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Guardian Angel - Act III - Scenes 2, 3, 4 & 5


INT. THE CATACOMBS

At one end of the small table, backed by the stacks, Beth and Miriam sit, pale as ghosts.

At the other end, not sitting but pacing, is Alton Kind.  Behind him, waiting in – maybe blocking – the doorway to the staircase that leads back up to the chapel, is the Attendant.

The attendant suddenly puts a finger to her ear, pressing it in.

                          ATTENDANT
                     Copy that.

Miriam leans in close to Beth.

                          MIRIAM
                     (whispers)
She has an earpiece?  Why does a TA need an earpiece?

                          ATTENDANT
                     (to Professor Kind)
Students are clear sir.  The gate is locked.

     BETH
(Whispers)
Why does a TA need to lock the gate?

Professor Kind turns to Beth and Miriam.  He puts his fists on the table and leans in.

                         

                          ALTON KIND
Now that we’re truly alone, I want you ladies to tell me what happened to the sword of St. Peter.

     BETH
Honestly Professor, I was just trying to save it.  Somehow, the temperature in its case started going up.  I grabbed it, fully intending to bring it down to you. 

     ALTON KIND
But you didn’t.  Why?

     BETH
Well, because…I sort of...lost it.

     ALTON KIND
My aides have searched every centimeter of this church, these catacombs.  They haven’t found it.  And when they examined the sword’s case, the temperature and humidity levels were exactly where they should have been.

     BETH
I can’t explain it…

                          ALTON KIND
Then we’re done here.  You and your friend are hereby expelled from the program and New York University. 

     MIRIAM
Me?

     BETH
Sir, Miriam didn’t do anything.

     ALTON KIND
She didn’t leave with the others when she was asked.  She should have. 

Alton Kind turns to the aide with the earpiece and starts talking to her in hushed tones.

Now it’s Beth’s turn to lean in close to Miriam.
                          BETH
                     (Whispers)
Beth, I’m sorry.  I can’t believe this is happening.

     MIRIAM
(Whisper)
You have to tell him something Beth.  You must remember something.

     BETH
(Whisper)
I…it’s crazy.  Unbelievable.  No way he’d take me seriously.

     MIRIAM
(Whisper)
So what?  A crazy explanation is better than nothing.  We’re getting expelled Beth!
    
     BETH
(Whisper)
Ok.  You’re right. 

     ALTON KIND (O.S.)
Ladies!

Miriam and Beth look up to find Alton standing at the other end of the table, glaring at them.

                          ALTON KIND
                     Get out.

                          BETH
                     Professor…

Beth stands up.

                          BETH
                     I have something to say.

                          ALTON KIND
It’s too late for admissions of guilt.  You had your chance.     

    

     BETH
No sir, I swear to you I didn’t take or break your artifact.  I did grab it, like I said.  And when I touched it…I went somewhere.

Alton Kind looks up at Beth intently.  Interested.

                          ALTON KIND
                     Where?

                          BETH
I don’t know, exactly.  It looked like a tomb.  There were stone walls all around me.  And in the center, there was a raised altar.

Beth catches sight of the aide smirking, trying to hide a laugh.

We hear a tug, watch Beth turn around, and from her POV we see a worried Miriam looking back up at us.

                          MIRIAM
What are you doing? Are you improvising? 

     BETH
No.

     MIRIAM
Because it’s bad.

     ALTON KIND (O.S.)
Beth.

Beth turns back to face Alton Kind’s piercing glare.

                          ALTON KIND
                     Was there someone…a body…on the altar?

                          BETH
                     Yes sir.

                          ALTON KIND
                     Man or woman?

                         
                          BETH
                     A man…I think.

                          ALTON KIND
                     You think?

                          BETH
Sorry, no, he definitely looked like a man.  I mean, he was a man.  With a beard.  Definitely a man.

Alton Kind takes an uncomfortable beat, reading Beth with his eyes.

                          ALTON KIND
Did he look like a man you’ve seen before?

Beth squirms.  How does she say this?
                    
                          BETH
Not exactly.  At least, not in the real world.

     ALTON KIND
Who did he look like Beth?

     BETH
(To herself)
I mean…it’s crazy.

     ALTON KIND
Be that as it may. 

Alton leans further in on the table, recapturing Beth’s focus.

                          ALTON KIND
                     Who did he look like?

Beth exhales.

                          BETH
                     Jesus Christ.

