Fear and anticipation of a future we didn’t know of made Destiny and Cara crippled for sometime. They weren’t able to move. For a few seconds, they stood in the room, looking towards the window as if a storm had just entered and completely wrecked their lives. The second call of Aunt Alice from the dining room pulled them back from their train of thoughts. 

They hurried downstairs. Cara was getting slow behind Destiny so she literally pulled her hand and brought her down to the dining room. Aunt Alice smiled cheekily at Destiny and she didn’t understand the reason why. 

“Destiny, I heard about your job. Congratulations!” She heard her exclaim. Oh, now she understood. 

“Thank you.” Though she tried to sound as pleasant as possible, given the current situation, she wasn’t able to. 

It’s true that she was newly recruited as an illustrator for a very famous comic book company called ‘Super Comics'. She was always good at painting and art. When all her friends were busy cracking mathematics, she used to scribble and draw throughout the pages of her textbook. It earned her the teacher’s wrath but not even did she try changing that habit. 

“Des, Des!” Cara's impatient tug on her wrist brought her back to reality. 

The chicken roast on Destiny’s plate was becoming drier as she was playing with it, rather eating it. Dangling the fork throughout the plate, she took a single piece of chicken and began to chew on it. “What?” 

“What happens now?” Cara kept her voice as quiet as possible. 

“We eat, we go to sleep and then we leave for Meyercliffe tomorrow when Chris arrives!” She whispered back. 

Cara looked apprehensive but then with a non-committal shrug, she went back to eating. “Are you sure it'll be okay?” 

“Yeah.” I guess so, Destiny said that to myself, inaudibly. 

She was worried sick. And it wouldn’t help a bit if she makes Cara worry so in order to calm the predicament, she assured her with all her might. Saying that simple ‘yes' to her was everything she could do, at that moment. She didn’t know if it was going to be okay, she just knew that they were different. And that, they belonged to someplace else. 

Having finished dinner quietly, and to be honest, quite hurriedly, they retired back to the room. Cara was tensed but Destiny made her sleep on the right side of the bed, placed the duvet over her and patted her forehead. She sensed her calming down and drifting to sleep. She was tired. It wasn’t her fault that in one day itself, she had travelled from Texas to Nashville and came here and then suddenly there was news that she had to go to Meyercliffe. 

Meyercliffe. Shit. Was that even a place? 

Destiny decided not to think about it any longer. She acquired the other side of the bed, made herself comfortable beside Cara and tried to get some sleep before their major escapade to Meyercliffe. 

The rays of sunlight touched Destiny’s face. The entire room was brightening up as the light creaked through both the opened windows. The moment she opened her eyes, she saw Cara looking down at her. “Fifteen minutes left.” 

Destiny jumped from the bed, taking the duvet with her. The whiff of alarm didn’t seem to surprise Cara. She exhaled a deep breath of agitation and then Destiny’s breathing also came back to normal. 

“I know. Let’s get ready.” 

They made the bed, cleaned the room and wore whatever they had best. Cara decided to wear her favourite pair of hot pants, a tight crop-top with a green stretchable jacket, whereas Destiny wore a simple pair of black jeans, a white t-shirt with a black leather jacket. Well, to be honest, she had tried to copy Chris’s attire. Not completely though. She had added her own feminine touch to it. 

It was hard enough for them. First of all, they didn’t know where the hell was Meyercliffe or where it was situated so they wore whatever they thought was apt for the current situation. They were presumably heroes. And a part of a squad. 

What squad? 

They were yet to find out. 

“Hey!” A familiar, male voice startled them. 

They turned around and saw Chris standing beside the exact window through which he had come yesterday and as they guessed, today also. He made his way towards them. His clothing was much more casual than yesterday. He was in blue jeans and a white shirt. He looked nice, actually. With his hair neatly gelled and combed back, Destiny noticed Cara staring at him intently. 

She smirked. “Is the looking contest over?” She arched her eyebrows. 

Chris immediately focused all his attention on Destiny and Cara looked down. “Let’s go, then.” 

“How will we go?” Destiny asked, totally bemused as to whether take a bus, or a train or better yet, a plane. 

“We'll portal there.” Chris’s simple answer boggled their mind. 

“We'll what?” Destiny asked back in a tone that gave off confusion and frustration. 

Chris looked as if she had produced a rhino from her pocket. There was no rhino or no pocket that was large enough, for that matter. He was going to jump through the window when Cara interrupted him. 

“You are going to jump again?” 

Chris sheepishly smiled. “Will you both be comfortable in walking away from your moms at this hour of the morning, and that too, to a place called Meyercliffe?” 

Destiny negatively nodded her head. “We won’t. What’s the plan? You are special. We'll hurt ourselves if we jump out of that window! It’s like three storeys!” She shouted. 

Chris smirked. And within a second, he produced two sticks from his pocket. The sticks were both eight inches in length, two inches in breadth and were made of iron. When he tapped at those, they started gleaming; a luminous white light coming out from them. 

Cara and Destiny looked on, completely dazed and fascinated. This was new to them. “What is it?” 

