Hi everyone! It's my birthday today! No, I'm not pulling an Eileen on you, it really is my birthday. Yup, today's the 14th anniversary of when this fanfiction-obsessed, planet-destroying child came into the world. Praise! And yet, it's the one day my two best friends and my favorite cousins all 'happen' to be going out of town. Hmmm... suspicious much? I mean seriously, it's the one day of the year they all have plans on a school day. How does this happen?!

In other news, in a recent act of what I now believe is sheer insanity, I have just sent out a Facebook post revealing my once hidden hobby of being a fanfiction writer. No, I have not experienced any recent brain damage, thank you very much.

I did it mainly for two reasons. One was to prove that I really had written a novel-length story. (Although, this definitely does not entail novel-worthy quality, I can assure you.) The second was that since I had promised a few real-world people that I would mention their names in the story, I felt they should at least see what it was. Admittedly, it was a pretty difficult thing for me to do because, as you could assume of a girl who spends her leisure time writing for a little kids' show*, my ranking is very low on the social totem pole, and I don't think admitting this is going to win me any extra points.

*For those who will mock me about this, let me just state that in my stories as a whole, all have been rated T, borderline M, and have had a city burn, a war, an attempted assassination, a plethora of guns and bombs, a planet exploding twice, and 15 actual character deaths, many of who were main characters.

So, why am I telling this to you, my readers? Well, it's just in the rare case that one of my real-world family members/friends actually reads this (Yeah, despite that whole emotional rant above, no one's probably going to care), you'll be prepared for a lot of weird.

Moving on...

Thanks for all the guesses on the villain! Unfortunately, none of you were right (Ha!)... well, kailaroseclover, you're technically incorrect. However, as for Mulan, I'm still undecided about what I'll do with her so... hang on to that.

But anyway, enough of that! You came here for a story, and a story I shall provide! And so, without further ado, I present to you the prologue of the sequel to Believing in the Beautiful Things, Beauty in Word and Heart!

Love is a twisted thing. Some say love is something to be served on a silver platter, to be abused and taken advantage of without giving anything in return. These are the ignorant ones. Some say love is a perfect, immaculate gift, one they cannot possibly deserve and therefore will never attain. These are the naïve ones. Some say love is something to be searched for throughout the world in vain as it elusively slips away. These are the foolish ones.

But I say love is something to be discovered in the most unexpected recesses of our daily lives. It is then unearthed like a precious gemstone being mined from the barren earth and then sculpted from our incessant time, labor, and devotion into a masterpiece, glorious and beautiful.

And although we are the creators, we are the ones who become its servants, for true love is an infinite, never-ending sacrifice. No love is greater than another, for all love is infinite and precious. However, just as we serve love, so also does love gain strength from us as it endures through all the trials of a terrible and wonderful world to emerge stronger than ever before. And yet, at the same time, we rely on love for strength, for once it is experienced, it is impossible to let go. It becomes our entire world, not by shielding us in a restricting bubble, but by opening our eyes to see our lives in a new light, to see what was once hidden, to appreciate what was once overlooked, and to reveal the secret beauty in all things. In this way, love guides us through all storms and shelters us from drowning in the flames of our own hate. It is our crowning redemption, our pillar of light, and quite often, the only thing we are living for.

And yet, at the same time, love can be our greatest downfall. The wrong kind of love, that of obsession, dominance, or greed, can spread from a tiny spark to a brutal, out-of-control inferno, which only succeeds in scalding all those involved. This is the greatest trap of love, to be so enamored in its rapture that it becomes one of selfishness, where you only think of the desires of yourself instead of the desires of many.

Because of this, sometimes the greatest test of love is to let go, to sacrifice all you hold dear for the sake of another, to throw yourself headfirst into a world of cruelty, and see if the spark of sacrificial love in your heart is enough to survive the flames.

-Believing in the Beautiful Things, Chapter 18 "Lessons in Love"

Date: October 30th, 2014 (approximately 1 and 2/3 years following the destruction of Planet Lexicon)

Location: Unknown

Mulan groggily opened her eyes to complete blackness. Not a single beam of light shed light upon her surroundings, making putting together the pieces of the previous days' events all the more challenging. The fallen angel tried to conjure up memories of what had led her to arrive here, alone and lost in this void of obsolete darkness, but her dizzying, pounding head was currently coming up blank. Mulan closed her eyes in pain as even the slightest movement sent spikes of agony shooting into her skull. She would have cried out in torment, but she had been trained for better than that. If any currently unseen enemies were lurking nearby, she would not give them the satisfaction of watching her openly suffer.

Taking several calming lungfuls of air in an attempt to quell the nearly overwhelming waves of nausea racking her entire body, Mulan forced her sluggish mind to focus on her current predicament. Since sight and movement would not aid her, she decided to rely on her other senses to gain an idea of what kind of environment she was in and thus form the basis of her escape.

Mulan could feel rough edges of brick assaulting her back, currently erected in a sitting position, most likely due to a wall. Judging by her painfully stiff muscles, her gnawing stomach constricting in her lower torso, and her sandpaper-dry throat, she guessed she had been trapped in this place for approximately four days, if not more. Of course, she would not die from this, although it would be very uncomfortable for an angel to be forever left in such a state. Besides that, Mulan could feel nothing else, save for a strange, coarse object covering the upper half of her head. Upon further investigation, she realized this must have been a blindfold, which explained the darkness.

Mulan tried to reach up to untie the blindfold but found her hands bound by rusty metal handcuffs. In spite of herself, Mulan let out a slight gasp upon realizing what the metal was.

Blessed iron, Mulan thought to herself. That's quite out of the ordinary. Very few know of its properties, and much less have the audacity to use it to drain the energy of a fallen angel. I wonder…

As Mulan further pondered her location, her nose picked up another piece of the puzzle, the acrid, wretched stench (at least to a fallen angel) of holy water.

