A/N: Once again, we have no excuse except for procrastination. I hope you enjoy it, though! This chapter was partially written by me, and partially written by Night.
To say Hannah was completely comfortable on Captain Breckon's ship would be a lie. The creaky, half-rotted deck set her nerves on edge, and she worried the vessel would simply collapse beneath her. She longed for the stability of the Bronze Garnet, but her ship's bottle had been left at the Holystone residence.
Relief swept over the blonde as the rickety ghost ship pulled into the Skull Island docks. Destiny emerged from the cabin, looking as pale as a ghost herself. Hannah couldn't blame her; even she had been starting to feel a little ill.
"Here ye go," Captain Breckon spoke, startling her out of her thoughts. "Pleasure having ye on board. Now if ye and yer friend could scram, that'd be mighty appreciated. I gotta take meself and this pup back to Marleybone."
"Thank you," Hannah replied, and although she didn't like the captain's attitude, she meant it. He grunted in acknowledgment, apparently impatient for them to leave.
The pair of witchdoctors were more than happy to oblige. They watched as the ship cast off, preparing to sail home.
"I can't say I care for the captain," Destiny commented, "but I hope Arabella makes it safely." Hannah agreed.
"Hannah? Destiny?" A familiar accent grabbed their attention. Turning, they were greeted by a profoundly annoyed-looking Hazel. "Where have you been? We've been looking all over for you; we were worried sick!"
The two blondes exchanged uncomfortable glances, uncertain of where or even whether to begin the story. Finally, Hannah came to a decision. She took a deep breath.
"I couldn't sleep, so I decided to go for a walk," she began. "I discovered a note in Ash's handwriting. It claimed to know where Valeria was being kept."
That caught Hazel's attention. "Well, what did it say?" she urged.
Destiny picked that moment to chime in. "It said she was being held in a cave by the docks. I happened to wake up and find Hannah, so we went to check it out."
A memory of their icy cage flashed into Hannah's mind. "It was a trap. We were caught in a cage of ice spikes. Luckily for us, Destiny happened to possess an ancient pyromancy relic that got us out."
Hazel gave a low whistle. "Some luck."
The younger witchdoctor nodded, continuing. "During this, the island broke off and floated off to stars know where. We got lost on a big, foggy island. And then we fell down a hole."
Both Hannah and Hazel were surprised by the abruptness of the last statement, but Hannah quickly settled back into her rhythm. "We were in a weird cavern with a bunch of odd paintings. We found a riddle, and we had to solve it to get out."
"Even after solving it, we were lost." Destiny took up the story as naturally as though it had been scripted. "Then we found the ghost of a young pup named Arabella. She turned out to be my foster parents' daughter."
"So she was your… sister?" Hazel checked, looking incredulous.
Destiny nodded as Hannah continued the tale. "Arabella led us to the ghost of a cat named Captain Breckon. He agreed to bring us home if we freed him from the island. That's about it."
Hazel shook her head. "You two are reckless enough to pass for swashbucklers. Let's head back."
The welcomes from Haley and Harmony were polar opposites. Haley fixed them with icy glares, demanding to know what had happened, while Harmony tackled them both in bone-crushing hugs.
"Gck… Harmony, you're crushing me," Hannah gasped. The buccaneer swiftly released them both from her hold, apologizing profusely.
"So, what happened?" Haley repeated icily. The pair of witchdoctors looked at each other, neither wanting to have to explain for a second time. Thankfully, Hazel decided to be their saving grace, retelling the story more or less verbatim. Hannah suspected it was more for Harmony's benefit than Haley's.
"So I think it's clear Valeria is being held on Hawk's island." Hannah jumped as Marissa spoke; she hadn't registered her presence until that moment. Looking over, she noticed that the legend's blue eyes were sharp and focused. "Maybe you could create a Windstone there."
"How?" Hannah pressed. To her dismay, the Iron Dove was already fading back into her hazy delirium.
Silence descended upon the room like a thick blanket. Hannah's brain was churning, trying to produce a way for them to acquire a unique Windstone.
"Hey, Madame Vadima basically knows all things magical, right?" Harmony piped up. "Why don't we ask her?"
Of course! Hannah felt unbelievably stupid. Her trainer was well versed in anything magical, and Windstones were most certainly magical.
"We should hurry," Hazel stated. "After all, we have no idea of Valeria's condition."
"Why are we so worried about her?" Haley grumbled. "Shouldn't we focus on Holly?"
Dead silence.
