Disclaimer: Still belongs to BVE and not me. So sad...

RESTLESS WARRIORS

By Etcetera Kit

Chapter Twelve: Force of Ages

Maya slowly took a bite of her grilled cheese sandwich and studied Arval as he moved quickly from book to book. His pen flew over the pages with a familiar scratching noise. Everyone had stopped their idle chatter and was mesmerized by what the fairy was doing. He had a good heart—she could see that clearly. There was also only one person with that particular sword—the Magna Defender. He had gifted Mike with that sword and his powers for a time, until Mike sacrificed his powers to keep open a portal that led Terra Venture out of the lost galaxy. The mere fact that Arval had it, spoke much for his trustworthiness. The Magna Defender would not have allowed anyone he believed suspect, no matter how small the offense, to carry his primary weapon out of the spirit realm.

"Any progress?" Taylor asked, looking like she thought a bulldozer and a jackhammer would suit their purposes much more efficiently than a nerdy fairy that was a language-buff.

"Patience is a virtue," Arval snapped back.

"Not right now, it's not!" the Wild Force Ranger retorted.

Kira exchanged a glance with Kelsey and she shook her head. Maya sighed. "Calm down, Taylor," she said. "We've got time before this ceremony goes forth—a little over three weeks."

"If we get into their lair now," Taylor argued. "It will cut down on the searching and we can start a strategy for attack and dismantling their ceremony!"

"Their lair will probably be guarded, man," Dustin said.

"By what? The Bogey-Man?"

"That's enough," Maya said sharply, putting an edge to her words that she rarely did. "Arval will have this translated soon enough and we'll see if it can aide us in any way."

"Got it!" Arval cried.

They all jumped up from their various sitting places and crowded around the fairy that held a piece of paper. "What does it say?" Kelsey asked.

"In a place that's high but low, where no mortal dare to go. Here the ancient bonds employ, but fear of closed spaces will destroy. Moonlight and starlight will lead thy way. Look for the password by the bay. Follow the old demon's laugh and there you shall find your path."

"Dude, that doesn't make any sense!" Dustin scoffed.

"It's a logic problem," Kira said. "Kind of like a scavenger hunt."

"So what are we looking for?" Kelsey asked.

"Well," Maya interjected. "Look at the first bit. 'In a place that's high but low, where no mortal dare to go'. We're obviously looking for something high in a low place. And it has to be a place where we wouldn't normally go."

"The throne room!" Kira said. "That room was the highest place in the temple, right?" Kelsey nodded to confirm that. "And the temple itself is in a valley."

Kelsey suddenly jumped up. "And there's a stream that goes away from the ruins towards the bay!"

"There must be something underneath the throne room—something that will lead us to the entrance of the underground tunnels," Kira continued.

"Why would they write that on the altar?" Taylor asked, her tone sarcastic.

"It's a demon tradition!" Arval piped up. "Demons put the entrance to their underground crypts, where they only want other demons to go, on their altars. That way, if another demon needs to find them, he can, but others cannot."

"How do you know that?" Dustin exclaimed.

"Demon studies are fascinating!" Arval replied enthusiastically. "It's a young science, but the things we are learning tell us much about the demons and how to fight them and how to keep them out of Fairyland."

Maya was silent as the bickering died down. She studied Kira. Of all of them, Kira had fallen into a thoughtful silence. She glanced to the others. Taylor looked torn between having some affection for Arval and hitting him with the nearest blunt object. Kelsey was staring at the rubbings and then Arval's complicated translation underneath them. His handwriting was beautiful—an old calligraphy, flowery, yet upright and masculine at the same time. Dustin was staring at Arval with a mixture of awe and fear on his face.

"Moonlight and starlight," Kira whispered. "We have to search the rest of the ruins by night. The rest of it will only reveal itself after dark."

"It appears that my job here is done," Arval said, pushing himself up from the picnic table. He gathered his books and made them disappear with a wave of his hand. He then cleared up the rest of the mess on the table save of a pile of neatly rolled rubbings. "These I entrust to you," he said to them.

