Bonds of Brotherhood

by tears-in-rain

WIP. Senior year is supposed to be difficult enough, but when the Dark Wizard Baltor threatens the Magical Universe just surviving to see graduation day becomes a challenge in its own right. Sequel to Brothers at Arms & Band of Brothers

14. Payback

A/N: Wow, it's been a long time since I've been back here, but I think you'll see that I did have a big task ahead of me with this chapter. If I wasn't following the 'one episode = one chapter' format I would have broken this down into like three different chapters, and each one of them would have been a task to work out on their own. Having said that, I'm glad I made the effort to put a lot of original content in since there's a lot of throwbacks to previous content and setups for stuff that'll happen later, both canon and non-canon.

And, yeah, this chapter is ridiculously long, so if you're thinking of quickly reading this before going to sleep or something, don't expect to finish it in one sitting.

Good luck!

---

Chapter Fourteen – Payback

"What's this all about?" Riven asked, stretching his arms out until he heard his shoulders pop. It was a few minutes past midnight and he, Helia and Timmy were waiting for the Winx Club in the forest just outside of Red Fountain. The girls were apparently teleporting in to meet them, which caused complications since it was impossible to teleport onto Red Fountain's grounds without knowing the password to get though the magical encryption that blanketed the school. The witch Dominique had managed to hack her way passed the magical defences within a week of them being installed but Stella hadn't been able to crack it yet, which was why the three boys were waiting in the woods in the dead of night.

"They didn't specify," Helia answered, absentmindedly picking at the sleeve of his shirt. Given all the extra security measures that had been put into place after the arrival of Baltor in Magix, the three boys all found it highly suspicious that Headmaster Saladin had given them permission to leave the school at such a late hour. And, when asked, the Headmaster had been unable to say why the girls were coming straight from Tides but the grave expression the old man had been wearing suggested that he was concerned too. "They just said they were coming here and needed to see us."

"It's not like them to be so vague," Timmy commented, wrapping his arms around him. Even though it really wasn't particularly chilly tonight he still felt cold for some reason.

"Please," Riven scoffed sarcastically. "They're always vague. Seems like barely a week goes by without them signing us up for some mission where they don't fill us in on everything and results in us all busting into dangerous situations without a well thought out plan."

"Teenagers these days, eh?" Helia said dryly and Riven shot him a dark look but before he could throw back a snarky comment there was a flash of golden light and suddenly the Winx Club appeared in front of them with the help of Stella's sceptre.

The sudden light burned the boys retinas and they had to blink a few times before the spots cleared, but when they did, they were a little taken back by the sight in front of them. They had seen the girls in their Enchantix forms before but there was something about four of them exploding into the night that left the three boys in a state of awe. They could feel the raw magic radiating out of the four fairies and the fact that they looked so damn good caused dopey grins to start to spread across Riven and Helia's faces.

That was, until, they got a good look at the girls faces. Fresh tears were openly running down the girl's cheeks and they all looked as though they were barely holding it all together, which instantly caught the boys' concern.

And most concerning of all, despite all the other girls being present, Tecna was strangely absent.

"What happened? What's wrong?" Helia asked, alarmed by the scene before him. Instead of answering, Flora flew into his arms and started to cry hysterically. Her tears set of a chain reaction and suddenly the other four fairies lost their control. Bloom and Stella clung to each other while Musa and Layla were doing the same. Their sobs were loud and unrestrained, and none of the boys had any idea how to react. Even Helia, who was the best at handling emotional outburst, seemed at a loss to what to do. All he could do was hold Flora as she cried while he and Riven watched them all, completely overwhelmed at what was happening and too shocked to move. Timmy watched the girls as well and, like his squad mates, he had slipped into a strange, numb state and he couldn't seem to get his mind to work correctly for some reason. The girls were all crying and Tecna was absent, but he couldn't make a connection between the two.

Finally, when the girls tears started to slow – most likely out of exhaustion – Timmy asked them in a soft, confused voice, "Where's Tecna?"

His question caused Flora, Musa and Stella to start sobbing again but Bloom attempted to hold herself together in order to answer, though she still couldn't stop the tears from flowing for her eyes. "Oh Timmy. I'm so sorry. I . . . We . . ."

"We went to Tides," Layla cut in when Bloom's voice broke. "Baltor had . . . Tides wasn't of any use to him anymore. He was going to . . . destroy it. My Realm . . . My home . . . "

"The Omega Portal started to collapse in on itself," Bloom continued as Layla covered her face with her hands in what appeared to be an effort to block out the horror and grief that was overwhelming the usually strong Water Fairy. "We went there to try and stop it, but it was too late."

"Tides is gone?" Helia gasped, suddenly feeling lightheaded at the thought of an entire realm being obliterated.

"No," Flora told him, taking a step back and scrubbing the tears off her face. "Tides is safe but . . ."

"In order to save Tides, we needed to shut the Omega Portal," Musa explained, her entire body shaking in the effort to keep her emotions under control.

"Tecna . . ." Bloom trailed off. With a loud sniff, she wiped her eyes, suddenly determined to finish the story without breaking down. "Tecna went into the Portal and managed to close it before it ripped Tides apart but . . .but she was unable to get away before it closed. The force of it pulled her in. It . . . She . . . She's gone. Tecna's gone."

Words failed everyone at that moment. Even though their group of friends regularly put themselves in dangerous situations, none them had ever really prepared themselves for what would happen if things didn't end up going in their favour. They were teenagers so they essentially blinded by ignorance and the youthful belief that they were virtually invincible, but this new turn of events broke straight through all of that and hit their very core. So to say that it rattled them would be a gross understatement.

"Gods," Helia breathed, immediately looking over at Timmy to gage his reaction. Riven was also moved his gaze to the computer genius but Timmy didn't even notice their eyes on him. If fact, he didn't notice much of anything that was going on around him. Timmy's mind had shut down for a moment and was taking some time to boot itself up again.

More than anyone else on his squad, Timmy had a scientific mind. He dealt with facts and figures while his friends tended to rely more on instincts and emotions, so when faced with a problem he couldn't make sense of Timmy's first response was to break it down. First of all, Bloom had stated that Tecna was gone. One look at the girls present could confirm that, but one would also note that all five fairies were in an obviously emotional distraught state, therefore it was possible that they weren't processing the events as accurately as they would in a rational state of mind. Second, they had said that Tecna had been sucked into the Omega Portal and it had closed behind her, but they hadn't specified exactly what had happened to her. Tecna might be gone but that didn't necessarily mean that she was . . . Tecna was missing. Unless new information presented itself, there was no reason to believe that she hadn't survived. And third, while he might not have as keen instincts as say Sky or Riven, Timmy's gut and his heart was telling him that Tecna was still alive.

Conclusion: Tecna had gone through the Omega Portal, it had closed and now she was trapped on the other side of it. Solution; go and find her. It was that simple. Why couldn't anyone else see it? Why were they wasting time standing around crying when all they needed to do was to go get Tecna?

"Timmy?" Riven's voice broke Timmy out of his thoughts. "You still with us?"

"Huh? Yeah," Timmy nodded, letting out a shaky breath that he wasn't even aware he was holding. "Yeah, I'm fine."

A sad and concerned look passed over Helia's face. "Timmy."

"I'm fine," Timmy said again, looking around him. All the girls were watching him, their expressions a mixture of grief and sympathy. Timmy didn't understand why they were looking at him like that and why they hadn't suggested that they should start figuring out a way to rescue Tecna. "Well, we should probably get going if we're going to find Tecna. The sooner we get started the sooner we can get her back. Right?"

"Oh Timmy," Musa hiccupped, her eyes swelling with more tears.

"Okay, stop saying my name," Timmy ordered, suddenly irrationally irritated. "Look, you said Tecna disappeared through the Portal. I get it. What I don't get is why we haven't done anything yet. We gotta find her. We just can't leave her in the Omega Dimension like some kind of criminal. So let's go get her."

"Stop it," Stella begged, shaking her head back and forth as tears fell from her eyes. "Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it."

"Timmy . . . there's nothing we can do," Bloom tried but Timmy wouldn't listen.

"No, there is something we can do; we can go find her," Timmy repeated, a beat away from running back to Red Fountain, grabbing a ship and flying to the Omega Dimension himself to search that place inch-by-inch if need be, but Helia's firm grip on his arm held him back.

"We can't find her," Helia disagreed. "Omega is too dangerous. Even if she did somehow manage to survive getting ripped through the gate there's no way she'd survive the harsh, unforgiving environment that is the Omega Dimension. I'm sorry Timmy, but she's gone."

Timmy ripped his arm out of Helia's grip but he stayed where he was, staring angrily at the ground. What the hell was wrong with his friends? Why were they just rolling over like that? When Lord Darkar took Bloom last year, did they sit around and say there was nothing they could do? No, they got up off their asses, went down to Shadow Haunt and took on every nasty challenge that awaited them down there in order to save her. They should be doing the same thing for Tecna. She was a member of the Winx Club. Her friends loved her just as much as they loved Bloom, didn't they? So why the hell weren't they acting like it?

"Tecna was a great fairy," Flora sniffed, her cheeks still wet with tears.

"And she saved the entire Realm of Tides with her sacrifice," Layla added.

Timmy clenched his hands into fists. He couldn't believe them, talking like Tecna was already gone. Why didn't anyone else believe that she was still out there, waiting for them to come find her? "Tecna's not gone," he corrected them all. "She's just trapped."

The girls all seemed a bit taken back by Timmy's steadfast denial that Tecna wasn't gone and their conflicting emotions were causing them agony as the grief and guilt bubbled up inside each of them. Riven noticed their painful expression and put a firm hand on Timmy's shoulder. Timmy's anger needed to be reined in so that the girls could be free to grieve and remember their friend. "It's okay girls, just go ahead," Riven told them. "Let it out."

"Tecna always had hope in her eyes," Bloom continued.

"Yeah, particularly when she was about to try to make a joke," Musa smiled, trying to remember the good times instead of dwelling in her misery but her words seemed to spark a fresh round of tears.

"I wish I had laughed more," Stella wailed.

"Me too," Bloom smiled sadly and that's when Timmy's defenses started to crumble. Squeezing his eyes shut tightly, he tried to get control of himself again, but despite his best effort he could feel a few tears still manage to slip out.

"Stop it!" Timmy ordered fiercely. Why wasn't anyone else trying? Why had they all just given up? "We can save her!"

Riven rounded on him and grabbed Tmmy's shoulders in order to shake him into seeing reason. A part of Riven hated himself for being so callous but Timmy just didn't seem to be getting it. There would be no rescue mission, only a retrieval that would most likely end up getting somebody else killed. They had already lost one person important to them so they sure as hell weren't going to risk anyone else. Timmy just needed to see that. "Tecna disappeared inside the Omega Portal."

"And the gate closed forever, Timmy," Musa added, walked closer to the grieving hero. They had hoped a clear stating of facts would make the normally logical teen understand, but all it did was fuel his anger.

"You're wrong! All of you!" Timmy snapped before turning to bolt away from their tears and their negative thinking. Acting fast, Riven grabbed hold of Timmy's wrist, preventing him from running off but Timmy wasn't going to let Riven rein him in this time and roughly pulled himself out of Riven's grasp. "Let go!"

And then Timmy was gone, bolting back to Red Fountain as fast as his skinny legs would carry him.

Riven looked back at the group of crying fairies for a moment and then made his decision. The Winx Club might be grieving but his squad mate needed him more. "I'll go talk to him," Riven said, running off before anyone had a chance to comment but he had seen Musa's shock expression. Yes, Riven knew he wasn't the best at dealing with all this emotional crap but he felt he'd do better trying to comfort Timmy than he would trying to deal with five emotionally distraught young women. He'd leave them in Helia's capable hands.

"We're gonna to miss you, Tecna," Bloom sobbed openly.

"Gonna miss you like crazy," Stella echoed.

As the five girls all dissolved into hysterical tears, Helia continued to stare in the direction that Timmy and Riven had run off to. He had wanted to follow them, to be there for his friend, but right now Helia had the Winx Club to deal with. Pushing his desire to help Timmy for the moment, the dark-haired specialist turned back to his girlfriend and her friends and started to arrange getting them back to Alfea.

---

Under normal circumstances, Riven was the fastest in his squad when it came to sprints, especially over uneven and dark terrain, but grief and anger had given Timmy speed that surpassed his natural ability and he managed to evade the former thief all the way back to the school grounds. The first place Riven looked was the school hanger, thinking along the lines that if something had happened to Musa and he thought she needed rescuing, he would grab the first ship he came across and hightail it out of there. However, all the ships, jets and levi bikes were all in their usual places so Riven was pretty sure that Timmy was still on campus.

People might think the next obvious place to look for Timmy would be his room or in a computer lab but Riven knew his friend better than that. Timmy may be a self-confessed geek, but he was also a whole lot more than that. He was a simple boy with a simple, country background. He came from a family that – although incredibly smart and surrounded by advanced technology – enjoyed the simple things in life. He had a mother who loved rolling around on the ground with dogs and walked around with rats crawling over her shoulders, a father who loved taking engines apart and putting them back together again just because he could and two older sisters who loved digging through soil or watching a person to try to understand why they thought the way they did. Timmy was a boy who would get transformed into a horse whenever his mother grounded him, so Riven was not surprised when he found his squad mate sitting on a bench outside in a secluded part of the school. The night sky was overhead, wind was gently rustling through the branches of the trees that surrounded them and in the distance, you could faintly hear the sound of running water as it slipped over the side of the school, giving it that fountain-inspired look.

Yeah, this was a place Timmy would go if he wanted to work through his thoughts and emotions, not a computer screen.

Riven watched Timmy for a second before sighing heavily and walked up to the bench where his friend was sitting from behind. The troublesome teen had had plenty of experience with loss in the past and he believe that the longer you deluded yourself into thinking that that person would come back, the more damaging it was when reality finally set in. He didn't want to appear heartless, but he also didn't want his friend to go through that same kind of suffering. The Timmy he knew wouldn't be able to survive it.

"I know it's really hard, dude, but you have to face up to reality," Riven said bluntly. The only approach was to cut straight to the truth. Yes, the truth hurt but in the long run it was better than allowing the comforting lie that was denial to fester. A wound would only start to heal once the mechanism of injury was stopped. Riven just hoped he could get Timmy to see that.

Looking up, Timmy stared at his squad mate with eyes that were surprisingly dry. "Riven, you know how sometimes you can feel someone's magic vibe?"

"Um, yeah, I think," Riven stammered, sitting down beside his grieving friend. He was a little thrown by Timmy's somewhat random question, but Riven was determined to give Timmy the attention he deserved. And although he had answered quickly, Riven felt he knew what Timmy was talking about. After all, he could always seem to tell whenever Musa or Darcy was approaching him, but Riven didn't know if that was because of his training as a thief and the fact that he was just hyperaware of them both.

"Well, I could always feel Tecna's really strongly," Timmy admitted. If this had been under any other situation, Timmy probably would have been a bit embarrassed to be admitting his feelings like that – specially to Riven of all people – but given the circumstances, he really didn't care. "And I can still feel it."

"Timmy," Riven sighed, his voice heavy with sympathy.

"Riven, if she was gone forever there'd be a void; an emptiness all around me but there isn't. I feel her," Timmy tried to explain, looking up at the nights sky and seeing a shooting star streak across it. Timmy knew he was being irrational, but he also knew in his heart that he was right. All he had to do was get his friends to see it to. Frustration and the rest of the day's emotions may have started to catch up with him because his eyes started to fill with tears, but his determination remained steadfast. "I know she's out there and I'm gonna find her no matter what."

Bowing his head, Timmy tried to hold back the flow of tears he knew were building but when he felt Riven put a comforting arm across his shoulders his defenses broke. Tears started to fall freely and, without any hesitation, Riven pulled Timmy into his arms and held tightly him as he cried.

"Shh," Riven whispered, tucking Timmy's head under his chin and rubbing slow circles on his back. While it was true that Riven usually tried to avoid the touchy, feely crap, he did understand how reassuring physical comfort could be to a person, mainly because he himself had craved for it as a child. And of all the people in his squad, Timmy was probably the one person that Riven wouldn't hesitate to hug if needed. After whole Darcy and Army of Decay mess that had happened in sophomore year, Brandon had started a campaign to get a hug out of Riven without any luck, but Timmy was Riven's exception and right now he needed him. "It's all right. Let it out, kiddo. That's it."

Riven had no idea how long they sat like that. At some point, he made the decision to remove Timmy's glasses so that the slighter teen could bury his face more comfortably into his chest, but other than that they remained unmoving. Given the late hour, no other students were out in this area of the school, so they were undisturbed until Helia found them. The long-haired hero looked tired and drained as he approached them and without a word he sat down on the opposite side of Timmy and wrapped his arms around him, resting his cheek on Timmy's shoulder. It was an awkward three-way hug but at the moment none of the boys cared. All they did was sit silently and let their grief wash over them. Tecna had been Riven and Helia's friend to so they felt her loss just as keenly as the rest of the Winx Club did, but on top of that they had to deal with the pain of watching Timmy suffer and know that there was nothing they could do to change that.

"Come on," Helia said finally, his tired voice sounding startling loud in the still night air. Before he had found his two squad mates, Helia had informed Headmaster Saladin of what had happened on Tides and the three students had been granted an indefinite leave from class but that didn't mean that they shouldn't at least try to get some sleep. "It's getting late."

Without any further discuss, the three young heroes-in-training got up and headed towards their dorms. Helia loosened his hold on Timmy to make it easier for him to walk but Riven kept his arms tightly wrapped around his emotionally drained friend's waist, practically supporting Timmy the entire way back to the room he shared with Sky and Brandon. The room had been set up to accommodate the three beds in the best way possible. The two beds that belonged to Sky and Brandon were parallel to one other, the headboards pushed up against the same wall. However, Timmy's bed was against the opposite wall at a different angle so that, instead of the headboard, the wall flanked one length of the bed. Wordlessly, Helia and Riven helped Timmy change out of his uniform and into something more comfortable to sleep in.

To an outsider, Timmy may look like the odd man out in their squad. Riven and Helia had bonded closely over the last year and there was no denying the almost twin-like connection that existed between Sky and Brandon, so people tended to think of Timmy as some kind of fifth wheel; a geek that they all swindled into giving them answers on their homework and driving them around. However, this assumption couldn't have been more wrong. Timmy himself probably wasn't even aware of it, but he centered the squad in a way none of the others could. If a disagreement arose within the squad, it was almost guaranteed that Brandon and Sky would side together while Riven and Helia would back each other up so it came down to Timmy as the swing vote, and every time they'd all listen and respect what Timmy had to say. All the boys were aware that one of the reasons their missions were as successful as they were was based on the fact that they had the finest working squad ship in the school and they also knew who to thank for that. Over the last few years, their squad ship had been to Sparx, Shadow Haunt and passed the Barrier Mountains and the only reason it had managed to function so well in those extreme environments was because Timmy had put hours into that ship, updating the programs and realigning the many parts. Timmy was the guy Sky turned to when he wanted advise, that Brandon kidnapped when he needed a straight man, who Helia sought refuge with when he wanted intelligent conversation and who Riven couldn't say no to, even when he was in his most feral of moods. Timmy was the youngest of the group by a couple of months so he had become the kid brother to a family of very protective older bothers. If anyone messed with Timmy they'd have to answer to four unforgiving specialists who'd each have their own unique way of inflicting retribution.

Timmy was their kid brother, and right now he was hurting so unbelievably badly.

Because his affection for the scrawny specialist, Riven wasn't at all self-conscious when, after he changed into some sleepwear that he stole out of Brandon's dresser, he slipped into bed next to Timmy, putting himself in between the wall and the other teen. Timmy was going to have a hard night in front of him and Riven knew he was going to need him. Pulling Timmy in close, Riven started rubbing slow circles on his friends back and he muttered soft words of comfort. Riven wasn't really paying much attention to what he was saying and was probably saying all the wrong things, but Timmy was passed the point of caring about words. All he clung to was the reassuring rumble of Riven's voice and the solid comfort of having his friend lying next to him. And even when he started to dose off, Riven was keenly aware of every move Timmy made. If the younger teen shifted even just a little bit, Riven would start rubbing his hand in slow, comforting circles and mutter soft, reassuring words into Timmy's ear. And every time that happened, Helia would watch them through the dark from where he had ended up crashing on Sky's bed, listening to the sound of Riven's voice as it slowly got hoarser and wishing there was something more he could do.

By the time morning rolled around, no one ended up getting much sleep that night.

---

"So now what do we do?" Riven asked Helia the following afternoon, his voice rough after a night's worth of talking. The pair was in the seniors' common room since Helia had wanted to make himself a cup of tea and even though it hadn't even been twenty-four hours since the Winx Club had informed them of Tecna's sacrifice in Tides, the two of them looked like hell. Shadows had formed under their eyes, their skin looked pale, their eyes were dull and Helia's long hair looked greasy and uncombed while Riven's was sticking out in different directions instead of being styled into one, neat spike. The pair looked frigging exhausted, and they had only just gotten started.

"There's nothing we really can do," Helia sighed after taking a desperately needed slip of his tea. "We've just got to let Timmy's grief run its course and be there for him as best as we can. It'll be easier now that we've got others wanting to help us out."

Even though the three teens had spent most of the day confined to Timmy's dorm, somehow the entire school had still heard about what happened on Tides and the students of Red Fountain had responded with a strange combination of shock and support. Most of the lowerclassmen were understandably rattled by the news and kept a wide distance on the rare occurrence when the three teens left the dorms to access the lavatory or food and water. However, the squad also received support and compassion from people who were closer to them, such as their freshlings and the other seniors. Even Marcus, who shared a heated rivalry with Timmy over who would perform better in the theory side of their schooling, had the good graces to offer his condolences and support to Riven and Helia if they wanted it. And most importantly, regardless of how people responded to the news of Tecna's sacrifice on Tides, Timmy and the rest of his squad received a display of respect and privacy from the rest of the student body. Given their close connection with the Winx Club, their squad had become some kind of living legend in the halls of Red Fountain after all the incredible missions they had completed. And while people sometimes had issues with other members of the squad – Sky for being so frigging perfect all the time, Brandon because he could sometimes be extremely juvenile, Helia because some people saw him as in intellectual snob and Riven for being, well, Riven – Timmy was the type of guy that didn't ruffle to many feathers and people liked him because of that. Therefore no one attempted to bother the intelligent teen with insincere offers of support or inappropriate questions about what happened on Tides.

Riven and Helia appreciated the support from their peers but were still reluctant to actually accept any help from anyone. Their grief was still so raw, and they wanted preserve Timmy's privacy as much as possible. It was only after Headmaster Saladin requested a moment alone with Timmy that the two other specialists felt it appropriate to leave their friend's side. Javalin had a quick exchange with Helia and Riven to see how they were coping but fortunately noted that the two teens simply wanted some privacy to discuss how they were going to help Timmy through this difficult time. Poor Timmy had cried himself out last night and had spent most of today staring aimlessly at the walls and dropping in and out of sleep without finding any rest. He hadn't eaten anything either, which had Riven concerned but Helia figured they'd wait until tomorrow before they got really worried. At least Timmy hadn't refused the water Helia had been offering him.

Riven leaned up against the common room table and ran his hand though his hair. This recent turn of events was challenging the emotionally handicapped teen in ways in ways that he just couldn't process, so Riven was relying heavily on Helia to govern their actions. "Do we call Sky and Brandon back?"

Cupping his mug in both hands, Helia stared down into his tea for a long moment as he weighed up the options. He knew that Sky and Brandon would be here in a heartbeat when they found out what had happened, but the question was whether or not they should be told in the first place. "No," Helia said finally. "Sky needs to work through what happened on Eraklyon and if he knows about Tecna he's gonna come back here whether he's ready or not. Timmy may benefit from having all his friends here, but we can't put that in front of Sky's own emotional wellbeing. If he doesn't come to terms with everything that happened to him, it could end up affecting him for the rest of his life and he's going to need Brandon to help him do that so no, we don't tell them."

"They're going to pissed about being left in the dark."

"I don't care. We need to focus on managing Timmy at the moment and we can't deal with this and Sky's mess at the same time. I just don't have the energy for that right now."

"I hear ya," Riven yawned before rubbing his face and feeling the stubble on his chin. He needed a shave but right now he had more pressing matters. "Do you have any idea of how the girls are holding up?"

"Yeah. I've got Mirta's number, and she's been keeping me updated. They've been much like Timmy; inconsolable. Who knows how many days they're gonna spend crying so unfortunately we're just going to have to wait and see what their next move is going to be."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, it's generally accepted that there are five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Last night the girls seemed to have passed the denial stage but now I'm worried about the next stage. I mean, if you were angry about losing your friend, who would you lash out at?"

"The guy who caused it who just happens to be hiding out in Cloud Tower," Riven replied without hesitation in a monotone voice and an expressionless face.

"Exactly. Ms. Faragonda is no doubt going to do her best to stop them from doing something stupid but I don't think she's going to be able to hold them off forever."

Riven folding his arms across his chest and sighed heavily. "Did you ever think this would really happen?"

"That we'd ever lose someone? No, not really," Helia admitted. "I know that seems pretty stupid considering all the dangerous situations we land ourselves in. You?"

Riven gave a one shoulder shrug. "I dunno. It crossed my mind a few times, but I always figured it'd years from now and be one of us. Or if it were one of the girls, I'd have my money on Bloom because she's a magnet for trouble or Stella because she's an idiot, but not Tecna. I guess I always figured she'd be too smart to land herself in such a dangerous situation."

"You never can pick it, can you?" Helia said, his voice heavy with bleak honesty. Riven shot him a sad smile but otherwise didn't answer and the pair remained silent as Helia finished his tea. Then they went back to the dorm to resume their watch over their friend.

---

The trauma of grief had a habit of disrupting routine so even though it was two in the morning Timmy, Helia and Riven were all still awake. Helia had once again claimed Sky's bed for the night and was absent-mindedly sketching away in one of his art books. Timmy was sitting cross-legged on his bed with his laptop in front of him and a more focused expression on his face than he had worn since the Winx Club had returned from Tides. And finally, in an effort to give Timmy some space while still remaining close enough to comfort him if need be, Riven was laying on the floor by Timmy's bed. He had been reading but for the last hour or so Riven had let his emotionally hazy mind drift as he listen to the sounds of Helia's pencil scratching on paper and the occasional click of the keys as Timmy typed.

As a sudden bout of alertness hit him, Riven pushed himself upright, shook himself like a dog before snagging his drink bottle and taking a swig of water. The cold fluid roused him further and when Riven glanced around the dorm he finally noticed the way Timmy was concentrating on his laptop, which was vastly different from the listless way the younger teen had been laying around yesterday. Pausing to let loose a yawn and shake his head in an effort to disburse the lingering sensation of slumber, Riven asked, "Whatcha readin'?"

"Huh?" Timmy replied, his attention still focused on the screen before him. From the other side of the room, there was an unnoticed pause in the sound of pencil scraping across paper.

While rubbing at his eyes with one hand, Riven used the other to reach back and flap against the bed in a vague gesture that was meant to indicate the laptop in front of Timmy. "What are you lookin' at?"

"Oh, um . . . I'm . . . I'm reading about Omega," Timmy answered with an obvious level of hesitation. As he expected, Timmy suddenly found himself the subject of his two friends' scrutiny but while Riven wore an expression of shock mixed with a trace of repulsion, Helia's look was neutral and guarded. Timmy wasn't sure which one was worse.

"Why?" Riven exclaimed, aghast.

"I dunno," Timmy shrugged, feeling uncomfortable at his friend's reaction. Timmy knew that some people might find it morbid to research the Realm that had ultimately claimed a beloved but that was just how the young hero functioned. Timmy needed to know. With research comes understanding. How could he truly process what had happened if he didn't have all the information? So Timmy needed to know. "I just . . . I just needed to."

Riven shifted in his seat and looked as though he was say something along the lines of how looking up stuff about Omega wouldn't change what happened on Tides but a voice from the other side of the room spoke up first.

"Tell us about it," Helia told Timmy, his voice a steady combination of authoritative and reassuring.

"Really?" Timmy replied, honestly not expecting the support.

"Are you kidding me?" Riven said at the same time. "You really think that's helping?"

"Talking always helps," Helia responded philosophically.

"I'll remind you of that the next time Brandon tries to share details about his and Stella's sex life," Riven shot back sarcastically and he was rewarded with Helia levelling him with a look that suggested the former art student would hit him is it didn't go against his ideology. And if he was close enough.

"Go ahead, Timmy," Helia prompted, turning his eyes back to his sketch but Timmy could tell that he was still listening.

"Um . . . Okay," Timmy nodded, pulling the word document that he was taking notes into up to the forefront of his screen. "Within the Magical Dimension, Omega is the smallest of the planet-sized structures and the furthest from Magix, which is of course the centre of the Magical Dimension. It's classified as a dimension and not a realm because of its technically not considered part of the Magical Dimension boundaries. The closest inhabited realm is Frost and, on the surface level, the two realms share a lot of similarities. There's obviously a lot of snow and ice, and although Omega can't support life the way Frost can, one of Omega's few natural inhabitants resemble a Frostish snow serpent. Only smaller."

"Bet that doesn't make them any more likeable," Riven grumbled, recalling this grade's trip to Frost during freshmen year. Frostish snow serpents might not be the most common threat in Frost but they were dangerous enough that even the frost giants avoided them.

"Actually, even though they're smaller, the Omega snow serpent is considered the more aggressive of the two species. And they have evolved so that they're able to shoot their venom and it acts pretty much like a freeze beam."

"Oh joy."

"Wait, do they use those snakes to control the convicts instead of guards?" Helia asked. Like most people, he only had a very basic understanding of the Omega Dimension – namely that it was a place where the worst of the worst were sent – but one thing Helia had heard was that it was a guard-free prison.

"Seems that way," Timmy confirmed, somehow managing to look and sound unaffected by the information he had uncovered. "There are prison satellites and ships in the area, and they obviously have guards but down on the actual surface of Omega, it's just the serpents. When prisoners are sent down to the surface, they're in a frozen state and if they break out, the serpents put them back in it."

"Gods," Riven shivered despite himself. Riven was well aware of the fact that he walked the line between law biding citizen and criminal more than anyone else in their squad – hell, all of Red Fountain – so the threat of incarceration affected him more than others.

"What else?" Helia encouraged Timmy, sensing Riven's discomfort and hoping to move the conversation along.

"Um . . . well, this is interesting," Timmy said, skimming through his notes. "Like I said before, Omega and Frost are similar on a surface level but at their core the two planets are very different. Frost is like most planets in that it has a molten rock core that gives off a considerable amount of heat. Omega's core, however, isn't rock. It's actually water."

"What? Really?" Helia exclaimed. There were a number of strange and unbelievable things in the Magical Dimension but Helia was still shocked by what Timmy had just said. It seemed to defy nature.

"Yeah. Like, it's still warmer at its core than it is on the surface, which basically means it's not a block of ice. There are components of mineral material mixed in with the ice sheets that make up Omega's outer surface but it's mostly just densely frozen water," Timmy explained. "In fact, there's only one other planet in the Magical Dimension that has a similar composition."

"Tides," Helia said so that Timmy wouldn't have to. Tides was known as the Heart of All Oceans so it was almost poetic that the heart of Tides was a subterranean ocean. It also explained why the Omega Portal was built into Tides instead of any other Realm. It wasn't that long ago that Helia and the others had witness Layla swim from Magix to Tides using the connection that the two oceans had. That same connection would allow access to Omega via its liquid core.

"Wait, doesn't Tides have volcanoes?" Riven frowned like he was working out a particularly difficult math equation.

"It does. Tides has a much greater occurrence of mineral materials than Omega and so has, y'know, land but when you compare Tidenese magma to magma from any other realm you'll find it has a fairly high percentage of water in it," Timmy told them.

"So, it's watered down magma?"

Timmy shrugged. "Something like that."

Riven still looked confused. "Wouldn't that just cool it down?"

"It's very hot water."

"So why doesn't it evaporate? Become water vapour?"

"Riven, you are aware this is the Magical Dimension?" Helia reminded his friend.

"You can't just say 'it's magic' to answer everything you can't explain," Riven shot back stubbornly.

"You've fought an Army of Decay and monsters made out of shadows. Do you care to explain that without the 'it's magic' excuse?" (1)

"Oh shut up," Riven grumbled. It was too early in the morning to deal with that kind of debate. Turning his gaze away from Helia, Riven looked back at Timmy and saw that the younger teen was worrying his lower lip between his teeth and he eyes had developed a glassy sheen that had not been there a minute ago. "Timmy?"

"Hmm?" Timmy absent-mindedly responded, his eyes looking unfocused as he stared at the screen before him. Concerned, Riven reached back and stretched over so that his fingers were able to reach Timmy's knee. The touch seemed to startle Timmy out of wherever his thoughts had taken him, and the young hero sniffed as he rubbed his damp eyes. "Sorry. I just . . . Do you know the Omega Portal was only a couple of decades old? They've been using Omega as a prison for over a century but . . . The Magical Council commissioned the Portal back when the Ancient Coven was growing in power. Back when the Coven found Baltor . . . It all comes back to him . . . It's all Baltor . . . He . . . T-Tecna . . ."

Ducking his head as his eyes started to spill over, Timmy tried to hold in the sobs that were aching in his chest to be released. And then suddenly, Riven was there on the bed, pulling his friend into an all-encompassing hug with arms that possessed the type of strength Timmy so desperately needed in that moment. The type of strength that meant that it was okay to break down and be vulnerable.

"Let it out. I gotcha," Riven told Timmy, pressing his forehead against his friends sandy coloured hair. "I gotcha."

As Timmy broke down into another bout of tears, Riven continued to hold him and mutter useless words of comfort while Helia watched the pair with a pained expression from across the room so as not to crowd them.

It was going to be another long night.

---

Fifty-nine hours after the specialist learnt the devastating news about Tecna and Timmy's life shattered forever, reinforcement arrived in Magix to help try to pick up the pieces. Since Riven and Helia were still reluctant to leave Timmy's side the heroes had considered asking one of their senior classmates to go pick their guest up from Magix's Spaceport but then their freshlings had begged for the chance to fly the squad ship into the City. The freshmen had just completed their intro to flying module and were now allowed to take a squad ship out with the supervision of a senior. Helia had hesitated but after Riven talked him around, the long-haired specialist had relented on the provision that the freshlings found a responsible senior who was willing to let them use his ship (Timmy had enough to deal with so Helia wasn't about to add the extra stressor of handing over their squad ship to the freshlings just yet). Unfortunately, when the freshlings returned and Helia and Riven met them in the corridor a short way from Timmy's dorm so they could have a quick word with their guest, not only was the senior the freshlings had found someone they would not have approved of but the person they had brought back with then was not the person they had been expecting.

"Dammit Lex, you got the wrong sister!" Riven snapped, his eyes bruised and his temper short after another sleepless night.

"That was the only sister there," Lex defended lamely, looking at the young woman standing alongside him and the five freshmen. After calling Timmy's family to tell them the news of what happened to Tecna, Riven and Helia had asked Timmy's eldest sister, Elizabeth, to come to Magix to speak with her brother since she was the one with the psychology training, but it was Katarina standing before them with a duffle bag hanging over one shoulder.

Helia, however, felt there was a bigger issue that needed to be addressed. "You chose Lex to supervise you on you first flight outside of class?" he questioned Benedict and Will since they were standing at the front of the group. The twins and Adris had wisely chosen to stand a little further back and let their squad mates speak on their behalf.

Will looked at Benedict and while no words were spoken, Helia could clearly translate the glare Will shot his friends way. It was undoubtedly a 'you-got-us-into-this-so-you-get-us-out-of-it' look. Regardless, Benedict ignored his squad mate and met Helia's gaze with unflinching confidence. "You just told us to find a senior who was willing to supervise us."

"I said a responsible senior," Helia corrected.

"Exactly," Benedict nodded and then a beat later he inhaled sharply, as if a thought had just struck him. Helia didn't believe it for a second. "Oh wait, I see where we may have gotten confused," the freshman said with feigned sincerity. "When you said, 'a responsible senior' you meant 'a senior who is renowned for acting responsibly' but we interpreted it as 'a senior is was willing to take responsibility of us as freshmen'. Wow, words can be really tricky like that, huh?"

"Indeed," Helia replied with a flat tone but Benedict continued to meet his mentors gaze without any hesitation. Deciding he wasn't going to get anywhere with Benedict, Helia moved his gaze to Lex, who looked as though he didn't have a clue what was going on. "You didn't think to check in with us before taking these guys out?"

"Well, they said it was urgent," Lex tried to explain. However, his excuse was somewhat tarnished when he added, "And they said they'd shout me a slushie."

Right on cue, there was a loud slurp from one of the twins as they both sucked on the straws to their own slushies.

"You guys are funny," Katarina commented to no one in particular, watching the whole exchange with undisguised amusement.

Riven let loose a heavy sigh. "Helia, I'm tired. Are we mad at them or not?"

Helia considered the question for a moment before answering. "We're irritated by their obvious deception, but we are impressed by their shrewdness. It shows potential for their future here at Red Fountain."

"Legacy?" Riven asked, referring to the conversation the pair had had the night the zombie witches had attacked Alfea.

"Legacy." Helia confirmed.

"Right. Now, what are you doing here?" Riven said to Katarina in a way that most would interpret as rude. Helia sharply elbowed his roommate in his side for his brutish manner.

Katarina, however, was not taken back. She had thicker skin than that. "Nice to see you again to."

"Kat, where's Elizabeth?" Helia asked politely.

"She's not coming," Katarina informed them bluntly. "I know you asked her to come and assess Timmy's mental state and all that jazz, but we talked about it and decided that it would probably be better if I came instead."

"But Liz is the psychologist," Helia pointed out.

"So?"

"So wouldn't she be better suited for this?"

"No."

"What? That doesn't make any sense," Riven snapped, once again earning himself disapproving glares from Helia and Benedict for his boorish behaviour. "Wouldn't someone with the correct training and experience be better suited for this?"

However, instead of being offended by Riven's rudeness, Katarina seemed amused. Laughing softly, the young woman pointed to both Helia and Riven while stating, "I'm guessing you two don't have any siblings. Right?"

"Um, yes?" Helia replied clumsily, slightly thrown by Katarina's presence and line of questioning. Next to him, Riven shrugged with the same air of awkwardness he adapted whenever his family was brought up.

"Well, let me educate you boys on what it's like," Katarina graciously offered. And then, quick as a snake, she reached out and flicked the two heroes simultaneously in the ear with the unnerving strength and accuracy that only came from years of experience.

"Ow! What the hell was that for?" Helia asked, rubbing his ear as Riven let loose a few of his favourite obscenities.

"That's what you get for being idiots," Katarina shot back. "Send Liz here to talk to Timmy? Are you kidding me? You've been to our house. You've seen the way the three of us interact. What make you think Liz is the appropriate person to help Timmy right now?"

"Well in our defence, of the two of you, you're the only one we saw bury him alive," Riven pointed out, still rubbing at his ear.

"I bury him because I care," Katarina said in a way that made it sound that it should be obvious and not at all crazy. "Timmy enjoys a physical challenge, not just a mental one. That's why he wanted to go to school here. And while Liz might be psychologist, Timmy doesn't need a doctor right now. He needs family."

"But if Liz was here, she could start off supporting him as a family member and utilise her training if she felt it necessary," Helia tried to explain, and Katarina response was to flick him in the ear again. The hero-in-training tried to dodge it, but the older fairy was still too fast for him. "Ow! Oh c'mon!"

