Hey guys! :)

I've just realized that my schedule is forever changing, so my posts might vary between days. Most likely new chapters will be up by Monday morning.

Note: Will knows that she has Quintessence because without Elyon on the throne of Meridian, basically none of the plot of the second season could have happened, which means that she probably would never have figured it out. So just to make her a tad less defenseless in this version, I added her actual elemental power.

Enjoy!

Will stepped in front of me. "Leave her out of this."

Cornelia hovered a few feet above the ground, as high as the roof would allow her, and three giant chunks of stone flew out of the wall behind her and shot towards Phobos. He deflected them easily, laughing. "Is that the best you can do?"

Matt did what he did best, shooting lasers at the tyrant, who again dodged the attack. Will looked around frantically to find something to use her power on, and she settled on a random suit of armor a few yards down the hall. It came to life and drew its sword.

Wait. Sword. I had a sword!

Phobos knocked Will away from me with a green blast of light, and sent another one straight for my head. I held the sword up in defense, and the light bounced off it and hit the wall immediately to his left. The suit of armor Will had animated charged forward, sword point aiming at Phobos' chest. Phobos moved and just barely escaped, and the side of the tip bit at his shoulder, cutting the sleeve of his robes and slicing his skin open. Blood trickled out.

"I think that's the first time I've ever seen him bleed." Matt muttered.

Phobos yelled in rage. The yell was a lot louder than it should have been, like it was running through the halls trying to find help. Phobos was showing weakness by bleeding. And he didn't like that. So he needed a distraction.

I realized I was still standing out in the open, so I ran to Will while Matt and Cornelia launched another attack together. She was sitting up slowly. I could tell she was fazed by the way she rubbed her forehead, then put her fingertips to her temples like she had so many times when she and I had conked heads when we were toddlers.

"I'm fine," she tried to assure me, but I could see that she wasn't. The corners of her eyes were tight as she scrunched her face in pain.

A scream came from behind us, and I whipped my head around to see Cornelia being thrown against a wall. Matt swiped at Phobos with his wings, but all he got in response was a sharp blow to the legs, and he was down, too. Phobos kicked his wings, flailed across the ground like Matt himself was, weak and vulnerable. "Pathetic." He spat. Then he looked up at us.

My eyes went wide with fear. I knew Will wasn't going to be able to fight. Even if we could summon a portal, either Phobos would follow us through it, or it would close before Cornelia and Matt got to it. The only way to go was back. Back down the halls, back through the tunnel, back above ground, then back home. And we had to run like heck to accomplish that.

Phobos took a step closer. "So which one of you wants to die first? The Guardian or the human? The hero or the tagalong?"

I sucked in a breath. Ouch. He'd just called me useless.

But I wasn't. I had my ring, and I still had a sword. As long as I had those and my pride, I could still hold him off. For a while.

Another step closer. I was still in my kneeling position next to Will, who was gasping in pain as she watched him approach. Why wasn't she even trying to hide her weakness?

Unless she knew something I didn't...

With one last stride, Phobos was right beside me. Will looked up at him defiantly, but it was obvious that she was struggling to keep it up. I gulped as my eyes found his face, towering above me.

"The tagalong it is," he held his hand in my face, and I could see the green light beginning to glow.

I couldn't die. Not like this. Not just because some prissy, spoiled prince said I wasn't good enough. Even with my eyes closed, I knew my ring had turned a violent shade of red, just like it had when it had reacted with the Heart. It burned into my skin, but I didn't bother to take it off. The pain meant he hadn't fired at me yet. The pain meant I was still alive.

I could smell a faint scent of some kind of soap. Lavender, maybe? Something dark. Something ominous. I heard the rustling of robes as he moved. "Or maybe you could tell me where you got that ring." The voice was right next to my face. He had squatted down beside me. His breath, cool and fresh, blew on my cheek.

I opened my eyes, only looking at the wall in front of me, watching him in my peripheral vision. He didn't know that it wasn't the ring that was special. It was the Heart. It always was. "A convenience store in Pennsylvania," I said to the wall.

When I was thirteen, Mom had had a moment of spontaneity and scheduled a flight for her, Dad, Jackie, and me to Niagara Falls. It had been the first time my whole family had been on a vacation since I was five. I didn't want to forget it, so Jackie and I bought matching mood rings from a gas station.

I realized with a pain in my chest that I hadn't seen Jackie since August, and it was January. She hadn't even come home for Winter Break.

The ring suddenly became a burden, and I tore it off my finger and dropped it on the ground. The clinking of the cheap metal on stone echoed off the walls of the dungeons. Everything was silent for five sweet milliseconds, and then light exploded everywhere.

I felt Phobos fall back from me, and I could hear Cornelia gasping loudly in the background. Will, who seemed to be the source of the light, squealed in surprise.

The flashes dazzled me, blinding me for what seemed like ages. Then it faded excruciatingly slowly. Once I had blinked the last purple spots from my vision, I sa that Will was no longer on the floor in front of me. She was standing, alive with a new energy that before had been gone. Her skin glowed faintly.

What had just happened?

Matt shuffled himself to his feet, and Cornelia once again rose into the air, both looking at Will as curiously as I was. Phobos sneered at my cousin. "You may have won this fight, but the final battle has only just begun." Then he disappeared.

The glow died down and left Will back to normal again. She turned to me. "Nina, what did you do?"

"I..." I went to twist my ring, but my fingertips only touched skin. Raw skin, where the ring had burned me. I looked down at my newly naked finger. The ring had left a circle of red, singed skin where it had last been.

My ring! Where was it? I looked on the floor around me frantically, my hands in a frenzy to find the only thing that had ever meant anything to me.

Cornelia brushed herself off. "Uh...Will? I think the ring is..."