With a short bow, the fairy known as Arval Parrot disappeared.

Dustin looked after him. "He sure didn't stick around long."

Kira looked lost in thought. She absently poked Dustin in the side. "Read the whole thing out loud."

"Huh?"

"Read it!"

Dustin picked up the scrap of paper Arval had written the translated riddle on. He looked around before reading it. "In a place that's high but low, where no mortal dare to go. Here the ancient bonds employ, but fear of closed spaces will destroy. Moonlight and starlight will lead thy way. Look for the password by the bay. Follow the old demon's laugh and there you shall find your path."

"We know to start at the old throne," Kira muttered. "What's the next line?"

"Here the ancient bonds employ, but fear of closed spaces will destroy."

"Ancient bonds?" Kelsey asked.

"Bonds," Kira replied. "Bonds between us. We have to have one of the four ancient bonds connecting us or we won't find the next step."

"What are they?" Kelsey continued.

"Blood, passion, love and friendship," Maya whispered. Those were the ancient bonds her people had always spoken of and honored. Love was the highest of the four. Blood and passion were the lowest, both being things that one could not control or could be forced. Friendship was second only to love. Maya had no worries about that—they were all protected by friendship, but was the bond of friendship amongst themselves? For herself, Kelsey, Kira and Dustin, she would have said yes, but for Taylor… who knew? She smiled to herself, knowing what Taylor's reaction would be if someone suggested she sleep with Dustin so they knew she was protected by one of the bonds.

"That next part sounds like if we have claustrophobia, we're screwed," Dustin commented.

Kira nodded. "Moonlight and starlight will lead thy way. Look for the password by the bay." She paused, twisting a lock of her dark blonde hair around her index finger. "That sounds like we need to wait until after dark when the moon and stars are out. But the bay… maybe there's an underground stream we follow or something?"

"I think the rest will reveal itself tonight," Maya said softly.


The Magna Defender had long sought revenge against Scorpius for taking the life of his son. It had been an all-consuming fire that burned within him constantly. It had been the very fire that drove him to take Mike Corbett's body so he could continue with his quest for revenge. But that single man's goodness had driven him also… it had given him the courage and strength to let go of a smoldering hate and give a young man back his brother and a group of young people their friend. Now, reunited with his son and serving on the Council of Light, he had found another purpose besides revenge.

He stared into the water basin. Well, to the untrained eye, it appeared nothing more than a water basin, filled with water. To members of the spirit realm, it was a window, a window into the mortal realm. These windows could be enlarged or decreased. They could be drawn upon to focus energy on a single area. This window was focused on the ruins of the old demon temple in Mariner Bay.

Zordon had given him this task, because he had been so used to seeing through Scorpius' cloaking devices in life and was familiar with the techniques used to cloak an area from mortals. The ninjas practiced these arts in the mortal realm. Villains such as Scorpius had been, used them to hide from the prying eyes of Power Rangers and other undesirable people thoroughly steeped in goodness.

He watched as Arval appeared to the five. Arval and the youngest female copied the markings on the old altar and markings that appeared in other places around the ruins. Then they left. That was when he had begun his probe. He gently extended his own mind, seeking out each part of the ruins and looking for abnormalities, or more, places that seemed too normal. Each stone in those ruins should have some dark taint from being constructed and dwelt in by demons. It was the parts of the ruins that felt normal, like the normal blend of good and evil touched it, that were suspect.

"Father?"

Looking up, he smiled as Zinka entered the room, holding his sword. "Arval's mission was successful then?"

Zinka nodded and handed him his sword. "He's good at that sort of thing." His son paused and looked at the basin. "Boric should make him a linguist."

"He would be good at that."

"Are you looking for cloaking devices?"

"Yes."

"Can I help?"

The Magna Defender gave his son an amused glance. "You know much about dark cloaking spells?"

"Of course, how else was I able to find you?"

His son did have a point. When he had been stuck in that abyss, barely alive, he had used many cloaking spells to hide himself from Scorpius. He had used those same cloaking spells to hide himself from the rangers and Scorpius when he came out of the abyss. Zinka had managed to find him many times and impart some wisdom that only one who died as a child could. It was Zinka that ultimately let him pass on and allow Mike life once more.