"You're cute and I can tell you mean well but by gods, you're incredibly thick," Katarina started calmly, completely unaware that she was insulting possibly the most emotionally intelligent student at Red Fountain. "Look, I know my brother. And, more importantly, I know that he knows us. If we send Liz in, he'll know we're only doing it so she can do a psyche evaluation and, no matter how we might try to justify it, that's gonna be exactly what we're doing. And if that's the case then Timmy's just going to shut down or get hostile. I know that because that's how it's played out every other time Liz has tried to get in his head. But if you send me in, I might be able to get him to talk. And of course, I'm gonna debrief with Liz and if she thinks there's reason for her to step in, she will."

Helia and Riven exchanged a long, serious look as they considered what Katarina was telling them. Her reasoning did seem sound and she was Timmy's sister so Katarina should know what she was talking about but the bonds that held a squad together were strong so Helia and Riven were reluctant to risk the possibility of anyone hurting Timmy further, even his own family.

"We just don't want Timmy to suffer any more than he already has," Helia finally admitted, his voice sounding small and weak to his ears.

"And I appreciate that, I do," Katarina said with actual sincerity. "I don't want him to suffer either. Not like this. This isn't funny. Hurling rocks at him? Hilarious."

"Gods," Benedict breathed, staring at Katarina like she was a mad woman but she continued on as if she hadn't heard him.

"But this? No. I'm here to help."

"And you're sure you know how to do that?" Riven asked, for once not meaning to be insulting. Timmy was one of his closest friends but Riven still had no idea how to really help him get over what had happened to Tecna. And after all, he had seen with his own eyes how dysfunctional Timmy's relationship with his sisters was.

"Oh for crying out loud," Katarina muttered, losing patience with the boys. After rolling her eyes, the young woman put on an exaggerated smile and said in a mockingly perky tone, "Okay, let's try something else. Hands up everyone who's known my brother for longer than say . . . Oh, I don't know, five years?"

Of course, Katarina was the only one who could truthfully raise their hand. For some unknown reason, Konrad and Zeus started to raise their hands and Lex – who was no doubt paying more attention to his slushie than what was going on around him – started to follow the twins lead. Fortunately, Will and Benedict were close enough to slap their hands out of the air. In the end, Katarina was the only one with her hand raised.

"Hmm, just me. Well, whataya know?" Katarina mocked. "I might just know what I'm talking about after all."

"All right, all right. You made your point," Riven conceded.

"So, you gonna let me do this?"

Riven and Helia exchanged another long look, and the heavy silence was broken only by the occasional slups from Lex and the twins' slushies. Even though Riven and Helia may love Timmy like a little brother, they still knew that they could never really compete with the love and understanding that Elizabeth and Katarina had for him. They may be a dysfunctional trio, but the three siblings had known each other long before the squad had ever been formed and if Elizabeth and Katarina thought this was the best game plan, then Riven and Helia had no choice but to follow.

Without a word, the two specialists looked back at Katharina and each gave a small nod of consent.

"Good," Katarina nodded, hitching her duffle bag higher on her shoulder. "Now, where's my baby brother?"

---

Timmy was lying on his bed with his hands cushioned behind head as he alternated between staring at the ceiling and lightly dozing. He wasn't particularly tired, but he wasn't motivated to do anything else and at least sleeping helped pass the time. Timmy had been vaguely aware that Helia had been texting people on his phone a lot this morning and a little while ago he had received a message that had prompted him and Riven to leave the room but Timmy had pretended to be asleep so they wouldn't bother him.

Frankly, he welcomed the moment of solitude.

His friends were worried about him, Timmy knew that. It was kind of hard to miss the concerned looks that flashed across their faces whenever they glanced his way. And while Timmy was grateful for Riven and Helia's support it was also starting to get annoying. Timmy couldn't even hit the head without someone trailing him so he was going to enjoy the solitude while he could.

Which was why he was completely unprepared when the door to his dorm flew open and Katarina came barging inside with all the subtlety of a landslide.

"Move your feet," she demanded in lieu of greeting and Timmy only just managed to pull his legs out of the way before his sister dumped what appeared to be a heavily loaded duffel bag on the end of his bed.

"Kat? What?" Timmy stammered, his emotionally fatigued mind unable to process his sister's sudden appearance. Katarina, meanwhile, appeared obvious to Timmy's reaction as she placed her hands on her hips and surveyed the room before scrunching her nose up in disgust.

"This room stinks like boy," Katarina commented, marching over so she could push the balcony door open as far as it would go. Timmy would admit that the room probably did smell a bit more ripe than usual given that he, Riven and Helia had been holed up in it for almost three days but he still thought Katarina's reaction was a little dramatic, especially when she snagged Sky's deodorant off his dresser and started spraying it around like it was air freshener.

"What the hell . . . ?" Timmy asked, simply because he still trying to wrap his head around that his sister was here. In his room. At Red Fountain. In Magix. It just didn't compute.

"It stinks," Katarina repeated, continuing her aerosol-based cleanse of the room. Sky's deodorant wasn't as pungent or overpowering as some of the brands on that market that was aimed at teenaged males' but it was still too much to be sprayed so freely around such a small space.

"Would you quit it?!" Timmy snarled, coughing slightly as the sudden anger and air-bound chemicals hit the back of his throat. Katarina gave him a long, stoic look and then replied by spraying the can directly at him. "Gah! Stop it!"

"Well then spray yourself. You're wrank," Katarina said, tossing the can at Timmy who only just managed to catch it before it hit him in the face. While he wanted to refuse her just to annoy her, a quick sniff under the collar of his shirt made Timmy consent to the request. He was probably in need of a shower, but a decent sprit of borrowed deodorant would do until then.

"Kat, what are you doing here?" Timmy asked, finally able to organise his thoughts to pose the question.

"Your friends called. Duh," Katarina answered offhandedly as she dragged Brandon desk chair over and situating it in front of Timmy's bed.

"Why?"

"They're worried about you."

"Really? I hadn't noticed," Timmy shot back sarcastically since snarky tended to be his default setting whenever his sisters were around. "And they thought you'd be able to help?"

"No, those dumbasses sent for Liz," Katarina smirked, pulling a device out of her duffel bag and placing it on the chair.

"What? Seriously? They've seen us all together. Why the hell did they think Liz would make things better?"

"That's what I said," Katarina commented, setting up the device that ended up being her collapsable twenty-four-inch movie screen. After powering it up, Katarina hit a few buttons and a few seconds later, the logo of a film production company appeared on the screen. Despite his muddled mind, Timmy still picked up that the logo was at least fifteen years old. However, Timmy's attention was quickly taken when Katarina reached back into her duffle bag and pulled out a plastic carry cage and plunked it in his lap. "Here, Mum sends these."

"What?" Timmy said again, bringing the cage up to eye level. Amongst the shredded paper and transportable food and water capsules, were two of his mother's rats. One was a pale blonde and the other was more a cinnamon colour and Timmy recognised both on sight. "Champagne? Whiskey? She sent me rats?"

"Yeah, but only because I refused to travel with a cat," Katarina replied, sitting down on the bed beside her brother. "Like I get that Pixie's your special-favourite but there's just something sad about a woman traveling on an inter-realm flight with a cat as her sole companion."

Blinking stupidly, Timmy lowered the cage holding the rats and finally noticed what was being played on the portable movie screen. "Ever Quest? Oh my gods, I haven't seen this in years."

"You used to make us watch it every chance you got when we were kids," Katarina recalled, digging around her duffle bag. The next thing she pulled out was a litre tub of ice cream that Timmy eagerly seized when he saw the familiar logo on the lid.

"Dairyvale's Green Apple ice cream," Timmy exclaimed, genuinely delighted by the presence of the brand and flavour of ice cream that wasn't overly common outside of Windox. "Did you bring any – "

"Toffy sauce?" Katarina finished, holding up the condiment bottle she had just pulled from the bag. "Of course. I'm not an idiot."

"Wait, you brought you own bowls? And spoons?"

"Like I said, not an idiot. I've stayed in communal living spaces. I know how disgusting people are."

"Yet you're the one that brought rats into my room," Timmy pointed out.

"Hey, you of all people know that, despite their reputation, rats are naturally very clean creatures."

"Yeah, but they're still linked as carriers for some of history's most infamous epidemics."

"So are children and people take those little snot bags everywhere," Katarina countered, pulling out two soda bottles and passing one to Timmy.

"Where did you find Sherburst?" Timmy asked, looking at the sherbet flavoured soda that years ago had been pulled from most supermarket shelves by parenting groups due to its high sugar content.

"There's this amazing lollie shop that Pete found down town – "

"Pete Taylor?"

"Shut up or I'll hit you," Katarina threatened. "Anyway, this shop has all these inter-realm and rare candy brands. Also, here's some of Aunt Carol's salted caramel cookies."

"Oh yes," Timmy said, accepting the zip locked plastic bag that his sister handed him.

"Mum also made a batch of her chocolate chip cookies but they got burnt in the oven while we were arguing about the therapeutic and travel aspects of cats verses rats, so I didn't bother packing them," Katarina explained as she started to scoop the Green Apple ice cream into the bowls she had brought with her.

It was in that moment that Timmy was finally able to process what he was feeling at that exact moment. The presence of his quarrelsome sister, an old favourite movie, the unhealthy treats from his childhood and even the unsolicited appearance of rodents in his personal space all combined to a kind of nostalgia that was unavoidably comforting. There was no way that Timmy would have ever thought to ask for these things but now that they had been presented to him, Timmy couldn't deny that they were exactly what he needed. Helia and Riven had done their best to comfort him, Timmy knew that, but there was no way they could have replicated the feelings that Katarina had been able to with just a few sharp words and a bag full of childhood memories. And for the first time in days, Timmy felt a genuine smile start to pull at the corners of his mouth.

"Thanks Kat," Timmy said, hoping that the tone of his voice would be enough to convey all the feelings and thoughts that he wasn't able to put into words right now.

"Watch the movie, nerd," Katarina replied, but her voice was gentle in a way that told Timmy that she understood perfectly what he was saying. Sometimes having siblings was good like that. And then, because it wasn't natural for them to leave such tender feelings lingering between them, Katarina told him, "I don't like your new campus. A school that floats? That's not normal."

"Of course, you'd say that," Timmy sniped back and then was able to settle back and watch the movie comfortably in every sense of the word.

For the next hour and a half, Timmy was able to lose himself in the out-dated costumes and special effects, the cringe-worthy dialogue and the sugar-filled snacks of his childhood. The rats, Champagne and Whiskey, had been let out of their cage to happily explore the dorm room. Champagne had eventually returned to the bed and was now curled up asleep in Timmy's palm but Whiskey was (hopefully) still sniffing around under Brandon's bed. Ever Quest was nearing its final scenes and Timmy was still trying to wrap his head around how many inappropriate moments and themes managed to slip by the censors into what was supposed to be a family friendly film.

"I still can't believe all the sexual references they had," Timmy said, a little traumatised after watching a childhood favourite with adult eyes. "I mean, this is meant to be a kids film."

"Mm-hmm," Katarina agreed, spooning out another teaspoon of peanut butter and eating it straight. Apparently, their Mum had packed an unopened jar and some crackers for the rats but after feeding them Katarina had started helping herself. "Censors weren't as strict back then."

"I know but there's gonna be a line. The actor playing the Woodland King looks about forty and he's aggressively hitting on Chastity who clearly states at the start of the movie that she just turned fifteen. I mean, that's paedophilic."

"Let's not even get started on the fact that they named the female lead Chastity of all things."

"And the scene with the mushrooms? It's like they're not even trying to disguise the drug use."

"You think that's bad; a few weeks ago, I was watching daytime TV while I was having a lunch break from my studies and I came across that Warrior Princess series I used to watch in primary school. Talk about inappropriate family viewing. The whole show's filled with the two leads queerbaiting the men who then froth at them in a way that's supposed to be 'comical'. It's ridiculous. How the hell did our parents think it was acceptable for us to be watching that?" (2)

"I dunno, but have you seen some of the kid shows that are coming out now?" Timmy asked.

"My gods, some of those are so weird," Katarina agreed around another spoonful of peanut butter. "I'm surprised they don't mess kids up in the head."

"Well, we apparently watched stuff with thinly veiled paedophiles, drug use and what I'm guessing is a male-scripted view on lesbians and we turned out all right."

Katarina took a moment to thoroughly swallow the last remnants of the peanut butter before asking, "Are you all right, Tim?"

Timmy was in the process of eating yet another of his Aunt Carol's cookie, but Katarina's question made him pause and turn to face her serious expression. Suddenly, all the comforting junk food Timmy had eaten throughout the day shifted to the point where it was starting the feel sickly. "Really? We're doing this now?"

"Well, it was gonna happen eventually," Katarina deadpanned. "Or what? Did you honestly think I was going to lug a bag full of candy and rats on an inter-realm flight because I had an itch to watch Ever Quest with someone? I might think you're an idiot, but I know you're smarter than that."

"There's nothing to talk about. I'm fine," Timmy lied, shifting so he could deposit the still sleeping Champagne on the bed beside him. Despite his best effort, the transfer still woke the rat that sat up and started cleaning its face.

"Yeah, I don't believe that," Katarina shot back casually.

"Well, it's true."

"No, it ain't."

"Is this want you flew all the way out here for? For some stupid back and forth banter? Cause if it is, I've got better things to do with my time," Timmy snapped, climbing off the bed and walking over to Brandon's desk to keep his back to Katrina, leaning hard against it with both hands as he let his head drop. He could keep the snarky back and forth conversations with his sisters up for hours – he had been on enough long-distance road trips with the family to be certain of that – but Timmy did not have the energy for it now.

Katarina was silent as she thought about the best way to tackle the conversation she knew she had to have with her little brother. In their family, Elizabeth played the mind games and Timmy was cryptic with his techno talk and sneaky wannabe-solider skills, but Katarina specialised in the ground. That meant that by nature she was unyielding and at times painfully blunt and the adult fairy was not about to start pulling her punches now. "So, your girlfriend died."

Timmy was lucky he was holding on to the desk because his knees buckled at his sister's words. He knew that his friends thought that Tecna was gone forever but none of them had ever come right out and put it so bluntly. Timmy's chest constricted painfully, and he suddenly couldn't breathe properly as a terrible ache hit him. Black spots appeared in his vision and Timmy had to squeeze his eyes shut to try to stop his mind from spinning. It wasn't true. Tecna wasn't dead. He knew it. He just knew it.

"She's not . . . dead," Timmy managed to choke out, his teeth clenched. "She's trapped. That's all."

"What makes you think that?" Katarina asked him, her voice as calm and casual as if she was discussing the weather. The fairy had gotten up from the bed and moved to lean up against the desk, her arms folded across her chest and her gaze fixed in the opposite direction that Timmy was facing. Timmy was oddly grateful for that since, even though he found Katarina's presence someone comforting, it was still easier to talk about this without the two of them looking at one another.

"I just know it, alright?"

"Could it just be your refusal to face facts?"

"No. I know she's out there," Timmy said, his voice strong and certain. "I know you might think I'm crazy, but I can feel that she's still out there. It's not denial. It's just . . . It's what my heart's telling me. And I know that sounds corny but there's no other way I can word it."

A heavy silence fell over the room, broken only by the faint sounds of Whiskey chasing Champagne across the floor. Timmy took some time to even out his breathing and shift the weight in his legs until they regathered some of the strength that Katarina's earlier comment had driven out of them. A slightly sick feeling still churned away in Timmy's guts, but it was no longer strong enough that he feared all the childhood treats that he had eaten within the last two hours would make a reappearance. As time continue to drag on, Timmy dared to sneak a glance at his sister and saw that behind her glasses her eyebrows were furrowed in the manner they tended to do whenever she was in deep thought. An unsolicited voice that sounded annoyingly like Elizabeth whispered in Timmy's mind that Katarina would end up getting wrinkles if she kept that habit up.

"Don't you have anything to say?" Timmy asked, suddenly desperate for anything to fill the silence. And of course, his sister was not at all accommodating.

"Shut up. I'm thinking," Katarina told him sharply and Timmy was forced to endure the silence that somehow managed to be awkward and comforting simultaneously. And when Katarina chose to break the silence, it was not with anything that Timmy was expecting. "Do you remember that time when Liz and I tried to convince you that you were adopted?"

"Wha . . ? That ti . . ? I . . ." Timmy stammered, his surprise from the sudden change in subject causing the link between his brain and his mouth to short circuit for a second. "You make it sound like a one-off. Kat, that went on for years. Like, from when I was five until I was nine."

"So, you do remember it," Katarina clarified blandly.

"Obviously."

"Well, I've been thinking about how all that ended, and I'm convinced that your actions on that day were a strategic and deliberate move to land Liz and myself in the greatest amount of trouble that you could possibly generate," Katarina stated in her most matter-of-fact tone of voice.

Meanwhile, Timmy was squinting at her like he was trying to see how her mind was working, if it was at all. "Okay, I assume you're talking about the day I finally decided to run away from home to find my 'real family' but beyond that I have no idea what you're getting at."

"Of course, I'm talking about the day you ran away. Now I've thought about it, and your actions that day seem very well thought out; you got on a bus that took you directly to the next district over where you knew that less people would know you or our folks and then you went straight to the police station to report yourself as a missing child. And you kept telling them your name was Angus McInnes."

"Because that's what you and Liz told me it really was."

"My point is, you managed to make a move that seems dramatic but, on reflection, is actually very low risk for a child. You got on a bus that stopped a hundred meters from our house and then took it directly to a cop shop. But because it was a different district, you knew that it would take longer to identify you and how that increase in time would have a direct correlation with our mother's fury at Liz and I."

"I think you're giving nine-year-old me a little too much credit."

"I don't think I am and pretty certain that you don't think I am either. We both know that behind your gangly, awkward, geeky exterior lies a scalpel-sharp mind, which is what's kept you ahead of the rest of the meat heads making up this sausage-fest of a school you got going on," Katarina said, waving her hand around in a way that was supposed to encompass the entire student body of Red Fountain. "But you've got more than just brains, Tim. You've got annoyingly good instincts and when it counts – like, really, really counts – you're so freakin' stubborn about it. Sure, most of the time you're rational enough to see alternative arguments about things, but sometimes I can tell that you get a gut feeling about something and you won't accept any other truth than that. I saw it when you were nine and refused to accept that we were anything less than family, so you plotted a revenge that I'm pretty sure Liz and I are still grounded from to this day. I saw it when Mum and Dad had their doubts about letting you apply to Red Fountain, but you were so sure that not only would you get in, but that you would be good at it. And as much as it pains me to admit it, you are good at all this . . . hero stuff or whatever you wanna call it."

"Thanks Kat," Timmy whispered, somewhat shyly. It wasn't common for him and his siblings to complement one another and although her words were sprinkled with sarcasm and insults, Timmy could tell that his sister was being as genuine as she could be to him.

"And if you're telling me that you know in your heart or your gut or even your disgusting, stinky feet that Tecna is alive . . . well, then I believe you."

"Really?" Timmy asked, unable to hide his surprise. He knew that Helia and Riven wanted to support him during this awful time, but Timmy suspected that neither of them believed him when he said that Tecna was still alive. So to hear that someone believed in his belief was more reassuring than the young specialist had been expecting.

"Well, I'm certainly not saying it just to be nice," Katarina assured him, cutting the tension and restoring the banter that they were both used to.

"No, you wouldn't," Timmy agreed, a fragile smile starting to creep across this face. Someone else believed that Tecna was alive. Or at least, they believed that Timmy's instincts were telling him the truth and not just trying to shelter him from his grief. It was enough to stir up a feeling that had been struggling to gain momentum: hope.

"So, I guess my question is, if you're so certain that Tecna's still alive and just trapped in one of the most inhospitable realms in the Magical Dimension, what the hell are you doing moping around here?" Katarina asked, twisting her body so that she could now face her brother.

Assuming that Katarina's change in posture signalled that they were past the awkward emotional conversations, Timmy turned to face her as he let out a heavy sigh. "It's not that easy, Kat."

"What do you mean? Just go get her."

"Don't you think that if I could have done that on my own, I'd still be here? I've done the research. I've considered every possible outcome. There is no way I can get into Omega, locate Tecna and get out on my own. If I want decent odds of being able to pull a mission like that off successfully – and believe me, I am not suicidal enough to attempt anything without those odds – I'm gonna need a team to help me."

"Don't you have a team? Those attractive but kinda dim-witted clowns you got out there?" Katarina asked, gesturing towards the door that Helia and Riven were no doubt still within eyesight of.

"They don't believe me. And even if they did, there's no way Saladin would approve a mission without some kinda of proof that it's not just a fool's errand," Timmy commented, staring down at the floor in a defeated manner.

Katarina, however, was not letting up. "So, what's your problem? Prove she's alive. Simple."

"No, not simple. Are you forgetting that this is Omega we're talking about? The only way I can prove Tecna's alive without going down to the surface is with some kind of communication device and Omega's atmosphere is known for being a natural barrier for conventional communication channels," Timmy explained, expecting his sister to understand just how impossible it was to prove that Tecna survived but instead she just started smiling at him with a pleasantly amused expression.

"Are you telling me that you're going to let something as trivial as 'conventional communication channels' get the best of you? You? The guy who helped co-design a successful prototype for a personal inter-realm transport device that is likely going to change the travel industry as we know it?"

"Well, I . . ." Timmy stammered, blushing slightly at his sister's praise. Timmy had told his father about the prototype he and Tecna had developed but he wasn't aware that the rest of the family knew.

Clearly enjoying her brother's embarrassment, Katarina leaned over to roughly bump her shoulder into his. "That doesn't sound like that Angus McInnes I know."

Timmy couldn't stop himself laughing at Katarina's comment but at the same time, his mind was spinning. Why was he letting conventional communication channels get in the way of him rescuing Tecna? He needed to prove that she was alive and if conventional methods weren't going to help him, then he needed to think up some unconventional methods. With a new sense of determination, Timmy looked up at his sister and gave her a genuine smile that lacked the usual snarky undertone he adopted when dealing with his sisters. "Thanks, Kat."

Katarina replied by leaning over again but this time the shoulder tap could be described more as an affectionate nudge as oppose to a rough bump. "What's family for?"

"When are you heading back home?"

"I'm booked on a red-eye flight back to Windox that leaves at ten-thirty tonight. Unless you need me to stay?"

"Would you be offended if I said no?"

"Nope. Liz and I agree that if we were in your shoes, we wouldn't want our siblings sticking around."

"Hmm."

"Wanna watch another movie? We've got a couple of hours to kill before I gotta leave for the spaceport and I'm frankly sick of talking for a while."

"Yeah, sure," Timmy agreed.

"C'mon. I've got stacks of movies on my hard drive," Katarina said, moving back to her pervious position on Timmy's bed. Timmy joined her and didn't object when she put on another old film they just to watch as kids, only this one was more her preference than his. It helped that he was able to zone out on the corny romance and dance themed storyline while his mind spun with new ideas and possibilities.

How the hell was he going to prove that Tecna was still alive without leaving the Realm of Magix?

---

"Crud, we missed recess," Brandon muttered, looking at the time on his phone as he and Sky made their way through the halls of Red Fountain.

"You ate on the flight here," Sky reminded his friend, the muscles in his jaw tense. It had seemed like a lifetime ago since he had last been here and Sky hadn't been this nervous walking into his school since freshmen orientation. The Prince had been so anxious that he hadn't been able to eat a bite of the food they had served him and Brandon on the flight to Magix, leaving it up to Brandon to polish off both meals but he still claimed to be wanting more.

"I'm still hungry and it's like two hours 'til lunch is served," Brandon groaned, rubbing his stomach. "I'm a growing boy. I need nutrients."

"Brandon, can you not?" Sky begged, twisting his hands nervously. Part of him knew that Brandon was only carrying on like that to distract him, but Sky was not in the mood to be grateful. "I'm nervous."

"What? Why?"

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe because the last time I saw the others I was attacking them with a dragon," Sky said bitterly, a familiar feeling of self-loathing bubbling up inside of him. "Or because I nearly got their girlfriends killed. Or maybe because I acted like a complete and utter ass so why they ever want to even consider speaking to me again? Pick one."

"Dude, you do realise that you just listed off exactly what Riven did to us during sophomore year and we managed to forgive him," Brandon pointed out. "It's gonna be fine. Riven probably knows what you're going through. Hell, he might even be supportive and empathetic towards you. There's a first time for everything, y'know?"

It was just at that moment that Riven, who must have somehow been altered that the two Eraklyain's were back, came storming down the corridor towards them while practically bristling with some kind of emotion that seemed almost electric. "Where the hell have you two been?!"

"Or not," Brandon muttered to Sky, going back to his earlier comment, before plastering a wide grin on his face and beaming at his moody friend. "Hey Riv, how ya been?"

"How have I been? How have I been?" Riven repeated, his eyes wide and more than a little wild looking, causing Brandon's grin to dim somewhat and make him want to take a step back. On closer inspection, Brandon was shocked to see how haggard his friend looked. Riven's burgundy hair looked as though it hadn't been washed for a few days, there were dark circles under his eyes and his face had that lean, ratish-look the former street-rat got whenever he skipped too many meals. However, none of that was as alarming as the strange energy that Riven was emoting. It could only really be described as . . . frazzled. Brandon had never seen Riven like this before. The temperamental specialist was so flustered he couldn't even string a coherent series of words together, curse words or otherwise. "I . . . You . . . Fuc . . . Things. . . I . . ."

And then Helia was there. Like his roommate, Helia had dark circles under his eyes and his long hair wasn't as smooth or shiny as it normally was, but he was noticeably more composed than Riven.

"Riven. Riven relax," Helia instructed, putting a calming hand on his roommates' shoulder. Brandon and Sky watched dumbfounded as Helia gently reined Riven in. It was like watching a patient horse wrangler skilfully bring in an out-of-control stallion who was literally quivering under his touch. With Riven – relatively – calmed, Helia turned to regard his two other squad members with an expression that was almost guarded. "So, you're back."

"Yeah, we are," Sky replied hesitantly, eyeing his two friends with undisguised caution. Something wasn't right. Riven was visibly rattled and Helia was defensive, which either meant that they were still angry at him after the incident on Eraklyon or something else had happened. Either option didn't sit well with the Prince. "What's going on?"

Unfortunately, in quickly became clear that Helia who wasn't going to give the Prince an inch. "We'll get to that. What's happening with you?"

"Excuse me?"

"Are you or are you not still spelled?" Helia asked bluntly and Sky couldn't help but flinch at the words and the serious edge he had to his voice. Helia was the one with the most patience and humility in their squad, so if this was his reaction than Sky knew is return to Red Fountain would not be an easy one. Sky also realised that he had assumed Helia would be the most forgiving of his friends so to receive such a frosty welcome from the long-haired specialist was shockingly painful, like a hit that the Prince did not see coming.

"No," Sky answered, his cheeks flushing with humiliation. Again, he had assumed that his friends wouldn't be so blunt with their questioning. "I am no longer spelled. Stella's fairy dust removed it all."

"And have you spoken to any of the girls?" Helia grilled, his expression and tone not softening in the slightest.

"No. I figured I'd gauge you guys reaction before I tried making amends with them," Sky replied, trying hard not to show just how much Helia's almost hostile attitude was hurting him. "I'm glad I did."

"And what's happening with Diaspro?"

"That's being dealt with," Sky answered vaguely. Helia's current attitude did not inspire Sky to share with him any more information than he absolutely had to and regardless of everything that had happened, Sky still had the dignity of the Crown to uphold. He was not about to pass on sensitive and possibly damaging information to someone that wasn't acting like much of a friend.

Helia's cobalt eyes narrowed, and it almost seemed as though he understood the reason for Sky's ambiguous answer. And while he chose to drop the subject of Princess Diaspro for now, the teenager still pushed on. "And have you come to terms with what happened to you and what you did while you were spelled?"

Shockingly, it was Riven who came to Sky's defence. Despite the almost electric emotion he had be projecting when he had first approach Sky and Brandon, Riven now looked as though all the energy had been sucked out of him. And when he spoke, his voice sounded as exhausted and emotionally drained as he looked. "Helia, cut the guy some slack. I mean, c'mon. With everything that's happened, I know I don't have the energy for all this."

Sky and Brandon glanced at each other out of the corner on their eyes. What kind of a parallel universe had they wound up in?

Helia, however, was not ready to back down just yet. "Riv, we talked about this. I'm not bringing them in unless it's the best thing for everyone involved. We can't afford to get a set back at this moment in time. For everyone's sake."

"Why? What is going on?" Sky demanded but Riven and Helia ignored him. Instead, the pair were momentarily locked in a silent battle of wills where Helia was reluctant and Riven seemed desperate.

"Helia, please," Riven begged, his voice little more than a whisper and it was then that Brandon and Sky realised the gravity of whatever it was the two of them were talking about. The two Eraklyain's had no idea what might have happened to cause their squad mates to act like this, but it was serious enough to push Riven almost to breaking point and cause Helia to blatantly ignore his roommate and best friends suffering in the name of maintaining control.

"What happened?" Brandon asked, his voice more gentle and less demanding than Sky had been. With another long stare with Riven, Helia finally relented. With a tilt of his head, Helia gestured to a room not far from where the four stood, which happened to be one of the computer labs Red Fountain had on offer.

"In here," Helia directed, leading the others inside. The computer lab wasn't empty, with what looked like two squads of lowerclassmen working away but they all paused what they were doing when the four seniors walked in. With uncharacteristic coldness, Helia ordered, "Get out."

The sheer authority that their usually gentle friend was exhibiting shocked Sky and Brandon but what was even more surprising was the way the lowerclassmen reacted to it. After a brief pause as they stared at the seniors with wide eyes, the lowerclassmen just up and left their work as if Headmaster Saladin himself had ordered them out of the room. Brandon would later swear that he even heard one of them mutter 'yes sir' on their way out.

"Okay, what is going on?" Sky asked again, feeling anxious about the strange way everyone was acting and also a little bit annoyed that Helia hadn't granted him any privacy before asking about Diaspro. Either unaware or unconcerned with how Sky was currently feeling towards him, Helia turned to face them with his arms cross loosely in front of him while Riven dropped down into a spare chair with a defeated kind of weariness. Sky and Brandon remained standing and met Helia's gaze head on.

"Four days ago, the Winx Club went to the Realm of Tides. With all the interference from Baltor, the Omega Portal had become unstable and was starting to collapse in on itself. It would have taken out all of Tides but of course Layla and her friends weren't going to let that happen. They were successful . . . but it came with a price," Helia informed the two Eraklyain's gravely and his next two words were enough to rattle Sky and Brandon to their core. "Tecna's MIA."

"What?" Sky gasped, shock hitting him like a bucket full of ice-cold water. "No."

"Oh gods," Brandon moaned, sinking into a nearby chair and leaning forward to brace his hands on his knees. He felt like he was going to be sick. While MIA might literally translate to 'missing in action', real soldiers knew that in most combat or catastrophe situation like the one Tides had been placed in, MIA generally meant 'killed, but not confirmed'. In some ways, it was worse than a KIA. Taking in gulping breaths as he tried to stop all the food he had eaten of the flight here, Brandon struggled to process the shocking news. Tecna was gone. How could this happen? They were the good guys. They weren't supposed to take hits like this. Brandon knew he was being unrealistic, but he had never actually considered the possibility of losing someone he cared about. It was stupid of him not to since he and his friends were constantly putting themselves in some kind of danger, but he had always had blind faith that they would somehow manage to pull through because that's the way it was supposed to be. Good was supposed to always triumph over evil. That's just how the universe was supposed to work. How the hell did this happen? Then a thought hit him, and Brandon snapped his head up to look at Helia again. "Timmy? Gods, how's Timmy?"

"Not good," Helia answered truthfully. "But that's to be expected."

"You said this happened four days ago," Sky recalled, a hard edge to his voice as he glared at Helia. Like Brandon, he was just as shocked and sickened by the news but instead of reeling in disbelief, the Prince's emotions quickly shifted to anger. "Why the hell didn't you call us?"

"Sky," Helia started patiently but Sky cut him off sharply.

"If we hadn't shown up today, would you have even called us?!" Sky asked, his tone dripping in rage and steadily growing louder. "I mean, this isn't something that might just slip your mind! Someone dies and you two can't be bothered to pick up the phone?!"

"It wasn't that we didn't want to call you," Riven tried to explain, his voice sounding pathetically small compared to his friend's, but Sky was too angry to listen.

"Why?! Because you're so much better at handling these types of situations?!" Sky shot back sarcastically. "Seriously, Riven, there are rocks out there who have more sensitivity than you! What the hell made you think that you could handle supporting Timmy right now without us?!"

"Hey!" Helia snapped, meeting Sky's fury head on without any hesitation. Once again, the former art student had adapted that authoritative, almost hostile attitude but unlike Sky, Helia still remained in complete control of his emotions. "I'm the one who decided not to call you two back here. Not him."

"Oh, this is what you do now? Stand in front of Riven?" Sky sneered, so uncharacteristically angry that he just wanted to lash out at Helia in any way possible. Sky had never expected this from Helia. Within their squad, it was the general consensus that the others would default to Sky's leadership in most situations. Occasionally there was some pushback from Riven and the Prince always half suspected that the antagonistic specialist might one day challenge him for the role of leader, but he had never expected it from Helia. While he might be directly related to one of the Magical Dimension greatest living hero's, Helia had never shown any real passion towards the lifestyle that Red Fountain fostered. Sure, he cared greatly for his squad and was always willing to fight the good fight, but Helia was most comfortable acting as a more supportive member of the squad or as some kind of mediator that might help remove the need to fight. And now suddenly, he was the one calling the shots on major decisions that impacted the entire team? The very thought made Sky's blood boil. Helia had only joined the squad last year, for dragon's sake.

Helia clenched his jaw for a moment and took a deep breath before to tried to justify his actions. "Look, I understand that you're pissed about being left in the dark and yes, you have every right to be. But I didn't leave you out of this without good reason."

"Ha, I doubt that."

"Sky," Helia warned, his voice and eyes as hard and cold as steel.

"No, tell me, Helia! What made you think that you, someone who only transferred to Red Fountain a year ago, would be better at handling this situation than me, someone who's known Timmy and Tecna since their freshmen year?! Huh?! Tell me!" Sky shouted, balling his fists up as the desire to throw a punch at Helia grew.

"Whoa, Sky, calm down," Brandon said, sitting up in his chair straighter when he saw just how out of control his best friend was becoming.

However, Helia continued to meet Sky's rage with the same unwavering control and conviction. "This isn't about you or me or which one of us is better suited to handle this. It's about Timmy and I'm sorry but you weren't here. I was. And when we got right down to it, the only thing that mattered was how to best help Timmy get through this. And again, I'm sorry but you and that mess you had going with Diaspro was a distraction that I didn't have time to deal with."

"I wouldn't have been a distraction," Sky growled out through clenched teeth. Helia was making an excellent point but Sky was too angry to see it. "I would have put all that crap aside if I had known!"

"Oh yes, that's a good move. Suppress your emotions about what happened to you. I can't see that coming back and biting you on the ass," Helia commented, his tone completely deadpanned. Once again, Sky felt a strong urge to hit him in the face but Helia remained unintimidated. "You needed time to deal with everything that happened on Eraklyon and I'm assuming that, since you're here, you've done that. I needed you back here once you felt you were ready to come back to Red Fountain. Not because you were called back to deal with a crisis. That is why you weren't told about Tecna until now. So, drop the attitude and then you can start helping Timmy through this because if your presence starts impacting on Timmy in a negative way, I swear to gods I will pull you out of there."

Sky didn't believe him. "You wouldn't dare."

"Try me," Helia warned, his voice deadly serious. "Timmy's been through hell the last few days and the last thing he needs is for you push him backwards. So get your ego under control for his sake. Got it?"

From their seated positions, Brandon and Riven exchanged alarmed and troubled looks since the two of them had never found themselves on the side-lines as their two best friends fought it out.

Sky was still glaring daggers at his longhaired squad mate and he was grinding his teeth together in frustration, but he could tell that this was one of the times when Helia honestly meant every word he said. Helia really would remove anyone if he thought they'd hinder Timmy's recovery, he didn't care who it was. His focus was solely on helping Timmy, even if he lost friends along the way, and Sky knew it was just a waste of time and energy trying to fight him on this one. Uncurling his fists, Sky let out a long, slow breath and gave in . . . for now. "Go it. Now, where's Timmy?"

---

During their time at Red Fountain over the last four years, it wasn't an unusual sight to find Timmy sitting at his desk, either hunched over his study notes or typing away on his computer. Currently, he was caught up in a combination of both: researching information on the realm wide web and jotting down important points on an ever-growing pile of notes. Timmy was so absorbed in his work that he failed to notice when Riven received an alert on his phone that prompted him to leave the dorm room or that Helia – after a brief moment of hesitation – followed after him. However, there was no way to miss their return, namely because of the people they brought with them.

"Timmy!" Brandon greeted loudly, causing Timmy to visibly jump in surprise.

"Gods!" Timmy exclaimed, pressing his hands against his chest as if it would help steady his suddenly racing heartbeat. "Are you trying to give me a heart attack?"

Not bothering to acknowledge the comment, Brandon dragged Timmy to his feet and pulled him into the all-encompassing hugs that the squire was renowned for. A beat later, Sky joined the hug, pressing as firmly into Timmy's side as he could without dislodging Brandon. For the second time in less than a minute, Timmy felt his breath hitch and his heart start to pound as emotions started to swell inside him. Even since Katarina's visit yesterday, Timmy had felt as though he had new focus and control over his overwhelming emotions but as Brandon and Sky continued to squeeze him, Timmy felt his throat tighten and his eyes start to sting.

"Oh Timmy, I'm so sorry," Brandon said softly, squeezing his friend tighter as if he was trying to make up for the comfort, he was unable to provide over the last few days.

"We would have been here sooner if we had known," Sky added, his voice gentle and apologetic but Timmy was still able to detect a faint trace of bitterness in his words. A small distance behind them, Helia was leaning up against the doorframe with his arms folded across his chest and a contemplative look on his face. Meanwhile, Riven lingered in the hallway looking like he would give any excuse not to be there.

"How are you doing, buddy?" Brandon asked, pulling back enough so he could get a look at his friend without breaking the hug entirely. Sky pulled back as well but kept one of his hands placed between Timmy's shoulder blades where he could rub small, comforting circles.

"I'm all right," Timmy answered, swallowing hard to try to push down the tears that threatened to build. After days of crying, Timmy he finally reached a point where he was able start focusing on things besides his grief and he wasn't about to slide backwards now. "I take it you know."

"Yeah," Brandon replied, unable to resist the urge to hug his friend again. The squire knew that the younger specialist usually wasn't one for touching, rarely initiating contact himself, but Brandon was one who didn't shy away from physical contact – in fact, he welcomed it – and right now he needed to hold his friend.

"We're so sorry we weren't there," Sky apologised again, resisting the urge to look up and glare at Helia. "Y'know, when it all happened."

"It doesn't matter. It's not like you could have changed anything," Timmy pointed out with a sad, one shouldered shrug.

"I know, but we could have been there for you. Helped you through it."

"Things were rough right at the start there, but I think I'm in a better place now," Timmy told them, trying to push Brandon off him but the squire continued to hang onto him. "Okay Brandon, can you let me go now? Please? I'm feeling a little claustrophobic."

"Just a bit longer," Brandon replied, not loosening his arms.

"Brandon, get off," Timmy said with a small laugh, finally shoving him off and then gifting him with a small, amused shake of his head. "You're an idiot, you know that?"

