Atlantean Souls

“Portia. Put that away and get into bed. It’s lights out right now, and if I catch you again breaking the rules, you will be punished,” Sister Helen said. She was the nun in charge of most aspects of the orphanage. Portia sighed and tucked her book away in the cubby by her bed.

“Sorry, Sister Helen,” Portia apologized, lying down, and the lights were turned off in her room, which she shared with several others. A few older girls, like her. She knew she was never going to be adopted. Honestly, that was alright. This orphanage was a good one.

Portia never felt scared for her life here. Those who ran it were good to the kids. Unlike some of the horror that others had faced in different places.

Portia just barely remembered her parents. She’d been only six when they were murdered. There were no other family members that were left to come and get Portia. Portia was a bright, clever kid. She’d thrown herself into her studies, knowing that was the only way that she was going to be getting out of here.

To go to the places that she wanted she needed to excel. Portia studied hard, and she was also determined to find out about her family. Most importantly, why they were murdered. Maybe that was a strange thing for a sixteen-year-old to focus on. Especially when they had their entire life ahead of them. Portia, though, had a secret.

She knew she was special. It had been drilled into her at a young age to never show this to others. Her barely there memories had her parents telling her this. She knew that there was an inheritance and stored items waiting for her.

She had been told this not too long ago as she prepared for what she would do once she left here. Once she was eighteen, she had a choice. Either she stayed in one of the housing units that the orphanage had to get them on their feet, or she was going to head off somewhere on her own.

Portia lay there for a while. When all was silent, she pulled her book back to her and with the light from the window, she started reading again. This one on ancient civilizations she’d gotten from the library. There was such a draw in this for her, something calling to her soul.

It hurt that no one had ever come for Portia. That truly she was alone in this world, but again, in the end, she did not mind so much. At this point, she did not think anyone would really believe her and the things she saw. Sometimes she would see people and they would have black eyes of demons.

Possessed, and she learned to pretend very fast. Even the sisters here told her that it wasn’t real. Which made her feel a little crazy. However, in recent years, she’d been seeing worse things. People with black pits in their eyes. No aura, like there was no soul in them. This deeper part of her was terrified of them more than the possessed or demons.

Her gift was real, she knew it. In her memories that were barely there, she remembered vaguely of her parents calming her. Of being talked to about the scary-eyed people. It wasn’t to tell her it wasn’t real either. Portia just didn’t speak of it anymore. Didn’t tell others that she could see the colors of their aura. That she had this incredible guidance system inside that seemed to always bring her to the right place at the right time.

Now, whether the situation was good or bad was something different. It always seemed like she needed to be there. She got along with nearly all that she met. She wasn’t a problem child in the slightest.

The day finally came when she was no longer a ward of the orphanage. Portia got her inheritance. Though there was no family home. Her parents had been meticulous in setting up their wills and such. Which told her that they must have known something was coming, something was going to happen. Portia only knew what was in the news about her parents. They had been robbed and murdered on vacation. Or so she was told.

She had gotten a vanilla envelope with all her paperwork. Plus one normal discolored envelope at the lawyer’s office. After finishing with the lawyer and Sister Helen driving her back to the orphanage to make a few more plans, she had finally opened the envelope left for her.

Inside was a pendant, it looked a lot like a bow with three arrows. Though on closer examination, the arrows were odd. One was definitely a classic arrow. Another looked like a sword, the third like a scythe. It was strange, and as she sat looking at it before reading the piece of paper with it.

It said: keep this on you at all times unless you feel you are in danger. Then hide it or lose it to the earth and sea. The black eyed ones can not have this before the one meant to wake. This is our family legacy.

Portia had frowned. What did that even mean? It seemed pretty obvious that her parents had not planned to die. Still, they had left this with a note and no other explanation as to what this was. Who was to wake? The black eyed? So they were real, her parents saw it too. That was a relief unless they were all part of the same mental delusion.

Portia had sat for a while looking at the pendant and then decided that she was going to figure out all she could about this thing. She went to college and studied ancient culture, language, and also took multiple courses on linguistics.