SNORT.

Everyone except Alton Kind looks over at the attendant, who’s composing herself.

                          ATTENDANT
                     Sorry.

                          ALTON KIND
                     Was he dead?

Now it’s Beth’s turn to be freaked out.

                         BETH
No.  I touched his cheek.  He was warm.  Then, he woke up.

     ALTON KIND
And then what?

     BETH
I don’t know.  I got so scared I jumped back and fell.  Then, somehow, I was back here.  But the sword…

     ALTON KIND
Is still in there.

Beth nods.

Alton Kind’s eyes are racing back and forth.  Finally, he turns like the snap of a whip to the attendant.

                          ALTON KIND
                     You’re done for the night Ms. Page.

                          ATTENDANT
                     Sir?

                          ALTON KIND
Have the back gate unlocked.  I’ll see these two ladies out when I’ve finished questioning them.

     ATTENDANT
Yes sir.

The attendant hesitantly turns into the stairs and walks up.

Alton Kind turns back to the table and sits at its head.  He pulls out his phone and begins typing away furiously.

Beth stands there, awkwardly.  She and Miriam look at the professor, and each other, quizzically.

                          ALTON KIND
                     You may sit.

Beth obliges.

                          ALTON KIND
Congratulations you two.  You’re re-enrolled into this school and this program. 

     MIRIAM
(Elated)
Really?

     BETH
Why?

                          ALTON KIND
I thought that should have been obvious.  Because I believe you.

     MIRIAM
You do?

     ALTON KIND
Yes.

     MIRIAM
Are you sure?

     BETH
(Shut up)
Miriam.

     ALTON KIND
In fact, you won’t be waiting until September to start work here.  Go home, get some rest.  I want to see you both here tomorrow morning at nine am.

The girls are elated.

                          BETH
                     Oh professor, thank you so much!

                          ALTON KIND
Don’t thank me, Beth.  You’ll find that the work we do together will wear you down.  The hours will be long.  The effort demanded, abundant.  The reward, little.  In short, this will not be easy.  Especially for you. 

     BETH
Why me?

     ALTON KIND
Because child…you’re going back in.  And starting tomorrow, the three of us will be working tirelessly, exclusively, on finding the key to getting you there and back at will.

     BETH
Who’s will?

Professor Kind is inscrutable, like a an Inca statue.

                          ALTON KIND
                     Good night ladies.  I’ll see you                              tomorrow.


EXT. THE WITHERED WOOD – NIGHT

Spero walks through a dark, wilted forest on the verge of full decay.  Branches droop.  Trees are bare.  Gray, brown and black surround the former angel, his own silver armor dimmed as though taking on the lackluster nature of the place.

Spero rounds a bend, coming onto a road that’s lined on either side by grey, dying trees with branches that hang low. 

DEATH’S GAUNTLET awaits – and in a moment of total silence and stillness, the former angel stands at its head, surveying what lies before him.

Hesitantly he makes his way forward – one step a time. 
Motion catches his eye.  He looks over to one of the trees.  Its branches sway gently.  Back and forth.

                          SPERO
The lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

Spero walks on.

                          SPERO
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:

A RUSTLING echoes.  Spero tries to find it with his eyes, but does not stray from the path.  On he goes.

                          SPERO
He leadeth me beside the still waters.  He restoreth my soul.

The withered wood disagrees.  A tangle of withered branches EXPLODES from their former, lazy sway, STRIKING OUT at Spero.

His arms and legs are wrapped in grey branches before he has a chance to react.  He’s stopped in his tracks, and the branches KEEP COMING.

Spero struggles, testing with his arms how much movement he’s capable of.  How much resistance he’s facing.

                          SPERO
He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.

Spero PULLS HARD with his arms.  It works.  The branches SNAP from the trees they were attached to.


EXT. GOLGOTHA HILL – DAY [FLASHBACK]

A bare-backed Jesus kneels in the sand before an open hole in the ground.  Next to him lies the wooden cross that he will come to rest on.

Jesus gets STRUCK WITH A WHIP, but the sound accompanying the strike is not one of a whip hitting flesh.  Instead, every time the whip strikes Jesus, we hear the sound of a brittle branch snap.

EXT. THE WITHERED WOOD – NIGHT [END OF FLASHBACK]

Spero is visibly stunned by the memory as the remains of the branches he’s snapped fall from his arms and legs. 

