After an hour of sitting inside that car, Ashley and I had exhausted all of our talk and road games. So, we decided to play a new game: getting information of the quest. So, we leaned into a relaxing Jessica's face and asked for the prophecy.
"What makes you think there's a prophecy, runts?" she snapped. Ashley backed away a little, hands in front of her. I persisted.
"Look. For every quest there has to be a prophecy. If you want us to work together, then you have to trust us with information that we could find handy."
She sighed, muttering about "stupid kids" and said to the driver, "Stop the car."
The driver didn't acknowledge her at all. She commanded him to stop the car again. This time, he turned his head a bit. An eye shown from behind the shadow of his hat: blue, a radiant, shining blue.
The next thing we knew, Ashley and I were on the ground and watching the car drive away. Four Earth-born hopped out of their cover and charged at us. By the time every one was sliced to pieces or burned to death, the car had left.
I tried to chase after it, but I couldn't tell which direction it had gone in. I ran back to Ashley and pounded my fists into the ground, yelling a bit. Ashley held Ashley's pack.
"Who knows? Maybe there's something in here that could help us find her."
After some digging, we found some papers. We found her identification and some money. There was a crumpled piece of paper on the bottom. Smoothing it out, we found a strange collection of letters all clumped together.
"Wkh gdxjkwhu ri zdu hqflufohg lq fkdlq
Wkh khduw ri jrog wr glh lq sdlq
Wkh ilqdo dfw wr eh xqgrqh
Wkh vdylru lq wkh irrw dqg vxq
Ri gudjrq'v erqh dqg ghylo'v kruq
Wkh Wlwdq Orug vkdoo eh uheruq"
I looked at it for a second, my mind racing. This was something my mother had trained me to do for a long time. I had been given codes upon codes and had solved them all. This would not escape me. After thirty minutes, I arrived to a conclusion. "This is definitely a Caesar Cipher."
So, together with Ashley, we deciphered the message and arrived with a six line prophecy.
"The daughter of war encircled in chain
The heart of gold to die in pain
The final act to be undone
The savior in the foot and sun
Of dragon's bone and devil's horn
The Titan Lord shall be reborn"
Staring at the prophecy, it wasn't hard to guess what Jessica would have to endure. We packed all the stuff up, careful to stuff the paper into a very small corner, and set out to New Jersey. We knew that there, we would find the start of the puzzle and the beginning of our quest.
