The rafts were ready at sunset. After a resistance test, they were brought back to shore, covered and fixed to the ground with some wooden pegs. They hoped that the storm would not return and drag them away.
That night, Icy woke her sisters up and gathered them beside her outside the tent. The calm that now reigned in that place was almost supernatural, and all the noises were muffled by the placid flow of the river and the light wind that stirred the covers of the rafts.
Icy pointed to the opening in the rock into which the water threw itself, disappearing into the darkness barely enlightened by a warm glow of unknown origin. It seemed there must be something else in there, perhaps an unknown life form, yet another alien remnant sprung from the Shadow fire. The ice witch's eyes sparkled with lust. She would never give up, even if she had to face the deadliest of creatures.
-Here we are.- she turned to her sisters. -Can you see it too? -
The two girls nodded.
-Once inside, we will have to look around very carefully. The last trace of the Shadow fire can be anywhere. We don't have enough energy to use the Vacuums, so we'll have to rely on our sixth sense. The negative energy of the fire will guide us to it.-
-How are we going to cross the river? With one of the rafts? -
-No, it would take too long and they would notice. We will fly.-
-Do we have enough energy to do it? -
-Yes, sisters, it is only a matter of a few tens of meters. After that we'll have solid ground to walk on.-
-Are you sure we'll be able to control that energy, once we find it? -
-I'm not sure, and this is the sore point. We will capture it and see how to best use it. For now, all I know is that it is too powerful to let it rot under lock. We haven't had a chance with the Dragon flame, but nothing will stop us from taking this one.
-What if you're wrong? What if it was too destructive for us too? - Darcy insisted.
-You really enjoy ruining the party, huh?-
-These are questions that anyone with a minimum of brains would ask, Stormy.-
-Shut up now.- Icy stopped them. -We have already talked too much. Time to get moving.-
-Wait.- Darcy turned to the camp before speaking, a move that didn't escape to Icy. -And the others? Don't you think they'll come looking for us when they see we're missing? -
-Oh yes, they will. But they won't be able to tell anyone that it was us who found the fire.-
-What are you going to do? -
-It's quite obvious, honey. I want to eliminate them.- Icy came closer to her, so that she had a clear idea of her purpose. -And I won't spare even one.-
Darcy held Icy's impassive, insane gaze as she began to feel a sudden weight in her chest.
-Is everything clear? - Icy spelled each word.
-I can't.- murmured the middle sister. Upon hearing this, Icy's gaze changed to an even more insane expression.
-What do you mean you can't?-
-Yes, we had a plan.-
Darcy turned quickly towards the camp, as if she were under the pressure of a time bomb and an increasingly threatening ticking was forcing her to choose which side to take.
-I can't do this to him, not again.- she exhaled.
She was amazed at the courage with which she had dared to utter those words. Long ago, she would never have allowed herself this. She knew how far Icy's madness could go, but she had a skill that her sister didn't have: that of knowing her limits and, in the most extreme cases, learning from her mistakes. Icy never learned. She had pushed over her edge, dragging her into a mad spiral, and she'd had no power to stop her. Now, she couldn't let her repeat the same mistake twice, not after all the chaos that had ensued, not after all the effort she had made to regain the trust of the one person who ever loved her.
-Oh, is that so. Well, I was right. And so you didn't listen to me, even after I told you to stay away from him.-
-You don't want to understand. You've never made an effort to listen to me. For once I want to be the one not to listen to you.-
-I knew you had bought your brains out, my dear, but I would never think to this point. I knew that idiot was involved, I always knew, from day one.-
-You don't even know what you're saying. You do not know him.-
Icy's hand struck her sister's face with a violence that she knew well, but which at that point, didn't fail to arouse a hatred she had never felt before. She cursed herself for not being able to respond with magic. She had no weapons.
-That brat has brought us nothing but trouble, and now you, who should be on our side, hold back? How naive you are! What do you think Riven will do when he realizes we're gone?-
Darcy didn't answer. She was trapped.
