Sonic the hedgehog nor any of its characters belong to me.
Lupa's story
"WHERE IS SHE?" Knuckles stormed into the hall. "WHERE IS THAT WITCH? I'M GONNA KILL HER! I'M GONA TEAR HER APART!"
Surprisingly, Rouge, who would always bring the hotheaded Echidna back down to earth, looked just as enraged as he was. Behind them, Espio was leaning against the wall, breathing heavily and holding his side. But he looked pretty mad as well.
"So, you managed to help them?" Tails asked and Espio nodded
"Yo Knux, shoulnd't ya treat your wounds first? Violett aint here yet, so there aint anything you can do!"
The three of them had thought that Violett would have returned to the ship by now, since she always seemed to be ahead of everybody else. Seeing Vector and Charmy already back was a bit surprising.
"Who's he?" Rouge asked when she saw the frightened little dove hiding behind Vector's legs.
But she froze when she looked at him and so did Knuckles. They took a few steps back and started shaking. The kid had piercing, blood-red eyes, just like Lupa.
"A new friend", Charmy flew around the boy, happy to finally be back in their own ship.
"He was a prisoner on the ship, so we took him with us." Vector shrugged. "Poor boy's frightened outta his wits."
Rouge wanted to open her mouth to say something, but before a sound came out, two other creatures came into the room. Violett and Blaze were both dripping wet and seemed to be at the end of their nerves.
"YOU!" Knuckles cried in rage. "YOU KNEW ABOUT HER, ABOUT THAT … THAT DEVIL!"
"You met Lupa?"
"YOU SHOULD HAVE TOLD US! LOOK WHAT SHE DID TO US! IF IT WASN'T FOR ESPIO, WE WOULD BE DEAD BY NOW! DO YOU GET IT? THAT WOMAN; SHE SERIOUSLY TRIED TO KILL US!"
"Had she been serious, you would already be dead."
"HOW CAN YOU PUT US IN SUCH DANGER?" Rouge helped out. "IF YOU KNEW SHE WOULD KILL US, WHY DIDN'T YOU WARN US?"
"SHUT UP!"
Blaze's voice was even louder than Knuckles' and the brightness of her flames filled the entire room. They came from her body and danced around without touching any of the others. But the heat was almost painful and Cream and the dove almost fainted. When the show was over, nobody dared to move another muscle until the enraged cat calmed down.
But before she could even open her mouth, two more people entered the room and every eye was locked on them. Amy was walking in, with the unconscious Sonic on her back. The wound hadn't closed and was bleeding so heavily that Amy's already torn clothes were filled with blood.
"Help …" Amy choked. "Sonic …"
Her knees gave way and she fell to the floor. Completely exhausted, she let Sonic fall, he rolled on his back and everybody saw what had happened to him. They saw how spots of red were all over his fur, coming from the huge amount of blood on his chest and his back and how his muscles, how weak he was hanging there in Amy's arms, how blood was even running out of his mouth.
"Oh my gosh …" Blaze gasped and everybody agreed silently.
The first one who caught himself was Tails and he screamed orders to everyone around. Vector took Sonic and brought him to the medical room and everybody followed. They brought Amy, who knew more about medicine then everybody else everything she needed and soon after, Sonic's chest was completely bandaged and blood stopped coming out of his mouth. But Amy was completely exhausted and was about to collapse. Yet, she stayed awake for what was about to come.
"That's it!" Rouge said and glared at the magician. "No more open questions. You owe us explanations. Because of you, Sonic might DIE!"
When she heard that, little Cream got scared and grabbed her mother's skirt.
"No …." Amy said weakly. "It's thanks to her Sonic's still alive."
Everybody looked at her. Of everybody in the team, Amy was the last one they expected to be on Violett's side. The fact that she was supporting her was shocking for everybody. Together with Blaze, she stood next to the purple hedgehog to support her. But something even more surprising happened.
"Very well", Violett said. "I will tell you everything you need to know. I'll start with the reason I never told you about Lupa before."
And she told them what she had told Blaze back in the ship; how Lupa loved playing games with her prey and how the only chances of escaping them were if you knew nothing about Lupa or if you had so much experience with her games that you figured out the rules fast enough to win.
"Now, before I answer the rest of your questions, there's something else that you need to know."
Nobody heard the flaw in these words, so eager where they to hear what the mage had to say. She took the ring from her neck and put it on her finger. For a second, she closed her eyes and the scenery around them changed. They stood in the middle of space and looked around nervously. Only Blaze and Violett herself seemed calm.
