"Phobos!" Will exclaimed. Virginia and Cullen looked at each other.
"I take it you know him then." Cullen said.
"We know him, and we kicked his but!" Irma exclaimed.
"He was a ruler of Meridian until Elyon took her rightful place on the throne." Hay Lin explained.
"What is he doing here, though? I thought he was still in the Tower of Mists." Taranee asked. Cullen sighed.
"I was hoping you could tell us that. We've never heard of him before, then all of a sudden, the Troll Kingdom begins to rebel under the flag of some one named Phobos. But if he was being held…" Cullen trailed off and looked at his mother. Virginia had her head in her hands.
"What?" Cornelia asked. "Do you know who released him? Because we need to find him and…"
"It was the Swamp Witch, Cullen. I bet you it was." Virginia suddenly said.
"How could the Swamp Witch do anything?" Elyon asked. Cullen and Virginia looked at the young queen, confused.
"I had some of my people look into the Nine Kingdoms. I couldn't come here from just a dream with no warning." Elyon explained. "Anyway, isn't the Swamp Witch dead? If she was Snow White's step mother, and Snow White is long dead, how could she survive?"
"She is dead. She's a very powerful witch, so she operates literally from beyond the grave. I thought when we stopped…" Virginia broke off. Cullen laid his hand on his mother's arm.
"Mom? Are you okay?" he asked. Virginia nodded. "I'm fine, Cullen."
"Who did you stop?" Will asked. Virginia sighed.
"You should hear this story, if your going to be staying here. All of the 3rd kingdom was affected by what we did." she said.
"It started when I was on my way to work one night. I was a waitress at a restaurant then, and I rode my bike through the park to get there. While I was riding, I hit a dog. The dog didn't have any tags, so I took him with me and hid him in the supply closet. Obviously I couldn't have the dog in the open at the restaurant without getting fired." Virginia gave a tired laugh there. "What I didn't know was that the dog was really Prince Wendell, Snow White's grandson. Actually, I didn't even know what the 9 kingdoms were until much later. But that's getting ahead of myself. Anyway, I went home early because the dog had written danger on the floor of the closet in flour. When I got home, I found that some people had been knocked out and the door to the apartment I shared with my father was hacked open. These things, trolls, tried to threaten me into giving them the dog, but I tricked them and trapped them in the elevator, which was broken at the time, thank God. Anyway, I didn't feel safe so I took the dog to…Cullen what are you sniffing after?" Virginia broke off to look at her son. Elyon and the guardians looked at him oddly, too. He seemed to be sniffing the air. All of a sudden he grinned.
"Nothing, Mom." he said with a smile. Virginia looked at her son with suspicion and opened her mouth to say something, but was interrupted when the door flew open. A man with dark, shaggy brown hair bounded into the room with his arms outstretched.
"Virginia, love of my life, come give this old wolf a hug!" he proclaimed loudly. Virginia grinned and flew to the door.
"Wolf!" she cried as she gave him giant squeeze before tilting her head up to give him a kiss.
"Hullo, Dad." Cullen said when Virginia and the man broke apart.
"Cullen! You've grown another inch. You really should stop growing, at this rate you'll be big enough to climb through Beanstalk Forest." the man said with a laugh. He turned to look at the girls.
"And who might these young ladies be? Friends of Tala? Or are they trying to win Cullen's attention?" he asked.
"Their diplomats, Wolf. Did Wendell know about them; have you come to meet them?" Virginia asked. Wolf shook his head and regarded them more closely.
"No, he didn't." he replied as they heard pounding on the basement stairs. The girls from earlier flew into the kitchen. The younger girls, the twins and the one who looked to be about six, flung themselves to Wolf and attached onto his leg while shrieking "Daddy! Daddy!" the eldest girl came up more slowly and closed the door before coming over and giving Wolf a squeeze and a kiss on the cheek.
"Welcome home, Dad." she said. Wolf laughed and reached down. He picked up the youngest girl and spun her around after giving the twins a hug.
"And how are my girls? Have you been behaving for your mother like you promised?" he asked playfully.
"Yes, we've been very good!" the youngest girl answered.
"Really good." said one twin.