She didn't finish, because the other Guardians had just emerged into our part of the dungeon, and Hay Lin, not bothering to watch where she was going, barreled into Cornelia, and both of them went flying to the ground. "Oh my gosh, sorry!"

I couldn't help it; I laughed. When I was stressed, scared, or panicking, it was usually embodied as a laugh. Behind me, Irma joined in.

"Guardians!" Tynar's familiar voice reached my ears, and I turned to find him propped up on Taranee and Irma's shoulders, limping on his left foot. His eyes met mine. "And...you. Thank you so much."

"Ask and ye shall recieve." Irma said with a crooked smile.

Will looked around at everyone. "Alright. Let's save the praise for later and get out of here before the guards find us."

Meanwhile, at the raid...

Caleb shoved the butt of his sword into a guard's throat, and the guard stumbled backwards, gasping for air. Taking advantage of the break, Caleb shouted to the rebels, "Retreat! Get back!"

The rebels did as they were told, finishing their fights, picking up their stolen goods, and sprinting to the nearest exit, knocking any guards that tried to stop them out of the way. Once they had reached the path in front of the castle, they tossed the supplies to the watchers who were waiting in the bushes, and they began to run, too. Caleb was glad that this raid had gone as planned. Everyone would be eating well tonight.

The Guardians appeared in the sky, Matt carrying Will's cousin, and Taranee, Cornelia, and Hay Lin lugging Tynar through the air.

"We're going back to headquarters." Caleb told Will, and she nodded.

"We're going back home." She said.

Caleb smiled at her. "Thanks for the help. Again."

"No problem."

The three that were carrying Tynar set him gently on the ground. He grunted in thanks.

"We'll take him back to headquarters with us." Caleb motioned for Tynar to follow him.

The Guardians disappeared through the thick foliage surrounding the path, and with a flash of blue light, they were gone.

Back on Earth...

Will attempted to do her Calculus homework while I pulled my hair back into a ponytail for bed. She groaned when she came up with the wrong answer and slammed her pencil on her desk. "This is impossible. Who was the beanhead who decided that abusing kids with useless word problems was fun?"

I tugged on my ponytail. "I think I read somewhere that math stands for 'mental abuse to humans.'"

She laughed. "You any good at Calc?"

"Nope. C average, but the occasional B. It's the only class I'm failing in, though."

Closing her book, she turned her desk chair to me. "So, about your ring..."

"Yeah?" No one had brought up what had happened between the ring and the Heart, but Will and Cornelia seemed to have a pretty good idea. After we had come back from Meridian, her friends had hung around until Mom and Susan had gotten back, talking about people at school. I had felt so left out.

Until Irma had mentioned Andrew Hornby. At that name I had perked up, and asked how they knew him.

"He's older than us, but Irma has a gigantic crush on him!" Hay Lin blurted out. Irma hit her with a pillow, but she didn't deny it.

"Why? Do you know him?" Will asked.

I didn't want to hurt Irma's feelings by saying he had flirted with me, so I just said, "I ran into him on the way back here today. He asked me why I didn't look familiar, and I said I was from out of town. We only talked for, like, a minute, tops."

Irma looked more than a little jealous, but she hid it quickly. "Isn't he adorable?" She asked with a dreamy look in her eyes.

"Uh...yeah, sure."

That was when Our parents had come in the door, and the gang said their goodbyes as they walked out. I couldn't help but notice the troubled looks Irma kept on sending me when she thought I wasn't looking. I had felt terrible.

Will continued on with her sentence, snapping me back to the present. "We think it absorbed into the Heart. We don't know how to get it out."

I shrugged, pretending like it was just a piece of cheap jewelry that could be easily replaced. Like it wasn't the only thing I had to symbolize my sister's and my bond. "It's fine. I'm sure we'll find a way."

I didn't talk the rest of the night. Will continued to try her hand at her Calculus homework again, but by the frustrated noises that she kept making, I had a feeling that it didn't go too well. The last time I looked at the clock before I fell asleep, it had said that it was well past two in the morning.

At the castle...

Phobos leaned back in his throne. Stress was overcoming him.

"My sister's power is dwindling," he said to no one in particular. It was true. Ever since he had absorbed her power two years ago, he had noticed how quickly it began dwindling. It was as if no one but Elyon could wield it correctly. No one else knew, not even his most trusted warrior. Phobos had figured out a long time ago not to trust anyone but himself.

His eyes stayed glued to the floor, where an image showed the Guardian leader and that girl, Nina, fast asleep. The Heart of Kandrakar glowed softly in the leader's hand. The prince wanted to reach out and grab it, but he knew better.

Nina turned over in her sleep. It was funny how Phobos had bothered to remember her name, when he hadn't done so for the Guardians, whom he had now been fighting for a little less than three years. Maybe it was because her sudden presence in Will's life intrigued him. He had never realized that the Guardians had families just as he himself had one. And, just like he shared some of his physical traits with Elyon, this girl had noticeable red highlights in her light hair, although they were not quite as bright as the leader's own cherry-colored locks.

He would never know how long he studied her face, searching for any obvious weaknesses to use to his own benefit. The ring was gone from her finger, but he already knew that it had absorbed into the Heart. What the girl didn't know, however, was that even though the ring was gone, its power stayed with her.

Phobos narrowed his eyes when a tear ran down her cheek. The weakness of emotion never failed. She could be a useful pawn against the Guardians. And maybe, if he pulled her strings just the right way, she might even be a possible ally...

Some of you might have been expecting a tad more excitement, and for that I really am sorry. I had to face major writer's block with this chapter. Good news is I have an idea for next chapter, but the bad news is that I am going on a trip with my family that will last from Thursday to Monday. Hopefully I will have chapter 8 up sometime next week.

I hope you liked it! :) And don't forget to Review, Favorite, or Follow!