Another update, and so soon! This is an action chapter – powers will be used and people will be in danger, oh no! This is my idea of a Meridian villain that would actually be a potential threat. Enjoy!
For all your disclaimer needs, visit chapter one!
Chapter Five
After convincing her mom that she could go to work and leave Will alone, Will spent the day in bed. She emerged briefly from her room around noon to eat a halfhearted bowl of cereal. Seth dogged her heels, a constant anxious presence. Will tried reading a book, watching TV, browsing the internet. She ghosted through the house, barely there.
"I think I want to go to school tomorrow," Will said to herself. She was lying spread-eagled on her bed, tired of sleeping but not knowing what else to do with herself.
Physically, you're fine. Seth licked her hand encouragingly. You should go for it.
"But what about my face?" Will touched her eye gingerly. The skin had purpled overnight and Will knew the bruise wouldn't recede for at least a week.
I'm just glad nothing worse happened to you, Seth said for the umpteenth time, his hackles raising at the mere thought of a threat to Will.
"You're changing the subject again," Will mumbled. She looked the shapeshifter over. His wound was completely healed, despite its horrific appearance the night before. "Too bad I don't heal as fast as you."
I will never leave your side again, Seth announced.
"You know you'll need to…" Will replied, her mind drifting away from the conversation.
She knew her friends would be banging on her door the moment school let out. She expected it from them. But what would they say when she told them that some human guy attacked her… and she, the leader of the Guardians, couldn't fight back?
Would they lose their confidence in her? Maybe the Council would take the Heart away, choose someone who could defend herself….
Realistically, she knew her what-ifs were ridiculous. But that didn't stop her mind from journeying to the pessimistic side of her brain; the side that reveled in worst case scenarios and caused Will's self-confidence to plunge.
Right at three-fifteen – Will had been watching the clock with mounting apprehension – there was a pounding on her door. Will, still wearing the holey sweatpants and t-shirt she had slept in, gestured for Seth to get the door. The bright red shepherd dog unlocked and opened the door with ease.
Cornelia, Irma, Taranee, and Matt burst through the door. They stopped short when they saw Will sitting cross-legged on the couch, or rather when they saw the enormous bruise on Will's face. Will could see the shock on their faces.
Matt approached her first. He sat beside her and wordlessly gave her a hug. Will melted in his strong arms.
The girls surrounded Will, sitting on the couch, floor, and coffee table in their effort to be as close as possible to their friend.
"What happened?" Taranee asked quietly. Cornelia held back angry curses and waited for an explanation. The blonde was ready to storm off and maim whoever had done this.
Instead of explaining herself, Will frowned and counted her visitors again. "Where's Hay Lin?"
The girls exchanged glances. "We all saw her at lunch today, but she never showed after school," Cornelia said. "We tried calling her, but she didn't answer her phone. We didn't want to wait, so we just came over here without her."
"I'm sure she'll be here soon," Irma said. "Maybe she ran into Eric or something."
Will nodded, the worst-case scenarios playing themselves out again. She pushed away negative thoughts about what was keeping Hay Lin and addressed her friends.
"Well, on my way home from Hay Lin's last night…" Will explained in as few words as possible what had happened. She knew trying to keep something like this from her friends was not the right thing to do (adding to the fact that it was impossible with Taranee's telepathy).
Her friends' identical expressions of horror were not encouraging. Will found herself inexplicably opening her mouth again. "It wasn't like he knew what he was doing, he was drunk and probably doesn't even remember –"
"Will, stop it." Taranee said. "Rationalizing is part of the healing process, but don't even try it with that sicko." Her face showed uncharacteristic disgust.
"I will hunt him down and make him wish he had never even seen you," Cornelia said, her fists shaking as she seethed with anger. Irma agreed with Cornelia for once, adding her own venomous threats.
"I don't even know what he looks like!" Will said, her voice coming out a pitiable whine. Matt tightened the arm he had wrapped around her. Will liked feeling close to him. She felt safe.
