"Bhyrun, you're…disappearing?" Danny asked in complete disbelief.
The aftermath of that painful battle that Danny shouldn't have won according to the odds was just like what the ocean would appear as after a hurricane. Just a few moments before, everything was outside and chaotic, and barely anyone could have survived in the middle of the action, no matter how hard they tried. Now, all the streets were deathly quiet. Nothing seemed menacing or dangerous anymore. Not even the massive black cloud as it hovered over the buildings.
"I…shall not lose!" Bhyrun screamed. He started to walk faster, but he just fell on the ground again. No sooner did Bhyrun fall on the ground did he start flashing weird colors.
Danny was confused as to why Bhyrun began flashing, and he was too afraid of something happening if he tried attacking. Because of this, Danny just laid low and let Bhyrun continue changing colors rapidly.
At long last, Bhyrun just jolted up and started screaming. He turned a solid shade of white, and bright beams of light started emitting from him. He screamed in even more pain, then white silhouettes of people starting flying out from within in. They looked like completely white ghosts.
"What the?..." Danny asked, not knowing what was going on.
The white silhouettes started gently floating in the air, and then slowly started falling. They gently tapped on the ground when gravity had pulled them onto it. The silhouettes stopped looking two-dimensional as they tapped onto the ground and started growing into fully fledged people.
Danny was staring down at the white figures as they started to take on the forms of people. One got up, and it slowly faded away from being white to turning into a person that Danny had never seen before.
Danny couldn't count how many of these mysterious white figures there were around him, but he honestly didn't care. He just wanted to know what they were doing, or what they meant.
After the sixth figure stood up and stopped glowing white and reverting back to a person, Danny thought of an idea.
"Wait a minute!" he cried. "Are you people…are you the ones who Bhyrun turned into Bhyspawn?"
The people looked at Danny like he was crazy or something. Obviously they had no idea that they had not just been turned into Bhyspawn, nor did they even have any idea what a Bhyspawn was.
Danny continued to look around in complete amazement as he saw the people changing out of the white forms and back to what they originally looked like. Then, he saw two figures that looked around his age growing into a three-dimensional white figure. One had short hair going around the back, and the other appeared to be wearing some form of headgear.
Danny gasped at the possibility of what those two figures were. Breathing heavily, he ran towards them, making loud grunting noises as he made his way through all the people. He was right in front of the two figures when they went back into their human form.
"Sam! Tucker!" Danny yelled with more happiness than he had ever yelled before. The white figures had just turned into his two best friends who had been turned into Bhyspawn a few days before.
There was no doubt in Danny's mind now that the people who were forming from the white matter in front of him were the people who Bhyrun had turned into Bhyspawn and used to enhance his power in the last battle. The people all around him were most likely the Bhyspawn he had defeated in the cloud with his ghostly wail.
"Danny!" they both yelled.
Instantly, the three of them pushed together and made a three-way hug. All of them were happy that the ordeal was finally over and everything would soon be back to normal.
"Oh man, I'm so glad you guys are okay!" Danny yelled happily, not loosening his grip on his friends. "I hated the thought that I could have killed you guys when I was fighting Bhyspawn."
"Danny, what happened?" Tucker asked. "What's going on here, anyway?"
But Danny didn't respond. He just continued to hug his two best friends. His eyes were closed, and the largest smile had spread on his face that had been there since their "vacation" evens started.
After a while, the three of them gradually let go of each other. Danny started to explain what just happened.
"Wait a minute!" Sam yelled, interrupting him. "You said you met Nouron? Isn't he the guy who our research said defeated Bhyrun back in the 1360's or something?"
"Yeah," Danny said with a smile on his face. "Even weirder, he's my ancestor. I'm related to him."
Sam and Tucker didn't say anything. They could only gaze off in disbelief at what Danny was telling them.
"Listen, you guys," Danny said. "Bhyrun used the power of his Bhyspawn I defeated to make himself stronger. It ultimately ended with him using the power of you guys as Bhyspawn and all these other people around here."
"And you had to fight him?" Tucker asked, making sure he understood everything.
"Yeah," Danny said, not taking the wide smile off his face. "I had to fight Bhyrun in his world-dominating form. It was a pretty tough fight, you know."
