Desolation

Spirit awoke with her whole body aching. She sat up and a fine gray ash fell from her fur. The yellow Lupe frowned in confusion then a voice surfaced in her mind, "This is the last..." Spirit looked desperately around and her heart froze in cold terror.

Mystery Island was dead. That was the only way to describe it. The once towering tropical trees were bent over and gnarled as though in pain. Their great leafy boughs now limp and bare. The ground had once been soft, but now hard, parched, and cracked. Spirit turned her head to look at the shore. The sea was gone, nothing but a glittering expanse of salt remained stretching on into the horizon. Spirit shuddered in revulsion, but where were the others?

The yellow Lupe turned to find that Hryre's home was now a ruin, as though it had been burned. "Aisa!" she cried running into the charred wreckage. "Inu, Fiyre, K2! Where are you?" There was no answer. Spirit's voice sounded strange and hollow to her. The color of her fur, she noticed, seemed gritty and dull. The yellow Lupe sat down. Tears trickled down her face to drip to the deadened land. A vile wind stirred her fur as she raised her gaze to the sky. There were jagged rips in the vast blue expanse, the only thing in this whole nightmare that was nearly unchanged.

Spirit hunched over, sobs shook her entire body. She couldn't feel anything, there was no cold or warm, no feeling in this place at all. Where, in all that was good and true, was she? A faint scent, aside from ash, reached Spirit's nose. She raised her head, attempting to decipher what it belonged to. The smell was faint, not as though it was far away, but more like it was old and whithered. Finally, she recognized it. It was Scinan.

Spirit walked through the charred remains of Hryre's house until she found him. The green lupe was sitting near a burnt wall. "Sci?" Spirit ventured timidly, he seemed almost completely lost.

Scinan jumped and looked around. "Sp- Spirit," he gasped, "you're alive?" Spirit nodded.

"Are you all right?" She asked quietly, moving closer. He nodded and began shaking tears streaming down his cheeks. Spirit reached out and put a paw on his shoulder. "Come on Sci, let's go look for the others."

"There are no others," Scinan murmured, "they're all gone Spirit."

"We don't know that Sci! They could have survived just like we did!" Spirit said defiantly, not willing to believe that they were the last alive on all of Neopia.

"We weren't supposed to survive Spirit." Scinan replied, his voice had taken a dark undertone that almost scared Spirit. She drew away from him.

"Wh – what do you mean?" She stammered.

Scinan looked at her, tears in his eyes, even his eyes were darkened. "Spirit, we aren't supposed to be here right now. We were supposed to get destroyed with everything else, this is the proof that there is no hope left." He gestured at his feet. A pile of warped shards of metal lay there, their sparkling sheen dulled.

"What is that?" Spirit asked, moving closer to it.

"It's..." Scinan swallowed, "it's my brother's sword."

Spirit gasped. "Ealdor's Heartblade?"

Scinan nodded. "Even the powerful heart of my brother was broken by this nightmare. We alone can have no chance."

"I don't believe you!" Spirit snarled, bearing her teeth at Scinan. "You can sit here and mope Sci, but I'm not going to accept this!"

Scinan got to his feet, that same lost look in his eyes. "Sometimes it is inevitable that one will be defeated."

"ScinanDarkShine," Spirit whimpered, "what's happened to you?"

Scinan just gazed at her with that same eerie, lost look. "What would you ever know about me ArizonaSpirit? You only met me twelve hours before now. You don't know me, you can't know the monster that I really am."

"What I know is that you care enough about your family not to give up on them." Spirit replied. "You aren't a monster Sci, I know that much as well." She turned her back on him, "I'm going to search the Island for survivors, you can come along if you want." She trotted away, trailing a cloud of dust.

Scinan watched her go. "I am a monster Spirit. By the end of this you will know it, and hate me for it." His ears dropped in sorrow. Eyes glazed with tears, the Lupe summoned the strength to follow after Spirit.

They searched everywhere, to no avail of any life. When the two Lupes got to the ruined training school Spirit put out a paw to stop Scinan. "Hey Sci, what's that over there?" She pointed over to the crumbling stone well that had been used for the school's training. There were and amount of shining crystal objects.

"I dunno, let's go check it out." The green lupe angled toward the well. The objects turned out to be a number of small crystal stones. They were oval shaped and seemed to have a light blue tint to them.

"I didn't think that things of such beauty still existed here." Spirit marveled, running her paws over the stones' smooth edges. "I wonder what they are?"