"It doesn't matter. We'll find him," Irma said, eyes sparking with fury.
It was too much for Will. She had expected their support, but not vengeance! She had thought she used up all her tears the previous night, but her eyes managed to grow hot again.
"Could we just drop it?" Will whispered, burying her face in Matt's shoulder. "I don't want to think about it anymore."
Cornelia abruptly stopped detailing her revenge plans and her eyes softened. She, Irma, and Taranee gave Will a huge hug, and Will was surrounded by people who cared about her. Immediately she felt better.
…Until a knock sounded on her door. They all looked up, and Taranee began to stand.
"No, Seth can get it," Will said. Seth was already trotting toward the door. When he reached the door, he paused, sniffing loudly. Then his hackles rose and he snarled more terribly than Will had ever heard before.
The girls disentangled themselves from their hug, and stood abruptly, ranging out across the room, ready for anything. Matt followed suit, wishing belatedly that he had some kind of weapon with him.
"What is it, pup?" Will asked quietly.
I don't know, but it smells terrible! Seth growled.
Will instantly relaxed, and even laughed. "It's okay, guys. It's only Blunk." Everyone sat back down, laughing at their paranoia. "Go ahead and let him in, Seth."
Seth shrugged off his mistrust and pawed the door open. It was indeed Blunk. The ugly little green creature stood in the doorway looking quite frightened. "Girls?" He peeked around Seth's massive furry form. "Why does you have dog?"
"It's no big deal, Blunk. Seth is Will's familiar, that's all." Cornelia said, holding her nose in her usual dramatic style.
"Come on in," Irma said. "What's the news from medieval times?" Recently, she didn't seem to care as much about Blunk's smell. Will chalked it up to too much experience with the Passling.
Seth let Blunk enter the room, despite his misgivings with the smelly creature.
"Girls! You has to come quick! There are bad things at princess's castle!" Blunk was usually the bearer of bad news, so the girls weren't surprised that he came with a summons.
Everyone looked to Will. She knew this probably wasn't a big deal, since most of the really bad creatures had left Meridian after Nerissa's defeat, but she couldn't sit it out, not with Hay Lin absent.
"Guardians unite!" Will cried, holding out the Heart. The fireworks ensued.
When the flashes died away and four brightly garbed Guardians stood in the living room (along with Shagon, who transformed sans spectacle), Will noticed that something unusual had happened to Seth. He had changed into an enormous tiger, two or three times the size of an Earth tiger. He must have been sixteen feet long and filled most of the space in the room.
"Whoa, puppy! What happened?" Will said, reaching up to scratch the fur on his ruff. The other girls let out similar expressions of surprise and confusion.
When you unite, obviously I'm going to need to be in a form more suitable for fighting, Seth said, preening. I get larger when you transform.
"Right, cool." Will said, shaking her head as she learned yet another of the horribly complex rules about familiars. Taranee relayed the new information to the Guardians as Will filled Matt in. She worried for a second that he might be jealous of this new development in Seth's power, but Matt took it in stride. He agreed that Seth would be more help this way.
"Okay, Blunk. We're ready to go," Will said, her hand resting on the enormous tiger. For a moment, she pictured her mother's face if she were to walk in at that moment. The thought made her smile.
Blunk slashed the air with his Tooth, creating a dazzling fold.
"Wait a second!" Irma said, punching away on her cell phone. "I'm sending Hay Lin a text."
"Oh, let her miss this one. She has enough on her plate already." Taranee said, and Irma shrugged and tucked her phone away.
Everyone filed through the fold, Seth somehow managing to fit through the tiny space.
They entered into the great grassy plains that surrounded Elyon's castle. They were surprised with the lack of a gory battle. Everything looked at peace.
"Caleb said to bring you to the castle." Blunk said, tugging on Cornelia's skirt.
"Did Caleb tell you anything else? What's the problem here?" Cornelia said a little rudely, yanking her skirt out of Blunk's hand.