Hannah cleared her throat softly. This proved to be a mistake, as all the eyes in the room except Marissa's immediately focused on her. "Two of our friends are imprisoned on Hawk's island. To me, that's unacceptable. So instead of wasting time arguing about who's more important, let's get moving and rescue them." She fixed each of her friends with an intense stare before walking out of the house. The others followed wordlessly, and they made their way to Vadima's sanctum.
Thankfully, the ancient witchdoctor was actually there for once. She beckoned the group to come closer with a single crooked finger. Hannah and Destiny walked straight up to her, but Hannah noticed the rest of the group hanging back as though nervous. She couldn't blame them; greenish smoke hung thick in the cave, making the atmosphere even more eerie than its usual creepy ambience.
"Welcome, children," Vadima purred. "You come to me with burning question, yes?" All the teenage pirates started talking at once, and the witchdoctor trainer held up a mottled hand to silence them. "The more voices speak, the less can be heard."
Hannah apologized sheepishly and began to explain their situation, but Hazel cut across her. "We need to make a Windstone."
Vadima hummed deep in her throat, a slightly unnerving sound. "Windstones are enchanted ice. Tiny one must create mold to fill with water." Hazel bristled at this. "Then, you travel through threads of Spiral to outskirts of Aegia. Do not tread on world itself! Only by waterfall on gateway island. Fill mold with water." She reached into one of her bell-shaped sleeves and withdrew a scrap of paper, confirming Hannah's suspicion that her teacher had anticipated their coming. "This is Windstone enchantment. It will vaporize once read, so be careful!"
Hannah gingerly accepted the paper, tucking it safely into her pocket. "Thank you, Madame Vadima," she said respectfully, and her companions echoed her.
"Do not thank me yet," Vadima chided. "You are closer than ever to finding friend, but danger awaits." She turned to gaze at Harmony. "Search for hidden ally. She will show you true self." She waved a hand, clearly dismissing them.
"It's not here." Destiny made no attempt to keep the bewilderment out of her voice. Hannah leaned over her shoulder but, as always, couldn't make head nor tail of the map. She had watched helplessly as her friends had scoured Valeria's giant map of the Spiral in search of a world called Aegia — to no avail.
"It has to be here!" Harmony insisted, desperation creeping into her tone.
"Maybe the old lady is just crazy," Haley suggested dryly.
Hannah considered her teacher with a slight smile. "Madame Vadima is many things, but crazy isn't one of them."
"Wait a minute," said Destiny suddenly, stopping them before an argument could develop. "Remember that magical map?"
Haley rolled her eyes. "You mean the one we had to go chasing all over the island for? Sure, I remember it."
"What if it can show us Aegia?" Destiny's blue eyes sparkled with hope.
"I thought it showed a person's dominion, not a nonexistent world," Haley deadpanned.
"Oh, shut up," Hazel groaned. "It's a hope, at least."
"It should work," Harmony assured them. "I think."
"There's one way to find out." Hannah glanced around, trying to remember where the map had ended up, but Marissa was way ahead of her; the half-crazed privateer emerged from the front room with the map in her hand. Wordlessly, she placed it on top of the giant map, then subsided into one of the reading chairs.
Destiny waved a hand over the map. "Aegia." As Hannah watched, the map's light gathered in the center of the map, then rose in a glowing sphere to hover a few inches in the air. Tendrils of light shot out from the sphere to connect to the threads of Spiral that connected all the worlds together.
The girls could only stare. The light seemed to pulse, as if moving from the Spiral threads to the hovering ball of light instead of the other way around. After a long moment, Destiny broke the silence. "What's that?" She pointed to a spot on the map, and Hannah leaned in for a closer look.
On a Spiral thread near the world marked Skull Island, something was moving. A closer look revealed that it was a tiny but amazingly detailed picture of a ship — a ship Hannah would recognize anywhere: her own. As she watched, it sailed away from Skull Island and turned, leaving the Spiral thread for the void beyond. A speech bubble appeared next to it, slowly filling with minuscule words: Take me to the world of Magic.
"Instructions, maybe?" Hannah suggested tentatively.
Hazel shook her head in amazement. "Could we be that lucky?"
"There's one way to find out." Harmony's voice sounded cheery, but Hannah could sense an iron resolve beneath her words.
The vertigo from the Stormgate faded away, revealing the familiar misty, starry atmosphere of the Spiral thread that led to Monquista. Of course, if all went well, they wouldn't make it as far as that hated world.
"Do you have the mold ready?" Hannah asked Hazel, who had an annoying habit of standing next to her when she was trying to focus on sailing.