He shakes it off, and keeps moving forward.  He comes out of the tunnel of trees, marked by the black husk of a fallen tree.  Even on its side, the dead trunk is so wide that it’s almost as tall as he is.

Spero makes his way around it into a dead field covered in thorn bushes.

                          SPERO
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me.

A FLYING THORN STRIKES Spero across his cheek, drawing blood.

                          SPERO
                     AH!

Spero looks for where the thorn came from, but the bushes before him stay perfectly still – like the kid in the class who won’t fess up to blowing that first spitball.

                          SPERO
                     Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me.

The only warning he gets is an audible groan, and then the air before him is suddenly FILLED WITH THORNS.

He has enough time COVER HIS FACE with his arms.  The thorns are mostly deflected off of his armor, THUDDING SOFTLY against it.

Spero brings his arms down, and his face is all bloodied and cut.  Some got through.

Another GROAN SOUNDS.

Spero turns around and runs back, LEAPING over the dead tree trunk and ducking behind it for cover.
After a million little THUDS sound, Spero hears that now familiar GROAN.

Then he has an idea.  He stays low, turns around, and starts PUSHING THE DEAD TREE TRUNK FORWARD.

                          SPERO
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: Thou annointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

He hears the CRACKING AND CRUMBLING of the first thorn bush being crushed under the rolling tree trunk.


EXT. GOLGOTHA HILL – DAY [FLASHBACK]

A bloodied Christ is breathing through his newly received lashes.  He’s not kneeling, so much as resting on his legs – taking his last respite before the end.

The red cape of a Roman centurion enters the frame, blocking our view from the suffering man.

Jesus can’t even look up at this man, and he doesn’t need to.

We see a crown made of thorns come down onto Jesus’s head.  It’s placed gently at first.  Then, it’s PUSHED HARD.  Not just once, but many times to get it firmly on.

With each push, we hear the CRACKING AND CRUMBLING OF A THORN BUSH BEING CRUSHED.  And we see the thorns dig deeper and deeper into Jesus’s head, drawing more and more blood.

EXT. THE WITHERED WOOD – NIGHT [END OF FLASHBACK]

Spero stops pushing, breathing heavy in the aftermath of his effort.  His eyes are watery as he looks back at the flattened field of thorn bushes that will no longer pose a threat to anyone.

He stands quickly.

                         


                          SPERO
                     (A plea)
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.

But behind Spero, we see the land respond one more time, with a blurry grey mass rising high up.

Spero turns. 

The former angel is dwarfed by an unmistakable fiend.  But it isn’t humanoid, like the last fiend he fought.  This is a TREE FIEND.  It’s trunk is slimmer than the one he just pushed, and its just as bare as the other trees he’s seen in this wood, but it has a face that conveys its intent.

It bends forward, using its branches to swat Spero away like a fly.

The former angel FLIES BACK, landing atop the thorny corpses he just left in his wake.

Spero collects himself, getting to his knees and surveying his foe. 

The tree fiend’s top half flails this way and that, as if taunting the angel to come at him bro. 

But Spero notices the bottom half stays in place.  Stationary.  Because it’s a trunk.

Spero looks over to the dead trunk on its side that he just used for cover.  He gets an idea.

The former angel sprints forward, dodging and weaving through the tree fiend’s branches that come for him.

Finally, he gets his arms around the trunk of the tree fiend.

                          SPERO
…and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

Spero PULLS UP.

The tree fiend SCREAMS as only a tree can.

And then, its roots begin to come up.  And the first one is RIPPED from the earth beneath it.

Another root goes.  Then another.  The tree WAILS. 

Then, finally, the last root is TORN from the earth beneath.



EXT. GOLGOTHA HILL – DAY [FLASHBACK]

Christ is on the cross now, though so weak from the torture that he looks dead already.

He’s at the apex of the rise, with the base of the cross ready to fall into the hole that was made for it.

A Centurion gives a signal.

A slave gets behind the cross and nudges the base into the hole.  It FALLS IN HARD.

                          JESUS
                     AH!

The revived Jesus’s head shoots up, and he looks down at himself; broken and set on high for all the world to see.

Then it falls back down.  Defeated.

                          JESUS
                     (Under his Breath)
Father?  Father?  Can you hear me?  He told me you could.

EXT. THE WITHERED WOOD – NIGHT [END OF FLASHBACK]

The corpse of the tree fiend lies on its side, with Spero resting on his legs beside it.