"Just to bring Guardians to castle. Hurry, girls!" He galloped ahead on hands and feet. Will looked at Matt and shrugged. He and the girls flew toward the white castle in the distance. Seth loped below, easily able to match their pace.
When they reached the castle, all seemed normal. The guards let them enter the front entrance with smiles, and even tipped their helmets at the realm's saviors. They didn't seem to know about anything wrong in the castle.
Elyon greeted them in the grand hallway. "Hey guys, what's up?" She looked the same as usual; even her braids were nice and neat.
"I don't know," Will said, giving Blunk a hard look. The Passling shrugged helplessly.
"As long as you're here, could you help with something?" Elyon asked, motioning them through a doorway. The girls followed, but Matt's wings and Seth's sheer size didn't allow them to enter, so they waited outside.
The room they entered was huge. It had lofty ceilings and walls covered with weapons and armor of all kinds. Tables displaying gilded crossbows and huge maces littered the room. It looked like a kind of museum.
"We've been trying to mount these swords way up there," Elyon pointed toward a blank spot on one wall near the ceiling. "but nobody can reach!"
"Slow day, huh?" Irma said, snickering.
Elyon grinned. "Yeah, not even the usual land disputes to occupy my time. I've been reduced to interior decorating!" She didn't seem too unhappy about the situation.
Cornelia picked up one of the swords from the table nearest them and flew toward the empty space. "Where do you want it?" she called down.
Before Will could even register what was going on, Elyon had grabbed a bow, fitted an arrow, and fired it at Cornelia. Will reacted without thinking. She wrenched the bow out of Elyon's hands and Irma pinned the queen's hands behind her. Taranee fell into a battle stance beside them, one hand filled with fire and aimed at Elyon.
"You okay, Corny?" Will yelled.
"The arrow missed! I'm fine!" Cornelia replied, sounding shaken. She landed next to Will a second later.
A mischievous smirk appeared on Elyon's face. A second later, Will knew why. Elyon shouted, "Guards! I'm being attacked!"
At least a dozen guards stormed into the room. They saw exactly what they wanted to see. Within moments all of the Guardians were being held back by at least three different guards. Will could hear Seth's furious growls outside the room.
"Elyon, what's going on? Why did you fire at me?" Cornelia shouted. Irma and Will echoed her. Taranee tried to convince the guards holding her that she wasn't a threat. They ignored her, to nobody's surprise.
"I don't know why! They just came in and started attacking me!" Elyon said, feigning convincing tears. Matt transformed into his human form and poked his head into the room. He looked astonished at the scene in front of him.
The guards were hauling the Guardians away when Caleb burst into the room. "Let the Guardians go!" he said. "That's what you should be putting in the dungeon!" He pointed at Elyon.
The guards did release the Guardians. The girls shook out their wings in a huff. "What are you talking about, boy?" one of the older guards said, looking ready to wage war against Caleb.
"I'll show you," Caleb said, and before anyone could react he plunged his sword into Elyon's chest. Cornelia screamed.
Elyon began writhing and shouting curses. Before everyone's amazed eyes, she slowly melted away. In her place was a shapeless purple shadow. It looked like it was made of Silly Putty and undulated in time to a rhythm nobody heard.
"Caleb, what is going on." Will said carefully, keeping her eyes trained on the purple thing.
"That," Caleb said, "is a shapeshifter. I've been chasing them all morning!"
"A shapeshifter like Seth?" Will whispered in horror.
"No. This breed feeds on chaos. It mimics the form of whatever it needs to cause chaos." Caleb explained. He wasn't attacking the shapeshifter.
"How do we kill it?" Cornelia said, her voice hard and angry. The shapeshifter was already starting to change its form into Elyon's.
"Fire. It's invulnerable to everything else." The moment the words were out of Caleb's mouth, Taranee unleashed a stream of flames from her hands. The flames engulfed the shapeshifter, and it vanished in the smoke.
"That was easy," Irma remarked. "Can we go home now?"
"There are more in the castle. I've been running into them all day and nobody believed me. That's why I called you." Caleb looked at Will for the first time. "Hey, what happened to your—?"