"Eh, it's been suggested once or twice before," Brandon shrugged, a lopsided grin on his face. This felt familiar and Brandon suddenly felt like he was finally home.

"I have missed you guys," Timmy admitted, his eyes turning warm as he looked at the two Eraklyain's with a small smile.

"Aw, now that calls for a hug," Brandon teased, moving in again but Timmy planted his hand in the middle of the squire's chest and held him at arm's length.

"Stop it," Timmy said, a noticeable laugh in his voice and Brandon beamed widely at the sound. He might not have been there when Timmy had first heard the awful news about Tecna but Brandon was glad he could help lift Timmy's spirits now at least.

"We missed you to, Timmy," Sky said, moving his hand up to give the younger specialist's shoulder an affectionate squeeze. Timmy eyes met Sky's and the Prince's heart sank when he watched the small yet playful smile his friend had been wearing get replaced with an anxious press of his lips.

"So . . . what happened with Diaspro?" Timmy asked hesitantly, ducking his head a little bit as if he half expected a negative response to be triggered by the question.

"It's . . . messy. No denying that. But the long and the short of it is that I'm . . . thinking clearly now and she's long gone," Sky assured him, looking down and noticing the papers and books that were scattered across Timmy's desk. He knew Helia might accuse him of avoiding discussing what happened with Diaspro, but the papers caught Sky's interest. "What's all this, Timmy?"

"Oh, it's nothing," Timmy tried to downplay but his friends became more suspicious when he moved one of the books across his notes like he was trying to cover a guilty secret. "Just a bit of research."

"On what?" Brandon asked, cranking his neck to get a look at what had caught Sky's interest. Despite Timmy's efforts to hide them, Brandon could still see page after page of loose-leaf paper was covered in Timmy's neat handwriting, indicating that Timmy must have put a lot of hours into whatever he was researching even compared to his usual study standards. Also, no matter how seriously the staff at Red Fountain took their students education, Brandon highly doubted that any of the teachers would have assigned Timmy any homework or assessments at this time.

"Um, nothing much," Timmy answered nervously, rubbing his hair. He knew his friends were going to take this the wrong way. "Just the Omega Dimension."

"Still?" Helia exclaimed, breaking his silence. "I thought found out everything you needed to already."

"What do you mean 'still'?" Sky shot at Helia, the venomous edge to his voice indicating that he wasn't impressed with the way the longhaired specialist had been managing things. Helia flat out ignored the Prince and after a hesitant glace in Sky's direction, Timmy followed suit.

"Um, I did. I just wanted to look into something a bit further, is all," Timmy explained.

"Oh. May I ask what that something is?" Helia asked pleasantly but there was an undercurrent of determination that clearly stated that there was no way Timmy was going to be able to sidestep the question.

"Er, sure. It's nothing, really. Just, um, how the atmosphere of Omega is a natural barrier to communication and, um, how I might . . . get around it."

A tense silence filled the room for a moment as everyone quickly worked out Timmy's intentions. Helia's face was carefully neutral and when he spoke, the air around him was heavy with all the unspoken things he was clearly thinking. "I see."

"Um, are you sure this is . . . I dunno, healthy? To be dwelling on Omega like that?" Brandon asked, awkwardly rubbing at the back of his neck. The squire's voice was hesitant and concerned, which stopped Timmy from becoming defensive.

"I know it might be hard for you to understand but I'm not dwelling," Timmy promised, realising that Brandon wasn't disapproving his actions. He just didn't understand them. "This is how my mind works, okay? If there's a problem or a situation that I don't understand, I gather all the information I need and make sense of it. It's just me working my way through things. I know it looks like I'm obsessing over this but I'm not. I just . . . I just need to know."

"Need to know what exactly?" Sky asked.

Timmy shrugged and stared down at his shoes. "I dunno. I just gotta know."

Helia's eyes narrowed as he scrutinized his friend. He had been there at the start of all this, so he had a clearer idea of where Timmy's head was at than the other two. "You want to know if Tecna's alive and trapped there. And you want to try and communicate with her. Don't you?"

Timmy lifted his head and faced his squad directly. He was confident in his decision and he wasn't about to hide it away from the people he considered his closest friends. "Yeah. I do."

"Timmy," Helia started but Sky cut him off.

"Well I think that's a great idea," Sky said

"Sky," Helia all but growled.

"What? It makes sense. We have no real confirmation about what happened to Tecna so it's only logical to attempt to contact her," Sky stated even though his opinion was most driven by the desire to oppose Helia's position. "Plus, Timmy's a big boy. He can make his own decisions about what he wants to do and we should respect that."

Tension was thick in the air as the two squad mates stared each other down. Sky's blue eyes were as hard as ice and the muscles around Helia's mouth twitch as he tried to stop himself from blurting out the first thing that flashed across his mind. Brandon and Riven once again share a concerned look with one another and Timmy kept looking between all four of them as he tried to make sense of what was going on.

Eventually, Helia held up his hands in defeat. "You know what, this isn't helping. I'm going to step out for a bit before somebody says something we'll regret."

"Good idea," Sky agreed bitterly, glad to see the back of him.

Helia hesitated for a moment, his mouth a thin line, before he turned and clapped his hand onto Riven's shoulder. "C'mon, Riv. Let's get something besides coffee into you."

"Huh?" Riven said stupidly but he followed his roommate with little promoting. Without a backwards glace, Helia closed the door behind him and left Timmy and his two roommates alone for the first time in weeks.

"Why are you fighting with Helia?" Timmy asked Sky as soon as the door was closed.

Sky pretended to play dumb. "What are you talking about? We're not fighting."

"Um, I should have to tell you this, but yeah, you are." Timmy told him, giving his friend a scrutinising look. "Wait, are you mad because he didn't call you guys when all this happened?"

"What? No. We're not even fighting," Sky said again.

"Could'a fooled me," Brandon muttered under his breath.

Timmy gave Sky a patient look. "Sky, c'mon. This is me you're talking to. You don't have be the 'Perfect Prince' around me. Also, this Helia we're talking about. He's not the type of guy to do things without putting everyone's best interest at heart. I mean, I'll admit I haven't really been paying attention to everything he's been up to over the last few days but if Helia decided not to call you and tell you about what happened, I'm sure he had a good reason for it."

Sky wanted to be stubborn and continue to oppose Helia's actions just for the sake of it, but he couldn't do that to Timmy. Not right now. So, the Prince reluctantly admitted that, "He thought I needed to fully process what happened at the Millennium Party or something like that."

Timmy considered the plan and nodded in agreement. "Honestly, I've kinda forget about all that over the last few days and – objectively speaking – it was probably the right decision not to call you back."

"Yeah right," Sky growled out before he could stop himself.

"Sky, do you honestly believe you would have been able to deal with this and Bloom and Diaspro and all the politics that's going on in Eraklyon now? Look at how stressed Helia and Riv are and they were just dealing with me and my issues."

"I would have managed it."

"I don't think you would have. Even if you managed it in the moment, I have a feeling it would have come back and bit you on the ass later. So, you and Helia work out whatever's going on between yourselves because I'm not going to play referee and I'm pretty sure Riven's going to snap if he's put under any more pressure," Timmy informed them, slipping back down into his chair and picking up his pen again. The move brought the two Eraklyain's attention back to the notes that were scattered across Timmy's desk.

"So, you're really looking into Omega, huh?" Brandon noted hesitantly. He didn't want to kick off another disagreement but Brandon shared Helia's concerns that Timmy's research might not be very healthy.

"Yeah, I am," Timmy informed him with an air of finality about it that said I'm-doing-it-whether-you-like-it-or-not. "You guys and Saladin are never going to just let me go to Omega to look for Tecna unless I have proof that she's alive. So, if I can work out how to get a communication link through Omega's atmosphere, she can contact us and then we can go get her."

As Timmy shuffled through his notes, Sky and Brandon exchanged a worried look. There was impossible to miss how confident Timmy was that Tecna was still alive and just waiting for them to contact her and no matter how much the two Eraklyian's wanted to believe that was true – and they did – the reality of the situation still lingered like a dark shadow. This was the Omega Dimension, after all. And despite what Sky had told Helia, both he and Brandon were already feeling way out of their depth and they had only been dealing with the issue for about half an hour. They both wanted to help their friend – there was no denying that – but they didn't have the first clue on how they were supposed to do that. Clearing his throat, Sky decided to wade into it. "Hey, Timmy, you know we're hoping for the same thing but at the same time we don't want you to be . . . disappointed."

Timmy stopped what he was doing and leaned back in his chair so he could look up at the Prince with a stern and determined expression. "Sky, no matter what you might think, I know Tecna's alive and I'm going to do whatever I need to do to prove that and bring her back home safe."

"Yeah but – "

"Sky, you're the one who told Helia that I have the right to make my own decisions and you guys should respect that. So maybe you should take some of your own advice," Timmy suggested.

"See, this is what happens when mommy and daddy fight; the kids play one against the other," Brandon muttered to Sky under his breath.

"Oh, shut up," Sky hissed at his squire before turning back to Timmy. "I know I said that, and I do respect your right to make your own decision. I do. But I don't want you to get your hopes set on something and then have them not work out. You can still try and contact Tecna but ultimately, none of us can hide from reality forever."

"Uh-huh," Timmy said slowly, clearly not warming to Sky's theory. Timmy could be stubborn when he wanted to be and nothing Sky could say was going to put him off his mission to prove that Tecna was still alive. And in order to get Sky to back down, he decided to come out swinging. "Speaking of hiding from reality, have you seen Bloom yet?"

"Oh, snap!" Brandon exclaimed with what Sky thought was very inappropriate enthusiasm. "You walked right into that one."

"Shut up," Sky warned his squire again, but Brandon took no notice.

"I mean it. He got you good."

Deciding to would be easier to just ignore Brandon than get him to follow order, Sky turned his attention back to his other friend. "Timmy, I am not hiding from Bloom. I was going to go over to Alfea after I touched base with you guys but then I found out about Tecna and – "

"You're looking for an excuse to avoiding seeing Bloom," Timmy smirked smugly.

"I am not."

"Are to."

"I'm not."

"Then why don't you want to go see her?"

"Because I'm dealing with you."

"I'm fine," Timmy assured him, standing back up. "I'm doing exactly what I believe I need to be doing while simultaneously trying to convince you all that I'm not going to do anything rash. Now, you've already said that I should be able to do whatever I think is right to get through this so are you going to stand by that or are you going take it all back and admit that you only said it as a pitiful way to get under Helia's skin?"

Sky stared open mouthed at the young hero standing opposite him. What the hell happened to the sweet, bashful Timmy he had met in freshmen year. Back them, Timmy would have been too timid to really stand up for what he believed was the right course of action, let alone twist Sky's own words back around and use them against him. The transformation Timmy had made within himself over the last four years was incredible not to mention a little unnerving given the current situation.

"Look Sky, if you don't approve of this, that's fine but don't say one thing and then try to take it back. I can't stand it when people do that," Timmy told him firmly. "And I don't care what you say, you need to go see Bloom and get that out of the way otherwise you're just going to have that looming over you and you won't be able to think straight. Go with him, Brandon. Stella's going to kill you if she finds out that you came back to Magix and didn't contact her immediately."

---

"Either we're getting softer, or Timmy's getting slyer," Brandon commented a short time later as he and Sky flew their squad ship to Alfea, ready to confront the girls for the first time since the day they snuck into Eraklyon's Royal Palace and broke Diaspro's spell. Their departure from Red Fountain had been delayed when the pair had crossed paths with Headmaster Saladin on their way to the school's squad ship hanger. The Headmaster had only done a brief check of their mental welfare and then let them go provided they both meet with him individually in his office as soon as it could be arranged to discuss the recent events affecting their squad and how they planned to move forward towards graduation. "Personally, I hope it's the latter."

Sky had left the task of piloting the ship almost completely up to Brandon so that he could sit with his elbows on the control panel and his head in his hands while he tried to even out his breathing. He had been as nervous as hell walking into Red Fountain but that was nothing compared to how he was feeling right now. How the hell was he supposed to face the Winx Club after everything he had done? How was he supposed to face Bloom? "I don't think I can do this."

"What?"

"I don't think I can do this," Sky repeated, lifting his head and looking up so his best friend could see the wild panic in his blue eyes. "Brandon, how can I even think of showing my face to them after everything I've done? I had my archery battalion fire on Layla. I attacked Flora with a dragon. I tried to slice Musa in two with my sword. And on top of all of that I betrayed Bloom and broke her heart. I . . . I . . . I can't do this."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. Just breathe, man. Just breathe," Brandon instructed, trying to keep his cool and keep the ship flying straight. He suddenly regretted not getting someone else to come with them. After three and a half years at Red Fountain, the squire was a more than a capable pilot and he had known Sky long enough that a little thing like a crisis of confidence no sweat, but it was kind of hard to do both at the same time. "Now get it together. You know you have to do this and we're going to do it now and it's going to be fine. Trust me. You're going to apologise to Bloom for the whole Diaspro mess and I'm going to apologise to Stella for not returning any of her calls. We've just got to suck it up and do it so pull yourself together. You can do this. You go to Red Fountain for crying out loud. We don't run away when things get hairy. We face things head on."

"But – "

"No buts. You think you got it bad? Sure, you're the one who got spelled and attacked everyone, but this is Bloom we're talking about. Salt-of-the-earth from actual Earth who always fights for the greater good and would never turn her back on someone she cares about if they made a mistake. Hell, she's forgiven Riven for helping the Trix try and actually kill her. And us for that whole name swapping mess two years ago. So, it's going to be fine. Me, on the other hand, I'm screwed."

"You?"

"Yes. Do you know that the last time I spoke to Stella properly was the night of the Millennium Party? And that was ages ago. Since then, there was only one phone call that I ducked out of after about thirty seconds and when we crossed paths that night she snuck into the Palace, and we were both kinda preoccupied then. Now you might think that a little bit of neglect isn't that bad when compared with what you did to your girlfriend, but let you remind you of one simple thing; you are not dating Princess Stella, the Crowned Jewel of Solaria. My girl does not handle being ignored well, even if it's only for a couple hours. Earlier this year, I accidentally left my phone in my room when I went to class and by the time recess rolled around and I could get it, I had nine missed messages, two missed calls and had to spend an hour that afternoon when classes let out apologising for being so irresponsible and promising that I would never do it again," Brandon told his friend. The squire was admittedly over-exaggerating since most of that hour-long apology had been made up of heavy flirting and propositioning ways, he could make it up to his girlfriend, but that wasn't the point. Sky needed to fix things with Bloom and the rest of the Winx Club so that they could go back to focusing on Timmy. "So, I'm game enough to face my girlfriend after weeks of intentionally ignoring her, you should be able to face yours over something as small as attacking her with a dragon and briefly getting engaged to another woman. At least you have the excuse of being spelled."

"If you say so," Sky sighed, running his hand through his hair and trying to resist the temptation to smile. This was why he needed Brandon to help him through this. Brandon's sense of humour might seem inappropriate to some people, but for Sky it was just what he needed to cut the tension and help him make this difficult, final step towards redemption. "You sure I can't talk you out of this?"

"Don't tempt me, bud. All right, we're here so I'm going to bring this baby in for a landing," Brandon said as he slowly brought the ship down in Alfea's quad. "Okay, we got this. It's gonna be a snich. Bloom's a sweet, caring young lady with a kind, forgiving heart. Just keep that in mind."

"Thanks man."

"If only I could find a girl like that," Brandon muttered as he went through the shutdown procedure for the engines. "On that note, would you mind terribly if I kind of . . . mislead Stella in how long I was detained by the Palace Guards? Y'know, as an excuse as to why I didn't contact her sooner?"

"You'd lie to your girlfriend like that?"

"If it gets be out of trouble? Without hesitation," Brandon admitted. "Hell, the only reason she gave me a chance of dating her in the first place was because I told her I was a prince when we met."

"That's not true."

"Yeah, it is. The prince lie drew her in but my sparkling personality and dashing good looks made her stay when the truth came out."

"You do have a perfectly symmetrical face. Not many people appreciate that about you." (3)

"Oh, shut up," Brandon responded to the jab as he got out of his seat and headed towards the ship doors. Sky followed after him while he thought about the squire's comment about how Red Fountain students didn't run away from things. With that in mind, Sky squared his shoulders and, when Brandon paused at the door and gave him an 'after you' gesture, marched off the ship to meet his fate. As luck would have it, Stella and Flora had been walking by when they had landed, and Sky was glad to see that they didn't both coil away in disgust at his presence.

"Well, look what the chagrin dragged in," Stella greeted sassily. The Princess's honey-gold eyes glowed playfully so Sky didn't feel too sick when she asked, "How's Diaspro?"

"She's history," Sky cleared up quickly. "After you guys broke that spell, she was banished from Eraklyon. We'll never hear from her again."

Things were a bit more complicated than that. Diaspro may be a lying, conniving, vindictive bitch but she was also a Princess and one did not just chuck her out of a realm without some political ramifications. Sky's father and Leopold were hounding at him to trying and broker a deal between Earklyon and Quartz, but Sky wanted nothing to do with any kind of negotiations that might lead to Diaspro getting off. Sky didn't want to get into any of that right now and thankfully he was saved when Brandon jumped down off the ship to join them.

"Stella," Brandon said with his most dashing smile, hoping to defuse some of her ire. "Hi."

However, even Brandon at his most charming wasn't enough to sway the wrath of his angry girlfriend. "Where have you been? No phone calls?! No magic messaging?!" Stella exclaimed, her hands balled into fists and her arms tense.

"I was locked up in an Eraklyon prison," Brandon explained, rubbing the back of his head. It wasn't the complete truth, but it also wasn't a complete lie either. Brandon knew Sky still felt guilty about his best friend being detained but he was just going to have to suffer for a little bit in order to save Brandon from a realm-full of trouble. "If I could have called you I would have but I had to wait for Sky to get me out and once he did, I rushed here right away."

"I feel so terrible about what happened," Sky confessed, jumping into the conversation he needed to have with the girls before Stella could start herself on a rant. "I have to apologise to all of you and especially to Bloom. I have to find a way to make it up to her."

"Well, Bloom's not here," Flora told him, a touch of sadness in her voice. "She's gone."

"She went on a major mission," Stella added with the same serious tone.

"A mission?" Sky repeated in surprise. "To where? And when is she coming back?"

"She went to the Island of Pyros," Flora answered, and Sky's eyes widened in surprise. He knew about Pyros. Everyone at Red Fountain did since they learnt about during their introduction to dragon handling in their freshmen year. Pyros was an island where very few humans rarely journeyed to since it was inhabitant by some of the wildest dragons in existence. It was a dangerous place rules by the thicker, more aggressive molten dragons and Sky had seen first-hand the damage they could inflict on people. One of the stable hands at Red Fountain had gone to Pyros as part of his degree in dragon wrangling and care, and he had almost been ripped in two by the talons of a dragon. He now had three, long scars diagonally down his front that reached from his collarbone all the way down to his hip and he was a living reminded to the students not to get too complacent around dragons. The thought of Bloom being alone on that island was causing Sky to start panicking and what Stella said next was not helping.

"And the question isn't when is she coming back, Sky, it's if."

Sky stared at the two fairies as he tried to stop his heart from pounding out of his chest. "Pyros? Really? Why . . . Why would she go there?"

"She needs to get stronger if she's going to defeat Baltor and Ms Faragonda said that Pyros is the place she needs to go to do that," Stella answered.

"Faragonda's behind this? Man, and I thought she was being reckless that time she sent you girls to Sparx but this . . ." Sky trailed off. Nightmarish possibilities of everything that could go wrong for Bloom flashed across his mind and Sky closed his eyes tightly to try and block them out. As he tried to do that, he felt someone take hold of his hand and give it a reassuring squeeze. Snapping his eyes back open, Sky was shocked to see that it was Flora who was holding his hand.

"Hey, she'll be all right," she assured him with a sweet smile that was so utterly honest and Flora all over. The Flower Fairy's kindness and compassion were some of the things Sky admired most about Flora and even though things were currently strained between them, Sky had to admit that Helia was a lucky guy to have her as a girlfriend.

"Thanks Flora," Sky smiled back, giving her hand a quick squeeze. He wished he could offer her a more affectionate gesture, but years of royal protocol had trained such things out of Sky's nature and, more importantly, he dreaded how it would feel if she rejected him. "I'm really sorry about everything that happened on Eraklyon."

"I know you are, and I know it wasn't your fault so I forgive you," Flora said, seeming to sense Sky's insecurity so she pulled him into the hug that he needed but would never initiate. As he felt her soft, warm body press against his, Sky had to blink rapidly to chase off the urge to start crying. Even though he had desperately wanted it, Sky hadn't been holding out for the Winx Club to forgiven him after everything he had done so he was a little unprepared for how good it felt to hear those words come out of Flora's mouth. Bloom may be his girlfriend, but he had grown to love each of her friends in their own unique way, even Layla who had only joined the group last year. The Prince hadn't been expecting such a connection when he first met the faires two and a half years ago.

"You don't know how much that means to me and I want thank you girls for not giving up on me," Sky said softly as Flora pulled back from the hug, but she immediately went back to holding his hand. It was such a small gesture, but it still made Sky feel warm all over.

"Hey, no problem," Stella told him, throwing an arm over Sky's shoulder and squeezing him tightly. It was a different type of hug to the one Flora had given him, but Sky appreciated it just as much. Sky always felt as though he had a special connection with the Princess of Solaria. Firstly, he had known her longer than any other members of the Winx Club and since Brandon was his best friend and Bloom was hers, they both had a vested interest in each other's happiness. Plus, blonde Crowned Heirs to the Throne needed to stick together. "You boys have always been there to help us out whenever we needed some muscle or a lift somewhere, so we figured we owed you. I mean, you were there to help me out when I got turned into that monster at the start of the year, so it's only fair that I help you with your monster problem."

Sky laughed, even though he had never imagined such a thing happening whenever he had tried to picture how his return to Alfea might go. "I've missed you, Stella."

"I know. I have that effect on people," Stella said with a flick of her blonde hair. Then she stood up on her toes and kissed him soundly on the cheek. "I miss having you boys around to."

"Hey, hey. I'm your boyfriend. How 'bout sending a bit of that lovin' my way?" Brandon leered at his girlfriend, who promptly threw herself at him and started to kiss his face all over with loud and exaggerated mwah's that made Flora giggle. Once the couple got that out of their system, Stella went about filling them in on all the Alfea gossip including Layla's betrothal to someone she had never met before and everything that had happened on Tides. At one point, Musa and Layla joined them, giving Sky a chance to apologise to them directly, but they didn't stay long. The Musical and Aquatic Fairies looked particularly affected by recent events – which was understandable since Tecna had been Musa's roommate and the Digital Fairy had sacrificed herself to save Layla's home-realm – so it wasn't long before Flora ushered them back inside for a pot of soothing tea, leaving Sky, Stella and Brandon behind to talk as the afternoon sun sunk closer towards the horizon. Stella and Brandon were curled up against one another as they continued to talk about everything from what was happening on Solaria to why Layla's parents would force a fiancé on her when their realm was in the middle of a terrorist crisis. And even though it was all very interesting, Sky couldn't seem to focus on what the pair was saying. The Prince's mind was spinning with too many thoughts and he was so distracted that eventually he just had to put an end to it.

"Hey Brandon, do you you could get your levi bike out of the ship and use that to get back to Red Fountain?" Sky asked.

"Um, yeah. That's fine," Brandon nodded, untangling himself slightly from Stella hold. Brandon knew it was his duty as both a squire and a best friend to remain by Sky's side during such a difficult period, but this was also the first time in weeks that he got to see his beloved girlfriend and Brandon wasn't ready to bring it to an end just yet. "Are you heading back?"

"Yeah. I gotta go speak to Helia."

Brandon looked hesitant. "Okay. What about?"

Sky sighed. "Gotta go tell him he was right."

Without a word, Brandon clasped him on the shoulder and then went to go grab his bike.

---

After a quick search of the school, Sky finally found Helia in one of the study spaces known as fishbowls it the library. It struck Sky as odd since he wasn't aware of any assignments due that would require Helia book out the fishbowl and, given the circumstances with Tecna, Sky would have thought that Headmaster Saladin would have excused his squad from any homework anyway. Perhaps it just showed how out the loop Sky was about what was happening at Red Fountain.

Sky had been hoping to catch Helia on his own, so the Prince was horrified to find that not only did his squadmate have company, but it was made up of various members of lowerclassmen as well as fellow seniors, Marcus and Sally. When Sky's classmates noticed him, their faces lit up with two very different types of excitement. Sally, being the gossip that he was, looked thrilled by Sky's sudden reappearance (probably because it meant that he'd be the first to tell everyone), while Marcus adopted a somewhat hungry look to his rat-like face that screamed danger.

"Sky! You're back!" Sally beamed, pulling the attention of everyone in the fishbowl to the senior that stood awkwardly in the doorway. Sky felt his stomach drop with dread as Helia looked over at him with a steely, guarded expression. It was strange to see some who was normally so kind and welcoming look so intimidating.

"How's the misses?" Marcus asked with a nasty grin, his rodent-like nose twitching with callous delight. It was unclear whether the spiteful little senior was referring to Diaspro or Bloom – no doubt both – but the question hit Sky like a punch to the gut. Wrought momentarily speechless by sheer humiliation, Sky floundered for a response that didn't involve hitting Marcus in the face. The Prince was therefore visibly surprised when Helia came to his rescue.

"Marcus, that's hardly appropriate," Helia chided, sounding shockingly like a parent calmly reprimanding a child. It was moments like this that reminded everyone that Helia was directly related to Headmaster Saladin and the authority the old sorcerer possessed appeared to be hereditary.

"Sorry," Marcus apologised but it was directed at Helia, not Sky.

Deciding not to call any more attention to Marcus's behaviour, Helia addressed his squadmate in an overly calm and professional manner. "Prince Sky, if you'll just give me a moment. I'll finish up here and be right with you."

"Of course," Sky nodded, feeling like he missed the memo that Helia was only seeing people by scheduled appointment now. As Helia went back to addressing their peers, Sky tried to make himself less conspicuous by studying the contents of the table instead of the other students in the room. After a moment of mindless staring, Sky came to notice that there was a vast array of paper document littering the table, several textbooks he recognised from strategy class, a number of tablet computers, a few PHA's, a laptop and what appeared to be blueprints of the new Red Fountain campus. The items and the students present gave the fishbowl all the hallmarks of a hard-core study session.

Or a war council.

Startled by the thought, Sky snapped his attention back to Helia, who indeed looked and spoke as if he was heading a council.

" – more efficient and increases our chances of success," Helia was saying, nodding his head thoughtfully as he flipped through whatever document was on his tablet computer. And wasn't that an odd sight; Helia electing to use a digital medium instead of traditional paper based. "Have you informed the appropriate individuals of these changes?"

"Of course," Marcus confirmed.

"Everyone's briefed and ready to response once the signal goes out," Sally added, making Sky frown. What the hell were they talking about?

"Excellent," Helia replied, lifting his gaze from the tablet so he could regard the other students in the fishbowl with a look of gratitude and pride. "This is amazing work guys. From all of you, I mean it. You should all be very proud of yourselves. I can't even begin to describe how impressed and pleased I am that you all continued to work on and improve the strategy in my absence. That's really above and beyond. Thank you."

There was a babble of voices as several people responded at once, either accepting the praise or trying to wave it off as something anyone would do if in their position, and again Sky found himself wondering just what it was they were all talking about. With another proud smile, Helia dismissed the other students and Sky had to step out of the doorway as they all collected their items and headed for a door.

"See you round, Sky." Sally said as he passed, his arms laden with a textbook, notebooks and papers, tablet computer, PHA and his phone.

"Yeah, see ya round," Marcus echoed, slinking past with a nasty grin that made Sky want to kick him in the shins. Deciding it was better not to rise to the bait, Sky purposely averted his gaze from his classmate who scurried off, no doubt to inform his squad of the Prince's return.

Sky was so distracted by the bitter taste Marcus's behaviour had left in his mouth that it took him a minute to fully acknowledge that he was now alone with Helia. Suddenly, the darkened library seemed very quiet and isolated as Sky was hit with the icy scrutiny of his squadmate. Gone was the warm, pleasant smile Helia had been directing at the other students just moments ago and instead Sky was meet with a defensive and somewhat antagonistic look to the normally gentle teen. Clearly, Helia hadn't forgotten the hostility that had sparked between the two of them the last time they had spoken to one another.

This was going to make Sky's job a whole lot harder.

"Hey Helia," Sky greeted in the least aggressive way possible, shuffling further into the fishbowl. The table, which was now less cluttered but still had the notes, blueprints and laptop on it, stood as a physical barrier between the two of them and Sky didn't feel it would be well received if he was to try to cross it.

Helia, his face still guarded, he simply replied with a crisp, "Sky."

Feeling increasingly uncomfortable, Sky dropped his eyes back down to the table. Up close, the Prince could now see that there were handwritten notes on the blueprints and Sky instantly recognised them as battle plans. "You've been busy."

"I have," Helia confirmed coldly. "And I still am so if you're here for another round of 'why-didn't-you-call-me-back', then let me save you some time; I didn't do it in order to upset or undermine you and I don't regret what I did. So, you can either accept that or get out of here because I don't have the time for it now."

Sky flinched at Helia's blunt words, but he forced himself to continue. Taking a deep breath to steady his emotions, Sky met Helia's gaze and said, "You were right not to call be back from Eraklyon when Tecna went MIA."

Since he was paying such close attention, Sky could see that Helia startled ever-so-slightly at the unexpected confession, but it appeared the artist wasn't ready to drop his guard just yet. "I didn't need you to tell me that."

Sky sighed and ran his hand through his blonde hair. He didn't expect Helia to just forgive him, but Sky was trying so the least Helia could do was listen without such hostility. "You know, this apology would be a lot easier if you stopped being pissed at me for a couple of seconds so I can get this out."

Helia studied his squad mate for a moment before he finally relented. With a heavy sigh, Helia sank into the chair behind him and without his frosty demeanour, the teenager looked positively exhausted. "You're right. I'm sorry. That was . . . bitchy. There you are trying to apologise and I'm here acting like an ass."

"Well, I was an ass earlier, so I guess it was your turn," Sky joked, a hesitant smile pulling at his lips that Helia thankfully returned.

"Come, sit," Helia invited, pulling a chair closer to where he was sitting. Without hesitation, Sky moved around the desk and took the seat on the same side as he friend, their chairs slightly angled so they could face on another. The moment Sky was settled, Helia reached over and grasped his wrist in a gentle, affectionate manner that was more like the Helia Sky remembered. "How are you?"

"Better than I was. Not as good as I've been before," Sky replied honestly, hoping that Helia would be able to understand his somewhat cryptic answer. Helia pulled a pained, sad smile that indicated that, although he couldn't exactly empathise with what Sky was going through, he at least understood what Sky was trying to verbalise.

"I'm sorry you had to go through that," Helia said softly. "And I'm sorry I couldn't be there to help you more."

Suddenly, Sky felt an almost absurd desire to laugh hysterically at his friend's unnecessary apology. Then again, there wasn't a well-defined social protocol for when an ex-fiancée spells someone with access to political and military recourse to attack their friends, so maybe condolences were appropriate. The whole situation was so messed up. And now, after speaking with Stella, Sky knew that Blator had been involved somehow and that put an even greater disturbing twist on the already twisted event. The Dark Wizard's mark had been on the Prince's shoulder, Stella had said, and had only been removed by Stella's fairy dust. Sky and Brandon had both suspected that Diaspro hadn't been able to create such a powerful love potion on her own but to have confirmation that it had come from Baltor trouble Sky on a number of levels. Firstly, was Diaspro that desperate to be with him that she would enter in the services of such a dangerous wizard? A wizard that was a known terrorist throughout the entire Magical Dimension? And it wasn't as if Diaspro's homerealm of Quartz had been spared from his attack. Baltor had raided Quartz and stolen their magical artifacts well before Eraklyon's Millennium Party so there was no way Diaspro could claim that her actions were based on a desire to protect her Realm and people. Diaspro had spelled Sky purely because she wanted to be with him, which made Sky feel very uncomfortable. Secondly, Sky was troubled by the potency of the spell he had been under. Was Baltor that powerful that he could create a love potion that defied the known principle of magical chemistry? Even the most powerful love potions required frequent re-dosing in order to maintain affect but by all accounts, in appeared as though Sky had only been exposed to a single dose. And yet, on the day the spell had been broken, Sky had been just as enthralled with Diaspro as he been on the night of the Millennium Party, almost a week earlier. No potion should have lasted that long. And third and finally, Sky was troubled by Baltor's motive behind assisting Diaspro. It couldn't have been just to create discord within Eraklyon, although that was clearly an added benefit. No, Sky suspected that the only reason Baltor gave that potion to Diasrpo – the only reason why Sky was targeted – was to hurt Bloom.

And it was that thought that troubled Sky the most.

Sky managed to keep from laughing in a way that would cause Helia to question his sanity, but he wasn't sure if he managed to keep an element of hysteria from entering his face and voice. "Are you kidding me? Helia, you did plenty. You stayed behind on Eraklyon so that the other guys could get them and the girls to safety. You stayed behind even though you knew it was dangerous. And when you came back to Magix you somehow managed to make Brandon think twice before he went tearing into some hairbrained scheme. Speaking for experience, I know that's not an easy thing to do."

"Honestly, I'm just as surprised as you are that I managed to make anything stick in that bonehead of his," Helia admitted with a teasing smile that Sky was compelled to return.

"I'm sorry again about earlier. I was out of line."

"Yeah, but you had a reason to be out of line," Helia reminded him. "You were upset and still reeling from when you found out about Tecna. It's only natural that you'd want to lash out at someone – anyone – to help you cope."

Sky couldn't stop a smile from tugging at the corner of his mouth. "I'm trying to apologise to you and you're the one coming up with excuses for me. You're a classic."

"I'm just saying that I understand why you reacted the way you did. This might come as a shock to you Red Fountain meatheads, but having at least some level of emotional intelligence can come in handy from time to time," Helia teased.

"Hey, you're one of us Red Fountain meatheads, remember?" Sky shot back with a good-natured grin, but his expression quickly turned serious once more. "But I get what you're saying. And I get why you didn't tell me about Tecna. There is no way I would have been able to deal with all that and the whole Diaspro mess. I needed to come to terms with what happened on Eraklyon and you needed all your attention on Timmy. I get it now. I shouldn't have blown up at you like I did. You were just doing you thought was right. I would have just been a bother."

"You're not a bother, Sky," Helia assured him, his voice sounding sincere. "Gods knows, I wish things had worked out differently so you could have been there to help out. Oh, and of course, wish that none of it had ever happened in the first place."

"Of course," Sky agreed. "I just feel so slack, y'know? Like I should have pulled myself together faster and been there for Timmy when he needed me."

"Okay, first of all; you didn't know so there was no way you could have rushed yourself. And second; stop feeling like you're the only one who can fix things."

"I don't think that."

"Yeah, you do. You're probably the best student at this school and you're going to be a great hero when we graduate, but there's only so much one hero can do. That's why we have squads. We can't be expected to do everything that we're meant to do on our own. Even the best heroes out there need someone watching their backs. That's just how it works for us guys. The girls don't have it the same. The Alfea and Cloud Tower girls have a completely different education than us, and not just because they've got to learn magic. They might have tight friendships with their classmates and figure out ways to converge their magic and all that, but they're still schooled with an individual approach. Red Fountain meatheads, on the other hand, are assigned to a squad on day one and our lesson plans revolve around learning how to work as a team just as much as they do as individuals, if not more so. We don't have magic, so we have to rely on each other to have our sixes. Stop trying to shoulder everything on your own and just let us back you up every once and a while."

"You know, Helia, you may not be aware of this, but you got a real way with words," Sky informed him with a small smile. "And I know you didn't do it for any kind of recognition, but thanks for being there for Timmy when he needed someone."

"I appreciate you say that," Helia replied, a soft smile on his lips. The artist held his smile for a moment before his face shifted into a more sombre expression. "Sky, I know I said that I don't regret not calling you back when Timmy needed you, but I am sorry that I didn't tell you about Tecna. She was your friend too. You deserved to know what happen to her."

"Like I said, you were just doing what you thought was best," Sky repeated with a shrug. The Prince had been so caught up in his concern for Timmy, his rage at Helia and then his worry for Bloom that he hadn't really had a chance to really feel any grief for the loss to Tecna. However, Sky was starting to feel it now and it left an awful ache in his chest. He wasn't particularly close to Tecna in the way he was with Bloom or Stella or Layla, but she was still Sky's friend, and he didn't know how to process the reality of her being gone.

"Maybe it wasn't the right call," Helia muttered, sounding like he was speaking more to himself than anyone else.

"Maybe it was," Sky shrugged again, feeling genuinely confused about how he felt on the matter. The Prince shuttered to think how he might be coping if he had to deal with Tecna's loss while still trying to come to terms with what Diaspro put him through. Maybe Helia had made the right call after all. "But don't listen to me. My head's all over the place right now."

"Regardless, I'm glad you're back," Helia told him, kicking Sky gently in the shin in a brotherly-type manner. "We're good?"

"Yeah. We're good," Sky nodded without hesitation, kicking his friend back.

"Good," Helia replied, slouching deeper into his chair as if the tension between him and Sky had put additional weight on his shoulders that had just been lifted. Absentmindedly, Helia brushed his long fingers across the scattered notes in front on him, drawing Sky's attention back to the contents on the table before them.

"What is all this stuff?" Sky asked, running his eyes over the notes and blueprints.

"Well, it's pretty obvious, isn't it?" Helia said, getting to his feet to sort through the papers easier. "Blueprints. Battle plans. Dossiers."

"Dossiers?" Sky echoed, also rising out of his chair. "On who?"

"Students, both here at Red Fountain and Cloud Tower."

"Cloud Tower?" Sky couldn't help but repeat, picking up a dossier at random. The name written at the top and the student photo that accompanied it wasn't for a Cloud Tower witch but Sky's classmate Toby (or Tobias as the file stated) and below was a list of personal stats such as age, realm of origin and what appeared to be personal skills, namely his dragon wrangling abilities. "I assume there's a reason for all this."

"I believe in being prepared," Helia stated coolly. "There's a high possibility that Baltor will target Red Fountain, so myself and the rest of the grade decided to plan out a response. If we go off the attack on Alfea, we can assume that Baltor will send the Trix in to grab what he wants and use the other witches as diversions. Having said that, we must assume that Baltor's learnt from the Trix's mistakes – namely setting fire to Alfea's ancient scroll instead of stealing them – so Red Fountain's response needs to anticipate changes to Baltor's modus operandi."

"And what do you think that's gonna be?"

Helia pulled a pained expression to show how difficult that question was. "It's impossible to say for sure, but if I were in Baltor's position, I would have the other witches' involvement be a lot more pronounced and not rely so heavily on the Trix. When the witches attacked Alfea, most of them just attacked the barrier and the fairies defending it with basic hexes while the Trix infiltrated the school to steal its magical artifacts. All it took to derail their plans was for a small group of fairies to go after them. The Trix are a group of talented witches but it doesn't take much to outnumber them. And most importantly, the Trix screwed up at Alfea. They managed to lift a few of the spell books but failed at getting the scrolls they wanted. And every time they've gone up against the Winx Club since busting out of Omega, they've had their butts kicked. Baltor's got to be losing confidence in them by now."