"Don't worry, this is only an illusion. As Blaze, Claws and I have told you, this Zone exists of thirteen dimensions. What you don't know yet is that we can enter only twelve of them, because the last one belongs to the dead. Only spirits whose bodies have died can enter that world. That last dimension is what you might call heaven or hell. Have you understood that so far?"
Everybody nodded.
"What we also haven't told you is that there is a kind of wall between the dimensions. Some of you might know this already. Tails told me that he did before we left. Those walls keep the dimensions apart and are incredibly strong. The strongest technology can only open a hole if there is a weak spot in that wall. They appear every now and then. However, very few types of magic can create a hole for a short amount of time without harming it in any way. The strongest of the walls is the one to the thirteenths dimension. It has absolutely no weak spots and no magic in this entire Zone can open a hole without breaking it apart completely. Did everyone understand that?"
"But what does this have to do with that wolf in the ship" Rouge asked.
"Just listen. It'll all come together in the end." Blaze snapped.
"Then I'll go on with what happens when people die. You see, there are three stages of death; the first one is when the heart stops beating, but the brain is still functioning. The body is dead, but the soul is still trapped in it. Any hospital can bring a person back to life in that stage. The next one happens about a half an hour after the heart stopped pounding, when so much of the brain has died away that the person is unable to live, even if he started breathing again. That's when the soul leaves the body. Usually, it stays within the twelve dimensions that we can enter until the brain of the body is completely dead. In that stage, only magic can bind the soul back to his body and revive the brain. But magic like that is extremely powerful and rare and I've never met anybody who has the ability to do so.
"The third stage is the ultimate death; it's when the soul departs for the thirteenth dimension. Once it's entered it, it cannot be brought back without causing a catastrophe. As said, souls usually go to the thirteenth dimension when the brain shows no more activity, but if there is still something that bothers a soul, an unfulfilled task or something similar, they stick around as ghosts until whatever is bothering them has disappeared. So far, so good?"
The rest of the team looked at each other, but since no one asked ay questions, Violett went on.
"Many millenias ago, the universes and the walls were unstable, except of course for the thirteenth. People feared that they would collapse and destroy this Zone entirely. So the three eldest and most powerful mages and their partners went to the kingdom of the dragons, who were already old and powerful back then and still are and asked them for the twelve items that represented the king's and the queen's reign. A few items for a prince and a princess were also in there."
As she said this, a female and a male dragon appeared in the universe and around them appeared twelve items; a huge crown, the heavy looking tiara that Violett had used to create a hole to the next dimension, a delicate diadem, a mighty scepter, the necklace that Blaze always wore, an expensive looking ring, a brooch with a ruby on it, the sword of Acorns, a beautiful golden arch with arrows, a little something that looked like a golden compass, a rather small specimen of these horns that you blew into and a dagger.
"The king and the queen listened to the mages and gave them the objects that you can see here. The mages took them and gave each one of them something that would give the objects very special powers. I only know of three things, which were the essence of a dimension, the essence of the wall to that dimension and the essence of the Master Oracle, the eldest of all Oracles. The objects received a lot of power and from then on, stabilized the dimensions and the walls between them. Only the thirteenth didn't have an object, since nobody could enter it.
"But soon, people who were hungering for power heard of these objects and the power they had and the four mages were forced to protect them as good as they could. So they gave the crown back to the family of dragons and bonded it with the bloodline, so that only chosen members of that family could use it, or a descendant of one of the mages. They also did this with two other very old reigns and their families. As soon as another reign reached a certain age and a certain amount of power, the mages and their descendants bonded an object with the reigning family's bloodline. Soon, all twelve objects were given to families and the dragons, who are very just and very wise, keep a list of all the kingdoms in this Zone and make sure that only the twelve eldest and most powerful ones have such an object."
This time, twelve creatures appeared in the galaxy together with their item; a dragon with the crown, a hedgehog with the tiara, a griffin with the diadem, a deer with the scepter, a cat with the necklace, an eagle with the ring, a bat with the brooch, a squirrel with the sword, a monkey with the arch, an iguana with the compass, a shark with the horn and a lion with a dagger.
The others all looked at the faces in awe. They knew now how old, mighty and powerful Blaze's and Sally's family really were and they had new respect to them, especially since the necklace and the Sword of Acorns have chosen the two to be their bearer. Blaze might know what responsibility she had, but did Sally? Suddenly, the story that Sonic had told Amy, Tails and Knuckles about Violett's behavior back in the castle made sense.