"I don't want to talk about it," Will said quickly.
"Okay," Caleb said, looking curiously at Will's eye. "We need to scour the castle and get rid of all the doppelgangers."
"We should split up!" Irma said excitedly. "I claim Taranee!"
Will surprisingly realized that she was excited as well. This was the Guardians' first real battle since Nerissa. She hadn't realized how much she missed feeling tall and strong. She loved feeling the quintessence flowing through her. The raw power was invigorating.
"No, we need to stick together," Matt said, having been filled in. "Both teams can't have Taranee."
"Oh yeah," Irma said, still grinning.
"What are we waiting for?" Cornelia said, already walking out the door, "Let's go!"
It was awkward, moving through the labyrinthine halls and passages of the castle in one big herd. Will was used to zipping through the castle with her Guardians at lightning speed, and this was far too slow for her liking.
She hung back with Seth and Matt. An idea occurred to her. "Hey Seth?"
Yes?
"Could you turn into a dragon or something that can breathe fire?"
Of course not. I can only shift into Earth animals.
"Well, why not?" Will said, frustrated.
I'm not a Meridian creature, Will. Seth said, shaking his massive striped head. My species of shapeshifter lives on Earth.
"Oh!" Will had always assumed that all magical creatures were from Meridian or one of the other supernatural worlds, never from boring old Earth. "I guess that makes sense."
She could feel Seth's amusement at her ignorance. It wasn't cruel; he just hadn't realized how little she knew.
"Hey, there's an Elyon!" Irma said, running up ahead.
"How do we know if it's the real one?" Cornelia asked. "Don't stab her until we know!" she told Caleb sternly.
"Ask her something only the real Elyon would know." Taranee said, already poised to blast her.
"Okay," Cornelia said, her brows knitting together as she tried to think of a question.
"Hey guys," Elyon said, sounding like a perfect copy of the Elyon they had already met. "What's up?"
"What is your favorite stuffed animal?" Cornelia said, her tone accusatory.
"Um, I dunno." The Elyon said, grinning at the group. "I've spent so much time here in Meridian that I forgot about my life on Earth!"
"She's not real," Cornelia hissed.
Taranee hesitated. "Are you absolutely sure?" she asked.
"Yes."
Taranee blasted the clone and it vanished in a puff of black smoke.
"One down," Irma said, sounding disappointed. Will could relate. Taranee was the only one who was doing any fighting here.
The group trooped slowly around the castle. With each Elyon they encountered, Cornelia asked her question – sometimes she asked Elyon's favorite color, or what was on the cake for her tenth birthday party – and then Taranee blasted the shapeshifter into oblivion.
This particular Elyon was different. When Cornelia asked, "What did you always used to carry around in second grade?" Elyon correctly answered, "My lucky rock. Why?"
Cornelia let out a delighted cry and rushed to hug Elyon, who was very confused.
"What's going on? Why are all you here?" She hugged each of them in turn as Taranee explained the situation.
"Oh, well if that's it," Elyon said, relieved that it wasn't something more serious. "Your job should be easier now." She laughed and joined the group.
Matt caught Will's arm and they stopped, letting the rest of the group go ahead. They could handle the shapeshifters without them.
"What's wrong?" Will asked, looking into Matt's eyes.
"Why does there always have to be something wrong?" Matt said. "Can't I just want to spend time with my girlfriend?"
"Sure." Will smiled and led them to a carved wooden bench against the wall. They sat cozily close. Seth curled up next to their seat and dropped his massive furry head on his paws.
"Especially since she's just gone through some pretty hard times," Matt reminded her in a whisper. His eyes reflected the same concern Will had seen in the Guardians' eyes.
"I really don't want to talk about it," Will said, turning her face away from Matt's. She was afraid she would break down again. It was best to pretend it had never happened.
"Okay," Matt let it go without argument. "But you know you will have to talk about it eventually –"
"Just not now." Will said, attempting to smile at her boyfriend.
