The Order of The Whitening and The New Beginning

The Order of The Whitening and The Threat to Mankind

The Order of the Whitening and Clarina and Luke

The Order of The Whitening and The Fight at White Manor

3 Month’s Later……………

Staring out of the window, Clarina let out a sigh. Her now overgrown, unkempt hair fluttered as the sound of her exasperation made a breeze catching loose strands in the air. Despondent, she didn’t even move them from her face where they now hung. Lacklustre and limp, her hair matched her mood as tears once more threatened to overspill from her raw eyes.

She was long past thinking she didn’t have any more tears to cry. But that’s what will happen when you lose the fight to save the world. Failure can have strange effects on the body. The coven had tried to pull her from her funk over the last twelve weeks, but one by one they had left White Manor. Each one was unable to rouse her and unsure of how to go about their work and use their magic with the threat of The Disciples hanging over them.

So far, it seemed, it was business as usual.

Despite penetrating the magic keeping them from setting foot on Earth, so far, The Disciples had kept a low profile when it came to making their presence known. Clarina didn’t care either way. She had failed. She had one job and she didn’t even manage that. Even Deandra, her closest ally in life and still even after her death, had vanished from her reach and she could no longer feel her in the air. She was the worst coven leader ever. She knew it, the current coven members knew it and so did the witches that had been before her.

The tears that had been hovering on the edge of her lash line came tumbling down her cheeks. Falling in time with the storm that was lighting up the sky and releasing its own tears. At least Mother Nature could be relied on to join her pity party she thought. With a wave of her hand, she shut the sash window to block out the rain that was now battering the grounds.

Clarina stood up to leave room taking her blanket with her. It reeked of her scent, the whiff of failure dripping from its threads as it seeped from her onto everything touched. She could feel it permeating through the manor like a fungus. No amount of showering would wash that stench away. Not that she wanted to shower anyway, what was the point when the end of the world is nigh?

Dragging her lifeless body out of the room and down the grand staircase she noticed how much brighter it looked in the hallway.

Her room was suffocating shade of grey thanks to the permanent bad weather otherwise known as the Great British Summer but the staircase was positively radiant. Where exactly was that light coming from?

Feeling the urge to explore the home she had forsaken, Clarina ventured down the red-carpeted staircase to the ground floor. It had been a while since she had been to lower floors of White Manor. The empty rooms were a depressing reminder of what she had lost. But she just had to know exactly where the glorious rays of sunshine were coming from. If only to draw the curtains to keep it out.

Stepping off the bottom of the grand staircase, Clarina sunk her feet into the deep pile of the carpet. She instinctively scrunched her toes and closed her eyes to savour the feeling. As silly as she knew it was, the feeling of losing your feet in a luxurious carpet always dragged her back to her childhood. To a time much simpler, before the existence of magic in her veins, a time more innocent. How she longed for that time again now. To go back to the days before her magic was awoken, the day before her grandmother died and broke the spell that was binding her powers.

Lost in her memories and sadness, the sound of voices broke through her thoughts and shook her back to the present day. The sound of chatter had been long missing from the manor. It stopped when the coven left her there alone. But mixed in with the deafening silence was the roar of abandonment that screamed at her every day after the front door closed on her friends. Leaving her behind.

She doesn’t blame them.

But it still stings to think that they gave up on her so quickly. She needed them but she just couldn’t, and still can’t, find her way out of the fog that descended over her the day they lost the fight.

Following the sound of the voices to the kitchen Clarina raised her barrier, she didn’t know who was here or what threat she might come face to face with but she needed to protect herself all the same.

“Oh hey” came the softly spoken words from behind her. The rage inside her boiled as she recognised the voice of Breanna. “You nearly missed it” Breanna grabbed Clarina’s hand and directed her to the circle of women sat cross-legged on the floor behind the island. All of them in their white ceremonial robes.

“What the…..” started Clarina before Breanna shushed her and guided her in the space next to Celia. Celia instinctively took Clarina’s hand in hers. Her power of telepathy had grown stronger in their time apart and Clarina simultaneously felt proud and a little sad that she had missed out on watching this happen.

Celia locked eyes with Clarina as she relayed everything she had missed since the coven departed from White Manor leaving their leader to wallow in her feelings of despair. “We found her” Celia whispered as she shifted her gaze to the person in the centre of the circle. The person that was slowly turning to acknowledge her place in the coven and meet her leader.

The young girl locked eyes with Clarina as she met her gaze. An audible sob left Clarina’s mouth as they recognised each other. Clasping her hand to her mouth, the young girl reached for Clarina’s other hand.

“Hello” she whispered gently “I’m home mum, I have missed you so much”