The former angel breathes heavy, and tears fill his eyes.  He stares off at nothing.

                          SPERO
                     Where were you?

Finally, Spero returns to the moment.  He looks all around him at the Withered Wood.  He looks up to the heavens, down at the earth.

                          SPERO
                     Where were you?!

Spero stands.  He turns in a complete circle looking.

                          SPERO
                     WHERE ARE YOU?!

But there’s nothing new to be seen.  The landscape is the same as it was from the start – all manner of dead and nearly dead things.

Until Spero spots a particularly dark patch, where the moon doesn’t seem to shine.  He focuses in on it.

And from it, a blue light suddenly shines. 

Spero walks beyond the tree fiend he’s just killed to get a better look.  But he doesn’t.  It has shown all there is to see from where he stands.

So he goes on – toward the light.


EXT. THE STEPS OUTSIDE ST. PAUL’S CATHEDRAL – NIGHT

Beth and Miriam walk through the small gate that leads to the stairs.  As Beth steps onto the bottom stair, Miriam grabs her.

                          MIRIAM
Hey.  Are we doing the right thing here?

     BETH
What are you talking about?  We don’t have a choice. 

     MIRIAM
I know, I know, but…this is insane.

     BETH
I know.

     MIRIAM
I mean, the guy believed you.  I don’t even believe you.  No offense.

     BETH
It’s fine.  I don’t believe me either, and I was there.

     MIRIAM
So what are we doing, then?  Why are we playing along?  This could be a wake-up call.  Do we really want to spend the rest of our summer, the next four years, working for a guy who’s probably out of his mind?

     BETH
I don’t know if I can believe what I saw, but the fact that someone else, someone who didn’t see it, believes me when I tell them, I don’t know Miriam, that’s something I’ve never known before.  I’ve spent my entire life in church being told that it’s somewhere in me, deep down.  And I’ve spent years looking for it.  Do you know how frustrating it is to see others tap into it so easily?  For people like my mom, my dad…they have it in spades.  They don’t need to search.  It’s effortless for them.  Now, someone I respect, whose every word I’ve read a hundred times over, believes the same way in me.  And more than that, he’s promising to show me what my parents never could.

     MIRIAM
What’s that?

     BETH
He’s gonna show me why he believes in what I saw with my own eyes, and still can’t manage to accept. 

    


     MIRIAM
Beth, your parents belief in Christianity is not the same thing as…whatever this is.  You’re not Alton Kind’s God.

     BETH
God is a mystery.  Right?  And what I saw?  How I saw it?  Why?  Those are mysteries too. 

     MIRIAM
He’s not going to turn you into a believer, Beth.  Your parents couldn’t. 

     BETH
I don’t want to be a believer Miriam.  Obviously.  But I want to at least know why that is. 

Beth turns from Miriam and walks up the stairs.

                          MIRIAM
                     God damn it.

Miriam turns and follows Beth.


INT. THE CATACOMBS – CONTINUOUS

Beth enters and approaches the table.  Professor Kind is already there, at the other end of the table, reviewing some papers.

Beth pulls out a chair and takes a seat.

The two sit in silence for a moment, Alton Kind still working without acknowledging Beth whatsoever.

After a moment, very slight echoes of footfalls can be heard.  Beth smiles.

Miriam finally walks into the room.  She walks straight to the table and sits next to Beth.

                          ALTON KIND
Welcome ladies.  In the future, do make an effort to be on time.
     MIRIAM
You never gave us a time to be here.

     ALTON KIND
Let’s get started, shall we?

Alton puts the papers down, folds his hands, and looks straight at Beth.

                          ALTON KIND
I assume you’d like to know where you went last night?

Beth nods.

                          ALTON KIND
                     Eden.

                          BETH
                     As in, Adam and Eve?

                          ALTON KIND
The biblical paradise in which the first man and first woman were made.  Yes.

     BETH
It’s real?

     ALTON KIND
It’s real.

     BETH
So…does that mean that I saw…in the tomb…I actually saw…

     ALTON KIND
No.  You did not see the human prophet Jesus Christ on Eden.  In fact, let’s get this out of the way right now.  I am not interested in confirming or denying your personal messiahs.  Christ, if he lived, was likely no more than a charismatic preacher who’s death was greatly mythologized by his own band of followers.  Nothing in all my years of research posits that there was anything even remotely supernatural about him.  But he is not the focus of my research.