Well, this narrows down the possibilities significantly.

No sooner had Mulan reached this conclusion then her ears picked up the sound of light footsteps pounding against concrete, followed by a grating noise like a slab of stone being moved aside.

Before she had time to react, the pairs of hands roughly grabbed her arms and forcefully dragged her to her feet. With a few irritated (and, Mulan did not fail to notice, distinctly female) shouts and shoves in the back, the fallen angel was driven forward. Thinking it would not bode well given her current state of weakness to resist, Mulan willingly complied.

Through her blindfold, Mulan could see a torchlight dancing in front of her, a strange sight to be sure. Didn't these people know what century they were in? Unless… ah, now her list of captors had dwindled down to a handful.

Mulan would have attempted to interrogate her kidnappers, but she was currently trying to resist throwing up from the pain her throbbing head was inflicting. So the trek to the unknown destination remained utterly silent, although Mulan imagined her two captors glancing uneasily at one another, wondering why their prisoner was so compliant. But she was more than willing to toy with their minds; it would only provide her with an advantage.

Surprisingly, Mulan was not very humiliated by the fact that she, a once glorious angel, had been captured with such apparent ease. Perhaps it was because she had once experienced humiliation hundredfold, all other embarrassment paled in its light.

Even centuries later, Mulan could still remember the day, no matter how much she had wanted to burn the memory from her mind. Head bent as verbal abuse stabbed her heart… her world of Light obscured in tears… the verdict slamming down upon her like a punch to the chest… the excruciating pain of veins turning to wires, of feathers turning to metal gears as her divinity was stripped away, leaving her more machine than anything else… the feeling of desolation as the gates closed… her desperate, broken cries to her once-called brothers and sisters gone unheard… the feeling of forever falling… falling… falling…

Irritated with herself, Mulan pushed aside these memories. Now was not the time to wallow in self-pity; all it would do was make her weak. She had had over a millennia to reconcile with the verdict. She wouldn't cry. She would preserve her honor. So instead, Mulan marched onward in silence, which was only broken by the occasional drip of water, giving the impression of some underground cavern.

Suddenly, Mulan felt a hand violently push her onto the ground.

"Bow to the Lady!" commanded the woman on her right, with the woman on her right adding a kick for good measure.

Ah, so that's who it is, Mulan thought, recognizing the name. This was going to be emotionally difficult.

"Nikita! Eliza!" reprimanded a third woman in a decidedly British accent. "Is that any way to treat our guest? At least get rid of that wretched blindfold!"

With a loud rip, the cloth was torn, allowing Mulan to fully take in her surroundings. She was in a large rotunda in the center of what seemed to be a large underground labyrinth, lined with smooth, tan bricks. There were two young women next to Mulan, one with fiery red hair to match her blazing green eyes and the other with pale lavender hair, though both were dressed in black military attire and carried weapons, the redhead a sword and the other a ruby-hilted knife.

At the center of the sparsely decorated room, there was a grand marble throne, flanked by two flaming braziers and mounted on a three-step platform. Upon it sat a woman robed in a simple, dark red velvet gown with a silt in the side that reached all the way to her thigh. Pale golden hair fell as a backdrop around her body, the fair blonde locks nicely complimenting her hazel eyes, so different from her mother's crystal blue ones. She carried a golden scepter in her right hand to match the golden diadem, strikingly similar to Queen Islanzadi's silver counterpart, resting like a laurel upon her head. A satisfied smirk curled the masochist's lips as she looked down upon Mulan's suffering with pride. Looking up, Mulan ignored this blatant attempt to get her riled up as she noticed a teal ten-point star emblazoned above the throne, the final detail Mulan needed to confirm both her location and her captor, as if she wouldn't have recognized her regardless. After all, she looked just as she did over a hundred years ago, when the two immortals first met.

"The Conclave welcomes you, Mulan," the Lady greeted with false warmth as she rose from her throne and opened her arms in a gesture of greeting.

"I see not much has changed over the years," replied Mulan, humoring her. "Although it certainly has been so long since we last met, hasn't it, Little Lucie?"

Yup! It's Miss Power's daughter! (For those who don't remember her, I suggest you reread the flashback in Chapter 18 of Believing.) I was especially surprised at you, TLM; after all, you guessed it in the first place, even before I had even presented the question!

And poor Miss Power/Vultora/Lucie! :'( ...Heyyyy, would the Conclave of Lexicon by any chance include MP's daughter Lucie? Is she still alive, being half-Lexiconian like she is, or what?

Remember that little remark? ;D Anyway, for those of you who are groaning at having what appears to be a carbon-copy of Miss Power, let me assure you that Lucie is nothing like her mother. While their ultimate goals may be similar, Lucie's backstory, methods, personality, and emotions are very different and more well-rounded. In short, I intend for her to be everything Miss Power should have been in Believing but wasn't.

Anyway, as for the next update, it will not be this story, although the two are closely linked. Watch my profile for a new story on Wednesday, where I will also announce how these updates will work.

Birthday reviews? :D Oh, and speaking of which, there's one more thing I want to add. If any of my real-world acquaintances out there want to leave a Guest review down below, I will ask if you refer to me as Isabella (except my awesome, loving, beta-editing godfather, who has the right to call me Izzie :D), both to protect my identity as well as to differentiate my Facebook friends from my Fanfiction friends. My Fanfic friends can continue to nickname me Bella, since you're already accustomed to the name and plus, I honestly just like you better than some of my FB friends. I know I've said it before, but you're the ones who have stuck by me and encouraged me through my months of writing, and I will always thank you for it. You guys rock!

Love to all,

Bella