"Extremely good." said the other. Wolf laughed and looked at Virginia, who nodded.
"Well then!" he exclaimed, "Why doesn't Tala take you out to the stable and see what goodies I brought from Uncle Wendell and Grandpa?" he asked. The girls cried with delight and Tala opened the door out of the house. Through the door, Will saw a large, grassy field surrounded by forest with a little village not very far in the distance.
"How long do you want me to keep them busy?" Tala asked Wolf quietly.
"About ten minutes. Do you think so, girls?" Wolf asked them. Elyon nodded.
"Alright then." Tala said and followed her younger sisters out, pulling the door shut behind her.
"Onward with the introductions. Stop me if you've heard them." Wolf said, smiling at them all. Will looked more closely at him. His hair was definitely shaggy, and he looked like he was growing a beard. It was very long, more like he hadn't shaved in two or three days. He was tall, taller then them and Virginia anyways, and lean. Then Will noticed something sticking out from under his jacket. The man had a tail.
"I am Wolf, no last name really. This is my lovely wife, Virginia, my son Cullen, and the boy asleep in the cradle is Seff. My eldest daughter is Tala, the twins are Tasmine and Tameka, and the littlest girl is Valisa. Now who might you be?" he asked, bowing when he introduced himself.
"We're the Guardians of the Veil. I'm Will, she's Taranee, Irma, Hay Lin, and Cornelia. And Elyon is the Queen and the Light of Meridian." Will replied. Wolf bowed to Elyon.
"Hello, you Majesty. Now, even if you have gone through the trouble of explaining it to Virginia and Cullen, I would like to hear about the Veil. I believe in Meridian, I've heard of it. But not the Veil. Where is the Veil?" Wolf asked.
"It's more of a what. The Veil is the barrier between Earth and Meridian." Will replied. Wolf nodded.
"And what is a guardian of the Veil?" Wolf asked.
"That would be us. When Phobos first started looking for Elyon, it was because of the Millennia had occurred and the Veil was weakened. There where holes in the Veil which connected Earth and Meridian. We closed the holes, and we occasionally go into Meridian when Elyon needs some help."
"Were you born in Meridian?" Wolf asked, although he was paying much closer attention after Phobos's name entered the conversation. Elyon shook her head.
"They were born on Earth, I was born in Meridian, but I grew up on Earth." Elyon explained.
"You can't be witches to be born on Earth." Virginia said suddenly. "How do you fight?"
"We have the powers of the elements." Will began. "When I use the Heart of Candracar, we transform into Guardians and have full control of our powers. We can use a little of them, even when we're not in guardian form."
"Why was Phobos looking for you?" Wolf asked Elyon. Elyon looked around at her friends before answering.
"I am his sister." Everything moved quickly and before they could blink Cullen and Wolf had their blades drawn and held at Elyon's throat. Will grabbed the Heart of Candracar, and the Guardians got ready to fight if needed.
"You could have mentioned that, you Majesty." Wolf said quietly, throwing a glance at Cullen.
"Would you have guessed she was related to Phobos?" Cullen whispered to him. Wolf shook his head. Elyon tipped her own.
"If I knew that you were fighting Phobos, why would I tell you I was his sister if I was on his side? There is no love lost between Phobos and I. When I was thirteen, and was to take the throne from him, he pretended to be the caring older brother before trying to kill me." Elyon said calmly.
"You are enemies of Phobos, then." Cullen asked.
"Yeah! Didn't you hear my 'we kicked his butt' comment?" Irma exclaimed. Wolf lowered his knife and Cullen followed suit with his sword.
"Sorry, your Majesty, but we are being cautious." Cullen said by way of apology. Elyon nodded.
"I have had to defend my own kingdom several times. I understand."
"So you are here to stop Phobos?" Wolf asked.
"We came here because Elyon had a dream that told us that this land would need help. We didn't know that the problem was Phobos, though." Taranee explained.
"Indeed. Alright then. In a week I head back to Wendell's castle. You can accompany me, and Cullen, you're coming, too. His Majesty wants to talk to you." Wolf decided.
"May we here the rest of the story?" Hay Lin asked hopefully. Virginia nodded.