“It’s a luminosa.” He shared the information excitedly. “It’s a glow-stick that we have for using certain powers. Like, you can tap at this and when it starts glowing, you can jump through a window, a hoop or anything from a height, and you will land perfectly on ground, without hurting yourself.” He continued, hurling one at Destiny and one at Cara. 

They both caught it at the same time and looked at each other. “Wow, so cool!” Cara gave a squeal of surprise. 

“Tap it and when it glows, have the intention that you want to jump off that window,” he signalled towards the mentioned window. “and then jump. Believe in yourself and in your luminosa.” 

“Our luminosa?” Destiny asked a bit confused regarding the ownership of those sticks. She thought they belonged to him. 

“Each one of us in our team has their own luminosas. They are especially assigned to us. And now I give yours to both of you.” He winked at them. 

Chris went first. He brought out his luminosa, tapped at it and it produced a brilliant white light; he closed his eyes, made an intention and ran towards the window to eventually jump off. The loud thud with which he landed on the street made them more nervous. 

Cara was going next. After making a cross in the air and praying, she did the procedure of tapping her luminosa and then jumped from the window. Destiny shivered at the sight. For a second, it was so quiet that she wasn’t able to breathe. Then a loud scream brought her back to the state of motion. It was Cara’s scream telling her to follow. 

“Okay, be with me, luminosa.” She tapped at the iron-made, sturdy stick which was big enough to cover her entire palm and peer out from her hand a little. It was eight inches in length. 

She tapped at the centre and her hand shivered at the contact. Light started illuminating her entire hand and slowly, it started to become shinier and brilliant. Without wasting anymore time, she made the intention of jumping from that window, looked at that window and then ran towards it in full motion. She hurled her body outside and for a few seconds, she realized she was falling down. The entire neighbourhood, the trees, the sky, the street, the vehicles, all seemed like a blur as she was going towards the ground. 

“Believe in yourself!” She heard Chris's faint scream. 

In the process of falling down, she tightly shut her eyes and began to convince herself that she was going to succeed. Gently and slowly, as if like magic, she landed on the ground with her feet touching them. She opened her eyes to see Chris and Cara smiling at her. So basically, she was able to jump down from a window of a three-storey house and land down on her feet, stable and unharmed. Wow. 

“Let’s go! We have to portal!” 

Destiny looked at Chris again. Portal? He had used this word earlier too but she hadn’t been able to ask him. But this time she absolutely intended to ask him all about portals or whatever the hell they were! 

“What is a portal?” She questioned him and he stopped her with his hand. 

“All in the right time. Let’s go.” 

Cara and Destiny followed him as he took them through small streets. The familiar Nashville now seemed queer to them. The known streets were all crossed and now he was taking them towards a valley. They didn’t know how much they walked but Destiny guessed it was almost an hour. Her legs were aching like anything and the distressed expression on Cara’s face told her that her condition was similar to her. 

“It’s a little outside of Nashville,” Chris uttered, his gait completely stable and dynamic. 

“Aren’t you tired? You don’t seem like a person who has been walking for an hour!” Cara railed at him. 

He looked nonchalant. “Don’t confuse me with a normal person.” 

Destiny rolled her eyes at him. “When will we reach? You surely aren’t, but we are normal people!” 

He scrunched his nose in displeasure. “I'm sorry for bragging.” His tone lighted down with a genuine tinge of guilt. 

She nodded and asked him the same question. He didn’t reply but after a few minutes of walking endlessly into the unknown, Destiny noticed they were entering a forest. The trees were dark and bent forward, looking like devils who search for human soul. The eeriness of that place scared the hell out of her and she felt Cara tensing beside her. 

“Chris? What’s this place?” Destiny’s voice shook. 

The bines of the old trees were moving and it seemed they were coming towards them. But how was that possible? Trees don’t move. Suddenly a hard stem came creeping and encircled itself around Cara’s feet. She screamed. 

“Cara!” Destiny turned around and ran towards her cousin. 

Before she could reach her, a dagger came slicing through the air. It cut the stem into halves, freed Cara from the tree's clutches and went back to its owner. It was Chris. And the dagger in his hand was glowing; that same luminous white energy pulsing through it. 

“Don’t fear. They are Cancum trees. They feed on our fear. The more you fear, the more they try to grasp you. Otherwise, they are harmless.” He said that so fearlessly that Destiny could almost hear her thunderous heartbeat. 

“Can you please tell us what’s this place?” Cara was impatient now. 

Chris sighed. “This is called the Dark Forest. I have taken you both outside of Nashville. And the valley you just travelled, that was not real. I mean, that is just real for our squad members. Otherwise, the valley doesn’t exist in the human world.” His words seemed to baffle us more. 

“And this forest too. We have to reach the end of the forest and then, we'll portal.” He looked at Destiny and assumed that she was going to ask that question again so he continued, “You'll get to know very soon what a portal is.” 

With a hope of getting the answers to all their questions, Destiny and Cara kept on following Chris. But they couldn’t seem to comprehend what would be the scenario if their mothers found out they weren't home.