-When he understands it, everything will be clear to him. You won't be able to try to explain how things are anymore. And he will hate you even more, when he will find out that you deceived him. Let's leave, now.-
Darcy pursed her lips, swallowing the bitterness and nervousness that the confrontation had left in her body and she turned for the last time to Riven's tent, before following her sisters to the threshold of the cave.
.
The roar of the creek had not been able to hide the soft voices coming from outside his tent from Riven's ears. Besides, despite his tiredness, he hadn't been able to sleep for most of the night. His mind remained active and relived the events of the previous night, mostly unpleasant ones, but also the others. Fate was strange. Only a few days before, he was convinced that he would return from that mission as he had left, and the next day he had been thrown at the mercy of the worst supernatural calamities in the company of the person whom, until recently, he hated most in the world. Or at least so he believed.
Seeing Darcy again was a shock. He still felt so much hatred for her, but he couldn't help admitting that, despite the fact that more than a year had passed, he still hadn't managed to get her out of his head.
Perhaps it was the memory of the time spent together, perhaps the bond that had been created between them by communicating from mind to mind, perhaps the misconception he had made of how much better Musa's company would be. The reality of the facts had not made him happy and, in the space of a couple of days, fate had faced him with a second chance: to put the grudge aside and go back to trusting the girl who had betrayed him. The dangerous situation had brought back an apprehensive Darcy, the only one he had really known and for which he still felt something.
The boy got up, took his weapon - in case he needed it -, freed himself from the sleeping bag and went out of the tent. Everything was silent outside, and he wondered if the voices he had heard were not just suggestion. The moon lit up the whole camp and the trees rustled slightly above the neat row of tents.
It was then that he noticed that one of them was open. He approached cautiously and instinctively brought the hand to the hilt of the sword. There could have been unwelcome guests inside it, and he shuddered at the thought that they might have already killed those who slept there until recently. He glanced in and saw three empty sleeping bags. No breathing, no sound, and no sign of life came from those three mounds of blankets.
A horrible foreboding gave him a chill in his spine and a growing nervousness pervaded the muscles of his whole body. He looked around. The other tents were all closed. There was no sign of Icy or Stormy. Nor of Darcy.
He felt his jaw contract as he became aware of what had happened.
All the certainties that he was slowly rebuilding collapsed in one moment, leaving him alone in front of the harsh reality: he should not have trusted her. He felt naive; maybe he was.
He wasted no time and he pulled out the pegs that kept the cover of one of the rafts anchored to the ground, and with no little effort he pulled the anchor rope until the raft fell over the shore of the river, floating on the dark surface. Before the current dragged it too far, he jumped aboard and drifted into the opening in the rock, which swallowed him like an abnormal, hungry mouth.
The interior was now pitch black, the rock floor was greenish and wet like an animal's stomach.
He turned on the only torch he had with him and illuminated the dark, pointed stalactites that grew in size as he continued along the river. Several times he had to kneel to avoid them. From time to time, the echo brought back the desperate screech of the tar monsters, which still lurked in the caverns of that hostile place. The noises they made were so loud that it seemed they were tearing each other's flesh apart. He began to suspect that some creature might notice his presence, and he lowered the flashlight.
He didn't know what kind of courage had prompted him to enter that place alone. Anyway he couldn't sleep, and now more than ever, he didn't want to. His only new goal was to find those three witches and make them pay, one way or another, for deceiving everyone. Clearly, the professors were wrong: it was not a good idea to believe that they had changed. He had believed it too.
The raft suddenly ran aground in a cove slightly enlightened by some strange and small luminescent rocks. He remembered seeing the same mineral species during the rescue mission of a few months earlier. He was not to be far from the remains of Shadowhaunt fortress. Several tunnels opened slightly above the water level. The river ran through a narrow passage in the rock, too small for him to pass through, and there was no way to move the raft. He scrambled up the nearest wall to get out of there quickly: as far as he knew, anything could hide in those dark and treacherous waters.
He couldn't go back now. He continued into the larger passage and saw that after a few steps it widened a lot, taking on the appearance of an immense cave. The view opened for several kilometers following the underground river. All around, the rocks gave off a pleasant and surreal greenish glow. The walls were studded with luminescent crystals of various shapes, which seemed to have dominated there for centuries, without ever mashing under the pressure and movements of the mountain. Instead, the floor was strewn with limestone boulders and gigantic scales of greenish rock, undoubtedly fallen as a result of the jolts.
