The Animorphs Alternate Universe Series
The Faith
Chapter 12d -
Virus, p4 -
What She Didn't Tell Us
(Marco)

"Rachel? Rach!"
I was still fully unaware of what had happened. Cassie… and Rachel… Cassie had just touched her. That's all, touched her, and Rachel had cried out, than fallen. She was, at best, unconscious, at worst…
"I should have guessed…" Alay was looking at Jake, who was knelt over Rachel, with a look in her eyes that I recognized as the look of someone who was feeling failure. "This wouldn't have happened…"
"'Lay," I asked quietly. "What happened?" Cassie had looked at me, after she had done whatever she had done to Rachel, and there was this look in her eyes… I have never seen anything like that in anyone's eyes, especially not in Cassie's. And I hoped never to see it again…
"Her Elemental Spirit," murmured Alay. "It woke up. And, now, it's finding ways to quell the hunger…"
"Hunger?" I repeated. Hunger… that didn't sound good.
"They… feed, off of already awoken Caster spirits. Sort of. Kind of. Oh, t'hell, I don't know how to explain it! Casters whose spirits are already awake attract seharai nendei, Elementals, and they just sort of hang around. It's that connection with the Elementals that give Casters their powers. The weaker the connection, the weaker the Caster, and visa versa. Elemental Spirits, that is, when we say they wake up 'violently', it is because they take complete control of the Caster and begin to… to… suck away, I guess is the best way to describe it, the Elementals clinging to other Casters." She was silent again, the wheels obviously turning in her head. I would have given a million dollars to know what she knew and wasn't saying. Something was wrong with this situation…
Cassie had walked right past me.
After she had looked at me, she had walked right past me, towards Tobias and Sarah. It was if… I was nothing to her. But I was. I was a Caster too…
"Why did she leave me alone?" I asked, scared and curious at the same time. Something nagged at brain, something Alay had said earlier, about Tobias, and being protected. Protected by what?
"Because I lied to you," answered Alay. "You aren't in any danger of catching Sarah's virus. She has you protected, guarded, with inverted shields that let Elementals go and come as they please, but Elemental spirits can't do a thing to 'em. She probably suspected, at least, that something like this would happen… because Tobias is protected in the same way."
"You… lied…?" The air gave a rapid, strange feeling shift. It was if it was being displaced, or separated, I guess is a better description. Alay whirled around with a gasp, and I was quick to follow. Cassie had reached the horse stall where Tobias and Sarah were, and was currently levitating an unconscious Sarah, or, at least holding her up. Sarah looked like a rag doll being held in unseen hands, and she was completely unaware of what was happening to her. That wasn't good…
asked Ax, mirroring my own uncertainty.
"She's toying with her," said Alay. "Because she knows Sarah is the one who created the shields. Just because they're inverted doesn't mean she can't see them… if she takes Sarah's energy, your shields will be lost… and so will Sarah. She won't survive the trauma of having part of herself ripped away." Who would, I wondered briefly, even as Alay's words sunk in. Sarah… lost.. as in, Sarah… dead.
"We have to stop her!"
"No!" Alay grabbed my arm and shook her head, her eyes wide. "You can't, don't even try. You won't do any good risking your life. You… have to face the facts." She said it and didn't believe, I knew. We couldn't just stand around and watch Sarah die. She was Alay's itala and, even though I had known Alay only shortly, she was as stubborn as she was scary. She made a face at me. "You, I hate. But we're not just blinding rushing forward and you aren't going to do a damn thing, understand my English?" I gave a blank nod, though I had every intention of doing something, at least. "Good. Ax, we need to flank Cassie, and fast. Take her left because your tail can hit over the side of the horse-stall wall. I get her from behind. Stun her, okay?"
I opened my mouth to say something, when suddenly, the air, the ground, and something else shifted. Two somethings else, things I didn't remember having felt shift before. The faint shifting of Fire and Water Elementals. Alay froze in her own confusion, her eyes again wide.
"She's… healing her?" she inquired. "I've never head of an Elemental doing a Heal Cast before…"
"Alay, why would a power-hungry being need to heal its victim?" I asked flatly. She shrugged.
"It's easier to strip away Elementals if the Caster is weak," she said, placing her hands on her hips. "So this makes no sense." Her face paled and she clapped a hand over her mouth. "Oh, Goddess, it isn't possible…"
asked Ax, obviously a little put out by the fact that I could sense the Casts and Alay could see them. He was blind to the things that were happening, short of what we told him.
"She's………" Alay fell silent, and shuddered. "Hannah was right…"
"About what?" I was losing my patience. Alay's whole being cryptic thing was annoying the hell out of me, especially because she was being cryptic about important things!
"Twins are supposed to have similar, if not the same, connection with Elementals," said Alay. "Their Spirits usually waken about the same time. It was raining when Emily's Spirit awoke. She's a Water Elemental Spirit, so the rain aided her, but Sarah's a Fire, so it slowed down the process…" I knit my brow in confusion, attempting to dechiper what Alay had said, but Ax beat me too it.
he said, quite coolly, in fact, while my brain went into blank mode.