     MIRIAM
But Eden is?

     ALTON KIND
That’s right.  Years ago, on an archeological dig, I met a very old woman who told me an incredible story.  When she was a child, she heard the tale of a preacher who had risen from the dead.  He claimed to be the son of God, and he would come back in her lifetime to end the world, and bring his believers home. 

     MIRIAM
What’s so incredible about that?  Seems pretty standard.

     ALTON KIND
What’s incredible is that this young woman was claiming to have heard of this young preacher only ten years after his crucifixion.

     BETH
She believed she was alive in the first century?

     ALTON KIND
That’s right.

     MIRIAM
So she was crazy.

     ALTON KIND
That’s what I thought too.  And then she showed me this.

He pulls out a smooth, round metal disk that takes up his entire palm.  His reflection can be perfectly made out in the face of it.

                         


                     ALTON KIND
She said one of the disciples spreading that early message carried it around with him when he preached.  Wore it around his neck, and claimed it came from the foot of the cross where Jesus was crucified.  The girl, being a child, was drawn to the shiny thing.  She asked to hold it, and the prophet obliged.  She disappeared instantly.  She said she went to Eden, where she lived several lifetimes in the fabled garden in a community of angels.  There, she partook of the fruit of the tree of life, which allowed her to live long enough to meet me.

     MIRIAM
But you met her as an old woman you said.  How is that possible if she was eating something that was supposed to make her immortal?

     ALTON KIND
An excellent observation.  The fruit, apparently, grants immortality…even more than that, keeps one healthy, but does not stop the aging process.  At least, not in mortal kind.  But it did not matter.  Even as an old woman there, the fruit kept her body working.  She could walk, run, think…all as quickly at seventy as she could at twenty.

     BETH
Then why did she leave?

     ALTON KIND
She didn’t.  This…

Alton puts the metal disk onto the table.

                          ALTON KIND
…her key to immortality that she had kept on her person since the first day she arrived, stopped working.

     BETH
She didn’t let go of it or, or drop it?

     ALTON KIND
According to your story, you dropped my artifact and returned to our world.  But it did not.  No, Beth.  She wore this as a necklace her entire life.  She was savvy enough to understand that it, somehow, was responsible for bringing her to Eden and keeping her there.  But one day, it stopped keeping her there.

     MIRIAM
When did you find her?

     ALTON KIND
We were digging in her ancestral home.  I was the first person she saw.  I saw her appear out of thin air.  Do you understand?  The dialect she spoke was so ancient, I had to piece her story together through a translator, pictures, pointing…anything that worked.  And quickly too.

     BETH
Why?

     ALTON KIND
The fruit is what kept her alive.  Without it…I saw her regress from an astute, observant human being to a pile of sludge in the matter of a day. 

     MIRIAM
I don’t understand, so if that thing is supposed to take you to Eden, why are you still here?  Why didn’t that disciple go?

     ALTON KIND
I don’t know.  She couldn’t explain it to me either.  Nor could she explain why it just stopped working.

    
     BETH
That’s why I’m here.

     ALTON KIND
Exactly right.

Alton gets up from his seat and walks around the table to the girls.

Beth and Miriam stand.

                          ALTON KIND
You are the only other person I’ve known to handle my artifacts and be transported.  I’ve waited for this day for thirty years.

     MIRIAM
That’s crazy.

Alton and Beth both look at her.

                          MIRIAM
                     I’m sorry, but it is.

                          ALTON KIND
                     Maybe so.  Probably.  Right Beth?

Beth is at a loss.  What? 
         
                          BETH
Yeah.  Probably.  But I know I went somewhere.  And, if it’s alright sir, I’d like to try going back. 

     ALTON KIND
Good.

Alton raises his hand with the metal disk in his open palm.

Beth takes it in.  She smiles. 

Then she GRABS it.

There’s a flash, and then…


EXT. THE WITHERED WOOD – NIGHT – CONTINUOUS
Beth finds herself in the middle of the decrepit wood.  She looks around at all the dead, and nearly dead, plants.

                          BETH
                     Hello?

No response.

Then, a blue light shines behind her.  She turns around.

Off in the distance, she makes out that it’s coming from an opening in rock, and in front of that opening she spots a very familiar figure.

                          BETH
                     Hey!

She waves and flails, but Spero doesn’t take notice.  Instead, he heads into the light. 

