parents they..." I couldn't finish my sentence because something caught in my throat and I chocked tears.

"That wasn't us. We sent two of our most skilled warriors to get you out before the Spirit did too much damage. The windows, the storm, your parents all of that, it was all one of their little illusion trick!" Basil said and his eyes got even whiter and I couldn't help but back away from him, my back against the bed frame.

"I don't understand anything..." I whispered.

"Look, the Spirits they can't reach you physically because most of them are like ghosts, their body isn't made of flesh, you can barely say it's a body, but they trick you with mind games. They can't touch you, they can't fight you but they can reach your mind."

Then how did my mother managed to get pregnant, I wanted to ask but I guessed he probably didn't know the answer, since they obviously didn't even know I existed until today.

I had so many questions, but I didn't know if I could ask them, didn't know if I had the right. But there was one I had to ask, one I needed to know.

"And what about Immortals? What do you do?" I asked

"We are the legends" he said emphasising on the "we", "The Greek gods, the Roman gods, even those pitiful super heroes... That's us. There's no definite law on what every one of us does. We just do."

"So what? Immortals have special abilities?" I asked a little more enthusiastic this time.

I know I shouldn't be, but wasn't it kind of cool in a way?

"Yes." He simply answered, his face always staying stoic.

"Like what?" I asked,

"Anything you can think about, an Immortal has that power."

I wanted to ask more, I wanted to know more but it felt like I shouldn't. It already felt like I was asking a lot from this frightening old man, who was still a stranger to me.

I was still so clueless. I had no idea what being half meant, no idea what powers I had, and I was still really lost... My mother had talked about a war... Would I have to be part of it now? I didn't even know if I could trust these people... I didn't know what to think anymore.

"You don't trust us, don't you?" Basil said like he was reading my mind and I gasped, thinking maybe that was exactly what he was doing...

"I don't know WHO to trust" I explained.

Basil stood up from the chair and gave me his hand.

"Come with me, child, and I will show you something that will erase all you doubts."

I stared at his hand for a few second and then reluctantly placed mine in his.

We walked out of the room and into a white corridor, the floor made of marble, with great columns supporting the arch roof and marble statues here and there. It felt like I had been teletransported into an Ancient Greece palace.

"Where are we?" I asked him as we reached some kind of outside corridor with only columns around it so we could see the blue sea and feel the wind.

"Atlantis" Basil simply answered, but I stopped dead in my track.

"Atlantis, as in the lost island Atlantis!?" I hissed.

"Yes." he simply answered.

"But didn't it sink or something?"

"No we just moved it... People were going to find its location and it wasn't a risk we were willing to take" Basil said and kept walking like this was the most normal thing to say.

Oh my god!!!

I wanted to bombard him with question again but we reached another corridor that had walls this time and then he stopped in front of the door with two men standing by it.

The door was in some kind of really old grey rock with inscription carved on it that I couldn't comprehend.

Basil started to say something to the men, guards obviously, in some kind of gibberish dialect and then one of the guard stepped aside and the other closed his eyes and the doors cracked open.

"Come with me child" he said and I reluctantly followed.

The corridor we now walked in was completely dark except for a few torch here and there, on the rock walls covered with spider webs and moisture and god knew what.

I really didn't like that place.

Especially since the big door closed behind us, and now we were trapped.

"As you can probably guess this is a dungeon"

Oh ya really? I wanted to say but I think sarcasm didn't really have its place here.

"And what? You're going to leave me here?" I asked, forming my deepest fear at the moment.

Sure he had been kind so far, but what was I really out of trouble?

Hadn't everybody say these people would hurt me once they would get their hands on me??

Nothing made sense anymore... if they weren't going to hurt me then why had they hid me from them all these years? Hid me from my own kind?

"No. I want to show you just why we are the good people and the Spirit are the bad ones" Basil said and as he spoke those words, thousand of torches lighted.

What I saw in front of me eyes left me speechless.

There was a big glass wall in front of me, and behind that glass wall there was the most terrifying thing I had ever seen in all my life.

In that prison, there was a demon. Yes, a demon, because that was the only word that could describe the creature in front of me. It looked like some kind of deep black and grey fog with the shape of a human. It seemed like it had a face that was contortion in expression of pain and it was completely frightening and I wanted to hide behind Basil.

The second I move I heard a high pitch goosebump chilling scream, the one someone possess would probably scream and when I turned my head I could see another glass wall and in it another shadow that kept bouncing on it, like it was trying to catch me and I couldn't help but scream back.

I could almost see hands, sliding on the glass, trying to claw their way out.

I wanted to get out of here. I wanted to be as far away as I could from here.

"These are some of the Spirits we have been able to catch over the years." Basil started to explain, his voice emotionless "Don't worry, none can escaped, but I thought it could be good for you to see what one really looked like"

The Spirit behind the glass started to hit what looked like its head against the wall and scream like a vulture and I was shivering with fright.

"No one ever comes down here... They get crazy when they see people... But I can't risk taking Immortals down here... Their mind is too weak for them, the Spirits could find a way to control them and escape. My mind is strong enough though, the one of your mother too and of course yours, because a part of you is like them..." Basil said.

Was there really a part of me that was like that? Could I have been like this?

That thought frightened me even more...

"Well well. If it isn't his majesty Basil who made us the honour of visiting!! Tell us Basil, how long will you be able to stay today without running away screaming like a little girl...?" a deep voice, coming from another cell that was still under the dark, said, mocking before laughing.

At first I was paralyzed.

Did I really hear it? Was I going crazy?

But then the fire light the cell and my eyes almost popped out of their sockets.

The Spirit stopped laughing and stared in my eyes with its own dark blue ones that were filled with some deep emotion I couldn't even begin to understand.

"Hello Jasmine" the Spirit whispered.

"Hello Baron"