The Magna Defender moved to one side of the basin so that Zinka could join him there and look into it as well. He narrowed the focus of the window to just the throne room. There… something around the throne was being cloaked. The stones underneath it felt entirely too clean to have been part of a demon temple.

"There's a mirror," Zinka whispered.

He nodded. It was a mirror—a mirror embedded into the stone floor that would reflect moonlight and starlight if it were a clear night. Someone had taken great pains to cloak that mirror so that no one would find it. Hidden, the mirror's secrets remained hidden as well. He gently probed the cloak and was relieved to find it was a simple cloaking spell. It was easy to lift, unlike some of the more complicated ones he had been expecting. It made him wonder what Vypra hoped to gain by shoddy cloaking spells. He lifted the spell, using his mental strength to counteract the physical spell that had been performed.

"There's more," Zinka said. "All of the stones that are mirrors have been cloaked."

"You're right." He paused. "Are they the same spell?"

Zinka paused. "Yes. She must have been counting on someone not finding all of the spells."

The Magna Defender smiled again. His son had grown wise and clever as he spent time in the spirit realm, learning from Zordon and great leaders endowed with a power that matched their own.

Soon enough, they had lifted all of the simple cloaking spells that had been cast over the mirror-stones. "You have learned about subtle strategy, Zinka," he said softly.

Zinka shrugged his small shoulders. "She had probably planned on someone finding one of the spells, lifting it and assuming she was inept, not thinking that there could be more than just that one." He paused. "It's rather ingenious."

"Well, let us hope that we have aided the five in their quest."

"I don't think they could have solved the riddle if the cloaks remained in place."

He didn't reply, just held out a hand for his son. Zinka took his hand and they remained silent as they walked from the chamber to seek out Zordon and report the news. This was how it had always been between himself and his son—they did not need idle words to fill the golden void that was silence. He had never needed words to communicate with his son. It was part of the reason Zinka's final cry of 'Father!' that ended his time amongst the living had cut to his very soul. Scorpius had tricked him and destroyed his son in the process.

He thought to Mike Corbett and his sacrifice of his powers to save his friends. It was something that he, himself, would not have done until Zinka showed him the way.

It was a lesson he hoped that others would learn in a more timely fashion that he had.


Kelsey sighed and stared at the dying fire. The rest of the afternoon and the evening had been quite an… experience, She absently fiddled with the band on her morpher. Some people just flat out weren't getting it, for lack of a better term. They were supposed to work together—they were supposed to be a team. Trini had even gone so far as to assign them roles in this new team, since they couldn't all take on the traditional yellow ranger role. A team is only a strong as its weakest link. Those were words she had told herself and others had told her. When she had been an active ranger, she had fought against being the weakest. The solution was not to have any weak links on a team…

Well, they didn't have any weak links in the traditional sense of the term. What they did have were people… a person… who didn't want to be a link at all. They had other members of their teams that they weren't crazy about at all times. Everyone had to deal with less than desirable people in day to day life. Butthead 101 as her mother used to call it. Maybe she wouldn't have chosen to work with this group had she had a choice, but none of them had a choice. They were here for a reason. They had been chosen.

She thought back to what had happened after the sun set. They had eaten dinner, before Maya pronounced the moon and stars high enough to continue their search. Not everyone was going to come, that much was clear from the tone that Kira used. And from what they had said the ancient bonds were, she knew that. Kira ended up taking only Dustin with her, for reasons that Kelsey could see only too clearly. She and Maya were better emotionally equipped to deal with Taylor if she went off on a rant or something. Dustin would not be able to handle someone like Taylor having any sort of fit or meltdown.

It had been kind of strange that Kira was confident of the friendship between herself and Dustin.