"Right. I was at the trolls, wasn't I?" she continued when the girls nodded. "I went to my grandmother's apartment. Wolf, who the Queen had released from prison, followed Wendell's sent to Dad's apartment, where Dad was just waking up from the troll dust. Wolf gave him a magic wishing bean in exchange for directions to Grandmother's house." Here Taranee stifled a giggle.
"Isn't this a lot like Little Red Riding Hood?" she asked. Virginia smiled at her.
"Things tend to overlap like that a lot here." she explained. "Well, Dad made rather…well stupid wishes, and he ended up with the NYPD chasing him for robbing a bank. Now, back at Grandmother's house, Wolf had…" she trailed off.
"I was unreformed!" Wolf protested. "It wasn't until I laid eyes on gorgeous Virginia that I repented! And I have apologized to her!"
"Don't get the wrong idea about Wolf." Virginia told him. "He had been locked up in prison for a while and was hunting. Animal instincts and all that. Any way, he tied up Grandmother, and was going to put her in the oven for a meal."
"Oh. That all?" Will remarked, and everyone laughed.
"Then I woke up, and he actually hid under Grandmother's covers and pretended to be her. Once he saw me, though, he fell in love with me. Since he had a meat cleaver in his hand, I ran. I ended pushing him out a second story window."
"When I woke up, it turned out I was outside a shrink's office and she thought I was a client. I told her about my problems, she gave me many self help books." Wolf laughed, and Virginia shared the chuckle. An obvious inside joke moment.
"Any way, as I was walking back with the dog home, I found Dad being chased by most of the NYPD. He used his last wish to understand the dog, and we followed him through the portal, the mirror downstairs. We ended up in the Snow White Memorial Prison, where the trolls kidnapped myself and imprisoned Dad and the dog." Virginia continued.
"I decided to rescue her from the trolls, and succeeded wonderfully. Except someone decided to have a shoe obsession." Wolf added meaningfully. Virginia sighed and shook her head.
"He never forgets that. So we used the shoes to find Dad in the prison, and we escaped, only to find that the mirror had been accidentally taken by one of Dad's cellmates when he escaped. So we set up to follow him, and caught up to the mirror in Love Town (AN: Correct me if I'm wrong with that), only to have it smashed and have to go to the mountains where the dwarfs who made it lived. There, and this happened after a lot of things went wrong that would take much to long to tell you about, I met Snow White, who told me I was the girl who would save the Nine Kingdoms. My father and I traveled through the swamp, and Wolf saved us from me dying from the evil witch's spell. We then traveled to the coronation of the fake prince Wendell. After a long and painful night, we managed to kill the queen and save the kingdom." Here Virginia's eyes misted and Wolf wrapped his arms around her. The girls looked at each other but said nothing; it was their story to tell.
"So. The stories have been shared." Wolf said, smiling at them all. "You girls will spend the week with us before we head up to King Wendell."
The adult discussion was over with as the younger girls ran back in, each clasping a glass doll. Tala followed them, carrying a spinning wheel and a crossbow with some arrows slung over her shoulder which she gave to Cullen. The girls were bouncing around, and Tala and Cullen led the Guardians and Elyon away from the noise and up the stairs.
"We only have two guest bedrooms, one bed each. Two of you can probably share a bed, but the other two will probably have to stay in my bed room with me. I have a rather large bed with a trundle, so that can hold three of us." Tala said, opening three doors.
"Except on Wednesday. That's the full moon." Cullen reminded his sister. She nodded thoughtfully.
"I'll just share Valisa's room then." she murmured back. The divided into the rooms; Cornelia and Elyon, then Taranee and Hay Lin, and Irma and Will shared with Tala. That night, they all slept peacefully. That is, except for Will. She seemed to have taken the mantle from Elyon for receiving informational dreams.
So sorry for this taking so long! I had this about five eights done and then I had to rewatch the Tenth Kingdom to brush up on old memories and I ended up forgetting about it until I was cleaning up my files and was like "oh that's right…" But here it is! Yay! And sorry for that long explanation, but it kind of was needed. But next chapter shall move along! Cause it is a plot