"That makes sense," Sky commented, rubbing his jaw as he took in all the information before him. Even at a glance, the Prince could tell that Helia had put together a well thought out battle plan. It was particularly impressive given that the former art student had only transferred to the school last year and was often handicapped by his pacifistic ideals. "Y'know, if this hero thing doesn't work out, you'd make a great super villain. You've sure got the brains for either careers."

"Thanks, I think," Helia grinned, seeing the humour in Sky's observation. "Although, if I'm being honest, I have found this to be quite fun."

"Really?"

"Oh yes. Not so much the whole 'planning-ways-to-take-out-my-Cloud-Tower-friends' thing but the collaboration with the other Red Fountain students. We had them all identify areas that they each felt particularly skilled in and then built and assigned the battle plans around that," Helia explained, his cobalt eyes glowing with pride for his fellow Red Fountain heroes. "It's literally going to be people doing what they do best. It's inspiring."

"I bet," Sky agreed, grinning at his friend. Trust Helia to find the human connection while putting together a battle plan.

"Of course, hopefully we never have to put it into action," Helia said, shifting the papers before him and placing them in some kind of order. "But if we do, at least we'll be – "

Ping-ping-ping-ping! Ping-ping-ping-ping! Ping-ping-ping-ping!

Sky jumped as a noise resembling sonar suddenly sounded from Helia's tablet computer. While Sky had been startled by the noise and had since slouched his posture in relief after rationalising it, Helia had suddenly gone every tense and was staring at the tablet with steely focus.

" – ready," Helia finished and then quickly snatched his phone off the desk in front of him. The phone had barely been in his hand for a second when it started to ring and Helia answered it before the first ringtone had completed itself. Looking over Helia's shoulder, Sky saw the face of either Zeus or Konrad filling the video screen and the freshling looked uncharacteristically serious. And when Helia spoke, he bypassed all usual pleasantries to ask, "Is it valid?"

"Appears to be," the freshling answered without needing anymore context to the question.

"ETA?"

"Seven, maybe eight minutes."

"Right. Send out the alert," Helia ordered, disconnecting the call without waiting for conformation. Stuffing his phone into the side pocket of his uniform, Helia started to move towards the door of the fishbowl. "C'mon. Hurry."

"What's going on?" Sky asked, scrambling after his friend. The Prince suspected he knew the answer to his question so part of him was prepared for Helia's grave reply.

"Red Fountain is about to be attacked."

---

Following Stella's suggestion, Brandon parked his levi bike off Alfea's campus in a place where it was mostly hidden by the surrounding forest. It might seem like an unnecessary move but, as Stella pointed out, if the Alfea staff spotted a levi bike in the school, they would go looking for a Red Fountain student. If Brandon hid his bike, he could stay as long as he wanted, possibly even past curfew.

Stella may have had to repeat her freshman year, but she was no fool.

"Mmm. I missed you," Brandon murmured, his voice muffled since he was unwilling to pull his lips away from Stella's long enough to speak properly. The Princess responded by threading her delicate fingers into the short hair at the back of her boyfriend's head to drag him down deeper into a kiss that he felt all the way down to his toes. If he had the mental capacity to notice anything beyond the taste and touch of his girlfriend, Brandon would blame the kiss for the way his foot caught on the bottom step that led up to Stella's loft as the couple quite literally stumbled through her room towards the bed.

After hiding Brandon's bike, the pair had slipped back into Alfea hand-in-hand and scurried down the halls of the schools, ducking behind curtains and down alternative routes as they hid from threats both real and imagined. They had barely avoided being spotted by Professor Palladium and Professor Avalon, who were thankfully pretty absorbed in whatever they were discussing, and Brandon was sure that Vice Headmistress Griselda suspected something judging by the way she suddenly froze and seemed to sniff the air like some kind of hunting dog. However, despite the obstacles, Stella had finally managed to sneak her boyfriend into her room and once the door was firmly locked behind them, the adrenaline from the sneak and hide journey across the school transformed into frenzied hands and biting kisses. The two teens were buzzing with a breathless kind of energy that drove them to go faster, more, now. Brandon couldn't help but marvel at Stella as she, without breaking their kiss, reached one hand down and popped her foot up behind her so she could effortlessly unbuckle her wedge shoe before kicking it off to the side. Stella wasn't quite as smooth when she attempted the same move on the other shoe – mainly because she tried to use the same hand on the opposite foot – but it resulted in her having stoop down a bit and made her kiss the hollow of Brandon's throat, just below his Adam's apple.

"Gods," Brandon groaned, and as soon as his girlfriend was barefoot, he scooped his hand around the back of her thighs and lifted her so he could press her whole body against his. Stella welcomed the move, wrapping her legs around his waist and cupping his face with both hands so she controlled the way she devoured his mouth. Their tongues slid against one another as they re-familiarised themselves with each other's taste and Brandon's legs felt unsteady as he blindly stumbled to the edge of Stella's bed. Pulling back slightly to avoid an unfortunate collision of teeth, Brandon dropped them two of them on the bed and moved so that his body covered hers, his legs straddled over one of hers and his upper body propped up on his elbows and forearms as he moved his mouth to kiss and nip just below Stella's jaw.

"Brandon," Stella gasped, arching her neck to give him greater access as her fingernails dug into his back. As he licked and nuzzled at the soft skin of her throat, Brandon breathed in the heady smell of her perfume, which had faded throughout the course of the day, and her natural scent that Brandon personally thought was even better. Snaking his arms under her lithe frame, Brandon rolled them so Stella could settle above him, but he had barely started to enjoy the weight of her body pressed across his hips when he felt his collar pull uncomfortably tight over his throat.

"Gah. Hang on," Brandon gagged, rolling them back the way they had just came. His damn cape had become caught up beneath him and had almost choked him.

"You right?" Stella laughed, her eyes shining merrily and her chest heaving.

"Yeah. Just . . . Hang on," Brandon said again, climbing back off the bed so he could effectively unclasp his cape and drop it on the floor by his feet. Stella propped herself up on her elbows so she could watch.

"Ooh yeah, baby. Take it off," Stella teased, titling her head to one side and pocking the tip of her tongue out of the corner of her mouth.

Brandon quirked an eyebrow and gave her a leering smirk. "Whatever you command, Your Highness."

Moving slowly, Brandon unzipped his Red Fountain uniform and pulled the tight material off his arms one at a time. And then, it a way that could only be described a slinky, the specialist stripped the uniform down so that it hung around his waist and allowed his to flex his chest muscles in a way that Brandon knew Stella liked.

"Ooh yeah," Stella said again, only this time with a different type of teasing and Brandon felt his heart start to pound as she placed her thumb between her teeth and bit down on the nail.

"So I take it you approve," Brandon couldn't help but preen as Stella's smouldering honey-gold eyes raked up and down his semi-naked form.

"Always," Stella smiled up at him, slithering further back into the middle of the bed. "What about you? See anything you like?"

"It's been a while since I've seen anything I liked more."

"Oh? No one in that Eraklyon prison caught your eye?"

"Not like you do," Brandon grinned, moving so that he was kneeling on the bed, ready to crawl up and over Stella so he could enjoy pressing his bare skin against hers. However, Brandon had barely moved when Stella suddenly lifted her right leg and placed her foot over the left side of his chest, effectively holding his back.

"And stop right there," Stella ordered, the playful teasing vanishing from her voice and being replaced by that unimpressed tone she had directed at him when he had first arrived in the quad.

"What?" Brandon asked stupidly, a little bit thrown by the sudden change in gear. "It was a joke."

"Well, I wasn't joking when I told you that I expect an update on how you are every once and a while," Stella told him, referencing the phone call they had shared when Brandon was back on Eraklyon and still thinking of a way to help the love-spelled Sky. Despite the way she had been kissing him only moments earlier, it was obvious that Stella was still mad at her boyfriend for the way he had been ignoring her in the weeks since the Millennium Party.

"Stella, babe. I told you. I was locked in an Eraklyon prison and I – "

"Oh, stop it. We both know that the second he was unspelled, Sky would have bailed you out so don't try that 'get-out-of-jail-free' card on me, mister," Stella said, wagging her finger at him like some vintage sitcom housewife, telling Brandon that she was yanking his chain a bit. Stella might have been genuinely upset by his communication breakdown, but she could also see that her boyfriend had been place in a very stressful and uncommon situation, so she was able twist it around so that she could use melodramatic scolding to get her point across. After all, Brandon was fully aware that Stella had every right to be miffed that her boyfriend hadn't called her for a few weeks, regardless of the reasons behind it. And Brandon did feel bad about it – he honestly did – but was hard to keep up the appearance of remorse since the leg still holding him at bay was giving him an unobstructed view up his girlfriend's skirt. It took some effort for Brandon to focus on what Stella was saying. "Now, I don't know if you've somehow gotten the wrong impression and for some reason believe that I am a low maintenance kind of a person, but I can assure you I am not. I am high maintenance with a capital H and a capital M. In bold. I have at least twelve different products for my hair and almost double that for my skin, which, by the way, does not include my make up. Only about a quarter of my schedule is dedicated to my schoolwork – if I'm being generous – the rest is made up of beauty appointments, social events and not-to-be-missed sales. So, what makes you think I would be anything but a high maintenance girlfriend?"

"Stella," Brandon started to say in a tone that he hoped was pacifying and not patronising. "It was a complicated situation. You're the Princess of Solaria and – "

"Oh, spare me the 'politics are messy' talk. I already got it from Helia."

"You did?"

"Of course. That little political aide-in-training came over the day you left for Eraklyon and gave me a whole spiel about how I could become a casualty if that mess between Sky and Diaspro blew up into an even bigger political shit storm. But my point is: I don't care. You're my boyfriend and I love you but if you ignore like that again, there is going to be hell to pay, mister," Stella warned.

"Yes dear," Brandon accepted without argument.

"I don't care if you're in jail, or in some remote jungle somewhere, or even if you're in the stomach of a Down Land guard worm – "

"Eww," Brandon interjected as he tried to picture how awful it would be to be swallowed by one of those giant guard worms. It was almost as bad as just thinking about being in Down Land again.

" – you find a phone and you message me. Got it?"

"Got it," Brandon nodded.

"Good. And don't you forget it."

"I won't," Brandon promised, taking hold of the leg that was still held against his chest and raising it up so he could kiss the inside of Stella's bare ankle. The move caused the Princess to twitch on the bed and Brandon managed to catch the soft gasp of the surprise that escaped Stella's lips. Encouraged by her response, Brandon kissed her ankle again. "I really am sorry."

"Uh-huh," Stella breathed out as Brandon planted another kiss, only this time on her inner calf.

"I mean it," Brandon said, his hot breath brushing across her skin as his kisses inched their way up her leg.

"Well . . . you'll have to find a way to make it up to me," Stella suggested, her voice getting that breathless quality Brandon adored as his oral exploration reached and then passed her knee.

"Hmmm. Anything in particular you had in mind?" Brandon asked, looking up to make eye contact with Stella before running his tongue across the soft skin of her inner thigh. Brandon felt an electric thrill buzz through his as Stella's honey-gold eyes started to simmer again with undisguised heat.

"Oh, I'm sure something will come up," Stella purred, making Brandon laugh through his nose at the innuendo.

"I'll try not to disappoint," Brandon assured her, nuzzling just below her panty line.

"You better. Like I said, you've got a lot of making up to do after blowing me off for Sky again," Stella teased, no doubt intentionally setting Brandon up for another sexually charge pun but her words made Brandon pause. Not immediately noticing her boyfriend's hesitation, Stella went on to grumble in a mocking tone, "You think I'd be used to it by now."

Somewhat alarmed by her words, Brandon pulled up and sat back on his heels so he could face Stella properly. "It's not like that," he told her, all the flirting and teasing replaced by seriousness for a moment.

"Wha . . . ?" Stella stammered, confused by Brandon's withdrawal in much the same way he had been when she had halted the way things between them were progressing only minutes earlier. "I was joking."

"Is that what you think? That I'm always putting Sky and his needs before you?" Brandon asked, genuinely alarmed that his girlfriend thought she wasn't a priority in his eyes.

"Oh Brandon, I didn't mean it like that," Stella reassured him, sitting up and capturing Brandon's cheeks between her palms so she could plant a quick kiss on his lips. "I was just teasing. I know that you love me. And, hey, I get it. You're Sky's First Royal Squire. You have a duty to him, and I admire how dedicated to it you are. Plus, Sky is, like, legitimately your best friend. It's not just a job for you so of course you're going to be there for him when he needs."

"Sky might be my best friend and my Prince but that still doesn't mean that he's more important to me than you."

"I know that," Stella replied, giving him another quick kiss. "I do."

"No, I don't think you do," Brandon said after a long moment of studying her face. Breaking his eyes away from hers, Brandon scanned the room until he saw what he was looking for, there in prime position on Stella's vanity table. Ignoring Stella's small cry of protest, Brandon slipped out of her clutched hands and moved over to pick up the pink and gold case he had given to her for her Princess Ball. "Do you remember when I gave this to you and what I told you it means to me and my family?"

"Of course, I remember. You said that it means that you're going to love me for the rest of your life," Stella recalled, shifting herself so that she was sitting upright on the bed with her legs curled beneath her.

"That's right, but I still don't think you get what that means," Brandon told her, moving back towards the bed with the case still cradled in his hands. "I didn't give this to you as some kind of hollow gesture, as I'm sure some guys might do. I gave you this as a promise that one day . . . I'd pick you over everyone else. Including all of Eraklyon."

"What?" Stella said stupidly, looking a little bit stunned by the declaration.

Smiling at how adorable she looked while confused, Brandon sat back down to the bed and took one of her hands in his. "Stella, you're the Crowned Princess of Solaria, which means that one day you'll be Queen."

Stella humphfed in a manner that was not very princess-like. "Not if that upstart Chimera and that beast of a mother – "

"One day, you'll be Queen," Brandon repeated confidently. Things with the Royal Court of Solaria might be a mess at the moment, but Brandon believed that Countess Cassandra and Chimera would get their comeuppance. No way would the Winx Club let them manipulate King Radius and damage the Realm of Solaria for much longer. They just needed to wait for the perfect opportunity to present itself and then Stella would be reinstated as the next-in-line to the throne. "And I know what that means for us. Stella, there's no way you'll be allowed to be with a commoner from another Realm. Even I know that's pushing it too far. So, for you and the chance to be with you, I am willing to give up my Eraklyan citizenship and join the great Realm of Solaria."

"Oh," Stella gasped, bringing her free hand up to cover her mouth while her other hand gripped Brandon's tightly as the magnitude of Brandon's gift – after months of sitting on her vanity table – finally hit her. Brandon was willing to give up his home. His realm. His Prince. All for just the chance to be with her.

"Stella, when I didn't contact you while I was on Eraklyon, it wasn't to protect Sky. It wasn't even to protect my girlfriend from getting dragged into the whole messy affair. It was to protect my future Queen from a scandal that her enemies might take advantage of."

"Oh gods," Stella gasped again, now fanning her face with her hand in that way that girls do in an effort to stave off tears. "Oh, you're gonna make me cry."

"Stella," Brandon smiled, slipping the case into her trembling hand. "I love you. Today. Tomorrow. And always."

"Oh Brandon," Stella gushed, tears sparkling in the corners of her eyes. Unable to restrain herself any longer, the Princess threw herself at the Squire and caused them to fall back down on the bed, their lips locked is a kiss that was filled with passion and promises.

---

In the time that Sky had been enrolled there, Red Fountain had sustained a large-scale attack on five different occasions. That might seem like a lot when compared with other schools, but it appeared to be on par with the other schools in Magix. Three of the attacks had been during Sky's sophomore year when the Army of Decay had laid siege on the school, the third of which had resulted in the destruction of the old campus. The fourth attack had been during the unveiling of the school's new campus, when Lord Darkar had spelled a faux Lio Dragerus to appear in the stadium. Lord Darkar had also instigated the fifth attack, when he sent the Trix and their mayhem ball into the school in a successful effort to steal Red Fountain's piece of the Codex. So, it was suffice to say that Sky had lived through a decent number of attacks on his school, but he was yet to experience one quite like the one currently happening.

The first thing Sky noticed was the distinction absence of panic. Of course, that wasn't a bad thing, but it just gave the different overall feel to the situation. As he followed Helia, Sky realised that the lack of panic appeared to be link to a noticeable level of focus each hero-in-training had. With the exception of the second & third attacks by the Army of Decay, all the other incidents that Sky had experienced had occurred with absolutely no warning so a level of panic and disorder was to be expected. This time the school had clearly had a warning, but the level of composure the students had was still eerie given the seriousness of the situation.

Another oddity was the fact that as Helia strode down the halls, students from every grade skirted around him or paused so as not to obstruct his path. All of them. Freshlings. Sophomores. Juniors. And even the odd senior that they encountered made way from him. Sky was shocked. Helia wasn't the type of person to demand respect or evoke fear in his peers, so for them to award him such courtesy meant that it was because they genuinely wanted to grant it to him. Sky's opinion of Helia had been on such a roller coaster over last few hours but the Prince had to admit that it was impressive for anyone to gain such respect from the entire student body, let alone someone who had only been at the school for two years.

However, the strangest part of the situation took longer than Sky cared to admit to actually identify: the eerie lack of noise. That wasn't to say that the halls were silent. There were still the sounds of people running, quick exchanges of conversations and the odd clunk of machinery but it was nowhere near the same level that it had been in the past attacks. And once Sky noticed the quiet, he quickly realised something else was missing.

"Why isn't the PA system alarming?" Sky asked Helia, referring to the pre-recorded overly calm, almost-mechanical female voice that normally announced the red alert and that all students needed to move to emergency battle stations and follow Red Fountain emergency procedures.

"Because I find that thing to be annoying and distracting," Helia answered crisply, moving to one of the stairwells and climbing to the next level. Several other students were using the stairwell as well, telling Sky that they had all learnt from the last attack by the Trix not to use an elevator during an emergency. "Plus, we covered this in strategies class; if you discover an enemies plan to ambush you, you don't announce your awareness and destroy any advantage you've gained. Turn your enemies ambush against them."

"Errr . . . Yeah," Sky agreed but he didn't sound very sure. It wasn't because Helia's theory wasn't sound – that was in fact a lesson they had covered in strategy class – but rather that the Prince was still struggling to process everything that was happening.

"Also, no one in this school goes anywhere without their phone so it makes sense to utilise such a reliable and subtle means of communication," Helia said as they stepped out onto the upper level. He then suddenly turned to face Sky with his hand outstretched in front of him. "Oh, that reminds me; gimme your phone."

"Okay," Sky answered and handed his phone over without hesitation. Helia quickly unlocked the phone and was in the process of doing whatever it was he wanted to do when he noticed two familiar figures nearby the stairwell Sky and Helia had just walked out of.

"Oi Riv," Helia called, and his roommate stopped so suddenly that Timmy ran into him from behind. Electing to ignore the minor collision, the two teens joined their squad mates for a quick meeting prior to the appending attack. "You know what you're doing?"

"Course I know what I'm doing," Riven shot back, the unspoken 'duh' made obvious by his tone but Helia chose not to be offended by it. Instead, the former art student was focused on digging something small out of his pocket.

"Here," Helia said, holding out Sky's phone and the small case he had pulled out of his pocket. "Sky needs to be patched into the comms channel."

"I'll do it," Timmy offered, accepting the items before Riven had a chance to. When the technical genius opened the case, Sky saw that it contained a number of spare earpieces, a communication device that was always closely guarded by the school's Quarter Master, which was why the Prince was in awe that Helia had been walking around with a whole box of spare pieces on him. Apparently even the teachers were taking Helia's peer elected role of leader seriously. It was forcing Sky to once again rethink his opinion of his gentle friend, an opinion that was rapidly changing as the day went on.

Meanwhile, Helia appeared oblivious to Sky's turbulent thoughts and feelings. Instead, the longhaired hero was frowning as he watched Timmy rapidly linked Sky's phone up with the earpiece and his voice was heavy with disapproval when he turned to his roommate and simply said, "Really?"

"Well, whataya want me to do?" Riven shrugged, easily understanding what Helia had issue with. "Lock him in his room? You know it's piss easy to break outta there."

Helia hmmed in displeasure but it was hard to tell if it was in response to the present situation or because Riven's answer had brought up a long-standing disagreement between the pair on whether balcony hopping was considered an appropriate method to access different dorm rooms.

"I feel like I need to remind you guys that I, A) can hear you, and B) am perfectly capable of deciding whether I should be in the field or not," Timmy commented, handing Sky back his phone and the earpiece that was now synced to it.

"You sure?" Helia asked, somehow managing to sound professional and not condescending.

"Yeah. I might not be good enough at the moment to join that little brain trust Marcus and Sal have going on, but I can at least be another body on the field."

"Fine," Helia agreed, "but you're gonna stick with me so you don't end up as a body lying on the field."

"Yes mum," Timmy teased with a bland expression.

"What do I do?" Sky asked, feeling woefully unprepared. It was hard to believe that he had only returned to Red Fountain a couple of hours ago. So much had happened that it felt like this day was going on forever. Finding out about Tecna, fighting with Helia, facing the Winx Club for the first time since Diaspro's spell was broken, learning that Bloom had been sent to Pyros on her own, making amends with Helia and now being caught up in an attack that everyone but himself was ready for. High school was not meant to be this hard.

"Just stick with Riven and try not to end up in the infirmary," Helia instructed as he and Timmy started moving off down the hallway, and Sky faintly caught Timmy grumble something about how he had just come from that direction.

"C'mon Princess," Riven ordered, gently punching Sky in the arm as he started off in the opposite direction to the way his roommate had gone. Sky obediently followed him but paused and looked back when he heard someone call his name.

"Sky, I mean it," Helia, who had also stopped, said earnestly. "Be safe out there."

"I will," Sky promised, unexpectedly touched by Helia's concern. Helia's first comment about staying out of the infirmary had been an off-handed pleasantry brought about by the distraction of an imminent attack. It was the type of thing anyone would say. However, for him to pause amongst all this chaos just to reinforce the need for his friend to take care of himself; that was classic Helia. How the hell did Sky ever think that Helia was anything less than an amazingly decent human being?

The moment was of course ruined by Riven huffing before shouting sarcastically, "I'll be fine too, in case you were wondering!"

"I wish I could believe that!" Helia called back, already walking away, which made Riven laugh with wicked delight before dragging Sky off down the hallway.

---

It didn't take long for Riven to explain to Sky the main aspects of Helia's battle plan.

In many ways it greatly reflected the response that had occurred instinctively the day the Trix had stolen Red Fountains piece of the Codex; a number of students would supply air support with the spaceships and dragon cavalry while the other students provided aid from the ground and defended the school halls from attack. All in all, it was a pretty standard strategy for defending a fortress. However, Helia's plan was thought out in a way that no other attack had been. In the previous battles Sky had been involved with, it had been the easiest solution to assign tasks based on grades – freshmen go here, sophomores go there. Juniors do this, seniors do that – but Helia had taken the time to work out the individual talents of each student and allocate them according. However, positions of command were still given to seniors. Toby, with his exceptional dragon wrangling abilities, was put in command of the cavalry. After much debate, Justin was place in charge of the fleet of squad ships, partly because he actually was a good pilot but mostly because he was behaving like a nightmare until Helia relented. Least he had Dean, who was a skilled pilot that was less inclined to talk back, manning the fleet with him and Kane was placed in command of the single-person Red Wing jets. On the ground, the very personable Bourne had been placed in charge of the troops but he had designated leadership roles to lowerclassmen in areas such as the archery battalion and manning the canons. Another unique aspect to the battle plan was a designated control centre. When the Trix had attacked last year, it had been pure luck that had Timmy had been working in the systems in the school's command tower and had taken over the role of communications. This time, at Helia's request, Marcus and Sally had personally selected Red Fountain students that excelled in battle tactics and strategies to manage communication and overall movement of the battle plan. Marcus had dubbed the group Cerebro (which Riven thought was lame and just the type of thing a wanker like Marcus would think up) and other factions had followed and picked out their own code names; the squad ship fleet calling themselves Iron Fury, the red wing jets deciding on Red Lightning, the dragon cavalry had elected to go by Sky Fire and all the ground troops were dubbed Final Clash. Riven didn't even attempt to disguise the displeasure in his voice when he informed Sky of that development. Regardless of their name, the factions had the same objectives; firstly, minimise any destruction the hypnotised Cloud Tower witches might inflict on the school campus and secondly, humanely capture and contain said hypnotised witches. Everyone at Red Fountain was very disturbed by the idea that there was a whole school of teenaged girls being held at the mercy of a mad man only a short distance away from their school, so Helia and the others had devised a plan to use the inevitable attack by Cloud Tower to rectify this injustice. The heroes had researched several ways to safely capture and contain the witches in the hopes that they could potentially figure out how to break the hypnotic hold Baltor had over the girls.

Then there was one final faction that made up Helia's battle plan and it was the only section to be staffed purely by seniors. While Bourne and the rest of his ground troops manned the surface levels of the Red Fountain campus, the seniors would break off into pairs patrol the lower levels of the school in case any of the witches broke through the other lines of defence. It was predicted that these students had the highest likelihood of encountering the Trix, which is why Helia had only assigned seniors to the role. Each student needed to possess the skills to defend themselves and assist others with minimal resources and backup, and even though there were some talented fighters in the lower grades, it was a risk Helia just wasn't willing to take. And like the other factions, someone had thought up a name for them: the Shadow Stalkers.

"I actually don't mind that one," Sky admitted as he and Riven roved one of the school hallways.

"You would," Riven shot back.

"What's wrong with it?"

"Well, it's not very accurate, is it? I mean, the lights are on," Riven pointed out. A second after the words left his lips, the standard lights flickered before shutting down complete until they were replaced with the dimmer emergency lights. It took a moment for the two teenagers' eyes to adjust to the limited light but Riven could tell that Sky was smirking at him. "Shut up."

"Cerebro to Shadow Stalkers," Sally's voice came across the comms. "The school's power grid was just struck by lightning. The levitation functions have not been compromised but internal electronics are currently limited. We are sending a team to try and reboot the grid but until then elevators are out of action and we've only got emergency lighting."

"Is the air and surface support's visibility compromised?" Helia asked, pausing with Timmy in another darkened hallways elsewhere in the school.

"Negative. Air support is able to rely on their infrared sensors and Final Clash has access to flood lights and generators. It's just the lower levels of the school we can't light," Sally reported.

"And I think you're about to get company," Marcus cut in. "Our infrared screens were reading three witches moving independently to the main witch horde and they've just disappeared. It's impossible to get an accurate reading from this distance but our ion sensors have identified a disturbance commonly associated with teleportation."

"Thanks for the heads up," Helia told his peers in Cerebro before closing his microphone to say to Timmy, "Showtime."

---

Despite being the last line of defence between the Trix and Red Fountains magical artifacts, Helia was only able to assign a total of eleven heroes to the Shadow Stalkers. In addition to himself, Timmy, Sky and Riven, Helia had recruited the services of Bishop and paired him with W, and then had Jared and Dave make up another team. Then there was Lex and Rowan who were decent heroes in their own unique ways but were admittedly not quite as adept at the mental side of their schooling, so they were assigned with Pete, who grew up in the ruling family of a Princedom so was a natural at leadership and diplomacy. So, despite their small numbers, the Shadow Stalkers were made up by talented heroes-in-training and their decisions to work in teams had strengthened their capacity for success, regardless of the risk.

And it was W and Bishop who were the first to encounter the Trix within the darkened hallways of their school.

"Some of the others should be there to support you soon," Marcus informed them after Bishop had radioed in their find and location. "Stick with them and only engage if necessary."

Without a word or even a need to look at each other, Bishop and W slipped into their fighting stances. W took point, crouching low with his phantom blade claws extended. Bishop hung a short distance behind him, his blaster rifle raised to shoulder height so that he would be able to cover his friend without shooting him in the process. Living up to their faction's name, the two heroes were silent as shadows as they crept through the dark, gradually closing in on their prey until they were close enough to hear the Trix speaking to one another.

"I didn't think this school of magicless wannabe's would even have anything to interest Baltor," Stormy was saying as she and her sisters casually strolled through the school. It was as if they weren't even trying to keep themselves from being detected, which showed just how arrogant the Trix Sisters were.

"Even a dog can unintentionally dig up treasure," Icy responded in a condescending tone. Since Bishop and W were silently following the Trix from behind, the heroes were unable to see the witches faces so the boys were forced to rely on the cadence of the girls' voice to deduce their intentions. "These losers might not have magic but that enchanted sword and shield they've got hidden down here was crafted by ancient elven smiths and the spells they wove into the metal will give Baltor a substantial power boost."

"And put us another step closer to ruling the entire Magical Dimension," Stormy cackled like the evil witch that she was.

"Exactly," Icy seemed to purr with malicious delight.

"Man, I wish we could just attack this school right out," Stormy said wistfully. "After three years, it's almost like a tradition at this point. Some of my best memories in this Realm are laying waste to this school."

"Mine to," Icy agreed but her voice turned nasty when she added, "but we can't risk another screw up like what happened at Alfea. Right, Darcy?"

Darcy didn't verbally respond to the very obvious jab Icy had made at her and her silence troubled Bishop and W more than Icy and Stormy's chatter. With her dark hair and dark clothing, Darcy was the most difficult of the Trix Sister's to see in the dim lighting. The aptly named Dark Witch seemed to shift in and out the shadows and her footfall was as muted as a cat. Through the gloom, W thought he noticed her occasionally turn her head but with Darcy's long, dark blonde hair it was difficult to be certain.

The shadows were Darcy's natural element and within the darkened halls of Red Fountain she was particularly dangerous.

When the attack came, Bishop and W were taken by surprise since the two heroes thought that they had the advantage from their position trailing behind the Trix. What the boys hadn't realised, however, was that Darcy had detected their presence with her psychic abilities and then had subtly duplicated herself before teleporting her double back through the shadows so that she could now creep up on them. Therefore, Bishop was hit full force by a hex blast so powerful that it knocked him straight off his feet and face first into the ground where he then lay struggling to breathe as his diaphragm spasmed. W was fortunate enough to avoid both the hex and his friend's fall but he now found himself caught between two Darcy's, not to mention Icy and Stormy who were now very much aware of his presence.

"Did you really think you could sneak on me?" the Darcy standing behind him asked, a cruel sneer tainting her otherwise beautiful face.

"You don't frighten me, bub," W growled, his balled fists with their extended claws held out in front of him like a boxer. Under normal circumstances, W made an intimidating figure, with his dark eyes and gruff, almost animalistic features, but the Trix just laughed at his efforts.

"Aw, the little pup thinks he's tough," Stormy mocked as the Darcy standing alongside her flashed out of existence in a burst of dim, purple light. W was aware that the Darcy standing behind him pulsed briefly with an identical light so he knew that the Dark Witch had pulled all her power back into a singular form.

"Let's see if we can cool off that feisty temper," Icy suggested, bring her hand up and conjuring a ball of ice blue magic. "Ice dagger!"

A shard of razor-sharp ice launched itself from Icy's outstretched palm, but the witch's gloating had given W all the warning he needed. With a quick sidestep, the hero was able to dodge the projectile and then used his momentum to spring forward to slash at Icy with his claws. Unfortunately, Icy had a quick reaction time and sprung backwards and upwards so that she was levitating a safe distance away from W's attacks. And moving into the space the Ice Witch had vacated was Stormy, poised and ready for her own assault. Laughing wickedly, Stormy conjured up twin bolts of lightning in each hand and cast them in W's direction, only she had no intention of actually hitting him. With sadistic pleasure threw her lightning bolts close enough to singe W's skin but not enough to hit him directly, provided he reacted fast enough. Left with little choice, W frantically dodged and weaved from side to side as Stormy repeated her cruel game, the sounds of her laughter and the crack of electricity filling the dark hallway.

"Ha! Look at the rabbit run!" Stormy mocked maliciously, but her amusement was short lived. From his place on the ground, Bishop had managed to level out his breathing enough to take aim with his blaster rifle while stretched out on his stomach like a sniper. His shot caught Stormy unaware and hit her in the chest hard enough to send her flying backwards and crashing to the ground well past Icy who was still hovering up near the ceiling.

"Not so fast," Darcy warned with steely control and then sent Bishop hurdling into the wall with a cool flick of her wrist and her telekinetic powers. And then, just because she could, Darcy flicked her wrist in the opposite direction to send Bishop sliding across the floor to hit the wall on the other side of the hallway. W tried to take advantage of her temporarily distracted state, but the second Darcy's golden eyes locked onto him, the hero slammed face first into some kind of force field. Stumbling backwards, W almost lost his balance when something cold suddenly encased his feet and froze them to the floor. With a growl, W turned as much as his ice-bound feet would allow him to glare at Icy.

"Well, this has been fun," Icy announced sarcastically, lowing herself gracefully back down to the ground, "but unfortunately we've got better things to do than play with you boys."

"Oh no, I'm not done with them yet," Stormy snarled, marching back to the fight, her hands balled into fists and her air literally crackling around her.

However, Icy remained firm and focused. "Not this time. Let's get what we came here for. Then you can do what you want."

Stormy folded her arms across her chest and let out an irritated huff but she reluctantly relented. "Fine. Let's find the stupid sword."

The words had barely left Stormy's lips when she was hit by another attack that sent her flying backwards again, only this time it wasn't from Bishop's blaster rifle. It was a kinetically charged arrow fired from Pete's phantom bow, as the Solarian came up the hallway behind Darcy, flanked by the hulking form of Rowan, his huge, double-headed battle-axe gripped in both hands, and Lex, who's normally blissfully clueless face was uncharacteristically sharp and determined.

"You're not leaving, are you?" Pete asked, pulling back another arrow but not releasing it just yet. "We just made it to the party."

"Don't worry. We'll rain-check for another time," Icy promised in a threatening manner.

"I'm going to rain-check them right now!" Stormy raged, climbing back to her feet for the second time in as many minutes.

"We don't have time for this," Icy stressed to her sister, her teeth bared like some kind of aggravated animal.

"I don't care! I'm gonna make time for this!" Stormy shot back before pointing at Pete, who was still aiming at her with his bow and arrow. "You're going to pay for that!"

"You can try," a cool voice sounded from behind the Weather Witch and out of the gloom came Helia, walking with steely confidence, "but we won't make it easy for you."

Despite Helia's threat, it was the teenager standing alongside him that caught the Trix's attention and the three witches all grinned in a nasty, tooth-filled way that resembled a predator cornering its prey.

"Well, look who it is," Icy all but purred, her cold eyes glowing with a horrible fire as she gazed at Timmy. "How's single life?"

A year ago, when the Trix had been in the process of stealing Red Fountain's piece of the Codex from the Berrytoss Chamber, Timmy had been in a position to shoot Icy at point blank range but had failed to take the shot. He had been under the effects of a compliance spell that prevented him from attacking Icy but deep-down Timmy couldn't say for certain if he would have been able to take the shot if his will hadn't been compromised. It really wasn't in Timmy's nature to attack in such a direct and violent manner. That incident last year had plagued Timmy with months of self-doubt as to whether he deserved to be at Red Fountain, and it wasn't until he had proved to himself that he was worthy of the title of a specialist by constructing a battle plan with limited magic against the Trix in the Resort Realm that Timmy had managed to move past his failure in the Berrytoss Chamber. Now, however, Timmy didn't so much as blink as he brought up his bee kicker blaster and fired directly at Icy's head.

Unfortunately, Icy managed to block the blast with a quick ice shield and she seemed more amused than disturbed by Timmy's blatant attack. "Oh, touchy."

"He's never going to get a new girlfriend with an attitude like that," Darcy mocked heartlessly.

"Forget the attitude. It's his face that's the issue," Stormy laughed, her pervious anger forgotten in the wake of her wicked delight in tormenting the heartbroken Timmy.

"I really don't need any more reasons to want to take you down," Timmy informed them, his voice sounding remarkably steady given the multitude of emotions that where raging inside of him.

"And trust me, I would love to see you try, Four Eyes," Icy replied, "but, as I keep reminding everyone, we've got a job to do here."

"Well, we're not going to just let you walk away," Helia informed her sternly, his laser strings ready to be unleashed with a flick of his wrists. However, his confidence just made the Trix laugh.

"Aww, they're so adorable when they're trying to be tough," Darcy gushed patronisingly. "It's like they honestly believe they have an actual chance of stopping us."

"Kinda pathetic, really," Stormy scoffed.

"Well don't worry, boys. We'll leave you something to play with," Icy grinned maliciously and then, down the hallway behind Pete, Lex and Rowan, sounded the crack that all the heroes associated with teleportation and through the gloom they could make out three distinctly female silhouettes. "Have fun," Icy cackled and then, with another crack, she and her sisters teleported out of sight.

"Shit," Helia hissed, angry with himself for not detaining the Trix when he had the chance.

"Double shit," Lex echoed, but his voice had a horrified and somewhat resigned tone to it. Since Lex usually went through life with the blissful ignorance similar to that of a dog, it was odd to hear him speak in such a manner, so it caught the attention of his classmates. And it didn't take them long to see what had trigger such a response.

Stepping out of the gloom with cat-like quiet and grace was the frighteningly familiar figures of Calleigh, Dominique and Fawks. Part of Red Fountains battle preparation had involved interviewing the students of Alfea about the recent attack on their school, and these three witches looked nothing like the hypnotised drones that the fairies had described. The main difference was the eyes. The fairies had described the witches as having vacant, white-glazed eyes situated within slack, sleep-like faces. These three witches, however, looked very much awake and aware. Their eyes were glowing with wicked delight, which admittedly wasn't uncommon when it came to witches, but there was still something unnatural about it. Perhaps it was the slightly wooden grins that gave the girls a somewhat puppet-like appearance or the Mark of Baltor, glowing maroon red on their necks like a vampire bite, which made it clear that the witches were not acting of their own free will. These witches were completely enthralled by Baltor's power and enslaved to do his bidding. (4)

And the Red Fountain seniors had no choice but to try and stop them.

While it was horrible on a personal level to accept that they were going to fight witches that they were friends (and, in Lex's case, lovers), the heroes could see how fortunate it was that Baltor had sent these three witches in to fight them as they all had some of the more detailed dossiers on them.

"All right, Lex. Break 'em down for us," Helia instructed, even though he could have easily rattled off the same information for his classmates. However, Lex had been the biggest source of information on the senior class at Cloud Tower when Helia had been building the dossiers and right now the former art student needed his shorter peer to snap out of the emotional whirlpool he was no doubt caught up in at the reality of having to fight his girlfriend and her friends.

"Um, right," Lex nodded, shaking himself like a wet dog and re-gathering his focus. With conviction and authority not normally associated with the short hero, Lex told his fellow heroes, "Calleigh; shape shifter with contact-telepathy. Strengths: can read your mind with a touch and can shift to look like anyone. Limitations: her shifts can be visually identifiable and any powers she copies are noticeably weaker than the original source. Fawks; an alchemist with a predisposition for explosives. Strengths: literally anything she puts her hands on can be transmuted into a bomb. Limits: she needs time to work out the base components and think up the alchemic equation first. D . . . Dom; teleportation and super speed. Strengths: can move faster than we can and spell others to speed up or slow down. Limits: most of her attacks are physical based, not magical."

The dossiers Helia had created had gone into further detail and had included other aspects of the girls' skills, such as Fawks being an expert potion maker or Calleigh only capable of shifting from human-to-human (Riven had sulked a bit at that revelation since she had apparently threated him with animal attacks in the past and he felt lied to), but Lex's recount had covered the basic and hopefully assisted his classmates battle choices. Steeling their stance and their minds, the seven seniors readied themselves for a difficult fight.

