Chapter 4: Meeting the Drake's

I drifted in and out of consciousness for a while. I was completely drained. I could feel the border to death right next to me. It would be so easy to just give in to it's dark allure, let go and be at peace. A weaker man would have, but I was not weak. I had defied nature itself to bring back one of my only friends. I wasn't going to give in now.

As I lay there in the nothing. I realised that I could not sense anything with my body. My mind could feed me information. I could constantly feel Jacob and Mary Lou. Their minds shone like beacons in the dark. And through them I kept myself alive. I could feel that they were injured badly. I could feel that I was too. Those injuries were only in our mortal bodies. Though their minds seemed linked to those bodies and pain, I realised I was not. I had left my body.

I couldn't feel my body. I just knew it was damaged. As I slumbered on the precipice of death I heard whispers. There were great men on the other side, their presence resounded in the dark. They were drawn to my presence while I was so close to death. I could not make out any words, but I felt the encouragement from them. They felt good and right if not distant. There was one who felt close.

His presence was sorrowful, apologetic and filled with shame. His mind urged me to survive. I could feel how strong he wanted me to live. I then realised why he felt closer. I felt myself in him, and in all the others too, but mostly him. I realised this was my paternal family. He was my father.

I became conscious of the fact that these presences were all masculine. In a moment of stupidity I wondered if only men went to heaven. But this wasn't heaven I was so close to. It was something else. An afterlife of sorts but not heaven. In a flash of inspiration I realised they were all my ancestors. My paternal family for generations were at the border to death, drawn by my presence. I instinctively knew these men were here because I was the last. I was the last male heir in a line of great men who urged me to live. They fed me the will to survive, through energy like the pool had.

When I thought of the pool, I looked deep into my sense of self and saw it. It was depleted dreadfully, which gave me a sense of sorrow. No longer was it full and vibrant instead it was shockingly shallow and listless. I cast my senses out around me to find something, anything. I needed to fill it, I felt as if it were important.

As I cast my newly discovered senses out I was delighted to find the energy. Everywhere. It flowed in and out of death freely. It swirled around me like a small but comforting stream. Then when I turned my new found senses to my ancestors they were as tropical storms, deep oceans and wild rivers. They were a spit of land in an ocean of energy. Their vast reserves of this power, dwarfed my pool.

As I became aware of their energy I felt the reason for their urging. They were trying to feed it to me. It was trickling out of the border to death and flowing toward me. It was weak, they couldn't push it out of death into life, into me. I felt that the energy needed to both be given and taken.

I reached out to touch the minds of Jacob and Mary Lou to steady myself. Then I focused on the energy being offered and I pulled. I longed for the energy to join with me. I had already defied death once. I would do it again. I imagined my pool becoming a huge ocean like that of my forefathers.

I felt their power push at the borders of death and then burst into life. I was engulfed in energy. My pool was replenished and began to widen and deepen. It stopped after a short while. I guessed that it would take a while to expand fully. I wrapped myself in the energy and sent some to Jacob and Mary Lou. I felt their minds respond albeit weakly. Their minds could not use what I offered so I had to direct the power to their bodies and forced them to heal and be strong. I felt their minds flare into brilliant existence. There was no doubt any more. They were alive.

It was then that I felt the emotion of my ancestors. It was the equivalent of emotional and mental applause. I felt pride, encouragement and love wash over me. They were proud of me. I pondered once more why they were all men and reached out to find a female presence. I felt them then. They were not as powerful or as strong as the men so their presence barely registered. They were stronger than myself or my friends. I guessed that women couldn't handle as much energy as men for some reason.

As I reached for a female relative I felt the most of them on the other side of the border to death but there was another distant sense of being surrounded by people with a similar feel. It was different and distant. I realised it was not around my mind, but my body. I sent a wave of thanks and promise toward my dead family. I knew not what I was promising but I was safe in the knowledge that they were watching out for me.

With that last thought. I grabbed the power that swirled around me, pulled it to me then burst into life towards my friends and my real family.

I felt my mind couple with my body once more. My senses began to come back bit by bit. First to return were my new senses, I could feel the people in the room, where they were in relation to me and their emotional and physical state. I could feel Jacob sleeping off to my left and Mary Lou still unconscious but thankfully alive off to my right. Just beyond Mary Lou I could feel two women. To my senses they felt, strained and weary, one more so than the other. My new senses told me she was related to me by blood, the other was of no relation, and the weary relative felt a little bit of resentment towards her and more than a hint of suspicion and mistrust. I could feel other women's presences but further away. Not in this room I'd guess. There were a couple of other men too, but none with the power like my forefathers. That was good.

I figured the energy must be magic. There was no other explanation I knew of. Clearly men could hold or use more than women. That didn't mean the women weren't dangerous too. I did a quick check of the women and noticed both were able to hold magic too, but on them it was little more than a stream. Weaker than I had been before my trip into death.

I focused on moving my magic to repair my body and restart my normal senses. As I did I found that they were stronger than usual. The first sense to come back was feeling in my body. I felt battered and bruised, but amazingly I was completely aware of my body. I could feel exactly where my limbs were in relation to each other, exactly where and how bad my wounds were. The worst wound I could find was shrapnel in my back.

I dipped into my magic, this time only taking a small amount and directing it toward my back. Willing my body to force out the shrapnel embedded there. I needed to pull more magic from my reserve but the process was amazingly fast.

Then when I stopped focusing on my back I checked the women again and found the weary woman to be more alert and excited. Was it possible she had felt me using magic? It seemed she didn't fear me. Which probably meant she had no reason to, I figured.

I guess it was possible, that if I could sense their magic then they could sense mine. Neither of them had moved though, they both stayed where they sat by Mary Lou. That made me suspicious, when I looked again I saw that the less weary of the two was using her magic on Mary Lou, she was trying to push it into her body. The more weary woman was channelling her magic into a sort of sphere encompassing both women and Mary Lou. It appeared to be a defence of some sort. I investigated it and found it to be quite crude. It was a stationary sphere of magic and had a single layer to it. I could feel her making it weaker though. She was pulling her magic out of the protections. While the other woman was trying to do something to Mary Lou.

This would not do! No one was going to touch my friends but me. Especially with some sort of foreign force. I summoned my magic with all my strength and thrust it at the sphere around the women which shattered as my magic hit it, there wasn't much magic left in it but I brought it to me and memorised the feel of it finding it to have a kind of signature unique to that woman. I passed the energy back to her and she was filled with fear when I did that. Her fear escalated into downright panic when I sat up and turned to face her. I didn't sense any guilt from her though just fear.