Well, they had gone to the temple ruins and came back, saying they had found the entrance to the underground tunnels and caverns. No one was going back to explore there tonight, but there would be plenty of time for that in the coming days. They also knew where to find it now, so they could find it in the daylight as well as after dark. Taylor had kind of clammed up after that, not speaking to anyone, just sitting at the picnic table and staring. Something had finally snapped in Taylor and no one knew what to expect next.

"Hey."

She snapped out her reverie to see Dustin standing before her, holding out a mug of hot chocolate.

"I didn't do anything to it. I promise."

Kelsey smiled at him and gestured for him to sit in the lawn chair next to her. He complied, holding his own mug. Dustin was adorable… not in the traditional way like a baby is adorable. He had a kind of wayward, happy-go-lucky look that seemed to reflect his true personality. Right now, his chocolate brown hair was curling wildly at the ends.

"Thanks," she replied. She gave him a sidelong glance. He seemed preoccupied. "You all right?"

"Yes. No. I don't know."

"Is it about Taylor?"

"She's mad at me, dude!" He paused. "And I don't know why!"

Kelsey snorted. "I think she's permanently mad at all of us."

"She's just so…"

"Not nice?" she offered.

"I wasn't going to put it that nicely." Dustin suddenly sat up straight in his lawn chair. "I've got this theory about people like her," he said, with more enthusiasm than necessary, but enthusiasm nonetheless. Kelsey smiled and inclined her head towards him to let him know that she was listening. "Something happened to them in the past. Someone hurt them." He paused. "That's why she's a bitch. She's doing it so she won't get close to anyone and won't be hurt again."

"You're into psychology?"

He shrugged. "I want to be a psychology major when I get the money together to go to college."

"You seem pretty good at reading people."

"Not as good as like… Maya," he replied.

"No one is as good as Maya."

They lapsed into a comfortable silence. Dustin might be the number one person on Taylor's hit list right now, but there was something endearing about him. He struck Kelsey as the kind of guy that all girls wanted as their best friend because he could just listen, he could just… be. He didn't try to be something he's not. He was better at showing his emotions than most guys Kelsey had met. He was just… Dustin. He managed to make most everyone around him smile and adopt his disposition. And he had probably just identified Taylor's underlying main problem when Taylor herself probably wasn't aware of it.

"Think we can find their lair?" she asked him, softly.

"Oh yeah. I mean finding the initial entrance was easy. All we have to do is follow the rest of that riddle to find the rest."

"Any idea what you'd be looking for?"

"No," he replied, but didn't sound particularly worried about it. "I'm sure that we'll be able to figure it out once we get down there." He turned towards her and frowned. "I told you I didn't do anything to that."

Kelsey looked down at the rapidly cooling mug of hot chocolate in her hands. "Sorry," she whispered. She took a sip tentatively. This was Dustin and, while his heart was in the right place, the end results weren't always the best. The hot chocolate was surprisingly sweet and even—not the lumpy hot drinks she had come to expect when camping. However, it wasn't too sweet. It was also richer than most hot chocolate she had in the past. "This is really good, Dustin," she said with a smile.

He ran his hand through his hair. "It's a secret recipe."

"Secret recipe?"

"Actually, I stole it from Cam when he came camping with us one time," he said very rapidly and turned the last phrase into a cough.

"I see," she replied, stifling her laughter. Dustin really was a piece of work.

"Come on," he said, his tone bordering whiney. "That was the only time during the tenure of our friendship that Cam has treated me like I'm smart enough to tie my shoes." He paused and looked at the dying fire, now just red-orange embers. "Of course, he was sort of… drunk." Kelsey gave him a sharp look and Dustin raised his free hand in surrender. "It was Hunter's fault!" he cried. "Not mine."

Kelsey smiled as Dustin launched into the story of that particular camping trip while they watched the rest of the embers die out and fade into darkness.

To Be Continued...


Author's Note: I think I got back to everyone who reviewed chapter 11. I'm a terrible person and didn't get back to the people that reviewed chapter 10. Whoops... At any rate, the usual thanks to reviewers and lurkers. (And I know you lurkers are out there- I've caught you!) Everyone have a great week, leave me a comment and remember 'with coffee comes enlightenment.' Cheers-EK