"Got it all worked out then, huh?" Dominique commented, startling the heroes. It was never really discussed, but all the heroes had assumed that, with the exception of the Trix, the witches working for Baltor would have lost the capacity to speak due to the enslavement spell they were under. As if they had literally become mindless zombies. So, to hear Dominique talk with undeniable awareness of what was happening around her was shocking. Chuckling at the boys' surprise, Dominique then looked to her right and met Calleigh's gaze. The pair nodded in silent agreement and then turned their attention back to the heroes before them. As a green band of magic moved up from Calleigh's feet, Dominique gathered burgundy-red magic the palm of her left hand, which she then used to slap Fawks on the ass in a sportsman-like manner. The burgundy glow spread down Fawks legs, no doubt charging her up to move at super speed, and when Calleigh finished transforming, she was a sickly, pale duplicate of Dominique. Clearly the witches planned to use Dominique's superior speed to their advantage.

And without a word, the witches attacked.

As one Fawks and Calleigh lunged forwards. Fawks jumped and used Rowan's axe as leverage to help her climb up on his broad shoulders before springing off in a way that simultaneously kicked him in the head and lined her up to jump down onto Bishop and W. The Dominique-shifted Calleigh had gone low, dropping into a baseball slide to try and take Lex out at the shins. However, Lex was used to sparing with Dominique at full speed, so he easily jumped over her, twisting one hundred and eighty degrees in the air as he brought his short staff down on the witch slipping beneath him. Calleigh might not be as fast as the true Dominique, but she was able to use the speed witch's quick reflexes to roll out of the way and spring up to body slam Pete. Meanwhile, when the other two had lunged forwards, the real Dominique had teleported herself to the other side of the heroes and had shoulder checked Timmy hard enough to send him stumbling to his knees before moving to wrap both arms around Bishop, who had managed to sidestep Fawks. With a crack, Dominique teleported them both up to the ceiling and let gravity take care of the rest. The witch was ready for the fall and landed effortlessly on her feet before springing off to take on W, while Bishop hit the ground hard enough that it would no doubt leave bruised on his knees and forearms. Regardless, Bishop was forced to scramble awkwardly back to his feet as Fawks shot past him, easily sidestepping Helia's laser strings and Timmy's blaster shots.

Within the confined space of the hallway, the fighting was chaotic. The witches were in constant movement, only focusing on an opponent for a few seconds before moving on to another. Such an anarchic way of fighting meant the heroes struggled to find a rhythm to their attacks and their wasted energy resulted in several close calls. It was only by luck that Rowan avoided taking Pete out with his large battle-axe and Helia managed to accidently lasso Bishop, W and Lex on separate occasions. However, the heroes all knew that they had to keep fighting. No one was coming to help them and the three witches were going to keep them distracted until the Trix completed Baltor's mission.

In short, there was no easy end to this.

---

Meanwhile, in another darkened hallway in another part of the school, Sky and Riven were having a disagreement.

"Argh, you're so annoying sometimes," Riven grumbled, folding his arms across his chest and rolling his eyes, making him resemble the stereotypical sullen teenager often depicted on TV and in movies.

"Oh, I'm annoying?" Sky asked, getting genuinely angry at his friend's behaviour. All day the Prince had been under various levels of stress, so he did not have the resilience to deal with Riven and his attitude at the moment.

"Yes."

"And how am I annoying, exactly?"

"Just the fact that you asked that is annoying."

Taking a deep breath in through his nose, Sky tried to ride out the desire to hit his squadmate. There was really no point in getting in an argument like this with Riven since he would drag Sky down to his level and then beat him with experience. The best strategy would be to try and get back to the discussion that had triggered the disagreement and try to make Riven see sense from there. "Okay, we are wasting time when we could be going to go help out Helia and the others."

"Are you back on that again? I told you, we are not going looking for them so stop being pain and keep following me," Riven ordered, moving off in the opposite direction to where Sky wanted to go.

"So, we just abandon our friends?"

"They knew what they were getting into when they agreed to being a Shadow Stalker. They'll be fine," Riven waved off dismissively, but he did pause when he realised that Sky wasn't behind him.

"I am not abandoning them," Sky stated firmly, his chin raised stubbornly.

"Oh, for crying out loud," Riven muttered before turning to face Sky directly. "Sky, you're letting your loyalties and your emotions distract you from the real mission."

"Our mission is to defend Red Fountain."

"From the Trix," Riven finished. "You heard the comms. The only witches Helia and the others are facing off against right now are Calleigh, Dom and Fawks. And Jared and Dave reported in that they're watching Kristee and that junior Lucy, which means that Icy, Darcy and Stormy are slinking around in here without any eyes on them. We need to find them and work out what they're after so we can stop them. That's our mission."

Sky didn't want to admit it but Riven was right. As much as he wanted to go find Helia, Timmy and the others and help them wrangle the hypnotised witches, there was no denying that the Trix were the greater threat, both on an immediate level and in the long term since their ultimate goal was to assist the Dark Wizard Baltor in conquering the Magical Dimension. However, that didn't necessarily mean that Sky had to like it. "You know the last time we tried to single-handedly stop the Trix from stealing something from Red Fountain, you got knocked unconscious and I got put in a hundred-year sleep."

"Well, here's hoping we both learnt from that experience and don't make that mistake again," Riven deadpanned. After all, Bloom wasn't in Magix to bail them out with her healing powers this time. When Sky didn't offer any more arguments against the matter, Riven turned back around and headed off down the hallways.

And reluctantly, Sky followed but not without saying to himself, "This is not going to end well."

---

Acting on a hunch, Riven headed for the Berrytoss Chamber, the unique artifact's room located down in the lower levels of the school. It was where the Scales of Justice was kept, and it was where a piece of the Codex to the Realm of Realix used to be hidden before it was re-hidden by the Pixie Elders over the summer break. Riven informed Sky that, despite Helia's best efforts, they were unable to determine the actions of Red Fountains resident Pixie Elder, Athena, in response to an attack on the school because, as Headmaster Saladin had apparently phrased it, she wasn't on the faculty payroll and could do what she wanted. Evidently, the Pixie Elders had their own agenda and didn't necessarily have to display loyalty to the establishments that had housed them all these years.

"I didn't think Red Fountain had any magical objects powerful enough to interest Baltor," Sky said quietly as the two heroes made their way down the stairwell. Red Fountain had plenty of historically important artifacts, but the point of heroes was that they didn't rely on magic to accomplish their tasks. They might use magically advanced tools and technology to assist them but none of them seemed on par with the items Baltor had been ruthlessly collecting over the last few months.

"A lot of us thought that to but Helia's convinced we've got something of value," Riven explained. "He tried talking to Saladin about it several times, but the old man was being annoyingly cagey about the whole thing. I think the fact that Saladin point blankly refused to confirm or deny anything made Helia suspicious."

"And you think he's right?"

"The Trix are here, aren't they?"

"Good point," Sky conceded. "What do you think the Trix are after?"

"Well, Helia, Marcus and Sally have had a lot of discussions with a lot of different people, and they have concluded that it might be weapons that belonged to Heiros. Possibly his sword and shield."

"Whoa. Heiros? I thought he was a myth."

"That's because you missed out on the lecture Sal and Jared put together and presented to class supporting the idea that Heiros was a real person. They went into a lot of detail. Enobarbrus was very impressed."

"Shame that I missed it," Sky lamented, since it sounded like a genuinely interesting lesson. Something that Enobarbrus's classes usually weren't.

"Yeah, it took up a whole period. And we didn't have to take notes or nothin'," Riven said, because no matter how interesting a class may be, high school students will still always be high school students.

Heiros was a warrior that lived during the early centuries of the Magical Dimension and he is remembered throughout all the realms as being the original hero. On fact, within the Magical Dimension, the term hero had been derived from his name. Back before the invention of flying ships, the only means for inter-realm travel was by using difficult to conjure and often unreliable portals, so for someone to make that effort and take that risk for the sole purpose of fighting monsters and rescuing those in need without the expectation of payment was unheard of, so it was no surprise that the bards and storytellers of old were inspired by Heiros adventures and gladly spread tales of his exploits to the masses. According to the stories, Heiros was a human who learnt his swordsmanship and master healing skills from the elves. His ideals of selflessness, honour and chivalry would live on to be foundations of modern-day heroics. Tales of his adventures inspired countless forms of art, from paintings and sculptures to poetry and even architecture, since his grand drinking hall of Berrytoss featured regularly in quests later in his career, given that many of the stories either began or finished with some kind of celebration. Eventually he was so beloved and admired by all intelligent beings in the Magical Dimension, including the Celestial Beings and the Ancient Gods, that Heiros was gifted a longevity not privy to humans until then and a set of glowing white wings, and thus the Order of the Paladins was born. His legend would have undoubtedly been exaggerated over the centuries, to the point where his stories had drifted more into the realms of mythology than reality, and people began to question whether the great warrior had even existed at all. There was no account of his death so there was no tomb to prove the existence of anyone who might at least inspired the old legend. Even the Paladins couldn't confirm if he had ever been real. Those who believed in Heiros tended to suspect that he had been granted admission to the place where the Celestial Beings and Ancient Gods now reside, aware of the modern universe but no longer an active part of it. And whether he pure fiction or total fact, or even if he was just a man whose stories had been twisted to something far beyond anything a mere mortal could achieve, the legendary warrior borne no heirs, so it is now said that any man who embodies the traits of selflessness, honour and chivalry is deem a Son of Heiros and worthy of the title of hero.

And if Red Fountain had any of Heiros's fabled weapons in its possession, weapons that were said to be forged by the master elven blacksmiths of old, then no wonder Baltor had sent the Trix to find it.

"So hypothetically, say we do have the enchanted sword and shield that belonged to Heiros, surely we wouldn't be so stupid as to store it in the Beerytoss Chamber? A place where the Trix had already worked out how to break open the Scales of Justice and stole a piece of the Codex to the Realm of Realix?" Sky pondered aloud as he and Riven continued down the stairwell.

"I'd like to think so, but you never should assume," Riven shrugged. "Anyway, we're not trying to find the weapons. We're trying to find the Trix and they think that we are stupid enough to do that."

Sky made a wordless noise of agreement since, after three years of dealing with Icy, Darcy and Stormy, he was pretty confident that the Trix would think that about them. The two heroes had finally reached the level where the Berrytoss Chamber was situated and Riven was just about to activate the panel to open the door when he suddenly froze. With a single extended finger and a pointed look, Riven managed to silently convey to Sky to listen. Instinctively pressing his lips together tightly, Sky tiptoed over to the door and cocked his head to try and hear what had caught Riven's attention. The sound was somewhat muffled by the door, but it was still possible to make out Stormy's raspy voice.

" . . . stupid enough to hide these weapons in the same place they hid the Codex last year?"

"Stormy, they're men," Icy replied, as if that was sufficient enough of an answer, which it probably was for any girls who were listening.

"Besides, we should check in the obvious places before we start looking . . ." Darcy's voice trailed off as the three witches moved too far away to hear. It was then that the two boys silently agreed to wait for a moment before following after the Trix, but it quickly became obvious that Sky and Riven had differing opinions of how long that moment should be. Sky was anxious not to leave it too long and risk losing the witches but Riven was more concerned with remaining undetected, from Darcy in particular, and felt that there was no pressing need to sustain visual awareness of the Trix location given that they had already received verbal confirmation that they were headed to the Berrytoss Chamber. The opposing views and need for stealth resulted in a mostly silent argument that involved plenty of hand waving and over-exaggerated faces. Riven ended up ultimately winning, partly due to the fact that he could physically block Sky from opening the door but also mostly due to his annoying new habit of flicking Sky in the ear, which in turn pissed Sky off enough to distract him from his argument and delay them anyway. As annoyed as the Prince was with his friend, however, Sky had to admit that the former thief's heightened abilities in the dark helped them track their prey easily despite the distance between them.

They weren't far from the Berrytoss Chamber when Riven suddenly slowed and through the dim light Sky could see his squadmate frowning. Something had changed. With no option but to creep a little bit closer, the two heroes moved silently forward until they could just make out the witches' silhouettes and hear them talking to one another. Or rather, heard them disagreeing with one another, judging by their tone.

"Stop being difficult, Darcy," Icy snarled, her voice burning with her usual cold fury. The three witches had stopped at a junction where another hallway lead off to the opposite side of the school and the other continued on towards the Berrytoss Chamber. "You're the reason we screwed up at Alfea. I'm not going to let you do it again here. I refuse to look like a fool."

"You make yourself look foolish enough on your own, you don't need my help," Darcy replied, only her voice much more even and edging on almost sounding bored when compared with Icy's simmering anger. Despite being in two different extremes of emotions, the boys knew that the two witches were each in their own more dangerous states of mind. Icy was hostile and itching to lash out if given half an opportunity, while Darcy was composed and calculating so that she could attack with precision. Plus, there the usual chaotic force that was Stormy. Whether they face each witch individually or as a whole, nightmarish group, Sky and Riven knew that it would take all their skills to avoid ending up in serious trouble.

"You better watch yourself," Icy hissed threateningly but Darcy didn't so much as flinch.

"Oh, I will. I'm just going to do it down that way," Darcy said, and it was impossible for the heroes to determine just where she was gesturing.

"Are you kidding me? You literally just said that we should check the obvious places before we go looking for new ones," Stormy reminded her.

"Yeah, but I never said that we had to stick together. You two go check the room with the stupid, oversized scale while I go check something to it down here. I'll be, like, five minutes."

"Argh. Fine. Go," Icy relented. "Just try not to set anything on fire, this time."

Darcy didn't reply (although both Sky and Riven could easily imagine that she rolled her eyes) and then turned and disappeared like a shadow down the other hallway while Icy and Stormy continued on towards the Berrytoss Chamber. Alarmed by this turn of events, Sky looked over at Riven, expecting to see him mirroring a 'what now?' expression. However, the look Riven was wearing was one that Sky unfortunately recognised and it could essentially be translated to 'I've got an idea that very dangerous but it's what makes it fun'. Sky didn't need to hear Riven's plan to know that he was going to suggest splitting up. What an idiot. Whispering with as much force and conviction that he inflict on a single word, Sky simply said, "No."

"Oh c'mon," was Riven's only response.

"No."

"Fine. Stay here then," Riven challenged.

"Riven, don't," Sky hissed as he tried to grab his friend to physically hold him back from making an idiotic decision but Riven, being the sneaky bugger that he was, was too fast for Sky and quickly disappeared down the hallway after Darcy. Left alone in the dark, Sky paused for a moment to fully acknowledged that the three options before him – follow Riven, follow Icy or do neither and instead go back and help the others – were all equally bad, before sighing and heading off in the direction Icy and Stormy had gone. "This is not going to end well."

---

The hallway Darcy had gone down lead to a chamber where a large, yellow brass statue that was an artist's depiction of Heiros holding a sword and shield stood. It was also the same chamber where Helia had shared a quiet moment with Flora during the Trix's last attack on Red Fountain, but Riven wasn't to know that. All he knew was that this chamber had doors and hallways that lead off the various other areas of the school and he had lost sight of Darcy.

With silent, cat-like tread, Riven slinked out into the chambers open space. The brass statue stood tall and ominous looking in the dim lights and it caused Riven to instinctively crouch lower as he skirted around its base. Pausing in the shadows, Riven regarded the many routes Darcy could have taken when he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end and a shiver run down his spine. Turning swiftly, Riven tried to suppress the unconscious desire to jump when he saw that dark silhouette standing behind him, lit only by unnaturally glowing golden eyes.

"Hey, sweetie," Darcy all but purred. "Looking for me?"

"Is it that obvious?" Riven asked, forcing himself to keep his voice calm and even a little bit playful, despite the fact that he could hear his heartbeat pounding in his ears. Riven had a plan. He fully acknowledged that it was a foolish plan with many different levels of stupidity within it, but it might just be enough to distract one of the Trix long enough to disrupt the mission Baltor had sent her on. And at this stage, any victory made against the Dark Wizard was considered a win.

"Like you could hide anything from me," Darcy countered, slinking forward with all the grace and foreboding of an income storm and it took all of Riven's resolved not to give into the urge to take a step backwards.

Riven's feelings on his ex-girlfriend were understandably complicated. On one hand, Darcy had spelled him into turning on his friends, unknowingly recruited him into helping her and her sisters gain the power to summon the Army of Decay in a bid for domination over the Magical Dimension and then locking in a dungeon after breaking up with him. And since then, Darcy had made it perfectly clear that she made a particular effort to make Riven suffer, such as when she had called 'dibs' on him back in the Resort Realm when her and her sisters were planning an attack on a magic-less Winx Club and the heroes escorting them. So, by all accounts, Riven should detest and fear the witch after everything she had put him and his friends through – and, on some levels, Riven did – but there was still something about Darcy that he still found to be very . . . attractive. Riven was self-aware enough to know that he was drawn, both platonically and sexually, to people that were unapologetically self-assured in who they were as individuals. In Riven's opinion, that was what true power looked like. Prince Sky was an example of someone who was born into power but spent a lot of time worrying about how his actions might affect other opinions of him – his parents, his girlfriend, the greater public – that Riven often lost patience with him. Princess Stella was the same, with her silly preoccupation with social trends and fashion and how it influences her daily behaviour. However, Riven found that Helia didn't have such as self-conscious nature. Helia had walked right into a school full of heroes in training and them that he thought that their view of the world was flawed. Then the Pacifist signed up to that school and showed that he do everything the rest of the students did without necessarily compromising his values, since he still prioritized democracy over force and only used non-lethal weapons. Even Riven's attraction to Musa had been affected more by her behaviour than her appearance. That wasn't to say that Riven didn't his girlfriend physically attractive – he did have eyes, after all – but back when he first met her Musa had initially been rather bashful when she had interacted with him. It wasn't until she started showing true confidence around him – standing up for her friends, calling him out when he was at his worst during those days with Darcy, any time he witness her singing – that Riven started developing romantic attraction to Musa.

And there was no denying that Darcy had confidence in spades.

As she slunk towards him, Riven could feel Darcy's dark aura press into him like a physical force and when her familiar perfume reached his senses it was like a drug hitting his bloodstream. The effects left him lightheaded and caused his guts to twist uncomfortably as memories of their time as a couple returned to him. Memories that still managed to heat his blood and make him feel nauseous in equal measure. Despite knowing that he should despise her, Riven had still always felt a sick kind of connection with Darcy. She may have been the only woman Riven had had sex with since his relationship with Musa hadn't progressed to that level but Riven knew that his connection with Darcy was more than just someone that he knew he could get sexual satisfaction from. For Riven, Darcy represented the lifestyle he had known during his time on the streets. A lifestyle full of always seeking personal gains and desires, no matter how many lines you had to cross or people you had to cast aside. A lifestyle that Riven knew he'd be very successful in. Darcy was a temptation that Riven had never really been able to give up, no matter how awful she was to and for him, so when she had gone off down that corridor on her own, Riven had known he had to follow her.

"What are you playing at, Riven?" Darcy asked, cocking her head to one side like he was something adorable she wanted to study. Or eat.

"I could ask you the same thing," Riven countered, trying to match the witch's velvety, soft whisper that managed to invoke feelings of yearning and fear in equal measure. Darcy was a master at using that tone of voice. "I doubt that Red Fountain offered you a scholarship."

"I have a feeling I don't exactly meet the honour code," Darcy commented, coming to a rest dangerously close to the young hero, causing Riven to once again suppress the urge to take a step backwards. However, he couldn't stop himself from flinching when Darcy suddenly lifted her hand to boldly brush her fingers against the hair that fell in front his face. "But you didn't answer my question; why did you follow me?"

"I'd always come after you," Riven answered cryptically. It was the type of answer that could be taken as both a threat and as a sign of affection. Riven wasn't deluded enough to believe that he had any great insight into the factors that shaped Darcy's motivations and behaviour but, judging from their history as a couple and Darcy's reputation with other men, Riven suspected that the beautiful, young witch validated at least some of her self-worth through the affections of others. She was still dangerously confident, but Darcy certainly sought vindication for her desirability more than Icy or Stormy ever did. It was a small weakness, but a weakness nonetheless. And Red Fountain had taught Riven to take advantage of any weakness he found in his enemy.

"Is that so?" Darcy whispered, confusion visible in her eyes even though the rest of her face remained neutral. Holding Riven's violet gaze with her hypnotic golden one, Darcy pressed in closer so that their breaths mingled together before them. The hand that she had brushed through his hair moved again, only this time it lingered down low as she firmly placed the tips of her index and middle finger an inch below Riven's naval. The contact was uncomfortably intimate and Riven's tensed his abdominal muscles on impulse but once again he managed to stop himself from stepping away. With deliberate slowness, Darcy used the two fingers to mimic walking up the body of her ex-lover, passing over his vulnerable solar plexus and traveling up over his sternum until they reached the hollow of his throat. For a brief moment, Riven recalled how he had found himself in a similar position with Princess Diaspro not that long ago, but then Darcy moved her fingertips up to trace the edge of his jawline. Of the two, there was no contest to as which woman Riven found to be the more treacherous, and Darcy seemed to unknowingly echo his thoughts. "Seems like a dangerous path to take."

"What's life without a little bit of fun?" Riven replied with a flirty, wicked smile. This was his plan; to distract Darcy by any means necessary. Riven knew that it was a dog-act to do something like this given that he was currently dating Musa and that his friends would see it as a betrayal (again) but Riven felt that, when at war, sometimes it wasn't always possible to take the high road. That sometimes, the ends did justify the means. And if it sometimes meant that he got to given into a little temptation? A temptation that he had been trying to ignore for almost two years now? Well . . .

. . . Riven tried hard not to think about that too much.

"Are you looking for a little fun? Riv?" Darcy asked, moving her questing fingers up to gently trace them across his lips. Her closeness brought up memories from the past that Riven had never really tried to forget and for the first time in what feels like forever, he gave himself permission to give into the wicked temptation. Darcy's hand ghosted its way down his neck until it rested in the centre of his chest. All Riven needed to do was to bend down . . . Lower his head . . . That was the plan . . .

. . . except now, he really didn't want to.

It was a revelation, in a way. After two years of second guessing himself and countless nights of tempting what-if scenarios, Riven finally knew that, even when he gave himself free rein, he had no desire to actually kiss Darcy. And it had nothing to do with what Musa or his friends would want of him. As selfish and awful as it sounded, Riven had decided not to make them a factor when his plan to stall Darcy had flashed across his mind. This was a strategy that people of all genders and sexual orientation had been using for centuries to gain advantage over others and Riven didn't have the time or the desire to examine the moral implications behind it. Riven had grown up in a world where people had wielded their sexuality like a weapon so he wasn't one to shy away from it when he knew it could be used to his advantage. So, for him to not want to kiss Darcy now wasn't because of any moral objection or out of fear of how his peers might perceive him. It was because he genuinely didn't want to be that person.

After years of thinking that he still lusted after Darcy – after the lifestyle that she represented – Riven finally and unequivocally knew that he didn't want any part of it. That he was and deserved better than this. It was a startling and freeing revelation . . .

. . . but what a bitch of a time to figure it out.

Seemingly unaware of conflict and confusion threatening to overwhelm the young hero before her, Darcy raised herself up on the tips of her toes, her hand still pressed firmly over Riven's sternum to counter her balance. Arching her back, Darcy's chest pressed lightly into his as she extended her long, pale neck and tilted her chin upwards until her mouth was level with his. Up this close, her scent was intoxicating, and he could feel her hot breath on his skin, but it still wasn't enough to ensnare Riven the way it had in the past. He still had no desire to kiss her, which was why he froze and clenched his eyes shut when he felt the feather-light touch of her lips against his.

It wasn't a kiss. Not by any account. It was more like two faces hovering just within reach of one another. And when Darcy started talking, still with that velvety-soft whisper designed to lure men in, Riven could feel her lips moving to form the words.

"I know what you're doing."

Crack!

The air was forced painfully out of Riven's lungs as the hex hit him hard enough to send him flying several feet backwards. Darcy's hand had been resting directly on his chest when she had summoned the hex so Riven's wouldn't be surprised to discover that the skin there had suffered some kind of magical burn. It certainly felt like he had been burned.

As they say, that's what happens when you play with fire.

Coughing as he tried to gasp for air, Riven rolled over from where he had fallen flat on his back in an effort to try and face Darcy, but he was unable to get up off his hands and knees. Darcy stood before him, her silhouette now outlined by a wicked, purple glow and her long air shifting as if it was caught up in a breeze. From his position on the floor, the witch looked impossibly tall and powerful, and Riven knew that she would not be an easy enemy to fight. Darcy was just as comfortable in the shadows as he was, and she had the advantage of black magic. His weapons would have little effect against a talent like that but Riven had to at least try. If nothing else, it would distract the Witch long enough to stop her from seeking out any more of his classmates to hurt.

Gathering his strength, Riven climbed to his feet and withdrew his long knife and morning star. His sabre may be his preferred weapon but Riven knew he would need the advantage of distance that his morning star offered, and his long knife was could always be used in the unlikely chance he got close enough for close quarters combat. Steeling himself, Riven started to spin his morning star so that he could at least attempt to block any spell that Darcy threw his way.

Darcy snorted mockingly, as if she knew exactly what Riven was thinking. "You're really going to try and fight me? Oh, Puppy Dog. You really are a masochist."

"I'm not intimidated by you," Riven spat, subtlety shifting his weight into the balls of his feet in preparation for attack.

"Well then you're an idiot."

Instead of answering, Riven sent his morning star flying with a flick of his wrist but before it could make contact with her, Darcy was engulfed by shadow and disappeared. "Shit," Riven cursed, recalling his weapon. Unfortunately, he wasn't quite fast enough. The hex hit him from behind, knocking him forward. The blast wasn't overly strong and Riven may have been able to keep his feet but the hex triggered a wave of nausea so powerful that it made his head spin and his knees buckle. Despite his best efforts, Riven found himself back on his hands and knees like a sick animal, ready for slaughter.

"Pathetic," he heard Darcy comment from somewhere behind him. Before Riven had a chance to even turn his head, the young hero felt an invisible force seize him and send him flying to one side so that he hit the wall with a jarring thud. The impact was so powerful that Riven fell half twisted over his far shoulder and rolled back over onto his back, his weapons gripped loosely in his fingertips.

This was not going well.

Riven felt something invisible seize him around his ankle and then suddenly he was being dragged back across the floor. The feeling of vertigo was still strong, so he didn't think to get grab his knife better before it was too late, and he was already dragged out of reach. Riven still had his morning star tangled up in his hand but it was of little use unless he got his footing again and even then, it wasn't ideally used in close quarters fighting, because of course Darcy had dragged him back until he lay at her feet. The Dark Witch went so far as to place one of her stiletto shoes on his chest, digging the heel into the skin that had already been burned by her first attack.

"You're not putting much effort into this," Darcy mocked, bending over her ex so that the lighter blonde strands of hair that framed her face fell forwards to hover above his face. "It's not very chivalrous for a gentleman to make the lady do all the work."

"Well, I'm no gentleman and you sure as hell ain't no lady," Riven replied, prompting Darcy to grin wickedly as if she was proud of such a comment. As the effects of the vertigo-inducing hex passed, Riven let a flirtatious leer cover his face and added, "But far be it from me to leave you so unsatisfied."

At his words Darcy threw back her head and laughed – either from arrogance or from pleasure that the banter had taken on a sexualized tone, Riven didn't know – but it gave him the distraction he needed. Moving fast, Riven tensed his abs and raised his hips, bringing one of his legs up and across so that it wrapped around the front Darcy's upper thighs. His other leg came up to, going behind the Witch so that she was scissored between the Hero's legs. Before she could respond, Riven forced his legs and hips downwards, causing Darcy to overbalance and fall backwards. The attack was so quick that she wasn't even able to try and use her hands to brace her fall, which meant that Darcy's head hit the ground with a loud crack!

"Ah! Motherf – " Darcy started to curse but she was cut off when Riven sprung his next attack on her. Darcy's fall and the hold he had on her had given Riven the momentum he needed to push himself off the floor and he now found himself sitting on his ex's hips with one of his legs tangled under hers. His training, both from the streets and here at Red Fountain, screamed at him to push his advantage so, without being fully conscious of his actions, Riven brought down the cable of his morning star to use as a garrote wire. Unfortunately, Darcy had instincts of her own and she managed to bring up her forearms just in time, blocking Riven's attack and locking them in a stalemate. Riven pressed down as hard as he could but the cable was not designed to cut so there was no way it was going to get through something as solid as a human arm. That wasn't to say it wasn't doing any damage. Wherever the cable had rubbed had turned Darcy's bare arms red and raw, so much so that blood had started to weep in places where the skin had broken. Darcy hissed at the pain but Riven's face was close enough to hers to see that her lips were pulled into a manic kind of smile and her eyes burned with wicked delight. "Bondage, Riven? So kinky."

Suddenly, Darcy relaxed one of her arms, throwing Riven so off balance that he had to place his hand on the ground to support himself. Quick as a snake, Darcy's free hand darted up and gripped Riven's hair tightly. Before he could process what was happening, Riven felt his head being force forwards and then his lips were abruptly pressed against Darcy's hungry, lush mouth.

This was the plan . . . but also, this was very much not the plan. Was Darcy kissing him because he had seduced her in some twisted, violent, unexpected way? Or was this her plan? Distracting him so that he wouldn't notice when her attack came? Either way, Riven felt sick and this time he was at least seventy percent sure it wasn't due to a spell.

Recoiling in horror, Riven managed to break free from Darcy's hold and scrambled backwards to get away from her. His legs were still twisted up with hers and his haste made him clumsy, but he eventually managed to find his feet and put some much-needed distance between his ex and himself. Darcy remained on the ground, slowly twisting her body into a pose that Riven may have found seductive if he wasn't so blinded by disgust.

"You're messed up," Riven said, but he wasn't entirely sure who he was speaking to. Darcy might be all kinds of bad news, but he had followed her of his own volition. At the time it had seemed like a good idea but Riven could now see how twisted his reasoning was.

"Maybe," Darcy agreed, assuming that Riven's comment had been directed purely at her. However, she seemed to instinctually know what he was thinking since she chuckled as she removed the morning star Riven had abandoned from her damaged arms in an unnecessarily provocative manner before adding, "But damaged attracts damaged."

"You really think I still find you attractive?" Riven spat, hoping that his voice sounded strong enough to cover up the hollowness of his words.

"You've got eyes," Darcy said in ways of answering, the unspoken 'duh' made obvious by her delivery. "And you wouldn't have followed me if you didn't. You would have stayed with your little, blonde Princeling so he wouldn't have to face Icy and Stormy on his own. Instead, you just threw him to the wolves just for the chance of getting me alone."

'Shit,' Riven thought to himself, not wanting to give Darcy the satisfaction of knowing she was right. No, wait, that wasn't it. She already knew she was right. Darcy was so much better at these mind games than he was. Fine, Riven didn't want her to know that she had gotten to him but it was hard to keep his self-loathing to himself. Once again, he had betrayed his friends to follow after Darcy. Even though he had sworn to himself that he would never do that again. What the hell was wrong with him? Why did he keep making the same mistakes over and over again?

Although, if he thought about it, that wasn't completely accurate. This wasn't the exact same mistake Riven had made before. This time, he had walked awake and aware down this path. And even though part of his motivation had been selfish, another part of it had been made with the best of intention. Darcy had gone off her own – with the intent to trap him, Riven now knew – and would have been dangerous to let her loose in Red Fountain without some kind of monitoring. It needed to be done. And who was to say that Sky was necessarily going to confront Icy and Stormy on his own? He might just follow them, monitoring their actions from a safe distance without putting himself at risk . . .

Sky was definitely going to confront Icy and Stormy on his own.

Shit.

Clearly aware of Riven's distress, Darcy laughed as she used her magic to levitate herself up into a standing position. Despite his emotional turmoil, Riven was suddenly struck by how much the action reminded him of those old vampire movies, where the monster rose unnaturally out of its crypt. It was somehow fitting given that Darcy was probably just as dangerous and captivating a vampire. Painfully aware of the danger Darcy represented, Riven withdrew and extended his sabre in a pitiful attempt to defend himself. If Darcy were going to attack him, then physical weapons wouldn't be much use. Still, it was better than nothing and Riven felt comforted by having the phantom blade in his hand.

Darcy cocked her head to one side, watching Riven with a patronising expression. "Adorable. Pathetic, but still adorable."

"I've had enough of your games, Darcy."

"Oh, Puppy Dog, I haven't even started to play," Darcy cackled, causing Riven's stomach to drop with dread. A malicious light entered Darcy's golden eyes as she raised one of her gloved hands and posed to snap her fingers. "You really shouldn't have let me get into your head like that."

The kiss. Not only was it a way to disturb him physically and emotionally, but it was Darcy's way of shaking Riven's mental shields long enough to break through. She had only needed a second, one brief moment of weakness, and now she had Riven's mind at her mercy.

Snap!

At first, it didn't appear as though Darcy had done anything. Riven had been expecting fiery pain to erupt from his brain and burn it way down his spine so the nothingness that followed Darcy snapping her fingers was more confusing than disturbing. And then he heard it. The faint scuttling that whispered of a horrifying mass. A nightmarish sound that had haunted the students of Red Fountain, Alfea and Cloud Tower for the last two years, even though Riven was willing to bet that none of them had encounter anything like that before or since then. A clammy sweat broke out across Riven's skin and he hands started to tremble as a wave of anxiety crashed over him. His violet eyes wide with undisguisable panic, Riven scanned the many entrances to the chamber, trying to find the source of the sound but it seemed to be coming at him from all directions. Scuttling, creeping and crawling closer.

And then, all at once, it was here. Spilling out of every entrance way in a slow, horrifying way, like watching unstoppable, deadly lava gradually creep up on you. A black, wiggling mass that made Riven shiver in dread just looking upon it.

The Army of Decay. It was back.

"No. No!" Riven shouted, squeezing his eyes shut and shaking his head to try and dislodge the image of the countless, crawling rot insects that were advancing towards him. "This isn't real! You're in my head. This is an illusion!"

"You sure about that, Puppy?" Darcy purred, levitating herself a few feet off the ground so that the rot army could continue to spread across the floor.

"Yes! This is all just one of your mind games," Riven told her, his voice firm. It wasn't real. It wasn't. "You, Icy and Stormy needed all your combined magic and the Dragon Fire last time to conquer up the Army of Decay. No way you could do it now with just a snap of your fingers."

"What can I say? I've gotten better with age."

"You're still not that powerful. Even with decades of training you still wouldn't be able to match the power Bloom had as a freshman."

Darcy rolled her eyes like Riven was being particularly dense. "And what makes Bloom so powerful? The Dragon Fire. And do you know who else is made from that power?"

Baltor. Shit.

Riven shook his head, refusing to accept what Darcy was implying. "Baltor would never share that kind of power with you."

"You'd be surprised what Baltor shares with me," Darcy replied, her voice heavy in a way that suggested there was some kind of innuendo mixed in with her tone. Riven scrunched his nose in disgust as he made a guess at what she was trying to insinuate. "Still think I'm unable to summon the Army of Decay."

"Yes," Riven reaffirmed. There were no rot insects surrounding him. It was all an illusion. It wasn't real.

"You sure? Because that one looks pretty real to me," Darcy said, pointing off down one of the corridors. Riven knew he shouldn't look, he knew it was some kind of trap designed to make him fall even further into Darcy's spell, but he couldn't stop his eyes from darting to the dark doorway the Witch had pointed to. And what he saw made his stomach roll with nausea.

It was a fully formed rot monster. It was one of the land-based ones, the one with the pinchers for hands and tentacles wiggling from its mouth. It might not be as big as the large, headless ones that had the massive fists designed for smashing down buildings, but this type of rot monsters was definitely more visually repulsive. It made Riven's skin crawl just looking at it.

"It's not real," Riven repeated, more to himself than Darcy at this point. "It's not real."

The rot monster started to move forward.

It's not real. It's not. It's not. It's not.

Red Fountain taught its students many different kinds of philosophies on fighting. One philosophy stated that if you cannot move you cannot fight, if you cannot breathe you cannot fight and if you cannot see you cannot fight. Riven was able to move but the image of the crawling, rot insects surrounding him was enough to keep his feet still, even though he was certain it was just an illusion. He could breathe but it wasn't easy with the growing sense of panic that was settling hard and heavy on his chest. And Riven's eyes were wide open but he knew better than to believe what he was seeing. All in all, it was not an ideal situation to be in.

The rot monster moved forward, each step absorbing the rot insects it crushed beneath its feet. It wasn't real. It wasn't real.

Made desperate from the inability to trust his senses and the growing panic, Riven did something that even he would call foolish; he shut his eyes to it all.

With one of his senses closed off to Darcy's illusion, Riven relied on his other ones to ground his reality. Hearing didn't work since Darcy had been sure to include the nightmarish scuttling of the rot insects and the sickening slide of the rot monster's tentacles moving in its mouth but she had screwed up when it came to smell. He might not have been fully conscious of it had the time but Riven recalled the Army of Decay as having a distinct type of smell. It was a combination of damp leaf, some kind of mould and a subtle hint of carrion. It was a pungent stench and one that Riven was unlikely to ever forget so its complete absence was telling. All that Riven could smell was the familiar scent of Red Fountain, made faint due to overexposure. Its smell was a mixture of motor oil, dragon stables and the salty aroma of sweat soaked sportswear, and it was all that Riven could detect. Well, that and the lingering scent of Darcy's perfume, wafting from somewhere just out of arms reach.

Unaware of the hero's newfound level of certainty, Darcy continued to boast. "You have no idea how powerful I've become since teaming up with Baltor. The things I've learnt. The gifts he's given me. Baltor is everything you should fear, and he adores me."

Darcy's voice was getting closer. Riven could hear the sharp click of her heels and soft rustle of her clothes as she moved. Soon, Riven predicted she would be within striking distance. His sabre was still firmly gripped in his hand, but he kept the tip pointing low at the ground. If he started slashing blindly with his blade, Riven knew that Darcy would change her method of attack. Plus, he would look ridiculous doing it. Riven needed Darcy to believe she had that advantage, at least until he could be certain any attacks of his would hit its mark.

"You really don't have a chance," Darcy gloated, her voice even closer. Riven could now feel her dark aura and body heat radiating out from the darkness. Even with his eyes closed, Riven knew exactly where she was. "Baltor is unstoppable."

Acting fast, Riven lashed out with his free hand, intent on grabbing whatever part of her he could. His fingers found something and close around them tightly. Darcy recoiled and whatever Riven had grabbed resisted for a moment before breaking free. Aware that his lack of sight was now a handicap instead of help, Riven blinked his eyes open and took in the scene before him.

"Son of a bitch!" Darcy screeched, clutching at the side of her head. The illusion of the Army of Decay had vanished, unable to keep purchase in Riven's mind now that Darcy wasn't actively sustaining it. And twisted around Riven's fingertips was a sizable chunk of long, dark blonde hair.

"Argh," Riven exclaimed in disgust, shaking his hand in a desperate attempted to dislodge the hair from his fingers. It resisted for a moment but eventually floated delicately to the ground at his feet.

"You!" Darcy snarled, glaring at her ex with undisguised loathing. Unbridled rage had caused all reason and sense of control to leave her mind so that all that remained was the desire to destroy her enemies. Acting more on instinct than thought, Darcy conjured up two glowing, purple hex orbs in each hand and then threw them. First the one in her right hand and then the one in her left before summoning more and repeating the process. Right, left, right, left, right, left.