"Who knows?" Scinan said, rolling one stone from paw to paw. "In this place, nothing is what it seems anymore." He held up the stone. "For all we know, these could be dangerous."

"How could anything so pretty be dangerous?" Spirit asked.

Scinan didn't reply, he stared into the depths of the stone he held. "I... think I know what these were." He murmured.

"What were they?" Spirit asked eagerly.

"Did you ever come here before?" Scinan asked, "before this happened I mean."

"Once or twice," Spirit replied, "sometimes I came with Aisa when Inu came here to train, why?"

"Did you ever speak to the Techo Master?"

Spirit nodded. "I did a lot, a very wise Neopet isn't he?" She said brightly, then her face fell. "I wish someone like him were here right now. So they could advise us on what to do."

"In a way," Scinan said quietly, "the Master is here."

Spirit looked at him sharply. "What do you mean, how could he be here?"

"Well, his physical presence isn't here, but his wisdom his." When Spirit looked confused, Scinan raised the stone then gripped it tightly in his paws. I guess, I'm really beginning to understand this nightmare. he thought to himself and concentrated on the stone with all his might.

Light ignited in the crystal and blossomed with radiating beauty. Spirit gasped in awe as the crystal flashed and projected words onto the ground. 'Never test the depth of water with both feet.' The words died away and Scinan lowered the stone.

"See?" he said quietly, "The Master's words of wisdom still linger here for us."

Spirit nodded. "And we have to remember them Sci. We can't just give up. Maybe you believe we weren't supposed to survive. But I believe that we're here for a reason, and we must figure out what that reason is at all costs."

Scinan flashed Spirit a smile, taking the lupe back. "You're right, we owe it to everyone, not just our families but everyone on Neopia, we owe to them not to give up."

Spirit punched the air with a paw. "Now you're talking!"

"So where to now?" Scinan asked, "we've searched the entire Island, where do we go now?"

"We should head for the mainland." Spirit said, "we might even be able to find clues there as to what the blazes has happened." She looked up at Scinan, "because I don't remember anything past going into your room."

Scinan shook his head. "Neither do I, I don't even remember what was making m so melancholy a while ago." Spirit looked at him and, indeed, the saddened, lost look in his eyes was gone. But they still seemed darkened, by something, a memory or a power within that had nearly destroyed him in its eagerness to be free.

It was very windy out on the salt flats left by the ocean. The hardened salt broke and cracked under their paws and stung the two Lupes' eyes. Before long both of them were limping from the deep gouges and cuts on their paws from the broken shards of salt. The landscape wasn't flat either. It was chock full of hills and gorges that the two pets had to cross. It was an endless journey, a hopeless journey. Maybe the two Neopets had thought that this time it would be like all the fairy tales, that the heroes of the story would manage to prevail even though everything was at its bleakest. But this wasn't a fairytale, this was a war with the world that they had once known and loved, and they were losing.

Spirit's legs wobbled and she collapsed, coughing. Scinan stopped and nudged her with his nose. "Come on Spirit, we can't give up. Get up, you can do it."

"No, I can't get up Sci." She shivered, then coughed again. "I made a huge mistake thinking that I would be strong enough to do something like this. I'm the gentlest in the family. I'm not hardened by fighting, or have a quick wit or anything. I'm just normal, I don't have the spirit to do something like this." She laughed slightly as tears started in her eyes. "I didn't even listen to you Sci when you said we needed pieces of wisdom. Remember what the Techo Master always said? 'Against impossible odds, you'll lose.' We should have remembered Sci, we should have been smart enough to realize that normal pets like us can't be heroes."

Scinan lay down next to her, tucking his paws underneath him. "And you are forgetting another thing Spirit." He replied, "that this isn't Neopia anymore. Thing are different now. This time we don't have a choice whether or not to become the heroes of this story." He laid his chin on her shoulder. "We have no choice but to fight the impossible odds this time. Lying here and whithering away, is not an option that we can accept." He stood, and turned his face south-western where he could just discern a dark shape on the horizon. "We're all that's left Spirit, that's why we have to keep pushing forward this time."

Scinan, nosed underneath Spirit's chest and heaved her body up over his shoulders, lifting her off the ground. "This time, we can't give up." He murmured, "we have to keep fighting for those heroes and friends and families who can't be here to do the job for us this time. For them, we have to keep going onward." And Scinan walked, steadily, mechanically, one foot after another, steadily moving onward.