Janney and Jonathan were in disbelief. They expected to find an entire army made up of the agents of the Darkness, and now George was telling them that no one and nothing was there. Not even the creature was present in the cave, according to George. It just did not make any sense. How could the entire chamber be empty? 

“Hang on a minute George. How can everything just vanish like that?” Jonathan asked.

“I don’t understand it any more than you Jon. But it has to be magic. It has to be. The only thing inside the cave is rock and Darkness.” George told them.

“Come on, why don’t we all go and see for ourselves?” Janney said as she pushed past George.

Soon, all three of them were standing in the cavern and could see that it was indeed empty, as George had told them. It was like looking into a bottomless pit, without the luminescence from the moss providing light as it did before. The cavern was just a big, dark, empty space. It was so dark they could not even see their hand in front of their face if it was not for the lights they brought.

“I can’t sense anything. It is as if nothing had ever been here before.” George told Janney.

“Maybe I can try.” Janney offered. “After all, we have different abilities.”  Janney closed her eyes and concentrated on the feel of the place. She expected to detect some signs of life, even a very small form of life, but she did not. It was just like George had said. There was nothing in there.

“George is right, there is nothing here.” Janney said as she opened her eyes.

“That is what I told you.” George said, exasperated that his sister didn’t believe him. “I should be able to at least find a sign that the creature had been in here, but there is nothing. I can’t even see any evidence from when we were here! The only thing that is here is nothing.”

“What are you saying that nothing is here?” Jonathan asked.

“I mean exactly that. Nothingness, nothing. It is as if the cave is a void in existence.” George told Jonathan.

“But how can that be?” Jonathan said. “Maybe it is a trick? Like the Darkness is covering up what is really here, so you can’t find it.”

“I suppose so.” George said. “I don’t know how it could do that, but I guess anything is possible.”

“I don’t think it is a trick.” Janney said. “I should be able to detect if anything is alive down here, and I can’t.

“Well, that is the whole point, isn’t it?” Jonathan said. “Say you are looking at George over there, but then I cover your eyes with my hand like this.”  Jonathan reached over and placed his hand so close to Janney’s face that the palm of his hand was almost touching her. “Now you can’t see George at all because I am covering him up. What if that is what is going on here? Somehow the agents of Darkness are covering up our senses to what they are they are up to.”

“Except I can still tell you are there as I can feel your hand next to my face.” Janney answered Jonathan. “George, do you remember what grandfather said about my abilities? I am able to see life, all life. Even the agents of Darkness have life. It might be twisted and perverted, but it is still life. I can’t sense any life here at all. I can’t even sense you or me. We should be absolutely glowing to me, but I only see Darkness and nothing.” Janney explained to them. She was frustrated and a bit scared.

“What if it is a void of nothing that is being placed in front of you?”  Jonathan said. “This way, when you try and find them, you only can see the void. To the two of you, it appears as if nothing is here.

“But how is that even possible? We are walking around in the cave. How can a void or space of nothing be in front of us and have us walking around in it at the same time?” George asked.

Jonathan laughed with a halfhearted grin in reply. “You said it yourself, magic. Look, none of us knows the extent of what the Darkness can do. What we do know is that it almost destroyed the world a long time ago. If it wasn’t for your grandfather it very well may have succeeded, and it has had a very long time to plan its revenge. Strategy 101 is to never let your enemy know your plans. It stands to reason that they don’t want us to know what they are up to.”

Janney had to admit that what her cousin Jonathan was saying made perfect sense. There had to be some kind of a magical veil placed over the cave that blocked their senses. The fact that she could not even sense herself was evidence of the veil. The weakness of the Darkness’ plan was that it worked too well. By blocking Janney from sensing either George or Jonathan, it called attention to itself. The giveaway was that it was blocking her from even seeing herself.

“George, what if we tried to work together?” Janney asked her brother.

“How do we do that?” George wondered.

“Try and find the creature again, but this time I will use my powers to focus on the space right in front of you. Maybe together we can tear a hole in their veil so you can track them?  I know once you have their trail you will be able to find them.” Janney said, explaining her plan to them both.

George liked her idea. They had never tried to link their powers together before, so he wasn’t sure if it would work, but it was worth a try. He figured the worst thing that could happen was that they would still be left in the dark in the cave. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

“What should I do?” Jonathan asked quickly.

“Just stay alert in case this works. For all we know, we may be standing in the middle of the Darkness once this is over.” Janney told Jonathan.