Riven deflected each attack with a precise swing of his phantom blade. The sabre sent the hexes off to either side of him, exploding with a loud crack when they hit the ground. It was like some bizarre sport; Riven trying to meet every serve Darcy threw his way, knowing that one missed would be game over. Darcy was furious beyond reason and Riven knew he needed to try and take control of the fight.

Deflecting another hex, Riven feinted to one side and then bounded forward, his sabre ready to finally make contact with flesh. However, irrational as she was, Darcy was still fast and cunning. Throwing two more hexes his way, Darcy then back flipped her way up until she was levitating herself safely out of reach of Riven's weapons. Damn these women and their ability to fly.

However, before either of them could adapt to the new manner of battling each other, something unexpected happened. Something started to make the whole Red Fountain campus start to vibrate. Riven would describe it as an earthquake, if it wasn't for the fact that the school was floating in the middle of the air. The vibrations were strong enough that Riven had to work to keep his balance and Darcy was all but ignoring him, her focus trained on something above her. And then there was a bright and sudden flash of red light that seemed to originate from a level somewhere above them. The red light faded just as quickly as it had appeared, but Riven could still sense that something had change. All the anger had gone out of Darcy and had been replaced with a cold and professional air that was, in some ways, even more dangerous. The Witch hovered in the air, her golden eyes fixed on something happening on the levels above, her face an expressionless mask. And then, she gave a single nod, as if she had been given orders and accepted them without hesitation.

"Right," Darcy said, more to herself than anyone and then looked down at Riven with a cold and focused expression. "Playtime's over. I've got work to do."

Before Riven could react, Darcy threw both hands out in front of her, and spiral burst of magic hit him head on. The blast was enough to knock Riven off his feet and send him falling against the statue of Herios that was behind him. Unable to catch himself, the back of Riven's head collided with the base of the statue, causing stars to burst across his vision and scattering his thoughts. The moment passed and Riven quickly blinked his way back into focus, but it was still too late. Darcy stood directly in front of him, like a dark nightmare.

"Good to see you, Puppy Dog," Darcy mocked without feeling, bringing her right hand up and across her body until it hovered above her left shoulder. Riven watched, dumbstruck by the fall and the sudden change in Darcy's behaviour, as shadows seemed congregate and congeal in her hand in the shape of a stake or spearhead that was black as night and looked as thick of substance as storm clouds. A paradox of heavy yet not.

Crying out from the effort, Darcy brought her shadow weapon down with a deadly precise slash.

---

Sky did not feel confident as he crept towards the Berrytoss Chamber. Icy and Stormy were in there, trying to get their hands on something to boost Baltor's power and Sky was about to face them in an effort to try and stop them. Unfortunately, Sky had no idea how he was going to do that. He knew he couldn't take on Icy or Stormy on their own, let alone the two of them together. The only person that could do that singlehandedly was Bloom and she wasn't here. She wasn't even in the Realm of Magix. Bloom was on the Island of Dragons, one of the most dangerous places in the Magical Dimension. On her own without anyone to help her if she needed it. It was entirely possible that she could be seriously hurt or even killed before Sky had the chance to . . .

'Stop it,' Sky thought fiercely to himself, clenching his teeth together in a mixture of determination and frustration. Thoughts like that didn't help and right now was certain not the time to start falling down a 'what-if' spiral. Helia, Timmy and the rest of the Shadow Stalkers had their hands full with their own groups of witches, Riven had idiotically gone after Darcy on his own and the other Red Fountain students were dealing with the remaining the Cloud Tower witches, so there was no one else left to track Icy and Stormy's movements but him. Sky needed to focus on the mission before him. He could have an emotional breakdown later.

The mission is more important than the hero.

Steeling himself, Sky quietly edged his way up to the entrance of the Berrytoss Chamber. Last year when the Trix had invaded the school, Sky had shown up here with Bloom and Tecna backing him up, so he had charged right on in without any hesitation. This year, however, the Prince was on his own, so a more covert approach was necessary. Crouching up against the wall, Sky cautiously peered around the corner, determined to assess the situation before making his presence know.

The Berrytoss Chamber was empty.

At first, Sky had thought that he and Riven had gotten it wrong. Icy and Stormy weren't coming here first. They had somewhere else in mind and by wasting time arguing with Riven, Sky had lost his chance to follow them to wherever that may be. After a moment, however, Sky remembered that couldn't be true. He had heard confirmation with his own ears that the Trix intended to check the Berrytoss Chamber before searching other places, even though anyone in their right mind would have moved important artefacts from there after the Trix had stolen the piece of the Codex last year. No, Icy and Stormy must be here. Looking again, Sky finally saw what he had missed at first glance; there was a small, robed figurine sitting in the normally empty pan of the scale and the hidden staircase at the scales base was exposed.

Icy and Stormy had already made their way past the security measures set in place by the Scales of Justice. In fact, Sky could see the top of Stormy's hair as she climbed up the stairs.

"That was a total waste of time," the Weather Witch was grumbling. Behind her, Icy was also climbing out of the hidden vault but she didn't appear to be listening. Instead, it looked as though the Ice Witch was concentrating hard about something with her frowning lips and deeply furrowed eyebrows. Stormy continued to ramble on, oblivious to her sister's lack of attention. "I told you these losers weren't stupid enough to hide something in the same place we busted into last year, even if they are men. There's nothing's there. Not even that damn pixie that tried to spell you. Nothing but a stupid, empty tome."

The two witches had made their way out of the secret vault and back into the Berrytoss Chamber. Icy moved to stand before the Scales once again and studied the items at its base. Sky couldn't see her face from where he was hiding but he knew she was still thinking about something since she brought her hand up to rest at her chin in a classic pondering pose. Stormy, of course, took no notice. She stood with her back to the Scales and her hands on her hips as she stared up at the ceiling like it might give her some kind of insight of where they should go.

"I guess we should go find Darcy. Maybe she found something useful," Stormy mused out loud. "Then I suppose we could hit up Saladin's office. Even if we don't find anything it'd be fun to trash it and – "

"Will you shut up for a minute?!" Icy finally snapped, glaring at her sister for a moment before turning her attention back to the Scales. "I'm trying to think here."

"About what? We already worked out the riddle," Stormy reminded Icy, gesturing to the robed figurine resting in the scale. "The weight of Red Fountain equal pomposity, remember?"

"Yes, Stormy, I remember that bit," Icy hissed. "It's just that the whole thing doesn't make any sense."

"What thing?"

"By gods, you're an idiot," Icy muttered under her breath before continuing to speak at normal volume. "The Scales, Stormy. This whole Scales of Justice thing does not make any sense."

Stormy paused and regarded the Scales for a moment but, even without seeing her face, Sky could tell that she didn't understand what Icy was getting at. "Err . . . In what way?"

Icy looked at the other witch in a way that clearly conveyed how disgusted she was that Stormy couldn't work this out on her own, but she answered the question anyway. "Look at this place, Stormy. Really look at it. Why is it even here? This is a huge space, and the school can't use it for anything beyond holding some stupid oversized scales with some trinkets at the bottom? That doesn't make sense. They only built this campus last year. This isn't some room that they just inherited or converted because they couldn't do anything with like with the old fortress. They purposely built this room with the intention of putting these Scales here. They could have stored weapons or squad ships or something of actual use in here but instead they chose this hunk of junk. Doesn't that strike you as odd?"

"Well, kinda," Stormy shrugged, "but we know what it was for. They built it to hide their piece of the Codex."

"And that's another thing that doesn't make sense. Who builds a safe and then leaves the key right outside it?" Icy asked, snatching the robed figurine in her hand. The Scales of Justice became uneven and the staircase to the secret vault vanished from sight. There was a moment of silence as Icy studied the Scales and Stormy stood by with nothing to say. Eventually Icy let out a hmmm and then bent over, plucked the blue feather up from the items and raised it up to study it. "Remember what Darcy said last year? About how these things always having some kind of trick?"

"Yeah, which is why she thought it would be the feather," Stormy recalled.

"Exactly," Icy said, her tone distracted as her thoughts swirled. "I think she might have been on to something."

"Whoa! Hold up!" Stormy quickly exclaimed, pointing at the warning that was inscribed at the base of the Scales. "Doesn't it say that you'll be destroyed it you pick the wrong thing?"

"Another thing that doesn't make sense. As if a school would leave something that would destroy a person if they dumped anything besides one specific item in it. They'd lose a student every other week," Icy pointed out.

'True,' Sky thought to himself, considering the self-preservation of some of his peers and unable to deny the accuracy of Icy's words. Truth be told, he hadn't really given much thought to the Scales of Justice. It has always been part of the furniture at Red Fountain, even back during the times of the old campus. The teachers had touched on it during their lesson plans on the odd occasion, but it was generally just regarded as just another relic that the School for Heroes had somehow acquired. Now that Icy had highlighted the peculiarities surrounding the Scales very placement in the school, however, Sky couldn't stop himself from also questioning it.

Why did Saladin and the school board dedicate an entire chamber to just a dangerous artefact?

Still unaware of Sky's presence, Icy continued to ponder out loud as she twirled the point on the blue feather between her fingertips. "When Baltor told us what we were looking for here, I started thinking about all the old Heiros stories we got told back when we were kids. Do you remember the one about the Labyrinth of the Obsidian Sphinx?"

"Vaguely," Stormy answered, managing to convey into one word how utterly uninterested she was.

Fortunately, Icy appeared to be in a showy mood because she ignored her sister's tone and started to explain her thinking. "In the story, Heiros and his crew go to the Sphinx's Labyrinth because somewhere amongst all the treasure there was a chalice with an antidote that was supposed to save some princess or something. Standard hero crap. Anyway, when they got to the main chambers of the Labyrinth the Sphinx said they could go in but only to 'seek their truth or meet their doom'. Of course, that turned out to a trick. Of sorts. The way the magic in the Labyrinth worked is that you had to declare your intentions going in and if you stuck to them, you'd be fine, but the second you broke them, even if it was to pick up a single coin from the hordes of treasure . . . Bam!" Icy slapped her palms together without dislodging or damaging the feather. "That's when it got you."

Stormy still seemed confused, judging by the way she cocked her head and asked, "What does that story have to do with these Scales?"

"Because by threatening to kill them, the Sphinx was forcing them to make a clear, concise judgement. Seek the truth or meet your doom. Choose wrong and be destroyed. It's the same concept, only with the Scales, what you seek influences what you choose."

"Okay, you lost me there," Stormy admitted, which Sky was thankful for. He had no idea what Icy was going on about either.

"When we came here last year, we were looking for Red Fountain's piece of a key that opened the realm that housed the Ultimate Power, so we were seeking something powerful. Something grand. Something that you could even call pompous and that's why we picked the statue, but if we came here looking for something else we might look at things differently," Icy explained, before holding the feather out in front of Stromy's nose. "Do you know what this is?"

"Um, a feather?"

Icy made a small sound of disappointment. "Try being a little more specific."

"A blue feather."

"Argh, this is why Darcy and I never included you in the planning process of any of our battle strategies," Icy said and Sky could practically hear the way she rolled her eyes. Personally, Sky was surprised to hear that the Trix actually had any battle strategies. Stormy let out a growl at the insult, electricity pulsing through her body so that Sky could see it sparked in her balled fists and frizzled throughout her hair. Icy ignored it and went on to explain, "It's a tail feather of a phoenix. A blue phoenix."

"Sounds like the stage name of a pole dancer," Stormy commented drily, clearly over Icy showing off. (5)

Icy choose to ignore the interruption but seemed to understand that her audience was losing patience, so she got to the point. "A blue phoenix feather is the symbol of the Academy of Alchemist and Potion Masters. So, I'm willing to bet that if I put this here," Icy said, boldly dropping the feather into the empty pan. Stormy took a step backwards, clearly expecting the Scales to suddenly lash out at them but the Scales simply seesawed the change in weight for a second before levelling out. A beat later, the staircase down to the hidden vault appeared again. "That will lead us to a collection of powerful potions."

"You sure?" Stormy asked, clearly not convinced. "It could still be a trick."

"Chicken," Icy hissed, moving down the stairs.

Stormy stayed where she was, and Sky could tell from the way she was twisting her hands together that she was nervous. The Weather Witch waited about thirty seconds before her nerves got the better of her and she called out, "Anything?"

A heavy silence followed and for a moment Sky had the grimly happy thought that Icy's arrogance had finally caught up with her, but then he heard the sound of heels climbing the stairs. Icy stepped out of the vault with a smug smile on her face.

"Well? What'd you find?" Stormy asked, suddenly sounding a lot more interested and excited by Icy's theory. Icy's response was to throw something small and shiny in her sister's direction. Stormy caught it easily and held it up so Sky could see in was a glass vial with a lavender coloured liquid in it.

"It's supposed to boost brain power and provide insight," Icy mocked, moving over to lift the phoenix feather out of the scale.

"Oh, ha ha," Stormy replied with a heavily sarcastic tone but she dropped the attitude when she asked, "But what does all this mean, exactly?"

"It means that all of these items are keys to specific vaults. And each vault has something important inside."

"Like Heiros's weapons," Stormy finished with an excited tone, confirming to Sky that it was the fabled weapons that the Trix were after. Maybe the sword and shield really did exist. After all, Baltor didn't seem like the kind of psychopath who would send his minions out to find something unless he was certain it was there. "It's probably in the sword one."

Sky watched as Stormy, convinced by Icy's display with the phoenix feather, bounded over, picked up the small sword from the items and dropped it in the pan. Just like before, the Scales seesawed and then levelled to allow the secret staircase was revealed. Without any hesitation, the two witches descended the stairs and vanished from sight.

Biting his lower lip between his teeth, Sky considered his options as he stared out into the empty Berrytoss Chamber. The fact was that Icy had worked out the secret behind the Scales of Justice – a secret that Sky didn't even know existed – and now she had access to all of Red Fountain's important artefacts, including the very powerful weapons of Heiros. And Sky still no closer to being able to stop then than he had been when he had first arrived at the entrance of the Berrytoss Chamber. Unless . . . Sky's eyes darted between the scale that now held the small sword and the secret staircase. If he were to remove the sword, then the Scales would become uneven and the entrance to the staircase would disappear, trapping Icy and Stormy inside the vault. Sky had enough experience with witches to know that it wouldn't be enough to trap the witches indefinitely – unless the vault had some kind of special ability to block teleportation – but it would give Sky just enough time to grab the other items (or rather, keys) at the base of the Scales at run. Without the keys, the Trix wouldn't be able to find Heiros's legendary sword and shield and give it to Baltor. It would make Sky a target, but it would be worth it.

"Let's do this," Sky said to himself quietly, readying his body to dart across the Chamber in the most efficient manner but before he could take off, something small and glowing flew up to hover directly in front of the Prince's face. Sky blinked in both surprise and at the sudden light, so it took him a moment to truly understand what he was seeing.

"Stop!" Athena, the Pixie Elder of Red Fountain, commanded him in an urgent whisper. "Don't confront them. You'll only get yourself hurt."

"But I need to stop them from – "

"No."

"But if they get – "

"No!" Athena stressed, flying over to place her little hands directly on Sky's lips to prevent him from talking. Up this close, her big, olive eyes completely fill Sky's field of vision and they were hard with determination. "They won't be able to get their hands on what they want."

Sky wanted to ask how the pixie could be so sure but his chance to talk was lost as Icy and Stormy climbed back out of the vault. It quickly became obvious that the vault opened by the sword did hold priceless weapons of historical importance but not the weapons Icy and Stormy were looking for. Annoyed but not deterred by their failure, the witches then started trying all the other keys. The crystal, the quill, the scroll, the sceptre, the technological device that was essentially an early prototype of a PHA and the pendant that resembled the students at Red Fountain wore on their uniforms today. Each key did open different vaults but each time Icy and Stormy searched them, they came back disappointed. By the time the time the witches failed to find anything in the final vault, Sky was daring to feel hopeful that he didn't have to confront the Trix and they would still walk away from this attack empty handed. Baltor wasn't going to get what he wanted. And judging by her worsening temper, Stormy was starting to notice that to.

"This has been a complete waste of time!" Stormy screeched, literally stamping her foot like a child throwing a temper tantrum. "We searched every god damn vault and come up empty! Argh! I just wanna . . ."

Snap! Bang!

Sky flinched as Stormy's lightning bolt one of the ornate pillars that lined the walls of the Berrytoss Chamber. The Weather Witch's rage may have been alarming but Icy's silence was downright unnerving. The Ice Witch once again stood in front of the Scales of Justice, deep in thought.

"C'mon Icy. Let's go find Darcy. Maybe she found something useful," Stormy suggested but Icy's ignored her. She didn't even look away from the Scales, something that Stormy quickly realised. "Are you even listening to me?"

"Hm?"

"Icy!" Stormy snapped, finally managing to break through Icy's long enough to make her look away from the Scales for a second. "Would you stop staring at that thing. There're no other secrets left for us to try and crack. We've tried everything."

"Not everything," Icy disagreed, taking a step closer to the Scales that towered before her. "It says pick the item that represents the weight of Red Fountain. But they all . . . It couldn't be that, could it?"

"What are you talking ab – Whoa! What are you doing?" Stormy exclaimed as Icy scooped up all the items at the base of the Scales of Justice – the robed figurine, the phoenix feather, the sword, the crystal, the quill, the scroll, the sceptre, the PHA prototype and the pendant – and dumped them all into the empty pan at once. Stormy took a literal jump backwards, expecting the Scales of Justice to lash out in response to such a bold move. Sky lent back as well, shocked by Icy's brash action but was even more alarmed by the way Athena reacted.

"Hmm, clever girl," the Pixie Elder commented, sounding as though she was speaking to herself and there appeared to be a note of admiration to her voice.

Sky didn't know how he expected the Scales of Justice to respond to Icy's action. A small, brutal part of him hoped it did destroy her or at least maim the Witch so severely that she would never be a threat to him and his friends again, but the logical side of him acknowledge that Icy was right in pointing out that there was no way that any school, even those teaching heroics and bravery, would leave such a dangerous item lying around its campus. Regardless, Sky still felt his eyes widen when the items Icy had placed in the scale and the rock that was in the opposite scale started to glow a fiery red colour. The items then disintegrated and scattered upwards into the air like embers swirling above a fire before disappearing into nothingness. A metallic sound filled the Chamber and the now empty Scales quivered before it too started to glow and shift like molten copper. As one, the two sides of the beam started to lower and became absorbed into the fulcrum until it became a single, glowing rod. The two circular pans had moved in an unnatural manner so that one slipped perfectly into the other to make one circular structure that sat abnormally upright on its edge at the base of the rod. The power and magic that was radiating off of the Scales was enough to violently shift the hair of both witches as well as Sky, even though he remained hidden some distance away at the entrance of the Berrytoss Chamber. Sky could even feel the magic the Scales were giving off crackle across his skin like static electricity.

And then the Scales of Justice started to sink down into itself, twisting itself until the rod and the circular dish became two distinct objects: a sword and a round shield.

The legendary weapons of Heiros.

"Whoa," Sky whispered to himself, hardly able to believe his eyes. The legendary weapons of Heiros were real. They had been hidden in the Scales of Justice this whole time. Or had they been the Scales of Justice? Sky wasn't sure. It did sound like something the ancient battle mages would do. Either way, it certainly explained why the Scales of Justice had always been house on the Red Fountain campus. The legends said that the weapons of Heiros had no equal and now Sky knew that they were real.

And that they were about to be stolen by Icy.

"No," Sky gasped breathlessly when he saw the Ice Witch move towards the dais that used to hold the Scales of Justice. Sky couldn't let that sword and shield be taken by her. He couldn't let them fall into Baltor's hands. He couldn't let that monster win again.

"Don't!" Athena tried to stop him, her little voice shrill with alarm but Sky paid her no heed. Springing into action, Sky darted forward and threw his boomerang out before him as he charged. The Prince had done a similar move last time he had challenged the Trix in the Berrytoss Chamber, only this time he didn't throw his weapon as a warning shot. This time, Sky aimed his boomerang to hit Icy directly in the back of her head.

"Ah!" Icy cried out as the boomerang hit her. Her long ponytail cushioned her skull enough to avoid breaking the skin, but the unexpected impact still sent her falling face first into the ground.

"What the . . ?" Stormy exclaimed, spinning around to see where the attack had come from. Before the Weather Witch could even process what was happening, Sky shoulder charged her, and she went crashing down onto her backside with a howl of pain.

"You!" Icy screeched, her hate and outrage seething within the single word but Sky didn't even look at her. All his focus was on the weapons of Heiros and his need to get them before the witches did. He was not going to let the Trix or Baltor use those weapons to hurt more people. Sky felt something cold just miss his feet as he ran (no doubt Icy's attempt to shackle him) but the hero was moving too fast for anyone to stop him. Without slowing his pace, Sky collided into the dais and reached out to seize the weapons within his hands.

The affects were instantaneous. A warmth spread up Sky's arms in a way that was similar to the way drinking a too hot beverage on a cold winters' days felt; borderline painful but still undeniably pleasant. The circular shield moved like mercury, so that even though Sky had grabbed it in his hand, it quickly found its place braced to his shield arm. Gripping the sword by the hilt, Sky felt a tingle spread up his arm and then throughout his body, leaving behind a strange combination of raw energy and balanced nerves. Both weapons were deceptively light and for a brief second Sky was thrown by the weight but then he felt a heaviness settle into the sword, almost as if the weapon was adjusting itself to the Prince's preference. The shield remained unnaturally light but it did give itself enough weight to at least remind Sky it was there. By now, the weapons had lost its intense glow and Sky could make out (but not understand) the inscriptions crafted by the ancient elves. However, the metal of both weapons still gently shifted like liquid copper and Sky would probably be mesmerised by it if he wasn't caught up in the middle of a fight with two very powerful witches.

Icy and Stormy had managed to find their feet and neither of them looked very happy that Sky had captured the weapons they had been sent to steal.

"All right, blondie, we can either do this the easy way, where you just hand those weapons over, or we can do this the fun way," Icy informed him, holding out her sharply manicured hand on the off chance that Sky gave up and handed over the weapons. "Which is when we take them out of your lifeless hands."

"I know which one I prefer," Stormy sneered.

"I'm not going to let you take these," Sky told the witches firmly. It was his duty as a hero to stop these weapons from falling into the hands of people like Baltor and Icy.

"Oh! Just what I was hoping he'd say," Stormy admitted with a wicked type of glee, shifting her weight in a bouncy way that reminded Sky of a boxer psyching themselves up for a fight.

"Ice dagger!" Icy hissed, throwing an attack out without any hesitation. A shard of ice as thick as her arm launched itself across the room like a missile, its tips dangerously sharp. Acting on impulse, Sky lifted the shield to block the attack and although he heard the sound of the ice hitting metal and subsequently shattering, Sky felt no impact in his arm.

"Lightning storm!" Stormy cried and purple electricity blazed its way across the Chamber. Sky braced himself, fully expecting the electricity to conduct painfully with the metal shield but, once again, he didn't feel any force collide with him.

"Whoa," Sky gasped, quickly looking down to assess if the shield had sustained any damage but find it to be just as pristine and elegantly beautiful as it had been when he had picked it up. Apart from the shattered shards of ice on the floor and the lingering scent of ozone, there was no evidence that Icy and Stormy had even attack him. "This shield is awesome."

"Indeed," Athena agree drily, coming up to hover by Sky's shoulder. The Pixie Elder did not appear pleased by this turn of events. In fact, Athena's expression seemed to indicate that she felt this situation was an unnecessary waste of time that she begrudgingly had to be involved with. As if Icy and Stormy weren't a serious threat and that Athena presence wasn't required here.

Icy seemed to share that opinion, judging by the way she rolled her eyes and groaned, "Great. Now there's pixies."

"Isn't that the same bug who tried to spell you last year?" Stormy asked her sister, pointing her finger accusingly at Athena.

"I'll have to remember to squash her for good this time."

"I'd like to see you try," Athena scoffed before turning her attention to Sky. "You didn't have to do this."

"I couldn't let them steal these," Sky protested, lifting the weapons in question.

"They wouldn't have done that."

"You don't know – "

"I do know that," Athena interrupted. "But since we're here, let's make the most of it. The shield is impregnatable and resistant to magic. It also absorbs kinetic energy, so you shouldn't feel any recoil should anything collide with it. I'm sure you've already worked that one out."

"Right," Sky laughed, a little overwhelmed by the abilities of what was traditionally a very basic, defensive weapon. His amazement was cut short, however, when Stormy aimed one of her tornados in his direction, causing Sky to duck behind the shield again. The shields' ability of deflecting the effects of magic became apparent when Sky was able to stand against the wind tunnel barrelling into him with barely any effort. In fact, the only thing the Prince needed to do was stop his blonde hair from blowing into his eyes.

"Now, the swords a little trickier," Athena continued, hovering close to Sky's ear and speaking very quickly and clearly, like she was trying to offload a lot of information as concisely as possible. "Like the shield, it's basically indestructible and absorbs kinetic energy. It was also created in conjunction with the most powerful spell in the Magical Dimension: the Spell of the Elements. That means it can summon up the elements of earth, fire, wind and water and use them as an offensive means."

"Really? Cool."

"Also, you can just the pointy bit to stab people," Athena deadpanned.

"Ha ha."

"Now, I feel that I should remind you that we're in a floating school, so maybe don't try and conjure up any earth-based attacks," Athena pointed out.

"No earthquakes. Got it. Whoa!" Sky exclaimed as a lightning bolt came dangerously close to hitting him in the face. Fortunately, the shield's enchantments rendered the magic useless, but Sky could still feel the electrical charge within the air around him. It reminded him that, although he had superior weapons, Icy and Stormy were still formidable opponents and the Prince needed to keep his guard up.

Athena seemed to agree, since she then spoke with such steely admonishment that Sky felt it like a slap to the back of the head. "And focus."

"Yes ma'am," Sky instantly replied. It was abundantly clear why this Pixie Elder had been selected to reside in Magix most militarised school; despite her diminutive physical stature, Athena had all the intimidating presence of a general.

Stormy was literally quivering with the standard chaotic energy that she usually brought into a fight, but Icy had recovered from the surprise of Sky's sudden appearance and was regarding her opponent with a cold and calculating gaze. "Those new toys aren't going to save you for long. By the time this is over, I'm gonna put you on ice the same way I did to your girlfriend when we first crossed paths with her in Magix."

"Promises, promises," Sky mocked but then he was forced to quickly bound to one side as Icy hurled an ice blast at his feet. For a few moments, Sky awkwardly danced across the floor as Icy repeated her attack in quick succession, trying to encase the hero's feet in ice to inhibit his movements. The shield was useful for blocking her attack but it's size couldn't cover Sky's entire body and every time he lowered it to protect his feet, Stormy was waiting to throw one of her lightning bolts at his head. In the end, Sky's best course of action was to use the shield against Stormy's attacks and keep moving to avoid being pinned down by Icy. Stormy almost tripped him up a few times by switching to wind-based attacks but Sky was once again able to use the magic cancelling abilities of the shield to block the worst of it. However, having such a defensive approach to a battle required a certain level of stamina and some kind of exit strategy, which Sky didn't have either and he wasn't the only one who knew it.

"You'll tire yourself out without gaining any advantage at this rate," Athena observed calmly, hovering close behind Sky's shoulder where she would be protected from the witches' attacks. "Use the sword."

"I've been trying," Sky replies through clenched teeth as he jumped away from another of Icy's attacks. The Prince had tried to get close enough to either of the witches to take a swing at them, but every time he got within reach of one, they'd levitate themselves away while the other one would press their own attack. Sky knew he was a good fighter but there was only so much he could do with a physical weapon against two magic-wielding opponents.

"Stop trying to use it as a simple sword," Athena told him, somehow knowing Sky's mindset and where he was going wrong. "Use the elemental magic."

"Oh, right," Sky flushed, feeling awkward and a little intimidated by the sudden expectation to use magic. Sky had been born into the Magic Dimension, so he had seen magic used on a daily basis for as far as his memories went back but he had never expected to be the one summoning powerful elemental magic, even if it was through a tool like the sword. It was just something completely outside of his natural skill set. It was like being expected to walk in five-inch stiletto heels; theoretically Sky could do it, but it would be awkward and clumsy as hell. "Um, how do it . . . activate? It? The sword? I mean . . ."

Athena was still close enough that Sky could faintly hear her let out a small sigh of frustration, but the Pixie Elder was a true professional and answered in a simple and concise manner, "Select element and picture it in your mind arching out of the end of the sword and hitting your opponent. Then, swing the sword. It'll do the rest."

"Okay?" Sky nodded hesitantly, still feeling massively under qualified to do this. The Prince quickly considered the four elements to work out which one would be the least catastrophic when he inevitably screwed it up. He discarded earth, just as Athena suggested, and then fire since even small flares could create a large amount of damage if the situations were right. Plus, fire painfully reminded him of Bloom and Sky just wasn't ready or able to dwell on that now. Sky was tempted to use water since it seemed like such a versatile element but then Stormy threw another wind blast his way and he decided to copy it. After all, he didn't want to accidentally flood the school and how much damage could a bit of wind really do to Red Fountain? (6)

Following Athena's instruction, Sky pictured creating a small wind gust when he slashed the sword through the air; something small to just get a feel for using magic for the first time and a maybe force Stormy to take a step or two backwards to keep her balance. That's all Sky was aiming for. As he brought his arm back in order to swing the sword foreword, the warmth in his arm flared up again, almost as if the sword was peeking up in excitement at the chance to use magic for the first time in gods know how long. Dismissing the ridiculous thought – the sword was an inanimate object for crying out loud – Sky concentrated on creating the small gust of wind and swung the sword. In the second that it took for him to complete the swing, Sky could feel the magic build and it was as controlled as he could have hoped but then, in that last little microsecond, things quickly changed. There was a sudden surge of eagerness that Sky knew did not come from him and it caused the spell to rip into the air with a loud clap of thunder. The wind blast was almost visible as it moved through the air like a shock wave, and it hit Stormy with such force that it sent her flying across the chamber and crashing into the wall.

"What the hell?!" Icy gasped, her blue eyes wide was she watched her sister drop to the floor like a dead weight.

"Holy crap!" Sky exclaimed, shocked by the viciousness of the attack.

"Ow," Stormy groaned pathetically, proving that she was still conscious but unable to immediately climb back to her feet.

"Would you try to restrain yourself a bit?" Athena scolded, causing Sky to stared open mouthed at her for a moment. Did she think he did that on purpose? However, Sky's shock only doubled when he realised that the Pixie Elder wasn't even speaking to him. She was speaking to the sword! The sword that, Sky noticed, felt smug about the fact that it had knocked the witch clear off her feet. Sky could feel that.

The Sword - for Sky now knew that the weapon had earned the capital punctuation - had some kind of awareness.

"You're gonna . . . argh. You're gonna pay for that," Stormy threatened weakly, sounding breathless and sore as she climbed back to her feet.

"Getting a little bit of magic wouldn't save you, hero," Icy added, only her voice managed to sound intimidating and menacing. Her words were then accompanied by a chilling sense of foreboding as the witch's hands started to glow with ice-blue magic. "Not when we've had a lifetime of practice. Icicle Fury!"

Icy and Stormy may have had the advantage of experience on their side but now that the Swords awareness had made the connection with Sky's consciousness, the Prince was finding it easy to conjure up and control the magic the Sword possessed. Icy's ice daggers were quickly engulfed and then melted down by a wave of water. Stormy's psycho-clone was broken apart by another power gust of wind. Sky was even able to meet all of Icy's attacks with ice blast of his own, and soon the Berrytoss Chamber was littered with chunks of ice that slide across the floor with the ever-changing wind currents. The Sword also supplied other attack options, including utilising the earth and fire elements but Sky resisted using them. Earth was still too risky and fire reminded Sky of Bloom but he had to admit that some of the Sword's suggestions were tempting, such as when the Sword showed him how to merge fire and air to make lightning.

"I can make lightning?" Sky thought out loud when the option flashed across his mind. The Prince could feel that the Sword was excited to try it as well.

"I wouldn't try it," a cool voice advised, causing Sky to jump slightly since he had temporarily forgotten that Athena was there still hovering behind him like a tiny little teacher.

"What? Why?"

"Because you haven't even tried to conjure fire yet. Get the basics down before you try condensing it into something as dangerous as electricity."

"Oh. Fair enough," Sky nodded, seeing Athena's logic but he was almost certain he could sense the Sword grumbling to itself in disappointment. It was enough to make Sky half consider letting up on his self-imposed fire ban and suddenly the Sword was gleefully supplying him with ways to conjure up fireballs and inferno waves.

Despite the strangeness of the situation, Sky had to admit that he could get used to Heiros's enchanted Sword. It was like having a battle-happy puppy that could spit flames and tornados from its mouth. Sky almost laughed out loud when the image of a tornado made of fire flashed eagerly across his mind.

Sky's amusement was short lived because the school suddenly started violently vibrating.

"I told you not to use earthquakes!" Athena hissed, alarm colouring her voice for the first time.

"It's not me!" Sky assured her, his panic rising at Athena's tone. The Prince's unease was amplified by a sudden burst of deep, red light that seemed to come from above and fill the whole chamber. The light dissipated as quickly as it had come but it still had a kind of malevolence to it that left Sky feeling shaken and the Sword seemed to bristle with open hostility.

Something truly evil was behind that light.

The only positive Sky could find in the wake of this new, unknown development was that Icy and Stormy seemed just as confused as he was. Stormy openly shrugged her shoulders and asked, "What the hell was that?"

Icy glared up at the ceiling as if it might offer her some answers and then clicked her tongue in annoyance. "Typical. The one time a psychic would be useful and Darcy's buggered off."

Sky felt Athena press her small hand urgently on his back. "Attack now," she hissed quickly and quietly in his ear. "They're distracted. Push your advantage."

Encouraged by the Swords eagerness, Sky let his mind fill with a fire attack. That disturbing red light had reminded Sky that there was a still a fight occurring outside the Berrytoss Chamber, so he needed to stop restricting himself and delaying his chance at victory. And there was no denying that fire would have a greater impact on Icy and Stormy than water and air. Plus, Sky had to admit that he had some silly desire to please the Sword that had been so disappointed that it wasn't allowed to make lightning.

Although he had been expecting it, the sudden explosion of fire from the end of the Sword still startled Sky. He could feel the heat radiating against his skin and the warm air made his lungs burn in mild discomfort. However, there was no denying then effectiveness of flames as a weapon. Stormy was forced to dive to one side to avoid the flames, landing on her stomach and wrapping her arms up over her head to protect her hair. Icy's reaction time was faster so she was able to erect a shield of ice before Sky's attack hit but a noticeable portion of it melted within seconds of being struck.

"About time we heat things up a bit, don't you think?" Sky couldn't resist mocking. Icy made a disgusted face at the pun but the Sword seemed to enjoy it, judging by the way it set itself alight. The flames were small, looking more like a gentle halo around the blade but Sky knew that it could turn into an inferno at a moment's notice.

"Funny, I was just about to suggest cooling off for a bit," Icy shot back, conjuring up a vortex of needle-sharp snow that came swirling towards Sky like a blizzard. With a slash of the Sword, a tongue of flame lashed through the snow like a whip, disrupting the flow of Icy's attack but not enough to scatter it completely. Fortunately, the shield managed to block the worst of the attack.

The next bout of fighting followed a similar pattern; one would launch an attack that the other easily countered, but not enough to gain any advantage. Fire and ice were just too equally matched. However, that didn't stop either teenager. The pair continued to move about the Chamber, throwing attacks at one another without any real success but also no desire to withdraw. Icy was not a person who would consider mercy or self-preservation and Sky watched the witch hurt too many of his friends to do the same. Plus, it was an absolute thrill for the hero to finally face the witch on a level playing field. The Chamber was a storm of fluctuating temperatures as Icy's blizzard formulated as icicles on the roof that Sky's fire melted. Stormy struggled to get to her feet as the fight raged so unpredictably and vicious around her, but she eventually did manage to hop back up, glaring at Sky with undisguised loathing and anger. Not that the Prince really noticed since most of his focus of on Icy. With a growl that was lost amongst the sounds of fire and ice colliding, an unnoticed Stormy summoned up a bolt of lightning and cast it at Sky's unprotected back.

"Sky!" Athena, who still hovered by the hero's shoulder despite the danger of battle, cried but there was no need for her alarm. Sky felt the shield drag his whole body around to meet the attack and as his body swung, the Sword let loose another whip-like tongue to fire that had Icy jumping out of the way. Sky suddenly suspected that the Shield, much like the Sword, had some kind of awareness and it was actually capable for manipulating his body in order to defend him. It was a strange concept for Sky to consider that he was pretty much just a medium for the two weapons to act out their own agenda. At least they were on his side.

"I'm starting to get over this," Icy announced with an irritable tone.

"So, let's end this," Stormy agree, a deep pink halo starting to surround her as she gathered the might of her power within her with the intention of channelling it into a single attack. On the other side of the room, Icy was doing a similar thing and Sky was unfortunately caught directly between the two. Sky was aware that the entrance to the Berrytoss Chamber was only a few steps behind him and he knew that there was a strategical advantage to leading Icy and Stormy into the school corridors where they couldn't split his focus like they were currently doing, but he still didn't even the possibility of running. Grounding his feet and readjusting his stance, Sky braced himself for the attack.

And when the attack came, it was intense in a way that no other single attack had been so far. Stormy created a stream of lightning so bright that it lit up the dim Chamber with an eye watering flare as Icy conjured up an icicle that was as big as her body and wickedly sharp. As one, the two witches cast their spells directly at the hero standing between them. Placing his trust in the weapons of Heiros, Sky stopped thinking and moved on impulse. The Shield caught Stormy's attack, but Sky could still feel the strength and dangerous electricity of the lightning press into it in a steady stream. Meanwhile, the Sword had instinctively created a wave of fire that billowed out of its point like a flamethrower to meet the column of ice that Icy had projected at him. The two elements cancelled each other out on contact – the ice melting from the heat of the flames and the fire being extinguished by the subsequent water – so Icy and the Sword were forced to continuously reinforce the magic in order to keep the attack going. Both teenagers knew that one moment of weakness would mean that the other would gain the advantage and utterly pulverise them.

As the stalemate continued second by agonising second, Sky felt sweat run uncomfortably down his body due to the heat of the flames and the strain of trying to hold off two intense attacks at once. The muscles in his arms and legs burned and each breath was hissed through clenched teeth. His vision became hazy from exhaustion, but Sky refused to let himself fold. He was the only person standing between the witches and their chance to Heiros's Sword and Shield for Baltor's evil purposes and Sky was going to give his all to make sure that didn't happen.

After what Tecna did on Tides, how could he do anything less than that?

It was then that a lot of things happened almost simulations. From behind him, Sky heard Athena let out an accusing and furious "You!" and a cold and burning hex hit him directly between his shoulder blades with enough forced to send him crashing forwards onto the ground. Without Sky there to block them, Stormy and Icy's spells flew forwards and collided with a horrific crack. Ice, lighting and some residual flames chaotically scattered throughout the Berrytoss Chamber that made Stormy yelp in surprise. From his place on the ground, Sky looked back over his shoulder to see what had hit him from behind and his stomach dropped to see Darcy standing in the doorway to the Berrytoss Chamber, haloed by a wicked purple glow. If the Dark Witch was here, then that meant that she had slipped away from Riven somehow and Sky knew that his squad mate was not an easy person to shake off once he set his sights on you. It was most likely that something bad had happened to Riven. Athena, the little fighter that she was, threw a green sphere of pixie magic at Darcy but the witch easily countered it with a spell of her own that smashed through Athena's attack before colliding with the pixie and knocking her out of the air. Darcy chuckled wickedly to herself and muttered something that sounded like "Déjà vu."