"And you handled it splendidly," said a pleased voice from behind them.
Danny shot around, and it was Nouron. It seemed Nouron also had a very pleased smile on his face.
"Nouron!" Danny yelled. He ran over and gave Nouron a hug, too. "Did you see that fight? Sheesh, that's one fight I don't want to relive."
"And you don't have to," Nouron calmly said in a happy voice. "Look over there."
Nouron pointed over to a dark figure slumped on the ground. He had thick black robes on him, but he looked very thin and frail now. It was undoubtedly Bhyrun.
Danny ran over to Bhyrun and gave him an "I-won-you-lost" look. "What do you have to say to that, Bhyrun?" he sneered. "Don't want to mess with me anymore, do you?"
Bhyrun growled. "Curse you. You and Nouron!"
"Danny, this centuries-old battle will officially be over once Bhyrun is dead," Nouron said calmly, looking right into Danny's eyes. "Once he is gone, the generations in our family will finally be at peace. Danny, I want you to do one last thing…"
Nouron reached from behind his long, shining cloak and pulled out his sword. "Open your hand," he ordered Danny.
Danny obeyed. Nouron put the gleaming sword into Danny's gloved hand. "It's been a long, hard time for you, Danny," Nouron said. "But you must do one last thing: you must stick this sword through Bhyrun and kill him."
"You don't have the guts!" Bhyrun challenged, firing spit out of his mouth as he continued to lie on the ground, unable to move.
"It'll all be over then?" Danny asked, unable to believe the very words. He took the sword, and then focused his eyes on Bhyrun. The happiness and relief in his eyes soon turned to anger and determination.
"Yes," Nouron said. As he heard that, Danny ran over to Bhyrun and held the sword above his head, ready to strike Bhyrun down with it once and for all. "Wait!" Nouron yelled, stopping Danny.
Danny turned around and looked at Nouron, curious as to what it was he wanted to say. Nouron didn't look too thrilled.
"When you defeat Bhyrun, I'm going to return to my own time," Nouron said.
"What? What do you mean?" Danny asked, starting to sound a little nervous.
"I'll be returning to 1368. I'll never have to come here again, and I'll finally be able to rest in peace."
Danny looked shocked to hear that he might never see Nouron again after killing Bhyrun. But he ignored it, knowing it would be selfish not to finish his family's generations of work just for that one reason.
Without saying a word, Danny walked over to Bhyrun. He ignored the sneer on Bhyrun's face as he raised the sword above his head. In one swift motion, he thrust Nouron's sword right through Bhyrun.
Bhyrun screamed in pain, but then his moan quickly died down. He slumped over onto the ground. His thin white fingers were no longer tensed up, but now relaxed. The same went for Bhyrun's grit teeth.
Danny watched as Bhyrun disappeared right in front of him, turning more and more invisible with every second. Only a short while later, Bhyrun was gone. He was finally dead, and the curse on Danny's family had finally been lifted after all these years.
Danny just stared in disbelief.
"It's…over…" he reassured himself.
Then, Danny looked up into the sky and saw something unbelievable. The black cloud started shaking violently, like there was some sort of earthquake inside of it. Then, it came crashing down towards the ground like a blimp when it's run out of fuel.
When the cloud was a few hundred feet off the ground, bright yellow lights burst from it. The entire cloud turned golden, and then it disintegrated into small particles.
For some reason, there was something emotionally touching about watching all the tiny gold photons disappear in mid air as the cloud burst into them. The cloud was no more.
Danny stared off, barely letting a sound out. Then he heard a hissing sound from behind. He turned around, and Nouron was also going invisible.
"Wait!" Danny yelled. "Don't go!"
"Danny, don't worry about me," Nouron said, still smiling. "You've done splendidly, and I'm proud of you."
"Hold on a minute!" Danny yelled, ignoring what Nouron just said. "Am I ever going to see you again?"
Nouron just continued smiling. "Will you?"
Danny didn't say anything. He just watched as the last remaining traces of Nouron disappeared, possibly never to be seen again.
After Nouron was gone, Danny knew it was over. The cloud, Bhyrun, the Bhyspawn, and now Nouron…everything symbolizing or recalling the incident was gone.