The boy glanced at his feet and saw that the stream continued impetuously, until it disappeared into the mist, at the farthest point he could see, probably re-emerging on the other side of the mountain. Huge stalactites, of the size of palaces, hung from the crystal-lit rock vault like the roof of a temple.
He listened. Aside from the distant cries of the monsters, it was all too calm.
It was impossible that the devastating effects of the Shadow fire had suddenly subsided. The trace could be anywhere, and something had changed over there.
-Are you looking for this? -
A sharp voice came from behind him. He whirled around.
Icy floated in midair, looking different from what he remembered. She was transformed, and her glacial, dark-rimmed eyes cast a maddening look upon him, to say the least. In her hands she held a medium-sized ice crystal, the outlines of which cast an eerie reddish glow in the darkness of the cave, almost giving it the appearance of a bewitched ruby. Inside, however, something seemed to be hidden, like an ancient fossil. By peering at it, Riven could see it. It was a small form, incorporeal and static, with a sinister aspect. She didn't have the warm, vital glow of the Dragon flame, but it enveloped on herself like a deformed demon, as tiny as destructive. He could only imagine what it looked like outside the ice that had trapped it.
-Damn,- he murmured.
-Did you say something? - Stormy mocked him. She, like Icy, had recovered the magic too, perhaps drawing it from the trace of fire they had found.
-Give it back. You have no idea what you are doing.-
Icy looked at him with contempt and toyed with the block of ice. -I have news for you: I don't care what you think.-
Riven's gaze fell on Darcy. She stood beside her sister, in midair; her long hair floated around her and her amber eyes stared at him with resignation.
The boy suppressed a surge of anger, but it last for a short time. He drew his sword and pulled out his hoverboard, and started to chase, but the movement of a weapon that hurled at full speed towards Icy, preceded him.
The object was instantly frozen and plunged into the river.
-Give that flame back, or you'll face us!- Bloom's shrill voice rang out.
Riven looked back and saw that his companions had joined him, and with them the Winx.
-So they fooled us again.- Brandon commented.
-We let our guard down, my friend, and this is the result.- Sky answered. He glanced at Riven, and started to ask him what had occurred to him to go there alone, but Tecna's voice interrupted him.
-They're flying away!-
The Trix flew along the river, towards the center of the mountain.
The girls instinctively tried to hit them with magic, and some, with great surprise, succeeded. The shots, however, missed the target and dissolved against the rock face, scratching it.
Bloom looked down at her palms and then looked at her friends, bewildered. The magic was back. Now it was clear why the Trix had managed to transform.
-But how is it possible? Shouldn't the power of the Shadow fire weaken us?- Stella asked, confused.
-The crystals! - Aisha exclaimed, remembering. -The crystals are fueling our positive energy. I learned that long ago. When they encounter large fields of negative energy, they rebalance it by releasing a large amount of opposite energy. Nature knows how to react against magical imbalances.-
-It means that now ...-
Now we can transform. Hurry.-
.
During the chase, the girls had to avoid several times the sharp fragments of stalactites that fell from above into the stream, which flowed incessantly a few tens of meters below them.
The specialists, weapons in hand, moved from one corner of the cave to the other on their hoverboards, to protect their friends in case of an attack.
The Winx had decided to arrange themselves in strategic points to set a trap for Icy. The goal was to make her harmless, blocking her, and consequently steal the fire by any means.
Bloom had her doubts about the success of the new mission: she had already seen how her Dragon flame made those three witches incredibly more powerful than normal, and the Shadow fire, the primary source of all negative energies, could only do worse. The escape of the Trix had been a major setback on their schedule, and had suddenly overturned all the set goals. The fire had been found, but the risk of it falling into the wrong hands had now made itself concrete.
Icy stopped in midair. She looked in every direction, clutched the ice block in her hands and realized she could no longer escape. She was surrounded.