Despite the dreadful implications that Darcy's sudden appearance meant for the Prince and his unaccountable squad mate, Sky's focus swiftly turned away from her when he heard Icy gasp, "The Sword."

Whipping his head back to the front, Sky was horrified to discover that he had unintentionally let go of the Sword when he had fallen into the floor. The Shield remained attached safely to his arm, but the Sword now lay some distance away and Sky was alarmed to see that Icy was almost as close to it as he was. Plus, she had the advantage of being on her feet while he was still sprawled on his stomach.

"No!" Sky cried, scrambling onto his hands and knees in order to scurry across the floor and get his hands on the Sword before Icy did but the Witch was already moving. To Sky's horror, it was clear that Icy was going to beat him to the Sword by a second at the most, but he didn't let the reality of defeat way him down. Even if he didn't get the Sword, Sky could at least grab Icy and prevent her from using its magic against him.

"Yes!" Icy cheered, dropping down hard on her knees and wrapping her pale fingers around the hilt of the Sword. A beat later, Sky slapped his hand on top of hers. And then, there was an unexpected flash of bright, golden light that momentarily blinded everyone in the room. Blinking rapidly to clear their vision, it took both Sky and Icy to realise what had happened and when they did, Icy once again gasped, "The Sword!"

"It's gone!" Sky exclaimed, staring down where the Sword used to be. Icy's hand was still trapped under his but there was nothing between her hand and the floor of the Berrytoss Chamber. The Witch instinctively reefed her hand out from under Sky's, but the hero could see obvious confusion within her pale blue eyes.

"Where did it go?!" Stormy shouted, moving over to see for herself that the Sword of Heiros had indeed disappeared. Darcy followed her but she looked confused about the situation in general given that she had arrived so late to the fight.

Sky quickly looked down at his shield arm and noticed that, "The Shield's gone to!"

"What did you do to them?!" Icy screeched, her anger and confusion making her look uncharacteristically mantic.

"Nothing!" Sky yelled back, just as alarmed by the sudden turn of events as she was, although for vastly different reasons. How could he just lose the weapons of the most famous historical figure Red Fountain and heroes all throughout the Magical Dimension had?

"What is going on?" Darcy asked, sounding somewhat bored. However, before Sky, Icy or Stormy could lash out at her for her underreaction to such a serious situation, a new sound caught their attention; the sound of some one laughing.

"Athena?" Sky questioned when he saw the source of the laughter. The Pixie Elder of Red Fountain was unable to fly after the spell Darcy had hit her with, but she had managed to climb back on her little feet and was watching the Trix confusion with gleeful delight.

"What did you do, pixie?" Icy demanded, rising to her feet and glaring at the pixie, her hands clenched into fists at her side.

"I didn't do anything," Athena shot back. "That was all you, witch!"

"What?" Sky, Icy and Stormy all said at once.

"Did you really think you could just come in here and take Heiros's weapons? Like it would be that easy?" Athena mocked. "Those weapons were made by the ancient elven swordsmiths and blessed by the Celestial Beings. They have magical properties that you couldn't even begin to understand, and they can only be wielded by a true Son of Heiros."

"What?!" Icy and Stormy repeated, looking furious at the news that they had spent all that time thinking of how to hack the Scales of Justice in order to find weapons that they could have never put their hands on.

"Are you kidding me?" Darcy asked, her disgust obvious as she finally started to understand that their whole venture to Red Fountain had been pointless from the begin.

"Whoa," Sky said softly, the honour that Athena's words unveiled settling onto him. A Son of Heiros was a title of legendary proportions, even more so than Crowned Prince of Eraklyon, and Sky found himself feeling a little lightheaded at the realisation. He knew that it didn't mean he was literally a descendant of Heiros but it was confirmation that he was, at his core, a worthy student of the values and lessons of Magical Dimension's very first hero. It was a very humbling discovery.

"If your abominable master had bothered to listen to any of the old stories, he might have saved you three the effort of coming all the way over here," Athena continued to gloat.

"Argh!" Icy screamed, her anger and disappointment causing her to lash out in a way that was more expected of Stormy than her. With a blast of icy-blue light, the Ice Witch encased the Pixie Elder of Red Fountain in a pixie-sized column of ice.

"Athena!" Sky cried, scrambling to his feet so that he could run to her aid. However, he had only made one step when he felt something cold wrap around his feet and anchor him to the floor. Icy had finally managed to pin him down.

"Oh no, I'm not done with you," Icy growled, her eyes still possessing that manic light.

"Let's just go," Darcy suggested, sounded completely fed up with this whole endeavour.

"Yeah," Stormy agree. "There's nothing else of value here for Baltor anyway."

"In a minute. I told this loser I was going to him on ice the same way I did to his girlfriend, and that's what I'm going to do," Icy stated, holding her hand out in front of her and conjuring up her magic. "Ice Coffin!"

Unable to move, Sky watched in horror as the spell hit him and then there was nothing but an all-encompassing cold.

---

As he was slammed once again into the wall after being body-checked by the speeding blur that he knew was Dominique, Helia had the sinking realisation that he finally understood the true meaning of the term 'battle fatigue'. Since enrolling in the School for Heroics and Bravery, the longest battle Helia had been involved with was the final stand the Winx Club and the rest of his squad had against Lord Darkar in Shadow Haunt and that had mostly consisted of travel time. The actual fighting had only taken an hour at most. Helia knew that the fight he was currently engaged with against the spelled witches of Cloud Tower had probably only been going for about half the time of the stand in Shadow Haunt, but it was draining him in a way that he had never experienced before.

Once again, Helia was incredibly grateful he had missed out on the near weeklong campaign against the Army of Decay.

Helia suspected that the exhausting nature of the fight against the spelled witches might be due to the close quarters of the school corridor and the versatile way the three witches fought. With her super speed, Dominique relied on physical combat in the form of running directly into her opponents to knock them off balance. In the early stages of the fight, Dominique had utilised her teleportation abilities but after accidentally translocating an unsuspecting hero into Fawks on two occasions and then teleporting herself directly into Calleigh's path (who then expressed her displeasure with a particularly wicked sounding hex) the athletic witch opted to rely solely on her speed. Fawks was an alchemist skilled in pyrotechnics, which meant her attacks were more magical based. With the mere touch of her hand, Fawks could determine the molecular structure of an object and then rearrange or even change those molecules to fit her needs, which was usually to make them explode. Fawks was one of the witches whose powers had most concerned Helia when he was constructing a battle plan, but it turned out that the complexity of her skill set was a hinderance in a fight. More a science than just straight up magic, alchemy requires runes and symbols to transmute substances into more complex chemical structures and the heroes found that they were able to disrupt Fawks before she completed the conversion of a material to a pyrotechnic attack. However, that didn't mean she wasn't a threat; Fawks's alchemic ability had ravaged the metal walls and floors of the hallway, leaving holes and warped surfaces that made dangerous obstacles while fighting. Fawks had also managed to ignite the capes of both Pete and Rowan's uniforms and Bishop had a oozing cut on his scalp where she had collected him with the long spear she had transmuted from the materials in the floor and was gleefully swinging around despite the risk she gave to her fellow witches. Only Dominique's fast reflects had saved herself from being hit by her friend and Calleigh had taken to avoiding the area entirely.

However, despite the physical and magical threats that Dominique and Fawks presented, it was Calliegh and her psychological attacks that were proving to be the most disruptive. The borrowed attacks she used in her shape-shifted forms might not be as potent as the original source, but the mere unexpected present of friends or family was enough to make most of the heroes pause. And that was the position Helia found himself in when he knocked Calleigh to the ground and was then frozen in place by a pair of undeniably emerald green eyes instead of the witch's usual inconsistent hazel.

"Helia," the young woman whimpered, her familiar voice wobbling in a helplessly vulnerable manner.

"Flora," Helia breathed, even though he knew it wasn't her.

"Help me," the imposter pleaded, her eyes shiny with fake tears.

Helia knew it wasn't the real Flora. Helia knew it was really Calleigh. He had seen her transform right before his eyes, but in that moment Helia still couldn't bring himself to attack and detain her the way he knew he should. And that brief hesitation was all Calleigh needed to gain the advantage.

"Ninja Daisies," the fake Flora smiled sweetly, casting a barrage of unnaturally sharp petals Helia's way. It was an attack that the hero could have easily counted - one swipe of his laser strings would disrupt the daisies trajectory and subsequent force of impact - but Helia still couldn't bring himself to raise his hands. Not when he was standing so close to the girl before him, and one slight miscalculation might slice her beautiful face.

"Helia!" a voice shouted from behind the frozen hero, and then Helia's vision was suddenly filled by a translucent golden shield that effortlessly blocked the floral attack.

"What the ...?" Helia blinked, trying to process what had just happened only to instinctively flinch when something from behind whizzed close by his face in the crowded corridor. The unidentified object collided into Calleigh - who had transformed back into her usual form & was part way through climbing back onto her feet - and her cry of surprise was surprisingly cut short as if her very breath had died before it had fully left her throat.

"Helia," the voice said again, softer this time, and Helia turned to see Timmy jogging up behind him. The younger hero wore an expression that was reprimanding yet still sympathetic as he said, "Keep your head in the game."

"Right," Helia nodded, looking away in embarrassment from falling for Calleigh's mind games so easily and in the process, he was finally able to make sense of the scene before him. The golden shield that had blocked the attack was actually a large rectangular screen that appeared to made of the same substance of the phantom shields the specialists used in battle, only this screen was being projected from a small disc-like device that had apparently been thrown at Helia's feet. Further in front of him, Calleigh stood with vacant eyes and a slack jawed expression, wearing a chunky, metallic bracelet on her right wrist that was emanating a hazy, violet glow. Turning back to Timmy, Helia asked with an intentionally neutral tone, "And where were you hiding these toys?"

"In the tech lab," Timmy answered, explaining where he had disappeared to. "I was working on them before . . . So, they're not completely tested but I figured they're better than nothing."

"For sure," Helia agreed, understanding what Timmy wasn't saying out loud. Looking back at the witch who was still immobilised by the glowing bracelet,

Helia hazarded a guess, "Addle shackles?"

"Similar," Timmy replied, pressing the strange looking gun he had in his hand. The golden screen retracted itself and the disc, which Helia now saw was on some kind of leash, was returned to the cradle of the strange gun. "I think it's safe. I mean, I did leave Konrad and Zeus unsupervised with it and they're fine. Well, for them."

"True," Helia grinned, but his moment of humour was shattered when Timmy suddenly shoved him out of the way a second before a crude looking spear was thrown his way.

"Watch it!" Timmy shouted, raising another strange looking gun - this one with a round barrel large enough that it looked like it could launch tennis balls - and fired it at Fawks, who had been responsible for the spear. Something thick and metallic was ejected from the gun with a low enough velocity that the human eye was able to follow it, so Helia saw the moment that Fawks tried to bat the object out of her way only for it wrap around her arm and latch itself. With a jerky and unnatural motion, Fawks came to a sudden stop and stared listlessly into the distance as the chunky bracelet on her glowed with the same violet light that the shackle on Calleigh's wrist did.

"Heads up!" someone – possibly Pete, from the sounds of it – warned from the other end of the hallway but it still wasn't enough to prevent both Helia and Timmy from being body slammed by Dominique with such force that it sent then flying backwards and crashing to the ground. The two specialists were knocked senseless from the blow, but Timmy's battle reflexes were sharp enough that he was able to roll out of the way when Dominique tried to slam a hex down on his face.

Clearly, the spelled witch was able to identify Timmy as her greatest threat and was now focusing all her attention on taking him out. Fortunately, with Calleigh and Fawks subdued, the rest of the Shadow Stalkers were able to come to Timmy's defence. With a loud battle cry, Rowan took a wide swing with his axe and it was only Dominique's quick reflexes that that prevented her from taking a direct hit to the ribs. Dropping down, the witch rolled under the swing of the axe before effortlessly getting to her feet so that she turned Pete's attack against him by using his spear as a foothold to launch herself into the air and fall feet first at W. Crossing his phantom claws in front of him, W managed to shield himself from Dominique's feet, but her weight was still enough to send him crashing backwards to the ground. There was a loud crack and Dominique suddenly teleported herself back to her focused attack on Timmy, who was still splayed on the ground. The witch conjured an ominous violet spell in the palm of her hand, intending to slow Timmy's mind and body so that he was no longer a threat to her. However, her plans were thwarted by Helia, who made a running tackle into Dominique and sandwiching her between him and the wall. With another crack, Dominique vanished and then reappear a short distance away, ready to make another run at taking Timmy out, only now Timmy was wating for her. The technologically gifted hero was kneeling on one knee, his disc-launching gun held before him with the setting adjusted. As Dominque started for him, Timmy fired the experimental weapon, and the disc was launched directly in the witch's path. Dominque clearly believed that no barrier would be a match for her at full speed and that arrogance was the reason she ran head on into the golden screen that was generated by the disc. The screen was strong enough to not only stand up to the witch's power, but it managed to send her sprawling backwards and Dominque would have hit the ground if she hadn't falling back against another identical golden screen. Blinking in confusion, Dominque found herself completely encased in transparent golden prism about the size of a phonebooth that even projected itself under her feet. A firm shoulder charge confirmed that she couldn't break her way out of the cage and the heroes watched the witch clench her fists as she tried and failed to teleport herself out. Finally, overcome with frustration and rage, Dominque slammed her fists against the wall before her and let loose a feral sounding scream of fury that was faintly muffled by the barrier.

"What is that thing made of?" Pete panted, watching as the witch continued to rage in her golden prison.

"The same barrier properties they use in the stables when they need to contain dragons," Timmy answered, slowly climbing to his feet. "Mixed in with some magical coding that blocks spells like teleportation."

"And you couldn't have pulled those toys out earlier?" Bishop teased, dabbing at the blood that was still oozing from his head.

"I got it as soon as I could."

"And you did well," Helia said, before turning to the other seniors in the hall. "You all did. That was not an easy fight, for a number of reasons."

Despite their victory, none of the specialist looked pleased with the result of the fight. Rowan and W had a hand on Calliegh and Fawks, respectively, since both witches were still so addled that they looked as though they would fall over at any minute, and Lex was observing Dominque was a sombre expressing as she continued to spit and rage like a caged animal. After such a chaotic battle in such close quarters, the sudden silence of victory didn't bring any form of pleasure to the heroes-in-training.

"C'mon. Let's get these girls contained somewhere safe and then make sure Dave and Jared are doing all right," Pete suggested. "Timmy, can we move this cage Dominque's in?"

"Um, yeah," Timmy answered, awkwardly adjusting his glasses. "At least, in theory it does. I wasn't able to do all the testing that I – "

"Whoa!" Rowan yelped a second before he collided roughly into to wall after being violently shoved away by an unseen force. There was a flare of acidic green light and Calleigh was its source, standing alert and aware with two glowing balls of magic in the palms of her hands. Hands, which looked like they belonged to a person of a different ethnicity to the rest of Calleigh's body. The balls of magic seemed to have some liquid component to them and when it dripped down the floor hissed and steamed like acid was eating down into it. Also, by Calleigh's feet where her addle shackles that had been corroded clean through by the Witch's borrowed magic.

"All right, boys. Hold it right there," Calleigh ordered, her visible eye flicking around to try and monitor all the specialists that were surrounding her.

"Don't be foolish, Calleigh," Helia tried to reason as Timmy brought up his shackle launcher again.

"Well then don't even think about firing that thing," Calleigh warned, glaring at Timmy. "These acid spheres will melt anything before it gets close to me and then I'll be forced to take on the lot of you by myself, which, I have to admit, sounds more challenging than fun."

"So, then you admit we've got you beat?" Bishop said, his buster rifle locked on the witch.

"I did not say that."

"Then what are you suggesting?" Timmy snapped, his weapon still raised.

"I suggest that you stand aside and let me take my friends and leave," Calleigh informed them in a way that sounded more like a command than a suggestion.

"Not a chance," Lex replied, his voice and face uncommonly serious.

"And you think you can stop me?" Calleigh scoffed.

"Not on my own," Lex admitted with a shrug, "but even I can see that you're massively outnumbered and I'm not the brightest crayon in the tool shed."

"Oh gods, Lex," Pete muttered under his breath while pinching the bridge of his nose.

Some of the heroes may have let themselves be distracted by Lex's poor choice of words, but Calleigh never lost her focus. "If you think I'm going to let myself be intimidated just because I'm outnumbered against a group of . . . a group of wanna . . . of wannabe . . ."

"What is happening," Timmy asked no one in particular, lowing his gun slightly as he watched Calleigh with confusion as she suddenly dropped her magic. Something had changed. Something was wrong.

Calleigh had curled her shoulders forward and was clutching the fabric of her dress around her stomach in a white-knuckled grip. Her knees were turned inwards, adding to her off-balanced look, and her breathing had suddenly turned shallow and ragged. In a matter of seconds, a visible sheen of sweat had broken out across Calleigh's brow, her green eyes were wide and unfocused, as if she was trying to understand what was happening to her, and she was unable to hold back her terrified whimpers. It was a stark change from the confident, elitist Calleigh they all knew her as.

"Don't let your guard down. It's some kind of trick," Bishop warned, his buster rifle still aimed at the witch, but everyone could hear the uncertainty in his voice.

And Helia's resolve completely crumbled when the witch managed to lock her panic-filled green eyes with his and whimper out one word that was little more than a whisper, "H-Help . . ."

"Crap," Helia cursed softly, knowing that it was still likely that this was another one of Calleigh's mind games but unwilling to stand aside on the off chance he was wrong. However, he had barely taken a step when the situation made a sudden and terrifying turn.

It all happened very quickly and started with a surging presence that somehow managed to shake the very foundation for the levitating school. The shaking was so violent that the boys struggled to maintain their balance and had to brace themselves against the walls in order to keep their feet. And then there was a band of magic light that signified that Calleigh was shape shifting, only it seemed all wrong. In all the times the heroes had seen Calleigh transform, it had always started from either the tips of her toes or hands, and from the crown of her head. However, this time it curiously started from her her core, wrapping around her like a belt and expanding outwards. And instead of her signature green colour, the magic was a malicious shade of red that grew brighter until it flooded not just the hallway, but the entire school. Finally, Calleigh threw her head back and let loose a piercing scream as the transformation ripped through her so suddenly that it almost looked like she was being torn in two.

Just as suddenly as it started, the shaking stopped, the red light faded and Calleigh's scream was cut off as the transformation became complete. Standing in the centre of the heroes was a man none of them recognised but who radiated just raw power and undeniable malevolence that it caused all the heroes to grip their weapons with renewed focus and dropped down into defensive stances. Despite how obviously evil the man was, there was something classically handsome and appealing about him. His burgundy outfit was well tailored and inspired by old world charm. His long, dark blonde hair had an underlying shade of strawberry blonde within in and it had a silky shine that made him look like he had just stepped off the pages of a magazine. His cheekbones were well defined, his jaw line was strong and beneath a set of uncommonly long eyelashes were a pair of ice blue eyes that gave a callous air to an otherwise handsome face.

This was undoubtedly the Dark Wizard, Baltor (7). Or, at least, Calleigh's copy of him. Although, Helia and some of the others got the feeling that this wasn't one of Calleigh's normal transformations.

"Ahh," the person that looked like Baltor exhaled, tilting his head from side to side like he was stretching his neck out after a tedious journey. He then regarded the young specialist surrounding him with a nonchalant, almost lazy look. "Are you the welcoming committee? I thought it was high time I visited the new campus of the esteemed school for Heroics and Bravery. Although, I must admit that my first impression finds it a tad on the gloomy side."

"You better shut your mouth, Bub, or I'll do it for you," W growled, his phantom claws held up in front of him like he was a boxer.

However, the Baltor-copy was far from intimated. In fact, he only looked mildly irritating when he muttered, "The hospitality could use some work to."

"Don't waste your breath threatening this one, W," Bishop advised, choosing to ignore the previous comment. "It's not like it's the real Baltor. It's just another of Calleigh's mind games."

"Oh, yes and no," the shapeshifter replied in a conversational tone. "Is this the body of a witch with the natural ability to transform into other people? Yes. Yes, it is. Is her mind the dominant personality at the moment? No, no it is not."

"Yeah, right," Pete spat out without thinking, refusing to accept that it was truly Baltor's consciousness speaking to them and not just Calleigh messing with them again.

Baltor looked insulted that anyone would dare question him. "I've broken out of the Omega Dimension, laid waste to entire realms and have enslaved the will of an entire school full of witch, and you will think it's beyond my my capacity to mentally project myself into the body of one measly shape-shifter? Bitch, please."

"So why are you here?" Helia asked, desperately trying to keep his utter rage at the situation under control. How dare that monster continue to violate these witches so blatantly? "I take it that this isn't a social call."

"Hmm. That one looks familiar," Baltor seemed to say to himself, tilting his head slightly as he studied Helia before seeming to dismiss the thought. "Eh, not like it matters. To be frank, little hero, I'm here to keep you distracted long enough so that my witches can do what they were sent here to do!" Baltor answered, his voice rising in volume and severity until he was shouting when he reached the end of his sentence. Oddly enough, he was directing his words at the floor, almost as if he was speaking to someone on the lower levels of the school. Perhaps the Dark Wizard had some kind of magical connection with his witches, or maybe they would just rely on Darcy's psychic abilities to get the message, but in that moment, it did make Baltor look kind of ridiculous.

However, it wasn't enough to make Helia forget the horrific nature of this situation. "This Trix might not be as formidable as they we're when they raised the Army of Decay, but they are far from hopeless, which means you just forced yourself into the mind and body of a helpless young girl simply because you can."

"Perhaps," Baltor conceded, "but then, why shouldn't I? She and the rest of her peers are my minions. I can do with them as I please."

"And what's stopping us to do as we please to you, hmm?" Rowan purposed, his battle axe posed before him. It wasn't a great threat but then again, the bulky teen wasn't known for his academic prowess.

Baltor looked somewhat pained at having to reply to such a comment, especially when the answer seemed so damn obvious. "You mean besides the fact that this isn't even my body so attacking me would therefore be a fruitless endeavour?"

"Pain is a mental construct," Rowan countered, causing his classmates to do a double take. "And I doubt even the great Dark Wizard Baltor is powerful enough to filter out every impulse in his mind."

"Holy shit," Pete murmured, genuinely impressed by how intelligent and threatening his dimwitted classmate sounded. Unfortunately, Baltor was not intimidated. In fact, he openly laughed at Rowan's words.

"Well, by all means, attack me if you want, but just know that this witch never acquired the psychic imprint she needs in order to transform into someone, and she's barely holding it together," Baltor informed them, holding up one of his hands so that he could show the specialist how badly it was trembling. Apparently Baltor was powerful enough to push Calleigh's magical capabilities beyond their normal limitations but he still couldn't stop her body's subconscious reaction to the strain. "If you attack her, I'm fairly certain her skin will rupture and she'll pop like a water balloon, but there are always casualties is war. Isn't that right, boys?"

"You're a monster," Timmy spat, his whole body shaking with rage. The villain directly responsible for Tecna's disappearance was standing right in front of him and Timmy couldn't do a damn thing to him. And this wasn't like when he had tried to stand up to Icy last year and prevent her from stealing Red Fountain's piece of the Codex. This time, Timmy knew that a part of him wanted to make Baltor pay for everything he had done this year – make him pay in the most bestial way possible – but he knew it was a pointless endeavour.

"Guilty," Baltor replied with a twisted kind of amusement. The Dark Wizard took a moment to study Timmy and seemed to take some sick pleasure in watching him, as if he knew exactly who Timmy was and the personal slight Baltor had taken against him. That possibility became more likely when Baltor continued to taunt, "Sure you don't want to use that little gun of yours to get some payback?"

"No," Timmy answered firmly. "I'm not going to stoop to your level. No matter how much you deserve it."

"And that's while I'll always have the advantage," Baltor said with smile that looked like an animal baring its teeth. "It's a shame, really. It's so much more fun when my prey puts up a bit of a fight. Unfortunately, there aren't many out there that are a worthy challenge . . . for . . ." Baltor trailed off, his attention clearly pulled elsewhere. The Dark Wizard was starting at a particular space on the floor, but it was as if he was watching something that was happening beyond it with a perplexed expression on his handsome face.

"Is . . . Is this a trick?" Bishop proposed, and Baltor made no sign that he had heard anyone speak.

"I . . . have no idea," Helia admitted, watching the Wizard closely. So far, Baltor seemed more inclined to just mess with them instead of physically attacking them, but there was no explanation behind Baltor's current behaviour. It was because of the uncertainty and the fact that they were all watching him so closely that Fall the specialists visibly jumped when Baltor made a sudden and loud response to whatever he was watching.

"Are you kidding me?!" Baltor suddenly exclaimed, throwing his hands upwards in outrage. "The one item this school has to offer that's of any interest to me and it disappears the second my witches get their hands on it? Gods, I hate quasi-sentient objects. They're always so fickle."

"I have no idea what's going on anymore," Rowan said to no one in particular.

"Okay boys, I've had enough," Baltor announced, his anger slipping away so that he now sounded frustrated and no longer willing to play with them. "I'd say 'it's been fun' but it really hasn't. It's just been a waste of time."

"And you expect us to just let you go?" Pete asked, his voice heavy with distain.

"Oh, for f . . . I'm not actually here! How many times do I have to tell you idiots that before it sinks in?" Baltor snapped, his anger flaring back up just as quickly as it had petered off. The Dark Wizard let out a heavy sigh of frustration and then seemed to think for a moment before his lips turned upwards in a devious smile that was far more unsettling than his rage or frustration was. "But you're right; it would be rude of me to just leave, so allow me to give you a parting gift. It'll be a chance for the pride of Red Fountain to show what they're really made of."

The comment, which was threatening enough when delivered with Baltor velvety growl, was made even more ominous by him laughing at the end of it. The laugh started off low and rumbling, like thunder warning of an incoming storm, and then built-in volume and with such malice that it was an undeniable 'bad guy' laugh. In future telling's of the story, the specialists would roll their eyes as they described at how cliché the whole thing was, but in the moment, it was actually pretty intimidating. Especially went the laugh abruptly cut off with a flash of red and then Calleigh stood once again in her normal form. The witch hung there for a moment, her eyes closed and a slack expression on her face, before collapsing straight down to the floor, her blonde hair spilling across her face like a shroud. At the sight of the fallen girl, a few specialists instinctively took a step forward to help her, but they were stopped by an unexpected source.

"Don't touch her!" Lex ordered, making everyone who had moved to freeze in surprise since the short specialist wasn't particularly known for his authoritarian presence.

"Why?" Helia, who had been one of the people who had stepped forward when Calleigh fell, asked.

"She's a telepath," Lex answered in the same simple way that he always spoke. "She probably doesn't need another voice in her head right now."

"Right," Helia agreed, mentally chastising himself for forgetting about Calleigh's contact telepathy. He had built those dossiers for a reason and yet, when it mattered, he had still disregarded the information they held. What a fool.

"So, I'm guessing Baltor's 'parting gift' is gonna be some new kind of witch attack," W predicted, looking around the dark hallway with a resigned expression.

"Probably," Bishop agreed, his tone equally deadpanned. "Unless Cloud Tower suddenly acquired some long-range missiles."

Bishop might have meant it as a joke, but W simply shrugged and said, "Maybe. Baltor has stolen plenty of other closely guarded objects."

"True."

Meanwhile, Pete was watching the exchange with an open look of appalled disapproval on his face at his peers' impassive attitudes towards an imminent attack. "What is wrong with you two?"

W shrugged again. "Overexposure to life threatening trauma over the last three years?"

"It's bound to leave a mark," Bishop added drily.

"So, should we split up again?" Rowan asked, ignoring the other boys' chatter. "Y'know, try and find where Baltor's next attack is coming from?"

"Oh, I'm sure it will find us easy enough on its own," Helia replied, "but in the meantime we should move these witches to where Bourne hopefully has other Cloud Tower students contained."

"Dom?" Lex's small, confused voice was noticed by those closest to him, but it quickly grabbed the attention of everyone else when he spoke again, this time louder and very much alarmed. "Dom?! Babe?! What's wrong?!"

Within her golden cage, Dominique was holding her head in her hands and sagging against one of the screens. The witch was visibly trembling, and a sheen of sweat had broken out across her body, reminding the boys of the distressed way Calleigh had looked just before Baltor had forced his likeness onto her. However, there was something savage about Dominique's reaction to whatever Baltor was putting her through when compare to Calleigh. The shapeshifter had managed to hold herself relatively contained and maintain to power of speech, even if it was only one word, but it appeared that Dominique was beyond such control. Like a caged animal, Dominique started to thrash and throw herself at the golden screens that surrounded her with frightening ferocity. Her feet, usually so sure-footed and powerful, slipped and failed multiple times during her desperate struggle, and the only thing keeping the Witch upright was her close containment. And all the while, Dominique continued to claw at her scalp as if she was trying to dig something out from under her skin and shriek like she was being burnt alive.

It was enough to break the break the professional composure of most of the young specialists.

"Dom! Dom!" Lex cried, repeatedly hitting the screen dividing him from his girlfriend in a frantic attempt to break the barrier or, at the very least, to see if she had the mental capacity to maintain eye contact with him for a second.

"We got to get her out of there!" Rowan shouted, his eyes wide and panicked.

"No!" Pete instantly objected, his voice shrill with hysteria.

"This is clearly Baltor's next attack," Helia reasoned, his legs feeling weak and his body trembling in response to such a horrific scene.

Bishop grabbed Timmy's upper arm in a tighter grip than he would have done in normal circumstances. "Can she break through that thing?"

"Unlikely," Timmy replied, his voice coming out somewhat strangled. "It's the same material we use to hold dragons and Hunter trolls."

"What about teleportation?" W asked sharply.

"No. I made sure of that."

"Dom!" Lex continued to shout, and it was then that Dominique started to glow with a deep, red light. Burgundy red was undoubtedly one of Dominique's signature magical colours – she had even dyed part of her hair to match her hexes – but there was a darker, more omnibus shade to this red and sporadically flicker like fire light. The Witch had stopped screaming at this point, standing still with her head thrown back and her eyes closed, her lips silently parting like a fish out of water. Dominque's face was flushed and still beaded with sweat, but her breathing began to level out of panicked gasps into deep, composed breaths. And then the burgundy red she had dyed into her fridge bleed unnaturally through the rest of her violet hair, dressing her in Baltor's signature colour from the top of her head down to her feet.

The corridor had turned eerily quiet now that everyone had stopped shouting, wating with bated breath for the next stage of this battle to commence. Dominque continued to glow, bathing everything in a hellish red that somehow made the corridor feel even darker than before when all they had was the dim emergency lighting.

"Dom?" Lex tried again, his voice soft and pleading as he pressed his hands against the screen dividing them, which had been transformed to a deep orange colour due to its original gold colour failing to maintain itself against Baltor's glowing, magical presence. And it was obvious that Baltor had complete control over his magically charged vessel when Dominque lowered her head and opened her eyes to show that her usual sea-grey irises had been replaced glowing red ones.

"This can't be good," Helia predicted, resigned to the fact that he was once again going to have to fight a friend who had been potently spelled by the Dark Wizard.

"You're sure that thing will hold her?" Bishop asked Timmy again.

"I sure hope so," Timmy admitted, not sounding overly confident.

Whether she had a chance or not, Dominique looked determined to break out of her confides and reek chaos on the boys before her, judging from the viciously gleeful smirk that spread across her flushed face. The smirk, when combined with her demonic glowing eyes were enough to make even Lex take a step back from her. Bracing her arms and back against the screen surrounding her, Dominque walked her feet up the remaining side of the prism until her bunched up body was holding herself horizontally off the ground. Her cage wasn't very big, but the Witch was still able to jerk her knees back and then sharply kick out with both her feet. The first kick had no effect on the barrier containing her, so Dominique took a moment to pool more of Batlor's presence into her legs until they were glowing like hot coals and then kicked out again. This time, the barrier wavery ever so slightly.

"Oh no," Timmy said simply, watching as Dominque began to repeatedly kick out at his device and with each hit the screen instability became more obvious to the point where hairline fractured began to appear.

"You said that thing is meant to be strong enough to contain a dragon, right?" Pete asked in a way that sounded anxious instead of accusatorial.

"Yeah," Timmy answered heavily, desperately trying to work out in his head if he had somehow made a mistake when scaling down the barrier for human containment instead of dragons, or if maybe the product was never designed to withstand such a concentrated hit by something as small as Dominique's feet. Timmy would welcome the possibility that he was wrong over or made an error of some kind if it prevented another possibility from being fact; that Baltor's magic had really made Dominque that strong.

"Well, this will be fun," W muttered, already accepting the worst possible scenario and extending his phantom claws out in front of him.

With another magic induced kick and a snap like a sudden surge of electricity, the barrier dissipated, and Dominique dropped to the ground. The Witch paused for a moment, crouched down on her toes like she was a sprinter at the start of a race, and gazed upon the specialists before her with a look that could only be described as predatory. The combination of her speed and heightened durability had always made Dominique a worthy physical opponent for anyone at Red Fountain (both student and facility) to face, but with Baltor's magic powering her, the Witch was now something that not even seven Red Fountain senior specialists could take on at once and expect to win. Nonetheless, Helia, Timmy and the other readied themselves in their battle stances.

It all happened a lot faster than the human eye could follow. There was a flare of red light and a sound that could only be described as a sonic boom, and then each, individual young hero was attacked in what seemed to be a single, simultaneous moment. For Helia, it felt as if he had been kicked in the back of the knees so hard he had lost his balance, punched in the stomach, had his hair on the right side of his head pulled so that more than half his hair was loose from its tie and the skin of his scalp was smarting in a way that indicated a number of strains had been pulled out and then finally body slammed into the wall with such force that it left an honest-to-gods dent in the wall. That was particularly impressive given that, like almost every other surface of Red Fountain, the wall in this corridor was made out of solid metal. The whole combination left Helia laying listless on the floor, awash with pain and shock at the suddenness and sheer ferocity of the attack. At the same time, Timmy felt as though he had both his wrists twisted painfully far back, his face slapped so hard it literally snapped his glasses in two, he was tackled around the middle and sent crashing down onto his back, all before some stood with their full weight on his left thigh. Both boys also felt as though they had both received various other scratches and bruises all over their bodies during Dominque's attack. And on the floor with them were Pete, Bishop, W, Rowan and Lex, all of whom had taken a physical pounding that had left them bruised and battered to the point where any movement, no matter how small, made them moan or hiss in pain.

Standing above them, still unnaturally red but otherwise unaffected by the melee that had just occurred, was Dominique. The Witch was silent as she slowly moved through the small space, taking the time to individually observe the specialists she had left sprawled on the ground, all the while shaking her head as if disappointed by how easily they had fallen. Maybe it was because Baltor's power surge had robbed her of the ability to speak or maybe it was simply because she had nothing to say, but the lack of gloating or jeers made Dominque seem more like a menacing predator as she slowly made her way towards the outer edges of the narrow battlefield.

"No," Helia gasped weakly, struggling to sit up. If he let Dominque leave now, it wouldn't take her long to rip apart the lowerclassmen on the upper levels that made up Final Clash and the other factions. As dangerous as it was, Helia needed to keep Baltor's super charged vessel down here and focused on the Shadow Stalkers so that the other factions had more time to capture and detain the spelled witches attacking outside. Helia was willing to endure more pain if it meant ending the suffering of others. Unfortunately, just the effort of sitting up until he was slouched awkwardly against the wall was enough to leave Helia sweaty and breathless, so he knew he sounded pathetically weak when he said, "Whe . . . Where do you think your g-going?"

Through the gloom of the poorly lit corridor and the haze of pain clouding his vision, Helia could see that Dominque had heard him. Her glowing red eyes were impossible to miss, and they were fixed directly on him.

"Seriously?" someone (possibly Bishop) groaned, sounding like all they wanted was to be left alone so they could slip into a peaceful state of unconsciousness.

Luckily, Timmy seemed to understand what his squad mate was trying to do. Groaning through clenched teeth, Timmy managed to roll himself onto his side and, after a few attempts, prop his elbow underneath him so he could also face Dominque. With his broken glasses, Timmy didn't have a chance in hell of properly seeing his enemy at such a distance and with such dim lighting, but he still blindly looked in her direction and said, "Yeah. We're not . . . done with you . . . yet."

"I'm done," Rowan muttered, his voice distorted by the fact that he was laying on his stomach with one of his cheeks pressed in the floor.

"No. We're not done," Pete repeated firmly, cradling his one of his arms up to his chest as he managing to sit up against the wall like Helia. "We're . . . students from Red Fountain. As long as we're breathing, we don't give up."

"That's right," W agreed. He had managed to get his knees underneath him but was still unable to push himself up off his elbows to sit up properly. However, the gruff teenager still glowered at Dominque like he was ready for another bout against her.

"Yeah babe," Lex panted from the other end of the corridor from his girlfriend. The short specialist had managed to pull himself onto his hands and knees and with a lot of groaning and cursing, was somehow able to climb to the feet with all the grace and noises of a man eighty years his senior. Puffing with exertion and barely looking steady enough to withstand a strong breeze, Lex flicked his short staff out to its full length in an undisputable challenge.

"Careful Lex," Helia warned, genuinely worried for his classmate. While it was necessary to keep Dominque focused on them, it was another thing entirely to openly welcome an attack when all the other specialists couldn't even sit up on their own. Lex was not known for his mental prowess, but this was foolish, even by his standards.

However, Lex either didn't hear his classmate's advice or simply choose to ignore it. After taking a few deep, steadying breaths, Lex steeled himself with determination and posed himself like a baseball player ready to take a swing with a bat. Staring his girlfriend down like she was the pitcher who was about to try to strike him out, Lex challenged, "Come at me, babe."

"No," Bishop gasped as he and the other seniors tried to pull themselves up to help only to realise that they were still too weak and sore.

Meanwhile, Dominque's attention was fully focused on Lex as she took a moment to study him. She even coked her head to one side as Lex took a few practice swings to loosen up his shoulder muscles. It was hard to tell with the dim, red tinged lighting, but it was almost as if the Witch was amused by his antics. There even seemed to be a small smile tugging at the corners of her lips. And that small smile turned into an animalistic, toothy grin as Dominque accepted the challenge and dropped into a runner's starting position.

It was over faster than anyone could follow.

Like before, there was a flash of light and a boom of sound that was accompanied by a sharp crack like lightning. By all accounts, it had looked as though Dominque had been going to charge Lex head on, but now she was standing directly behind him. Such a sudden and unforeseen change of attack may have been devastating to anyone else, but everyone had forgotten that Lex had been dating Dominque for nearly two years now and he had been constantly subjected to her physical and magical attacks in that time. Lex knew how she fought on a subconscious level and not even Baltor's mind control could completely override. And that was why he was ready for her when Dominque teleported herself behind him instead of charging him head on. No one saw when he had shifted his weight and changed his grip on his staff, but Lex had managed to do it fast enough to catch Dominque directly across her diaphragm and solar plexus, driving the wind out of her and most likely cracking a few ribs in the process. Unprepared for the attack, Dominque crumpled over the staff in a way that left her vulnerable to the next stage of Lex's attack. Pulling his staff out from under his girlfriend, Lex brought his weapon up and around to bring it down across her shoulder blades with enough force to send Dominque crashing face first into the floor. With her diaphragm in spasm, the Witch was unable to draw breath, so she stayed pathetically on the ground as blood mixed with saliva trickled from her mouth and her eyes were glassy with pain from the hit to the nerve bundle in her solar plexus. That may have been enough to keep her down, but Red Fountain taught its students to follow an attack through to certain victory and while Lex might not be the best student in his grade, he was still a Red Fountain Senior. Twisting a special function on his staff, Lex activated the electrical component to his weapon and brought it down between Dominque's shoulder blades like a taser. The effect was instantaneous. Dominque's whole body spasmed, her head shooting up and her back arching in a subconscious effort to pull away from the electrical current coursing through her. The blood on her chin and her glowing red eyes made the whole scene look even more horrific than it already was and many of boys felt physically ill as they watched their friend brutely attack his girlfriend. Lex and Dominque's relationship might seem dysfunctional when compare with conventual couples, but they did care about each other in their own strange way.