Jonathan did not like the idea of doing nothing, but he guessed he didn’t have any choice in the matter as he was the only one there without the magic of a dragon. He made a quick note of where they were in relation to the tunnel that led to the outside in case they needed to make a quick exit by tossing a glow stick in the mouth of the entrance, and then waited.

Both George and Janney had closed their eyes and were concentrating. George began focusing on the creature from the other day. He knew instinctively it was the ancient enemy, the Ichneumon. He called up an image of it in his mind and called it by name silently. Concentrating on the beast itself and pushing past the emotion of fear and terror that came with it. His fists began to clench the more he concentrated. A thin bead of sweat began running down his face.

Janney focused on the space immediately before her brother. She closed herself off from her normal senses of sight, smell, and hearing and reached down deep for the inner sense that came from her being a guardian. She attempted to focus her gaze on a smaller area, thinking that by doing so she could put more power behind it. She soon began straining to keep her focus as all her efforts were only returning there was nothing before them. Janney was about to give up when she had a thought. She already knew what George should look like to her senses as she had seen him many times that was. Why not concentrate on him rather than the space before him, she thought.

Janney changed her focus to where her brother was standing, and almost immediately she knew this was the right thing to do. She recalled the image of the light and the power George could give off. She strained and tried to will that image into existence in her mind. Suddenly, she felt as if all the air in her lungs had been slammed out of her. She gasped and struggled to maintain a hold of her power as she opened. What she saw scared her and left her in awe. George was not just glowing before her but was pulsing with a radiating power and fire. The inner core of his being was a pure blueish light that was too bright for her to look at. His fists were pulsing with a yellow and orange light that looked like flames dancing back and forth. She knew immediately she was looking at the raw power of a midnight dragon within her brother. It was terrifying and beautiful altogether.

George was so focused on his thoughts that he did not even hear his sister when she cried out as her power gave her sight back. He knew something was working, though, as he felt the familiar feeling of the hunter connect to the calm within him as he concentrated on the Ich. He felt it. The twisted rage of undeniable hatred the creature contained repulsed George. He did not know where the creature was yet, but he knew without a doubt he soon would.

Janney could see her brother had connected to his power. She could only assume also meant that he would soon be able to track what they were looking for. Taking hope that she was on the right track, she slowly moved her focus to the space immediately in front of George. She let her focus contain his glow just on the peripheral edge of her sight. Her thought was to use her brother as an anchor and to push off of him to rip a hole in the veil of Darkness. It didn’t take long for her to see that her decision was correct. She could see the light from Georges's hands streaking out before him. She imagined that was how his magic tracked down his quarry when looked upon with the eyes of a guardian. She moved her concentration to where his light faded into the Darkness. She started to feel the nausea that came when near agents of the darkness. The veil before George began to thin out, and eventually it opened up altogether.

A sudden blast of cold wind howled through the cave and would have knocked Janney to the ground except that Jonathan reached out and caught her. She looked at George and saw his face was slightly illumined with a green light that was coming from the tear in the veil. Janney realized the light was the same glow the cave had before when they first entered, and she knew that their plan had worked. Jonathan was right, there was a veil of Darkness in front of them, and they had just opened up a hole in it that they could pass through. As elated as she was at the thought that they were correct, it suddenly occurred to her that they had never discussed what they should do now. How were they to defend themselves against the strength of the Darkness? She was pretty sure they would notice what they just did, so they no longer had the element of surprise they thought they would have when they first set off on a scouting missing that morning.

“This way.” George said with a distant tone to his voice. He was lost in the hunt. He had the creature’s scent now and would not turn back.

The cave burst into life as they crossed the threshold of the hole in the veil. The blue and green glow was everywhere, but they did not see any sign of life. They did not see the creature or the man from the aquarium. The calm and peacefulness from the cave they felt before was gone. Janney could hear alarm bells ringing within her, warning her of the danger that was just out of their sight. She knew that George had to be feeling the same warning too, but if he did, he did not betray any sign that he was.

It was a strange sight to behold, while still a boy, George was also a hunter with a power inside of him. He moved forward through the cave, focused on finding the Ichneumon. They followed George up through the northern end of the cave as the winding path sloped upward away from the area where they first saw the creature. They traversed through a maze of stalagmites that rose from the cave floor and had the green moss growing on them. Janney noticed that the blue glow was coming from the stalactite formations that hung from the cavern ceiling in clusters. It felt like she was walking through an alien world rather than inside a cave in Tennessee.

George led them up the path to the top of the large cavern and came to a stop as the path appeared to make a sharp turn to the left. He motioned for them to be quiet, and they put their heads close together so they could hear him as he whispered. “They are around the bend in the passage.”