Danny let a deep sigh of relief escape him. Although he wasn't looking, he could tell Sam and Tucker were staring at him. "Guys, can I get some time to myself?" Danny asked, looking down at the ground.
His two friends nodded their head, and then they quickly walked away. When Danny saw they were no longer in sight, he just sat down and curled up into a ball. He tucked his head between his legs, so his face wasn't visible. No one knew what his face looked like under there.
"Ah ha!" yelled a familiar voice. "Now I got you!"
Danny looked up. It was his father, Jack.
"Oh no…" Danny moaned.
"Oh yessssss," Jack said in an almost evil way. "I've been waiting for this moment for a long time, ghost child! Now, I'm finally going to capture you and keep you as my prize!"
Danny thought for sure he was going to get blasted by the Fenton Bazooka or sucked into the thermos, until he saw his dad's face look irritated.
Jack suddenly remembered that his daughter had forbidden him to bring ghost hunting equipment on the trip, so there was nothing he could do. "Errrrrrgggggh…JAAAAAAZZZZZZZZZ!" Jack yelled.
Danny smirked. "Talk to you later, old man," he said. After making that remark, Danny flew up and back towards his hotel, ready to finally put everything behind him.
The next day, the mayor of the city was holding a ceremony to honor Danny's heroics. Danny even showed up in his phantom form to accept an award.
"We are all here today to give our utmost gratitude to this ghost," the mayor said. He was standing at a podium in the middle of the street with just about everyone standing there and taking pictures, whether they were a tourist or a resident. "We owe him our greatest thanks for saving our town from that vicious cloud. Let this show that not all ghosts are evil, and that they could be walking amongst us. Therefore, on behalf of Summerwater Resorts, I award this medal to Danny Phantom.
Danny, with a huge smile on his face, took the award. He lifted his arms up into the air so everyone could see him holding the medal. The medal was gold and circular, and it had the word BRAVERY engraved in it.
As Danny lifted his arms up to show everyone the medal, the thousands of people in the crowd burst with cheers and white flashes starting filling everyone's view due to all the pictures being taken. This was one of the happiest moments of his life Danny could ever remember experiencing.
Then there was a dark picture with four spotlights spinning around in random circles over the darkly lit stage. The camera cut back to a man in his early forties, standing on a set to a television show. The set resembled a haunted house itself, or an extremely frightening looking scene. The show was Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction, and the man was Franklin Jones, a relatively new actor to showbiz.
"What happened here?" he asked, trying to give the camera his best confused look, mixed with fear. "Is it really possible for a smashed bottle to awaken an ancient curse? Perhaps it was just coincidence that by the time Toby smashed the bottle, the dark cloud had set in? If so, then how do you explain Bhyrun and Nouron popping up? Were they perhaps just some people who tried to motivate Danny to fulfill his family's duties? Or were they really the spirits of a struggle that leads back to the Middle Ages?"
Franklin held up a medal and showed it to the camera. It was obviously the prop used near the end of reenacting the last story. It looked strikingly similar to the one that Danny was showing to everybody. "Is this story of a Descendant's Curse true, or are we clouding your logic?"
"We'll tell you which our stories were true and false after this message," said the announcer on Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction
"That's definitely 'fiction'," Madeline Fenton said as her television show went to the last commercial. "There's no way that story could be true."
"Madeline!" called her father into the living room. "Your mother's almost done getting her hair right, so be prepared to leave in a few minutes."
"All right," Madeline said. She really liked her name for some reason. She supposed it was because her father said he named her after his own mother, Maddie. Except Madeline hated being called "Maddie" so they just kept it as Madeline.
Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction came back on. Madeline was watching the show intently to determine how many stories she correctly identified as true or false. She heard her dad on the phone confirming reservations at the restaurant.
"Last name's Fenton," Madeline's dad said into the phone. "F-E-N-T-O-N. First name is Daniel."
Madeline didn't pay any attention to it other than that. Three stories had been revealed, and Madeline had correctly identified all three of them.
"How did you judge the story of the girls who went into the haunted house and think they saw a ghost, only to have it turn out to be a police officer but later see a figure standing in the window as they were leaving? Did you say fact or fiction?"
"I said fact!" Madeline yelled at the screen.