The attack finished as suddenly as it had started. Lex jerked his electrically charged short staff away from Dominque and let it fall from numb fingers to the floor as he stumbled back to the nearby wall, which he then slid down as if his legs no longer had the ability to hold him. With the electricity no longer forcing her muscles to contract, Dominque slumped back down onto the floor and her eyes rolled back in her head as her body finally gave into unconsciousness. Almost instantaneously, the red glow began to fade like that of a dying ember and the unnatural red of her hair began to convert back to violet. The Witch suddenly looked dark and cold, and the only movement her body made was small fluttering of her ribs as she pulled in sharp, small breaths.

The sudden stillness and silence was heavy that when it was broken it startled everyone conscious enough to see it. Evidently, at some point during her super-speed attack on the Shadow Stalkers, Dominique had taken the time to remove the addle shackle from around Fawks wrist. It had taken Alchemic Witch a minute to fully shake off the addling effects but now she was aware and had one objective; flee and take her broken classmates with her.

Running forward, Fawks grabbed a still inconsolable Calleigh by the wrist and dragged her across the floor towards Dominque, ignoring the Shape Shifters cries of anguish at being touched. Once she was within arm's reach of Dominque, Fawks let go of Calleigh and dropped to her knees. The Alchemist clapped her hands together and then placed her hands on the floor in front of her. With a sudden flare, an alchemic circle surrounded the three witches. Before anyone could stop them, a boom sounded and a cloud of thick smoke that smelt like gun powder fill the corridor. The cloud lingered for a minute, but as it thinned the specialists could see that where the circle had been there was now a hole that had eaten down to the level below and that all three witches were gone.

Across the comms, Cerebro reported that the rest of the Cloud Tower Witches were retreating.

---

"We weren't able to save a single witch?" Helia repeated, shocked by the report Bourne was giving him. After confirming that Dominque, Calleigh and Fawks were no longer in the vicinity, Helia and the rest of the Shadow Stalkers had returned to the upper levels of Red Fountain to check in with the other factions. Helia and Timmy had found Bourne easily as they strode across the grass on the outermost level of the school, the clear nights sky above them appearing hauntingly empty compare to how it must have looked just a few moments ago. Patches of grass and parts of building were still smouldering after being hit with hexes, the air was tainted with the smell of singed ions from dark magic and a number of trees had either been spelled into odd shapes or blow up entirely. And yet there was not a single witch left on the campus to confirm that they were ever here.

"We had about thirty in containment," Bourne reported, looking tired and battle ragged but he still held himself tall as any good hero would. "They got a bit more difficult to manage after that weird red light, but my troops still managed to hold them. Then, all of a sudden," he snapped his fingers, "they were gone. Just teleported their way out of here. Dunno how. I thought witches couldn't teleport onto campus unless they know the magical encryption and I figured it would be the same for getting out."

"Marcus has a theory on that," Helia replied since he had asked the intellectual student that same question over the comms a few minutes ago.

"He thinks that, while they're under Baltor's spell, the Cloud Tower witches are existing with a hive mind," Timmy said, feeling a bit uneasy since he still hadn't grabbed his backup glasses to replace the once that Dominque had broken. He was also still a bit irritated that Helia had claimed that he didn't have time to let Timmy go get them but somehow managed to fix his hair before finding the other factions.

"Hive mind?" Bourne echoed. "Like bees?"

"Yeah. Marcus thinks that as long as some witches stay outside Red Fountain's teleportation lockout barrier, they can summon the others back to them regardless of whether they're within an anti-teleportation confinement, like what you were holding the captured witches in," Timmy explained. "Usually, the very thought of admitting that Marcus has thought of something I haven't would make me sick to my stomach, but even I have to say his theory does have some merit to it."

"What a ringing endorsement," Bourne grinned. The blonde senior generally got along well with both A level students – Bourne got along with all his peers – but he still found their hostile rivalry to be rather entertaining.

"It's the best I can manage," Timmy shrugged unapologetically.

"What have you done with your faction?" Helia asked, trying to get his peers back on the situation they had just lived through. There were still a few Red Fountain students lingering in the open green space but nowhere near as many as Helia had assigned under Bourne's command.

"I sent those who were injured down to the infirmary, those who needed rest to their quarters and those who were still pinging down to the lower levels to make absolute certain that there's no more witches hiding down there," Bourne said.

"Do you think there's a chance that there are?"

"Not at all but it's better to giving students with an adrenaline buzz something to do that to leave them to their own devices."

"True," Helia nodded, scanning the empty sky. Baltor hadn't been able to find the only item in Red Fountain that he wanted – whatever it was – so there was no reason for him to leave any of his minions behind. Helia also believed that the Dark Wizard wouldn't try to destroy them just get even. For a monster like Baltor, the idea of dragging out his enemies' demise would be far too appealing to pass up, even if it might ensure his victory against Bloom later. However, such gloomy thoughts on the future were pushed from Helia's mind when he saw another of his classmates sitting on a shadowy bench a short distance away and he quickly offered his hand to Bourne to shake. "Thank you again for all your excellent work. You were undoubtedly the correct choice for command of Final Clash. Now if you'll excuse me."

"Of course," Bourne replied, moving off to check in with the remainder of his troops while Helia and Timmy made their way towards the specialist sitting alone on a bench.

"How're you going, Lex?" Helia asked, taking a seat on one side of his short classmate as Timmy sat on the other side. Lex had been too occupied staring at his hands to notice them approaching him, so he jerked his head up in surprise at their sudden presence. Even in the shadows, the blotchy red skin on his face and his watery eyes made it clear to both Helia and Timmy that their friend had been crying.

"Oh, hey guys," Lex said, ignoring the question as he scrubbed his face with the heel of his hand.

"You okay?" Timmy asked, even though he knew more than anyone that there was no way Lex could be.

"Not really, but I'll pull through," Lex sniffed.

"Yeah, I get that," Timmy empathised, looking down at his feet. How many nights ago had he sat on a bench just like this one and tried to come to terms with a reality he didn't want to accept?

"I know this probably doesn't help right now, but you did the right thing back there," Helia told Lex, putting a comforting hand on his back. "We know the type of person Dominque is. She would hate the idea of being someone's puppet. By stopping her, you were stopping Baltor's hold on her."

"For now, maybe," Lex muttered, looking off in the direction they all new Cloud Tower resided. "Baltor's still got them. He can use Dom and the others however he wants. Again and again and again."

"We'll get them out of there before that happens again," Helia swore, now feeling more determined than ever to rescue the Cloud Tower witches from Baltor's hold. "We'll think of a way."

"Sure," Lex whispered so low they only just caught it.

"We will," Timmy reinforced, gripping Lex's shoulder in a tight squeeze. "You just need to believe and not listen to all those nasty voices in your head that tell you otherwise. She's going to be all right and you're going to get her out of there."

"Really?" Lex asked hopefully while Helia's expression had shifted into a concerned frown.

"Definitely," Timmy assured him recklessly. "Then all you'll have to worry about is how she's gonna react to losing to you in a fight."

"True," Lex laughed. "Especially since she'll know I was pulling my punches."

Both Timmy and Helia blinked, not expecting a comment like that. "What?"

"Well, she's my girlfriend so I couldn't exactly bring myself to truly take her out," Lex explained in his usual submissively simple way. "If it was anyone else, I'm sure they would have gone for the obvious hit."

"Which was what exactly?" Helia tried to clarify.

"Smash her kneecaps in," Lex said with a shrug, as if the answer was obvious and not absolutely horrifying. "It would slow her down, but it would probably disable her for life, and I just couldn't do that to her."

"Right," Timmy agreed, his voice made distant by the impact of Lex's words. Given that Lex was not known for his academic prowess, it was always a bit of a shock whenever made an insightful comment. Now that Lex had pointed it out, it did seem like the best way to take out a fast-moving adversary would be to take out its legs but the thought of intentionally hitting Dominique in the knees was enough to turn Timmy's stomach. A wound like that might be able to heal with the advantages of modern and magical medicine but it would never be as good as natural, and for Lex to consider the action and its implication before rejecting in the heat of battle showed tremendous intuition.

Something Lex was not exactly known for.

Fortunately, the need for any further response was interrupted by Will, who came running across the lawn.

"Helia! Timmy!" Will panted, his eyes and face still flushed with excitement and adrenaline from the battle. As a freshling, this would have been Will's first real fight against a hostile enemy and despite the urgency of his call, his still couldn't keep the grin off his face. "We need you in the Berrytoss Chamber."

"Coming. We'll check in with you later Lex," Helia promised, standing.

"I'll be right," Lex assured them.

"Get some rest," Timmy advised.

"I will," Lex nodded but made no attempt to move from where he sat, looking out towards Cloud Tower. Without another word, Helia and Timmy followed after Will at a run.

---

Will had briefed them on the trip down to the Berrytoss Chamber, but the sight that met Timmy and Helia in that hallowed hall was still enough to make their breaths catch.

"Sky!" Timmy cried, running forward until he had both palms on the huge pillar of ice located in the centre of the room. Even with the heat of his hands, the very most outer edges of the pillar remained utterly frozen, chilling the room and clouding the boy's breaths, and motionless in the centre was Sky.

"Good gods," Helia cursed, moving at a slower pace into the Chamber, his cobalt eyes taking everything in. Sky's frozen body and the pillar of ice entombing him was clearly Icy's doing, but the empty space where the Scales of Justice was equally disturbing. Undoubtedly, the Scales were what the Trix had been sent to retrieve, but Baltor had said that what he wanted was gone so what had happened here?

"We've got to get him out," Timmy said, trying to reign his panic back in. "He'll suffocate soon."

"What?" Will blinked, the reality of the situation finally overriding his post battle buzz.

"No, he won't," a new voice disagreed, and the students turned to see Headmaster Saladin come striding into the Chamber, followed closely by Benedict. It seemed as though the two freshmen were together when they had discovered the Prince's frozen state and had split up to find help. With a seasoned eye, Saladin studied the pillar before him. "The ice has locked Prince Sky in a type of stasis, so he does not actually need air in this state."

"So . . . he's okay?" Will asked hesitantly, not used to addressing his headmaster directly.

"In a sense. If left too long, the stasis might become irreversible, but I believe I've made it here in time. Excuse me, Timothy," Saladin gently ushered Timmy off to the side. With his other students safely out of the way, the Sorcerer was able to focus on the one trapped inside a wall of ice. Spreading his arms wide and raising his staff aloft, Saladin closed eyes and summoned all his magic to the centre of his being. "Confractus glacies. Ardeat ignis."

With a surge of magic, a warm, orange light and a wave of heat filled the Chamber. There was a loud crack like thunder as the two extremes in magical temperature collided and stream spilled out into the air with an angry sounding hiss. The heat was enough to cause everyone present to break out into an instantaneous sweat, but the icy pillar continued to hold its shape.

"Ardeat ignis!" Saladin repeated, feeding more energy into his attack until it looked as though there was a massive fireball surrounding the ice. The fire suddenly flared white hot, causing the four students watching to shield their eyes from the intensity of it, but Headmaster Saladin stood tall, unwilling to faulter against the dark magic opposing him. And then, amongst the roar of magic and the hiss of steam, there was a deep and terrible crack, like the sound of a glacier breaking apart, and Saladin knew his power had overcome Icy's. The heat was retracted so suddenly that it felt like there was a shift in gravity, but the Headmaster reflexes were still fast enough to catch his much taller student before he fell to the ground.

"Sky!" Timmy and Will shouted in unison, dashing through the lingering steam to take their friend's weight from their Headmaster. Like the floor beneath their feet, Sky was completely drenched and, even though the room was still uncomfortably humid, his lips were tinged with blue and his teeth were chattering uncontrollably.

"Best to get him to the infirmary," Headmaster Saladin advised, wiping the sweat from his brow with a handkerchief he had pulled from his pocket. "Doc will get him warmed up again."

"C'mon Sky, we'll take care of you," Timmy promised, shifting the Prince so that he had his arms draped across Will and his squadmates shoulders. However, they hadn't taken a single step when Saladin stopped them with a question.

"Timmy, where are your glasses?"

"Oh, they broke," Timmy replied, more concerned with his friend than whether he could see or not. "But it's all right. I can still see well enough to get Sky to the infirmary."

"Have you got them on you?" Saladin asked, ignoring what Timmy had just said.

"Um, yeah?"

"Well get them out. Quickly," Saladin insisted when Timmy hesitated. Unwilling to let go of Sky but also accepting that his Headmaster wasn't going to take no for an answer, Timmy awkwardly dug out the two pieces of his broken glasses and held them out to Saladin, who hovered his palm over them and said, "Oculus Reparo." (8)

"Wow," Timmy gasped, watching as the two pieces shifted back together and the hairline cracks that had appeared in the glass disappeared. With practiced ease, the senior slipped the glasses back onto his face with one hand. "Thanks Headmaster."

"My pleasure. Now, get your friend to the infirmary."

"Yes sir," Timmy nodded, as he and Will readied themselves to assist a barely conscious Sky to the infirmary. However, now that he had his glasses again, Timmy was able to see the Chamber clearly for the first time and finally noticed something. "Hey, the Scales are gone."

"Yes," Saladin sighed regretfully. "It was always a possibility but it's still sad to see it go."

"And I'm sure you're going to explain to us what exactly happened," Helia said to his grandfather, his dry tone of voice indicating that compliance was Saladin's only option. Fortunately, a voice calling from the corridor leading to the Berrytoss Chamber robbed the Headmaster the chance to argue or call his grandson out on his presumptuous and borderline disrespectful behaviour.

"Headmaster Saladin!"

"Later," Saladin promised Helia before turning to address the student that came running into the Chamber. "Kane, what's the matter?"

"It's Riven," Kane panted, his eyes looking a little wild. "He's . . . It's . . . I dunno how to explain it."

"Then show me," Saladin ordered, already striding off. It was one thing for a freshling like Will or Benedict to be all jazzed up after a battle, but it was something else entirely for a seasoned specialist like Kane to be acting so on edge. Kane was visibly rattled by whatever had happened to Riven, and that said something since the two of them did not get along. It was all enough to fill Helia's and Timmy's stomachs with dread.

"You deal with Sky," Helia told Timmy, since he couldn't let his panic over one squadmate overshadow the needs of another. "I'll deal with Riven."

"Right," Timmy instantly agreed and that was all the prompting Helia needed to take off after Kane and Headmaster Saladin.

Helia didn't fully register that Benedict was following him until the freshling spoke, "Saladin's pretty spry for an old guy."

"Hn," was all Helia grunted in response but he could see what Benedict was referring to; even though Helia had only hesitated for a moment back in the Berrytoss Chamber, Headmaster Saladin was already a far distance ahead of them, disappearing around a corner and down another corridor. Since the main lighting still hadn't been fixed, the small group followed Kane through the dimly lit corridors until he reached a junction that Helia recognised as the same chamber where he had shared a quiet moment with Flora during one of the Trix's attack on Red Fountain last year. It was also where a large, yellow brass statue of Heiros stood, and it was at the base of that statute where they found Dave, Jared and a few lowerclassmen standing around Riven, who sat slumped at the statues base. None of the specialists were making effort to even touch Riven and there was something unnatural about how he was sitting. His long legs were splayed out in front of him and his back was slouched up against the statue, but it was Riven's arms that made the situation look so strange, since they were spread out like he was on a crucifix. At first glance there didn't appear to be anything holding his arms in that position but as Helia got closer he was able to see several semi-translucent stakes driven into the flesh down his arms and into his torso. The stakes looked as thin of substance as mist, as dark as midnight shadows and were certainly not like anything Helia had even seen before. No wonder Kane had had such trouble putting them into words.

"What the hell?" Benedict muttered to himself, craning his neck to try to get a better look at the stakes as Saladin crouch down to study his student.

"Riv? Can you hear me?" Helia asked, dropping down to one side of his roommate, whose eyelashes fluttered slightly but didn't open. It also looked as though Riven was asleep; his eye remained closed, his head was hung so that his chin was on his chest and his breaths were slow and even. However, on closer inspections it was clear that Riven's breaths were too measured to be occurring naturally, his teeth were clenched in a painful grimace and a sheen of sweat was coating his body. It had all the hallmarks of a person holding themselves as still as possible since any movement was agony.

"We tried moving him, but he just started screaming like we were running him though with a red-hot poker or something," Dave reported, watching Saladin closely as the Sorcerer lend in close to Riven.

"Hmm," was Saladin's distracted response.

"What are they?" Jared said softly, and no one needed him to elaborate further to know what he was talking about. The shadowy stakes were clearly the things holding Riven in place and causing him such pain, but from what they could see, there was nothing to them. Riven's skin didn't even looked pierced, so there was no blood. All in all, it looked like Riven was an oversize pin cushion or a strange kind of voodoo doll. Things turned even more confusing when Saladin reached out to touch one of the stakes and his fingers passed straight through as if they really were made of mist. Riven hissed a pained breath in through his teeth but otherwise didn't react to Saladin's explorations.

"Hmm," Saladin repeated, only this time he didn't sound completely engrossed by the situation before him. In fact, he seemed to have made some sense of it all. "They are a very interesting piece of magic."

"How so?" Helia asked, not really in the mood for his grandfather cryptic talk.

"It's a combination of psychic and shadow magic," Saladin explained. "These shadows have no substance but they're activating the nerves in Riven's body as a pain stimulus, which is of course registered by the brain. And since they're essentially made of shadows, there's no way to physically remove the stimulus without causing the illusion of considerable pain. I'd wager those shadows feel as though they go all the way through to the other side."

"So, he's been psychosomatically impaled by magic?" Benedict tried to clarify.

"Exactly. Well put, young man."

"Great. How do we treat it or whatever?" Helia refocused his grandfather.

"Well, two ways come to mind; one, just pull Riven straight off but in addition to being excruciating for him there are a number of potential variables that would make moving him redundant."

"Such as?"

"Oh, just off the top of my head, we're assuming the shadows are anchored in the statue instead of him. We're also assuming that they set in their size and won't do something like extend themselves as we try to pull Riven off them. That kind of thing. With more time I'm sure I could think up more."

"It's okay. We get the idea," Kane said, looking a bit nauseated by the possibility his headmaster was suggesting.

"What's option two?" Helia pressed on, swallowing down his own feelings on the images his grandfather had just painted in his head.

"It's possible to burn shadow magic away by applying its exact opposite; light magic," Saladin explained. "However, it's not without its risks. Shadow and light are two polar extremes and exposing a person to them would be similar to dunking a person with heat stroke into an ice-cold bath."

"Which can cause shock," Helia finished, recalling the basics of first aid that Red Fountain students had to re-sit every year. "Can sudden changes between dark and light magic do that?"

"It will put the human body through tremendous stress as it tries to rapidly reacclimatise, so it's highly likely the cardiovascular system will be momentarily compromised," Saladin theorised.

"How is that any different to what you just put Sky through?"

"What happened to Sky?" Dave asked but both Helia and Saladin ignored him.

"Because I actually stopped my heat spell before all the ice melted," Saladin informed his grandson. "There was still about an inch of ice encasing him when I stopped and let the residual heat surrounding him finish the job. I never hit him directly. Unfortunately, with Riven I don't have a barrier to help protect him. Those shadow dart things or whatever we're calling them are going directly into him so that's where I need to direct my magic."

Helia sighed. "And those are our only two options?"

"That's all I can think of right now. I might be able to do some research and come up with another approach, but it would require leaving Riven as he is."

A quick glance at his roommate caused Helia to dismiss that option. Riven was in obvious pain and who knows how long he had been stuck like that. Helia wasn't about to drag out his suffering any longer than was necessary. "I don't think waiting's an option."

"I agree, and of the two options I much prefer the light magic approach since I know there's ways to counter the adverse reactions. There's just too much uncertainty with the other option."

Helia nodded. "Okay, so what's your plan."

"Well, my side of it is relatively easy. It's what come immediately after than we need to worry about," Saladin said, and Helia only just resisted snapping out 'obviously' and rolling his eyes. If Saladin sensed his grandson's irritation, he didn't acknowledge it and pressed on. "Once Riven's free I will teleport the two of you directly to the infirmary. Tell Doc it's extreme polar-magical exposure. He'll know what to do."

"Extreme polar-magical exposure," Helia repeated.

"Excellent. Now, step back. This isn't going to be pleasant."

Helia had seen a lot of horrible things tonight, from witches being spelled beyond their control to boyfriends ruthlessly attacking their girlfriends, but Riven's guttural screams when Saladin's light magic hit him was something that linger in his memories longer than anything else.

---

As the schools' medical officer, Doc was a prodigious asset to the Red Fountain faculty. It many ways, he was overqualified for the role, having done his residency of emergency medicine in some of the most prestigious hospitals in the Magical Dimension before completing his fellowship in field medicine and going on to work in various battle situations. However, an unfortunate accident had left the doctor with severe post-traumatic stress and depression, making it impossible for him to continue in that role. That was when Saladin approached him and offer Doc a position at his old alma mater. In addition to being the school's medical officer, Doc also taught first aid and advance field medicine and even though it was a role he had never trained to do, Doc loved and thrived in the job. The students all respected and trusted him in a way that differed from all the other teachers and his presence in an emergency was always reassuring. Such as now, in the aftermath of an attack on the school, Doc was using the opportunity to refine his students' medical skills. After Helia had approached the faculty a few days ago about preparing for a Cloud Tower attack, Doc had set up a triage station in the room across the hallway from the infirmary in order to treat minor injuries such as cuts, bruises and burns, leaving the actual infirmary for cases that required more advanced medical intervention. And so far, none of the students brought to him required anything more than the basic field treatments, but that changed when Timmy and Will arrived with a half-frozen Sky supported between them.

"Oh, this looks exciting," Doc commented pleasantly, and for some reason his mild delight was oddly comforting to his students. After all, if Doc wasn't acting all serious, then things weren't as bad as they might seem. "Follow me please."

"Icy got to him," Timmy reported, since he felt like he needed to say something as he followed Doc across the hall to the actual infirmary, leaving his nurse Jodi to supervise the others. It was much quieter in the infirmary than compared to the other medical station, and the room was stocked with medical products and devices.

"Uh-huh, and Will, what's you're diagnosis?" Doc asked calmly, opening one of the cupboards and reaching inside.

"Um, hypothermia?" Will replied.

"And how do we treat that?"

"Er, get him warm?"

"Correct. Here, get him out of that damp uniform and into these scrubs," Doc ordered, tossing the pair a set of scrubs and a few towels. "Once you're done with that, tuck him up into that bed and we'll get started on treatment. Will, I want you to get his vital signs for me. Don't worry about an ECG. Just blood pressure, temp and a stats probe should be fine."

"I can do that," Timmy offered as he started stripping Sky, keen to help his friend in any way he can.

However, Doc wasn't going to let a teaching opportunity slip past him. "I know you can. Let the freshman try in a 'real life' situation. In the meantime, I want you to get a bear-hugger blanket and the warming device from that cupboard over there and set it up. Sky will also need a cannula put in, but I'll do it since his veins are going to be bloody hard to find."

As a team, the three men got to work. Timmy and Will quickly changed Sky out of his damp uniform and into dry scrubs before bundling him into one of the infirmary beds. Sky tried to help them as much as he could, but his movements were sluggish, and he had no control over his fingers. Once Sky was buried under the blankets, Will started to attach the monitor equipment to determine his vital signs while Timmy collected the bear-hugger for active warming.

"What have you got, Will?" Doc asked, sitting down by Sky's right arm with a kidney dish full of cannulation products.

"Temperature is low; thirty-five point six Celsius," Will reported, the concern in his voice obvious since the reading was well below acceptable levels.

"Yeah, but we expected that. We'll just record it as a baseline and work our way up," Doc assured Will, securing a tourniquet around Sky's arm before prepping the skin in his elbow with an alcohol wipe. "What's his systolic blood pressure?"

"Ninety-two."

"Eh, that's not as bad as it sounds. He's a healthy young man with a normal blood pressure of one-hundred and ten or one-hundred and twenty, and he's only half conscious right not so no wonder his blood pressure took a dip. Same thing goes for his heart rate," Doc shrugged, glancing up at the monitor mounted on the wall behind the bed to see the readings. "What do you think of that oxygen saturation?"

"It's outside of ideal ranges but only by two percent."

"So what are you going to do?"

"Give him some oxygen. Probably just with nasal prongs since a mask would overkill, right?" Will suggested, still feeling a little nervous to be giving medical care outside of a training simulation.

"Excellent answer. Do it."

Meanwhile, Timmy had found a bear-hugger blanket and was busy spreading it out directly over Sky before re-applying the regular blanket that he had pulled back, all while trying to avoid Doc and Will as they worked. With the blankets back in place, Timmy attached the bear-hugger to its heating device and turn it on at its highest setting of forty-five degrees Celsius. With a whoosh the bear-hugger blanket filled with warm air that would heat Sky faster than a conventional blanket. By now, Will had applied the nasal prongs and had set the oxygen to two litres per minute.

Touching a button on the side of his safety googles, Doc shone an infrared light on Sky's arm to identify his veins that had shrunk from the cold. As Doc cannulated, he instructed Timmy and Will to prime an IV line with warmed Hartman's solution ready for when he finished and to get a fluid warmer device that would keep it heated throughout the transfusion. Soon enough, Sky was comfortably bundled under a heated bear-hugger blanket with an IV warming him from the inside-out.

"Temps gone up by point two degrees," Doc reported, retaking his students' temperature. "Well done, Sky. You're on the road to recovery. Now, you're probably going to get rather drowsy. Don't try and fight it. You'll feel better for it."

"He's really gonna be okay?" Will asked, even though he could see that some of the colour had returned to Sky's lips and his teeth had stopped chattering.

"After a good nights' sleep; absolutely. Nothing to worry – "

Snap!

"Doc!" Helia cried, struggling to keep a seated Riven from toppling forward as the semi-conscious teen started retching. The pair had been teleported directly into the infirmary and looked so distressed that even Sky tried to blink himself awake to find out what happened.

The only person who didn't hesitate was Doc. With a sharp order to Helia to move, the former field medic quickly positioned Riven on his back and then did a perfect ranger roll to get his student draped across his shoulders in a fireman's carry. The doctor then quickly crossed the room, dropped Riven onto one of the spare beds and started barking orders. Gone was the relaxed medical officer who always took advantage of any teaching opportunity, and in his place was the task focused critical care professional.

"Jodi! I need you! Timmy, get me vitals. Now. Will, prime me an IV line and get me a fluid warmer. Helia, what am I dealing with?"

"Um, extreme polar-magical exposure," Helia panted, still shaken by the teleportation and the spell Saladin had used to remove the shadow stakes from his roommate.

"I'm here," Nurse Jodi announced, rushing into the room.

"Ondansetron," was all Doc had to say to her and the nurse quickly moved to the drug cupboard.

"Riv?" Sky said weakly from his place in his bed, but the drowsiness Doc had warned him about was hitting him relentlessly and he was struggling to keep his eyes open.

"Timmy, get a Hudson mask on him. Eight litres," Doc ordered as he rapidly tried to secure IV access. Timmy efforts were delayed brief by Nurse Jodi darting over and placing a wafer medication on Riven's tongue.

"Ondansetron in," Jodi reported. "Blood pressures at seventy-three."

"Okay, let's get him in Trendelenburg."

Jodi reached over the head of the bed and clipped something into position. "Shoulder bolsters in place."

"Okay, let's get an ECG on for good measure."

"Riv?" Sky tried again, but sleep was rapidly pulling him under. Despite his best efforts to stay awake, Sky soon lost himself to the darkness.

---

It was still dark out when Sky blinked his eyes open. He was still tired, and his entire body had the type of post-battle ache that Sky knew from experience would take a few doses of hero's brew to truly lift, but he was determined not to give into the strong sensation to fall back asleep. Shifting sluggishly under his blankets, Sky wasn't aware that he had made any noise until a soft voice came out of the shadows.

"Sky? That you?"

Looking back over his shoulder, Sky finally noticed Helia, who was sitting a short distance away and half hidden by some of Doc's medical equipment so that the light emanating from his phone didn't disturb the sleeping students.

"Hey," Sky croaked, his voice sounding weak and gravely.

As silent as a cat, Helia slipped out of his hiding place and returned to the stool that had been placed by Sky's bed. "Water?"

"Please," Sky nodded, accepting the plastic straw that Helia held steady for him so he could wet his dry, gritty-feeling mouth. The water was room temperature, which wasn't Sky's usual preference, but it tasted absolutely delicious. Plus, he wasn't sure if he was too keen on ice water right now.

"Just take small sips. You might make yourself sick if you gulp too much at once," Helia advised.

"Thanks," Sky said, pulling back even though he still wanted more. He also had a feeling he would need to use the restroom soon since he had an IV line pumping extra fluids into his arm, so limiting his water intake might delay that as long as possible. "How's Riven?"

"He's fine," Helia assured him, gesturing over to the bed alongside Sky's. "His blood pressure dropped down to his boots for a bit, but Doc got him to rally again. He's been sleeping it off for the last couple of hours."

Now that his eyes had adjusted to the dark, Sky could make sense of the lump under the blankets on the bed next to him. Apparently, Timmy had fallen asleep on Riven's bed with his head down the bottom end, so the pair were sleeping top-to-tail. Timmy was curled in an uncomfortable looking position and would probably wake with a crick in his neck but someone, most likely Helia, had draped a spare blanket over him so at least he was warm. Riven was bundled under his own set of sheets and had somehow thrown his arm over Timmy so that he was cuddling on of Timmy's socked feet to his cheek. It was equal part adorable and ridiculous.

"Oh, I wish I had a camera," Sky lamented, taking the time to truly appreciate the scene. Brandon was gonna be pissed he missed this.

"Gotcha cover," Helia grinned, holding up his phone.

"Nice. What time is it anyway?"

"Just after five. I couldn't sleep."

"Did the witches get away?"

"Yeah. All of them. I'll fill you in later when you have a better chance of remembering it," Helia said in a way that could only be taken as accommodating, not patronising. "But I hear you got your hands on the weapons of Herios. That's pretty epic."

"How'd you hear about that?" Sky asked but his question was answered when he saw that Helia's phone hadn't been the only thing glowing. "Athena!"

"Hello again," the Pixie Elder greeted pleasantly.

"Are you okay?"

"Of course, I am. The only thing that sustained any lasting damage is my pride for letting that witch Darcy best me not once, but twice now," Athena noted, the slight vexation in her voice the only thing giving away how truly irritated she was about that fact. Pixie's may be composed of pure positive magic, but Athena definitely had a warrior's soul and the self-imposed expectations that came with it. "You held yourself well in there, Prince Sky. I'm sure you'll be a fine hero when you grow up."

"Thanks," Sky replied, and he honestly meant it. The Pixie Elder's had been in Magix for the last century so Athena must have seen countless students come through Red Fountain in that time. She would probably always view then as children compared to her, but Athena's praise was something of high value. Unfortunately, knowing that only made Sky feel guilty and unworthy. "But it was all for nothing. You said yourself that the Trix could never lay their hands on it since they weren't heroes and now the Sword and Shield have disappeared gods knows where."

"Those witches might not have been able to physically hold the weapons, but if they or Baltor had known about Herios's failsafe, they could have found a way to move them. There's not much a person with magical abilities can't work themselves around if they take the time to think about it," Athena pointed out. "And it's not like weapons like those were going to stay hidden away at Red Fountain forever. I've been telling Headmaster Saladin for years that the Sword was getting bored and where it goes, the Shield follows. It was only a matter of time, really."

"So where are they?" Helia asked, looking far too at ease with the idea of a sword and a shield having enough awareness to get bored or take off on their own.

"Wherever they're needed," Athena answered cryptically. "They truly are an amazing set of weapons. They'll put themselves in the paths of sons of Herios who need them, and once their task is complete then they'll move on again. Soon, there'll be a new set of legends told around campfires and in taverns, and that Sword will be revelling in every minute of it. Over time, they might return to Red Fountain to rest and to annoy me with their stories."

"Wait, so they actually talk to you?" Sky blinked.

"In a sense. It's more like pictures suddenly appearing in your head, as I'm sure you recall."

"Um, yeah," Sky nodded, recalling how the Sword had supplied him with various attacks he could use against Icy and Stormy. The Prince felt like he had had a crash course with the weapons of Herios, but he could imagine that if someone carried the Sword and Shield long enough, they would be able to work out the weapon's magical abilities without someone like Athena explaining them.

"If I'm honest, it actually gets a bit annoying after a few years," Athena grumbled. "That Sword is like a child that you can't block out."

"I can imagine," Sky laughed. "Well, I'm glad I got to experience them, even if it was just for a couple of minutes."

"It'll be quite a story to tell, that's for sure," Helia agreed.

"Brandon's gonna be so pissed that he missed this."

"Yeah, where is he?" Helia asked. "I haven't brought it to any of the teacher's attention, but I haven't seen hide nor hair since yesterday afternoon in the dorms."

"He's probably still with Stella. I know the two of them have a lot of catching up to do, but Brandon loves a good fight so he's probably gonna take it personally that Baltor choose last night to attack Red Fountain."

---

"I can't believe I missed it," Brandon groaned, draped dramatically across one of the tables in the mess hall. It was the day after Cloud Tower's attack on Red Fountain and classes had been cancelled so that the students could have a chance to recover after the difficult night. The chaos from the attack was probably how Brandon managed the slip back onto campus early this morning without any of the teachers spotting him, but he had spent the whole time since he heard the news of what happened sulking about the fact that he wasn't there.

"Would you let it go already?" Sky sighed, picking at his purposely bland lunch. Doc had released both Sky and Riven from the infirmary at around ten o'clock this morning but had warned them that they might still experience side effects from their incidents, such as fatigue, light sensitivity and mild nausea.

"No," Brandon objected, sitting up so that he could properly argue his point. "Ever since sophomore year, I have been at every witch attack on Red Fountain. Every one! And now I'm behind, like Riven and Helia."

"Hey," Riven warned, his violet eyes flicking up from the pages of the book in his hand to glare at the Squire for a second before returning to his reading, his half-eaten lunch forgotten.

"It's not a competition," Helia reminded everyone.

"Says the guy coming last," Timmy pointed out without looking up from the tablet computer he was working away from. Unlike the others, Timmy had bolted down his lunch as quick as possible so that he could give his entire focus to the task he was working on, but even that wasn't enough to distract him from taking a playful jab at his friends when the situation presented itself.

"I have a handicap; I wasn't here for the Great Witch Invasion."

"You're still losing," Sky quipped back and then ducked when Helia threw one of his potato gems at him.

"What am I gonna do?" Brandon continued to groan, burying his face in his hands. "Years for now, when my kids come up to me and say, 'Dad, tell us about the time the Dark Wizard Baltor sent his witch army to attack the great school of Red Fountain. Tell us, dad'. What am I supposed to tell them then?"

"That you were off screwing their Mom?" Timmy suggested, actually looking up from his work in order to give Brandon a smug grin.

Brandon fixed his friend with a glare. "Timmy, I'm glad you're feeling good enough to joke around with us, but I would never tell my future kids that I was screwing their mom."

"Rooting," Riven said randomly, still not looking up from his book.

There was a moment of silence as everyone tried to make a connecting been Riven's outburst and the current conversation. "What?" Brandon eventually asked.

"Rooting," Riven repeated, turning a page. "Solarian colloquialism for sex."

For Brandon, that still didn't clear anything up. "What?"

This time Riven finally looked up with an irritated frown like he felt that Brandon was being intentionally obtuse. "Well, in this future scenario, the mom you were screwing has to be Stella who's the Princess of Solaria so your kids will use Solarian slang. Duh."

Brandon was momentarily so mortified by his friend that words failed him.

"I'm impressed that you used colloquialism correctly," Sky commented.

"Helia has one of those word-of-the-day calendar," Riven explained, returning his attention back to his book. "He's kind of annoying about it."

"Any yet it's evidently helping to broaden your vocabulary," Helia shot back.

"Begrudgingly," Riven muttered.

"None of you are taking my pain seriously," Brandon complained, throwing his upper body back down onto the dining table to mope melodramatically again.

"Don't worry, Brandon. Baltor's still out there," Helia tried to comfort. "I'm sure there'll be another opportunity for you to take a crack at him and his minions."

"And in the meantime, maybe you'll learn that it's not worth it to sneak out after curfew to see your girlfriend," Sky said hopefully. The Prince might have snuck into Cloud Tower with Bloom one night a few years back, but that was before a Realm-destroying terrorist had taken up residence in Magix.

"Oh, forget that," Brandon instantly dismissed, sitting up again in a dramatic shift in mood. "I'm gonna go see Stella again tonight."

"What? Are you stupid? You'll get caught."

"I'll be fine."

---

Early the next morning, Codatorta caught Brandon sneaking back onto campus and promptly gave him detention.

---

(1) This conversation is literally my creative-side and my logical-side arguing with itself

(2) Around the time that I was writing this part I was being all nostalgic and watched a few episodes from 'Hercules: The Legendary Journeys' and 'Xena: Warrior Princess' and, my god, it is so inappropriate. How did a show with that much sexual innuendo have the 6pm time slot on a Saturday? That's like family hour. I watched that when I was in primary school. No way censors would let them get away with that kind of thing nowadays. Also, all the food in this scene is unfortunately made up

(3) Season 2, Chapter Four: The Queen of Perfection. It's such a fantastically stupid line that I had to bring it back

(4) In Episode Twelve - 'The Tears of The Black Willow', Lucy's is shown acting almost completely unspoiled while spying on the pixie's caring of the tree-bound Faragonda and then later Lucy pushed her way past two other Cloud Tower students who are still completely spelled. My theory is that Baltor gave awareness back to some of the witches, but they're still under his control. Plus, it gives me a chance to make the Red Fountain heroes have to wrangle with the difficult concept of having to fight hostages, who are also their friends. I also reasoned that Baltor would choose to promote the most powerful witches (AKA the seniors) and witches he knew would cause a lot of emotional pain (AKA Lucy, who he saw Mirta risk breaking into Cloud Tower to find)

(5) Just so you know, there's actually a very successful male pole dance in Australia that goes by the stage name of Blue Phoenix. He's amazing to watch and moves better in heels than I do

(6) Ha ha, foreshadowing

(7) One of the things I realised when brainstorming this season was that the Red Fountain boys don't encounter Baltor until the very last episode, so I wanted to find a way to bring him in a bit earlier instead of just talking about him. It's one of the reasons why I wanted to introduce a shapeshifter

(8) Stole that from Harry Potter. Also "Confractus glacies. Ardeat ignis" apparently means "Ice break. Fire burn" in Latin

A/N: Well, thank god that's finally over with. I don't plan on ever attempting anything that ambitious again. Congratulations on getting through it. Hopefully it doesn't take me as long to get the next one out.