The reality of what they were about to do hit them. Now that they were here, none of them was sure what they should do. At the same time, they all knew that they needed to be there. That something terrible was going to happen if they did not try and stop whatever the Darkness was planning on doing. Janney really wished that Pix and her grandfather were with them. She began to doubt herself and think that maybe they should have waited for Pix to return. Of course, she knew it was too late for regrets now. Besides, they were not there to fight but to investigate. She would leave the fighting up to her grandfather, after all, he was a dragon.

Once they both indicated to George they were ready, he led them around the bend in the passage. The passage opened up and became a thin cliff outcropping that wrapped its way around the top of a large crater. A thin drop of water fell from the roof of the cave which over eons had caused the crater to form. The area gave a strange resemblance to the large waterfall the park was named for, which Janney thought they must be fairly close to, if not directly under. Several places along the ledge sloped down and could be used to get to the basin at the bottom of the waterfall. The man from the aquarium was standing in one of these places directly across from them. He had his back turned, and he had not noticed the newcomers who had entered the chamber. He was surrounded by the same dark swirling forms they had seen the night before. Even when concentrating, Janney was not able to focus on what kind of forms they were, as they looked like they were part mist, part liquid, as they squirmed and swirled about.

George scanned the area, taking note of threat after threat and where they were in case they needed to escape, but he could not find the creature that led him there. He did not want to use his magic if he could help it, as he knew that as soon as he did, their position would be discovered. Unlike the previous chamber, this one did not have any stalagmites they could hide behind. They were completely exposed in the open with their only defense being that, so far, no one had noticed them.

Jonathan tapped George on the shoulder and pointed at a tiny ledge at the top of the other end of the cave. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust, but he finally saw what his cousin was trying to show him. On the other side of the waterfall was a ledge with a large ruby in the stone wall. George knew instantly that the ruby was the Eye to the Light. The world and lives of the fey, pixies, dragons, and other magical beings were contained within the Eye. Or rather, it was the gateway to that land where so many years ago Virago had sealed them up to keep them safe from the Ich.

George thought creatures of Darkness were looking up at the Eye, but then he realized it was not the eye they were looking at, but the Ich. The beast looked stronger than it did the other day. It had scaled the rock wall and was attempting to get onto the ledge where the ruby was near. It looked as if it was being held in place by something, as if it could not continue to move forward. George knew that his grandfather had placed protective magic around the Eye in case it was ever discovered, and he could only assume this was what was stopping the Ich from getting to the ledge and the Eye. The creatures below were lending their strength somehow to the beast. George knew from their last encounter that he was not strong enough to defeat it, especially now if it had grown in power. He motioned them back into the passage and out of view from the Ich.

“We have to stop it.” George whispered.

“How do we do that?” Janney asked.

“I don’t know, but that ruby is the Eye of Light. It has to be.” George answered.

“I thought that looked like what you two told me about.” Jonathan said. “I mean, how many giant rubies can there be?”

“We can’t let them get to it.” Janney said softly.

“I don’t have the strength to take that beast on.” George said, disheartened.

“What about the others?” Jonathan asked George.

“What about them?” George responded.

“Surely that thing is feeding power from them. Can you take them on? That would weaken the thing and slow it down.” Jonathan asked.

George thought about it for a moment before answering. “I am not sure. The man from the aquarium is here, too. I can tell he is not as powerful as the Ich, but he is strong. I am not sure if I can take him.”

“Maybe we should try and get a message to Mr. Virago?” Janney suggested.

“I don’t think there is enough time.” Jonathan said. “He will know something is up as soon as you use your power, George. That is how Pix found us last time.  I would imagine it would be the same this time too.”

“He was a lot closer then too.” Janney pointed out.

Suddenly, a large guttural cheer sounded from within the chamber, and they knew the Ich was making progress. They were out of time and needed to act one way or the other, and they knew it.

“I am with you all the way George.” Jonathan said reassuringly. “Whatever you decide. I am staying right here with you.”

George wanted to be comforted, but the idea of his cousin’s bravery, but the reality was what could he honestly do to help him against any of the agents of Darkness? “Thanks, Jon, but look after Janney first.” George told him.