"Did you say 'fact'?" asked Franklin to the audience. "If you did, you're correct."
"Yes!" Madeline yelled. "That's four out of four! Just tell me the last story was fiction and I'll have had a perfect show!"
"How did you judge the story of the half-human, half-ghost boy who battled his family's tormentor? Was that fact or fiction?"
"Fiction!" Madeline yelled. She crossed her fingers. "Please, please, please, PLEASE say it's fiction!"
"Did this story seem too farfetched to be true?" Franklin asked the audience.
"Yes!"
"If you thought so, you're wrong," Franklin said, putting a sad face on for the camera.
Madeline's face dropped. "WHAT!"
"According to our research, this story took place about twenty years ago, in 2006. It's true."
Madeline couldn't believe it. The story about Danny Phantom taking on a cloud, a scientist and some dark mage actually happened?
"Madeline!" her father yelled, "your mother and I are heading into the car! Get in as soon as your show's over."
"All right, dad," Madeline said, turning the television off. She started to walk towards the doorway, but she stopped for some reason. She looked at the mantle above the family's television and saw a medal that looked EXACTLY like the one Danny Phantom had been awarded in the story.
Confusion swept Madeline's face. She looked at the medal and saw the striking resemblance it had to the one in the last story on Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction. She also got confused by how much her father, Daniel, resembled the main character in the last story.
She continued staring at the medal with those thoughts passing through her head. "Hmmm…I wonder?..." she said softly to herself.
THE END
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Author's Note:
Wow, would you look at that. It's been almost three months since I began writing this, but it feels like just last week when I was writing parts of the story before anyone knew Skyler was evil. After this time, my Descendant's Curse project is coming to a close.
You might be interested to know that I came up with the core to this story back in July or August, but I never got the story written down, so this is a recycled one. (with some major changes made to it, of course) I started outlining this story probably a few weeks before Split Decisions ended, and I was surprised with how long it took me to outline it. Believe it or not, by the time I actually started writing this and got the first chapter on the site, I still didn't know Skyler's name, Bhyrun's name, or Nouron's name. Basically, I didn't come up with names for those guys until their first chapters.
I'm not going to lie; I was disappointed with the amount of reviews I got. If I got two every chapter I'd be fine, but it was pretty annoying when I was writing the teen-chapters and not getting a single review for about 6 chapters in a row. But I'm glad I got all the reviews at the end that I did. Thank you Horselver4ever, Ghostboy814 and Leppers for being my main reviewers, as well people like Jenna Dax who took the time to read my story and review it. Once again, I'm happy with the reviews I got towards the end, because you guys were reading this and giving me motivation to continue, and that was everything you guys could have done. So thank you.
Am I going to write any more Danny Phantom stories? Well, I don't see why not. After all, I love writing stories of supernatural things, especially when the hero gets to be a teenager. I'm still writing Revelations and Revenge, so if any of you want to read it, (besides Leppers, because I know you're reading it already) please do. But after Revelations and Revenge, I don't know when I'll write another one, but it probably won't be until into July, possibly August.
But enough of that. After all, this is supposed to be a memoir of Descendant's Curse. I've had a lot of fun writing this, and it's a bonus that this has become the longest story I've ever written. I've had a lot of fun writing this, and I'm going to miss it, actually. After all, at least writing a part of a chapter has become part of my daily routine for almost a quarter of a year, and it might not be the easiest thing in the world to walk away from that. But I have more things to move on to now, but this is going to be one story I'm probably going to take with me for a while.
I'm proud of how this story turned out. I'm kind of sad that it's over, but like I said, I have more things to move on to now. Thank you all for taking the time to read and review my story. As you know, it means a lot getting feedback. Writing this (and then having to write Revelations and Revenge) was very time consuming and was hard at times to balance that and school, but I love writing so it wasn't so bad. I looked forward to coming home almost every day and being able to add on to this story, and I'm a little sad to see it end.
As I write this the night before I post this final chapter, I reflect on how so much has actually happened since I started this. Once I sign at the bottom, all work on this story will officially be complete. Thank you to all for reading and reviewing Descendant's Curse.
Velkan the
Impaler
Monday, May 08, 2006 – 7:39 p.m. EST