"When we go back to Earth, can I take you out to dinner?" Matt asked, showing the same trepidation he had when he had first asked her out months ago.
"Of course." Will smiled for real now. "How about Italian?"
"As you wish," Matt delivered the cheesy line with aplomb.
They cuddled together on the bench, making romantic small talk, until all the Elyon shapeshifters were all destroyed and everyone came back to the hall where they sat.
"Will! There you are!" Irma said, looking bored. "We found twenty-two shapeshifters and got rid of them all. What have you two been doing?" She asked, waggling her eyebrows.
"No, nothing like that," Will rushed to say. "Just talking a bit." Truthfully, they had been making out, but Irma didn't need to know that.
"Can we go back to Earth now?" Irma whined, plopping herself down on the bench beside them.
"Sure," Will stood and told everyone they were going back to Earth. Cornelia wanted to stay and catch up with Elyon. She assured Will that Blunk could fold her back when she wanted to return to Earth.
Will held up the Heart, and a shining portal appeared. Through it she could see the basement of the Silver Dragon. Matt stepped through first, followed by Will and Seth. The portal dissolved after Irma and Taranee went through.
Cornelia talked for hours with Elyon, and they ended up in Elyon's enormous bedroom, trying out outrageous hairstyles on each other and laughing at the results.
"Guess what?" Cornelia said as Elyon teased her friend's voluminous golden hair.
"What?" Elyon said, concentrating deeply on detangling Cornelia's earrings from the emerging bouffant.
"Caleb and I finally did it!" Cornelia said, her voice squeaking at the end.
Elyon dropped all the long hair in shock. "What?" she gasped.
"Yup. It was two nights ago. After we went to see the VMJ movie, Caleb came back to my house. My parents were at Lillian's dumb piano recital, so we had the whole place to ourselves." Cornelia filled in her best friend with every detail, not noticing Elyon's discomfort.
"Hey, I, um, learned a new spell." Elyon said desperately. "Want to see it?"
Cornelia saw through the attempt, and frowned at her friend. "What's wrong? Don't you have someone?"
"No," Elyon admitted, hanging her head. She was the queen of an entire realm and she couldn't even net herself a boyfriend! How pathetic was she?
"Oh, Elyon," Cornelia said, lying back on the bed with Elyon. "It'll happen soon, I promise. You could hold a ball or something."
"Like that would work," Elyon said miserably.
"No, it's a good idea!" Cornelia said, sitting up excitedly. "You should throw a big party and invite all the eligible bachelors of the land!" She giggled. "I sound like Cinderella, right?"
"I don't think—"
"It's so romantic, though! You'd have all the hot Meridian guys right here, at your fingertips. You could cherry-pick your favorite!"
Cornelia's enthusiasm was contagious. Elyon's mood began to lift. After all, Meridian hadn't had a festival since Phobos's fall. It was about time for a party!
"It could be a masquerade," Elyon said, framing her eyes with her fingers to suggest a mask. "Why stop there? It could be a costume party!"
"That's a little middle school," Cornelia pointed out.
"You're right," Elyon instantly agreed with her friend. Cornelia knew what she was talking about. She was in a successful relationship, after all.
"We need to start designing your gown right away!" Cornelia said, then paused. "And what will I wear?"
"One of my maids knows the best dressmaker in Meridian," Elyon said. "I could have gowns made for all of us!"
"All of us?"
"The Guardians and me, of course."
"Oh yeah," Cornelia had momentarily forgotten about the other Guardians. Spending time with Elyon felt exactly like their sleepovers back on Earth. For a while, it was just her and her best friend.
Cornelia glanced out the window to see darkness. The sun had already set! She leapt off the bed. "I'm sorry, Elyon, I have to go! My mom's going to be freaking out!" She gave her friend a hasty hug as Elyon called for Blunk.
Once Cornelia had folded back to Earth, Elyon sat on her bed thinking pleasant thoughts about what jewelry she would wear, and what food she would serve, and how to decorate the grand hall…