They made it back out to the ledge without being noticed, so they still had the element of surprise for however brief amount of time that would be. George grabbed hold of his power and pushed it down deep, hoping he could mask it long enough to get a good shot off before they were found out. He noticed the Ich was now on the ledge and was banging against what appeared to be a magical force field of some kind directly in front of the Eye to the Light. It almost had the ruby, and it appeared to be only a matter of time until it was able to break down the defenses around it. It was now or never, he told himself. He let the rage build inside of him at the thought of the Darkness getting access to the Eye and the knowledge that it would destroy all those who lived because of it. The rage began burning hotter and hotter within him until he could not hold it back anymore. He needed to release the power before it grew beyond his control. He aimed at the man from the aquarium and let loose a torrent of ultraviolet and black smokeless flame that exploded in his target.

Instantly, the chamber erupted into chaos. The man dropped to the ground as the flames engulfed him. Caught by surprise at the force of the attack, he twisted and fell from the rock down to the bottom of the cave.

George knew the agent of Darkness would not be destroyed so easily, but for the moment, he did not focus on him. He saw the Ich let out a terrifying scream of rage and pain as felt power leave it and turned in time to watch its ally fall to the bottom of the cave as the dragon’s fire continued to burn. He sent his next round of flames into the midst of the swirling dark forms made of the agents of the Darkness. George sent wave after wave of his smokeless flames into the creatures. They cried out in rage as the flames tore into them.  The effects of the fire were much more devastating to them than it was to their master.

Janney looked at George and tried to lend him whatever strength she could give him. She could feel him weaken as he relentlessly released the dragon fire. She decided to use the technique Pix had taught her in the garden to help strengthen the sick plants to help her brother. She lent her strength to the areas that she thought were not as bright as the rest of him. Being that George was a living person meant her work was much more intricate than when working with the plants, but the concept was still the same.

The creature was so close to its long-awaited prize of the Eye to the Light that it decided to ignore George for the moment. It would deal with it once it had the ruby. What the beast had lost in power, it attempted to make up in rage as it began its attack against the ruby once more. It became a fury of power and rage with its black teeth and long claws unleashing themselves against the barrier that prevented it from obtaining what it desired. The onslaught continued until there was a deafening explosion of blue magical power from the ruby, which through the Ich down from the ledge. The creature howled as it landed on its back with a thunderous crash near where the children stood.

The beast came to its feet and turned its attention finally on George. It crouched back on its back legs, preparing to spring itself across the cavern into the boy that was destroying its minions. Jonathan yelled out to warn George, but he was too late. The creature launched itself into the air towards them with an unexpectedly booming screech like that of a thousand eagles crying out as one echoes throughout the cave. A smoky, almost ghostly form rose up from the ruby and rushed down and grabbed the Ich, tossing it hard against the far wall. The form continued to grow and soon took the shape of a large black dragon. The Ich recognized its old foe and let out a snarl of anger as transparent violet flames engulfed the beast.

George stopped his attack and was in shock as he watched the shadowing dragon creature join the fight. He was not sure who or what that dragon was, but he was sure glad it was there. The dragon was relentless in its attack against the beast. Every time the beast moved to attack, the dragon turned to smoke, leaving the creature frustrated at not being able to do any damage to it. Over time George realized that while the dragon’s attacks were real, they were not damaging the beast as much as he expected. The ghost-like form was not able to inflict much substantial harm. It was successful in keeping the beast from the ruby but not much more. He was about to join the fight, but then felt a blast of magic rip past him up towards the Eye.

Janney cried out in horror as she saw the man from the aquarium rising from the cave floor. He floated up, suspended in the middle of the cavern. His pasty white face rapidly healed itself from the effects of George’s dragon fire. “You can’t stop me boy!” the man yelled and another bolt of magic was hurled from the man into the ruby. “I am the Darkness!” he screamed.

As horrified as Janney was, she knew she needed to act. She extended her power up to the Eye and attempted to protect it from the attacks the man was throwing at it. She instantly felt the cracks developing in the structure of the ruby. She poured every part of her into the gem, focusing on giving strength and removing any taint of Darkness. She could feel a power in the gem that she had never felt before. She was not sure what it was, but she was sure that it was the key to how the magic worked with it. She put all of her magic into strengthening the inner magic she found in the ruby. At first, she could feel the power resisting her as if it was not sure if it could trust her or not. She tried to reassure it that she was there to help. She was a guardian of the Light, she tried to tell it. She only wanted to keep it safe.

The magic reacted to her thoughts of safety, and suddenly the chamber was flooded with an intensely bright light. Janney screamed as she felt a wave of heat wash over her. Jonathan and George were swept up in the light and heat seconds after Janney. The world seemed to be undone as if every part of who they were was taken apart and then put back together. A moment later the world went dark.