She could speak a large number of languages. You might find this impossible, but it just came naturally to Portia. A gift, it just seemed, like when she heard a language she was able to speak well in a short amount of time. She literally threw herself into her studies like a woman possessed. This drive and need of it consumed her. If Portia only knew how truly unique she was.

As she was nearing graduation and had been going with professors and different historical societies to finish her degree, it led her to many ancient sites. Helping clean and catalog relics and manuscripts just seemed to grow her hunger for knowledge. This was a dream come true for her to work. After digging more into her parents, she did know that they had been in a similar type of work. After a few well-known, and older historians learned her name, they were happy to take the daughter of Harris and Michelle DeFaunt on.

It made her happy to follow in her parents' footsteps. Still, it did not fill the void of growing up alone and feeling isolated from the rest. That she was still different, still unique in what she could see and what she could do. Others found it unbelievable, her ability to speak so many languages. To have this uncanny ability to always guess and be right. Well, most of the time, or come close.

Then something happened, something insane that Portia could not believe. She was working hard on finding a way to get a team to a newly discovered temple in the mountains across the ocean. It seemed to have appeared overnight, and not much was known. The temples seemed empty, but there was a pull to go. It felt like she couldn’t sleep, couldn’t focus on anything but getting to these temples.

As she was driving to the university one day, ready to submit all her papers and requests for funding to go to these temples, it felt like the world had been thrown upside down. Portia was in a near-pileup on the expressway one day. She had swerved to miss a couple of cars as two went barreling by. What she saw made her jaw drop open.

There was a woman climbing out of one car and standing on it like some stunt double in a move. These black looking tendrils weaving around her. She was a creature unlike anything Portia had ever seen, and she leapt forward onto the car hers was chasing.

Even as it seemed like a man in the back seat of the first car fired at the one she stood on. Portia knew this was one of those things with pitless black eyes. Even though it was dangerous, she had gotten out of her car like a few other people and watched in stunned disbelief as a fight like no other happened.

A man with wings dropped from the sky and fought this being. Portia saw all of it, saw this man with wings for what he was. Watched him take brutal blows to stop this being, and then did something that was too bright to look at directly. The woman had flaked away to dust, then the man somehow managed to find the strength to take off. He went who knew where, as Portia stood there in stunned silence. It seemed like no one else remembered it like she did.

The days that followed had not one mention of what really happened on that highway. Just that a car had exploded due to a bomb. Lies, and Portia thought she was going crazy for a second. Someone somewhere was covering something up. That had to be it, how did no one else seem to have video or anything? Though from that light all the cars had stopped working and none started again. So perhaps other devices too. It just blew her mind.

Nothing that crazy had happened again in the few years that followed. However, it did pop up in her dreams from time to time. Another mystery for her to ponder over and research, oh the rabbit holes that she went down.

Though finally she was approved to go to these temples, and she had gotten the permission from the country it was in. She just went around everyone, paid for it with her life savings as her intuition told her to do so.

That was how Portia had found herself on a plane with a small group excited to go and see these temples. She ignored the muggy air here, the jet lag and everything else as they marched up to those temples. Not knowing that a few on her team were planted there, that a dangerous group of people were watching her for this. That demons and other beings were searching for what was hidden far below those temples. All of this, all the things in her life and intuition, had brought her here.

She’d been so determined to bring that crypt up, to find these secrets. This had to be something more. This was something that would help her understand ancient peoples, to prove the existence of the things she saw.

Of what she felt she could do, and there was no stopping her. Everything she had was tied up in it. Even as Portia had turned around in the forest and run back to the truck and the danger she’d run from, she knew it was right. Portia had no idea that her story was just starting then when another one had ended.

Internally, she knew this was what she had to do. Portia knew going against her instincts was bad. It never worked out for her if she ignored them. Though as she met those intense copper eyes of this strange being who’d appeared there and clearly killed those around the vehicle. She wondered if this time her intuition would finally be wrong. Still, she found herself running forward as he collapsed to the ground to help a being she knew not.

How little she knew. How much her world was about to change, and the answers she was seeking were only going to lead to more profound questions. Lead her down a rabbit hole that no one was ever came back from. The man she ran toward was the start of a truth Portia didn’t know she needed and was ill-prepared to handle. Portia was now the only help this man in the sarcophagus had.