The Torture Begins
Mimi blinked, the sun falling through the skylight landed warmly on her face her as her consciousness climbed slowly from the dark place it had receded to while she slept. The singing of birds filtered through the window and she heard a loud, angry groan from the room next to her's. Guess Matt's motto isn't 'The Early Bird Catches the Worm'." She thought and giggled.
"Mimi, are you awake?" Sora whispered through the door. Mimi smiled.
"Come on in, Sora." She called loudly, hearing another groan. Sora opened the door and snuck in, leaving it open.
"Mimi!" She said, exasperation her soft voice. "You're going to wake him up!"
"So?" Mimi retorted, her voice louder than before. "He needs to wake up anyway, that Chloethia person is supposed to be by soon and he's not going to be ready!"
"Neither are you if you don't get up now." Sora pointed out. Realizing that her friend was right, Mimi slid from the bed and crouched in her green silk nightgown, opening the chest that held her clothes.
"You have to help me find an outfit." Mimi informed her friend while she untied the string that held the cloth that kept her clothes from getting dust on them closed tightly. Sora rolled her eyes.
"Come on, Mimi, we both know you'd never need me to help you with clothes."
"Well, for your information, today I do need your help." She pulled out three different pants outfits and spread them out on the bed. "Which one will look best?" Sora scrutinized the outfit cursorily before responding.
"There all green, just pick one, it won't make much difference." Mimi exhaled in annoyance.
"Just because they're the same color doesn't mean they're the same! Just look at them!" Mimi glanced over at them to see if the fact that same color, different outfit was so hard to see. It wasn't. The first outfit was a dark, forest green button-down vest that was tight around the top and stopped at the waist where a light green sash held the darker green pants up. Aladdin style! She thought smiling. The second was all light green, the top was long-sleeved and loose with a low cut neckline and ruffled wrists and the pants were tight, spandex like material. The third was a kind of combination of the first two. The white top was loose and low-cut with ruffled wrists. The loose, Aladdin style pants were dark green, almost black. The vest, a matching color; was identical in design to the first.
After thinking with her finger pressed against her chin, Sora pointed to the second. "That one looks nice." Mimi wrinkled her nose, but smiled to cover up the look of distaste.
"What do you think of that one?" She asked, pointing to the third. Personally thinking that, although they were all ugly, Sora had managed to choose the ugliest of the three.
"Well… it looks a little-"
"Perfect! I'll wear it then!" Mimi interrupted, then hugged her enthusiastically. "Thanks for your help Sora, you're the best!"
"But I didn't-"
"Is Tai awake?" She asked, looking past Sora and through the doorway as if she could see downstairs. Sora blushed.
"Well I eh…"
"Sora!" Mimi grabbed her friends hand and led her out into the hallway. She dragged her to Matt's door and knocked loudly, initiating another groan and some muffled words that she couldn't make out. Sora gasped.
"Go away!" He shouted angrily, and Mimi heard the distinct sound of something soft hitting the door. She guessed it was a pillow.
"Are you awake?" She called sweetly, ignoring the obvious fact that he was.
"No! I'm still sound asleep! Now will you go away?" He demanded.
"Not until you're awake." She answered, still with the honey in her voice. Grumbling answered her, then the sound of blankets being thrown. Sora tried to whisper something to her but she waved her silent, listening to see what he was doing.
The door opened wide to reveal Matt, holding a blanket around his waist with one eye open and his hair in a ruin. "I'm awake."
"So I see. Now go get dressed and come down to that big room with all the furniture. We'll be waiting for you there." Then she spun and headed back for her room, Sora's hand still grasped in hers. After shutting the door behind her, Mimi laughed out loud and Sora smiled tentatively.
"Did you see what he looked like!" She gasped between giggles. Remembering the look of being only half there on his face. "He just looked so… funny! I could barely keep from laughing in his face when he came out with that blanket-" She stopped laughing and said seriously. "I wonder what it would be like to wake up next to him, to see him like that every morning? Do you think it would stop being funny if that happened?" Sora shrugged.
"I don't know, that's something you'd have to find the answer to yourself."
"Well, anyways, I did that to show you what you have to do. Now go wake up Tai. I'll be dressed and down with Matt in a second. With how tired he looked, he probably went right back to sleep." She smiled and shoved Sora out the door before she could protest.
*****
Chloethia came and collected them for breakfast not long after Matt and Mimi came down. After they'd all eaten, though not to their fill for she had advised against it, she led them to two separate buildings. Tai went into one, Matt, Sora, and Mimi went into the other.