Beth looks down at the metal disk in her hand, then holds it to her chest and moves toward the light. 

From a out of a group of dead trees behind her, we see the darkened shape of something watching her as she goes.  We see the thing melt into the ground, literally becoming shadow, and following after her slowly.


INT. THE LIGHTED CAVE

Spero walks into the cave that is bathed in a soft, blue light.  It’s not blinding or abrasive, though he enters in awe.

We’re ON HIM as he takes in this place.  The cave itself looks not that much different than the tomb he awoke in.  In fact, it looks exactly the same, except that there is no stone alter in the middle and it’s awash in blue.

Spero steps forward and gets to his knees.

We move around him to take in what he sees – a BURNING TREE, alight in blue flame but not consumed by it.  It’s small and slender – more a sapling than a tree, and it shows only a few leaves, like a young tree in the dead of winter.  It’s set atop a series of small, stone steps.

                          BURNING TREE
                     Welcome child.
                         
SPERO
                     Father?

                          BURNING TREE
                     No, Spero.  I am not your maker.

                          SPERO
                     Then what are you?

                          BURNING TREE
                     Knowledge.

                          SPERO
                     Of what?

                          BURNING TREE
                     Everything.

                          SPERO
And you can share this knowledge with me?

     BURNING TREE
I can share some.

     SPERO
Can you tell me of the Almighty?  Our creator?

     BURNING TREE
No.

     SPERO
Why?

     BURNING TREE
I can only tell you what is yours to know.

     SPERO
Is it not for me to know of the father that bore me?  The king that sires me?  The god that demands all of me?

There is only silence in answer.  The blue flame calmly goes on, both burning and not burning.

                          SPERO
                     So be it.

                          BURNING TREE
                     You are faithless.

                          SPERO
Impossible.  I am an archangel of the Lord on high.  Elder brother to mortal kind and one of their fiercest guardians against the dark fiends that would ensnare them.  That is my commandment…my calling.  And there is nothing I believe in more.

     BURNING TREE
All true.  Yet still, you are faithless.

     SPERO
How can that be?

     BURNING TREE
I can show you.  Show you the pain from which you have been spared by living in the light of the golden tree.  Yet the knowledge will not cure your malcontent.

     SPERO
But it will make me whole.  Ever since waking here I have felt…incomplete.  Fractured.  They told me something broke me, and that pain was taken away so that I could know bliss again.  But bliss is not enough.  I need to know what I lost, even if knowing destroys me.

     BURNING TREE
You have already been on that journey, young Spero.  Ever seeking.  That is what brought you across the lagoon to me.  For once you crossed the threshold of the abundant green to the barren lands you were in my presence.  For I am this land, Spero.  And the ghosts of your past, of your pain, are sprinkled over all of it.  The fiends you face carry bits of you that you have lost, just as they carry the bits of all that have lost knowledge.  For knowledge is fluid, like the river.  It flows from once place to the next, never staying quite where you remembered it to be when you found it before.

     BETH (O.S.)
AHH!

Beth’s scream shakes the entranced Spero out of his focus.

The former angel runs to the door of the cave to find Beth at the bottom of the rocky road that would lead her to him, except that she is blocked by a vicious looking fiend only a bit taller than her, but humanoid and wielding a large, blackened club.

Spero turns back to the Burning Tree, whose blue flame is now so bright that it’s almost blinding.

                          BURNING TREE
If you would reclaim your past, then you will have to fight for it.  Thus I grant you the means to do so.

The Burning Tree explodes in radiant blue.  Spero covers his eyes.

Then the light dissipates, and when Spero looks back up, there is no burning tree to be found. 

Instead, he finds a SWORD SET IN A PEDESTAL at the top of the small staircase where the tree had just been.

He approaches the staircase and holds at the bottom. 

                          BURNING TREE (O.S.)
                     (Faint and ephemeral)
Remember, you were given your bliss.  But knowledge comes at a cost.  And that cost will always be great.

     BETH
AHHH!

Spero looks back to the open doorway, and the danger that awaits him outside.  There is no choice to be made.

He turns back to the staircase, rushes up it, grips the hilt of the sword with both hands, and PULLS.

The blade comes out easily, and Spero marvels at bluish tint that gleams off the silver blade.

But only for a second.  He lets the blade fall, raises his head to the cave door and starts running for it.


                          END OF ACT III

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