In response, Hazel held up a hollow wax construction in the shape of a Windstone. "How do we know this will even work?"
"We don't," Hannah replied shortly. "Um, would you mind heading belowdecks? I don't know how turbulent this will be, so I'd rather be the only person on deck." Not to mention, I want someone down there to make sure Destiny's okay. Hazel seemed to catch the subtext. She gave Hannah a smirk and headed down the steps, leaving the pilot alone at the wheel.
The Spiral thread suddenly seemed too silent. Hannah gritted her teeth. No time like the present. She turned her wheel fiercely, swinging the Bronze Garnet hard to starboard. As the ship left the safety of the mist lane and sailed into open black sky, she shouted, "Take me to the world of Magic!"
For a few seconds, nothing seemed to happen. Then, all at once, an enormous gust of wind filled the Bronze Garnet's sails from behind. Stars and colored mist swirled all around, completely obscuring Hannah's view as fierce crosswinds buffeted her. She clung to the wheel, trying desperately to keep herself anchored. After what felt like hours but was probably only a few minutes, the wind and mist vanished as suddenly as they had appeared, leaving Hannah with a breathtaking view of the strangest Skyway she had ever seen.
For one thing, there were no Windlanes. A sort of shiny surface that didn't quite have a color spread in all directions, swirling, paper-thin, and insubstantial. No creatures, other ships, or even floating rocks patrolled the Skyway, leaving it shockingly clear and open. In the distance, there was an enormous bank of clouds that Hannah sensed contained the main world of Aegia, where Vadima had forbidden them to travel. More significantly, off to the Bronze Garnet's port side was an island no larger than the ship itself, with a waterfall that seemed to fall from the greatest heights of the sky before vanishing into the ground, leaving no trace it had been there. Hannah steered the ship toward the islet.
As Hannah dropped anchor, her friends and Haley swarmed up from belowdecks. "That was supremely weird," Hazel declared.
The moment Destiny reached the deck, she turned and retched over the gunwale. Hannah put a sympathetic arm around her, and the pair left the ship, followed by Hazel with her Windstone mold. They had decided that everyone else would stay on board so nobody could get in the way.
They approached the waterfall. Hazel held the mold under the flow, letting the water fill the Windstone shape. As soon as she withdrew it, Hannah pulled the scrap of paper Vadima had given her from her pocket. With her free hand, she pulled her staff from her back. Destiny placed her hand over Hannah's on the staff, holding her own staff in her other hand. Thus situated, Hannah began to read the incantation.
It was written in a language she didn't recognize. Each word disappeared from the paper the moment she carefully sounded it out, convincing her that she was doing it right. As soon as she read the last word, the paper vanished, the waterfall flashed with a silver glow, and the mold in Hazel's hand exploded. She yelped, dropping it. As the feeling of magic subsided to normal levels, Hannah bent to pick it up and found a Windstone like any other, only silver. She also saw a pair of uncanny silver eyes staring at her.
"Hello," said an ordinary fox. Well, ordinary as in it was small and walked on all fours. The fact that it had rainbow-colored fur, silver eyes, and could talk made it anything but.
"Gack!" Hannah leaped to her feet, failing to contain her surprise.
The fox laughed, its voice sounding quite human but neither male nor female. "What business have you in Magic's world?"
Destiny cocked her head. "But we haven't actually set foot on Aegia."
The fox shook its head. "Be that as it may, you are still in the world of Aegia. I repeat my question."
Hannah held up the Windstone. "This is why. Who are you, anyway?"
"I'm a rainbow fox from Aegia," said the fox innocently, grinning widely as if at some private joke.
"Do you have a name?" Hazel pressed.
"Nope! Well, yes, actually, but I don't believe I shall tell it to you."
Hazel looked like she wanted to kick the creature. Truth be told, Hannah shared the sentiment. "Did you need something, or can we be on our way?" Hazel asked irritably. "We're kind of in a hurry here."
"I know," the fox said cheerily. "If that's what you want. Good luck! See you later!" It vanished in a puff of multicolored mist.
"What was that all about?" Hannah murmured, more to herself than anything.
"Not sure, but look!" Hazel pointed, and Hannah followed her gaze to a Stormgate that had appeared in the Skyway, seemingly out of nowhere. "I'll bet anything that'll lead us to Hawk's island."
Destiny let out a soft moan. "Not another one!"
"Another one," Hannah confirmed grimly. Resisting the urge to say something over-dramatic, she led the way back to the ship.