They stepped through the door as Chloethia excused herself and went back to the building where she'd left Tai. Lyanna appeared almost instantly and abducted Matt to take into one of the various rooms where she shut the door behind them. Sora looked to Mimi, but her friend didn't return the look. Instead, she stared forward as another woman, purple haired and gray eyed, leaned languidly against the slight green walls. She gestured for them to come closer.
"Good morning children of Love and Sincerity," she greeted. "I promised yesterday that I would say more and I will, though it will not be of more useless talk." Sora exchanged a glance with Mimi and gulped.
"Today, we will talk of your gifts and how you'll be using them. When we'd selected you from all the other children of the world, though there are others, Gennai spread the word of their idea and other kingdoms of our world have done the same as us, only for different reasons; We had hoped that after you had defeated Kalabrys-" She paused long enough to look at Sora. "I'm sorry if this is confusing you, the gate we took you through put considerable stress on the body and we wanted you to sleep it off before we talked to you. I assume you were told?" Sora nodded timidly and the woman, Daenerys Sora remembered, continued.
"We'd hoped that after Kalabrys was defeated that many of you would remain behind to rule beside us. Although Raena is older, I hope to name my daughter Tarisha heir and train Raena to be a warrior. She has expressed more of a desire to fight than rule and the child is so solemn, I fear leadership would weigh her down. I'd hoped you would be the eight that guard the monarch. In my father's time, there were personal bodyguards called The Eight, that is why there was eight summoned instead of only the six that was needed. They were the guards of the ruler and his or her family. Now, you wont be forced, if one or all of you decide to leave, others will be chosen, just remember that you were our first choice and think on that.
"Another thing I must tell you, time travels much faster here then in your world if you haven't noticed. It has been our magics that has protected you. I tell you now that to fully access your powers, you must be in an adults body for your body now, though much more adaptable, is not capable of withstanding all the traumas that will be inevitable. I say this now to inform you, and prepare you, for the fact that we are going to remove the spell long enough for your bodies to reach full maturity at one and twenty years of age. The process will take three days. Also, your… Digimon is it? They will have to be converted back to their egg form." Sora and Mimi both opened their mouths to complain, but Daenerys held up a hand to silence them. "Your Digimon friends get their energy to temporarily evolve from your energy. The "digivices," as you've named them, were designed to tap the energy that sustains your sleeping powers. We can't have that now, they agreed last night, when Chloethia spoke to them in private, or did you not notice their absence when you awoke?" Both girls blushed and lowered their eyes. Daenerys smiled and continued with her original speech.
"Now to get on to the point of why you are here, I will be training you both in your powers, for Empathy and Healing are closely related. We will begin by-"
"Eh, excuse me, Your Grace, but I-" Mimi interrupted.
"Call me Dany, for after this moment forward, I will call you by your given names. What is it that you would ask of me, Mimi?"
"Well, I was wondering since you mentioned the word yesterday, what an Empath was?"
"I was just about to explain that." Daenerys said patiently. "If you would have a seat," She gestured to three cushions in against the wall beside her, "I tell you everything you wish to know about your powers." They all sat comfortably on the large pillows and the Queen continued with her dialogue.
"An Empath, dear Mimi, is someone who reads and manipulates emotions. A Mindreader, which by the way you all are; is very useful to find out what someone is thinking. But the down side is that, unless you, in a sense, rape their mind, you can only tell what they're thinking at the time. While an Empath can search through all the emotions, place pictures in people's minds and sense how they react. They can even use that as an attack, making a person afraid or angry enough to be foolish or clumsy, or even send enough mental trauma their way to render them unconscious. People who are Empaths are very useful as diplomats, but they are also healers. Not the kind you or I are, Mimi, though we have our own type of Empathy, mostly to sense pain or distress and create a link. The healers Empaths are, is mentally. They can cure any sort of phobia just by entering the minds and erasing the fear."
"And now that I've explained what your powers do, lets get on with how you'll be using them against my sister my sister, Shall we?"
After hours, or "marks" as Daenerys called it; of listening to their teachers lecture them on their various powers, with a mark for lunch of course; the four friends stumbled to their guest house with promises from the teachers that the real work would begin the next day.
*** Chapters to Come ***
Theft of Innocence
Words of the Soul
Spark of Life
Journey into Darkness
Abduction of Beauty
Face off with Flowers
The Clash of Power
A Feast of Evil
Dance of the Fearless
A Time for Friendship
Good-byes Can Last Forever