"Legend also says that those mages put a guardian for the dimensional items, so that their true power can only be used when all twelve of them are together. But uniting them is an act that needs an incredible amount of mana and it would kill most mages. However, when you do summon the guardian, he will be able to grant you any wish, whatever it might be.
"Now we get to our enemy. Rouge and Knuckles have already met her; she's a wolf named Lupa and just like me, her ancestors helped with the dimensional items. But perhaps I should start from the very beginning."
The universe disappeared and they stood in the lobby again. Some sat down, others kept standing, the rest didn't' quite know what to do.
"You see, Lupa's family is the oldest and most powerful family of mages in this entire Zone. There is no mage who can keep up with them. But unlike most of the most powerful families of mages, the mages of Lupa's family often cause trouble for the Zones, so they keep many things that my teachers taught me in secret. Only the eldest and wisest are allowed to know about the Zone's and the dimensional items, so for a long time, Lupa didn't know about that.
"When Lupa was but a child, the grownups around her soon saw her talent and saw her as a prodigy, even for one of their family. They trained her and were astounded at how fast she managed to control the flow of her mana, something that is very difficult for every mage to do. But she had always been a lonely child, because her red eyes and white hair scared the children. Red eyes aren't very often seen under the wolves and white hair even less.
When she was about 15 years old, Lupa went to a family reunion and meet Ira, an albino wolf. As you can imagine, he too didn't have a very easy childhood, but he had dreams; big dreams. He wanted to bring all twelve dimensions under his reign and bring peace to them that way. Lupa was immediately captivated by that idea and promised Ira to stay by his side and help him. Ira had been a prodigy; not in the flow of mana, like Lupa, but in the amount of magic he had. The two together were a dangerous pair and soon, when all of us were only little kids, a war erupted. Ira and Lupa were taking over one planet after another on more than just one dimension and many mages got together to stop the two of them. My mentor, Pythia, was amongst them as well.
"But Lupa and Ira couldn't be stopped, until the day that the two became a bit too sure of themselves. They stood at the top of a battle and looked at it from somewhere beyond. And Ira thought it was the best opportunity to propose to Lupa and so he did . And while the two were being happy with each other, another mage came from behind and threw a dagger filled with magic towards Lupa. But Ira saw it, turned his fiancée around and took the hit. The magic exploded and destroyed him from the inside.
"Lupa reacted fast and brought Ira away from the battlefield, where she tried her very best to treat him. She didn't make it. A few hours later, Ira died. Lupa had lost the only person in the world who had treated her like a living thing and had given her love."
Everybody was quiet. Rouge and Knuckles remembered the crazy look they had seen in the wolf's eye and could no longer feel fear … only pity.
"After that, Lupa disappeared and the war ended. Nobody knew where she went and nobody searched for her either. Some said that she had died of a broken heart. But as you clearly saw today, that is not the case. Lupa had been researching about magic until she finally found something that might bring her beloved Ira back; the dimensional items' guardian. If she would manage to find all twelve dimensional items and bring out the guardian, then she would be able to bring Ira back, no matter if he left for the thirteenth dimension or not."
"But why are we trying to stop her? Trying to bring back someone you love … that can't be a bad thing", Tails said and Violett saw how a tiny bit of hope came into Tails eyes.
"Because years have passed ever since Ira died and the chances that he hasn't left for the thirteenth dimension yet are too big to take the risk. And even though the guardian might have the power to summon a spirit from the thirteenth dimension, the wall would still break apart and the two universes would collide. That would cause the dimensional items to overpower themselves, they would break and the disruption in balance would cause the other walls to break apart as well. All thirteen dimensions would collide, this entire Zone would collapse and all life would end. And since there would no longer be a thirteenth dimension to go to, we would all be doomed to reside as ghosts in the shatters of the broken Zone."
That hit like a bomb. So far, the group had stopped worlds from becoming ruled by a dictator, from being destroyed completely and had stopped the galaxy from being turned into a galaxy where only plants could live. This mission was taking place in an entirely different dimension and right at the moment, nobody was sure if they would be able to take on such a burden. At least none of those who were conscious right now …
Can you imagine how long it took to think up such a plot? I definitely wanted an foe as a character that was dangerous, but had a reason for what she did. I wanted one that knew what it meant to suffer and that would be able to take on Violett no problem without seeming overpowered. And that three stages of death system is gonna be very important later on.
Well, at least now you know what Sonic and co. are up against.