A/N: Thanks for all the positivity and follows. :) I don't know how often I'll be updating this, most likely around once a week or sooner. Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy this new chapter as much as the first one(It's gonna get weird). Happy reading!

"She's not here, Toffee." Marco spat. A blistering glare shot from his eyes as he reached under his pillow stealthily. The sword he'd kept from Heckapoo's dimension was concealed underneath.

"You won't be needing that," Toffee grinned and evil grin. "Tonight is just a warning for you. If you step in my way, I won't hesitate to end you in front of your beloved princess!"

The connotations of Toffee's statement hit Marco like a ton of bricks. As much as he wanted to pull out his sword and lash out at the deplorable being, his body wouldn't move. The anxiety of what had happened to him previously made him feel powerless against Toffee.

Someone knocked on the door. "Marco, breakfast is ready." It was Marco's father.

"I see I've made my point clear," Toffee cackled. "Tread carefully, boy." A puff of green smoke expanded from where Toffee was seated, when it faded the ugly beast was nowhere within sight.

Marco jumped off of his bed and immediately started to pace back and forth trying to gather his thoughts and calm his near exploding heart. He needed to tell Star what just happened a soon as possible. The sound of porcelain clattering outside his door drew him away from his manic thoughts. "Is that pancakes I smell?"

"Yes, Marco. You really should come out and eat with your mother and I." His dad replied through the door.

"Sorry, no time for that." Marco opened up the door and grabbed a few pancakes before sprinting down the hallway. "I'm going to the library."

Marco's father stare at him zooming down the stairs in confusion. "Okay, just be back before dark." He said, slightly dejected.

It felt like only a few minutes had passed by when Marco rode up to the steps of the Echo Creek library. After chaining his bike to the rack, he marched in and up to the counter. "I need everything you have on the mystic arts."

"Second floor, left hand far corner." The librarian directed without looking up from his book.

"Thanks."

Hours passed and books piled higher around Marco. He felt like his head was going to explode from all of his reading. Everything from different planes of existence to cursed relics and mythical creatures. He stopped halfway through a chapter titled "Creatures From Other Dimensions". A portrait of a purple woman with six arms and butterfly wings had caught his attention.

It looked an awful lot like Star's Mewberty form. Marco began reading aloud softy. "These Beings call themselves 'Mewmans' and are capable of terrifying magics. They take the appearance of a human unless extremely aggravated. When aggravated, these beings transform into monsters with multiple arms. It seems as though this form allows for much greater magical potential."

As he studied the chapter he noticed an odd footnote. The note briefly explained there existed a set of maps and spells to traverse the dimensions undetected. It also stated that another book contained all of the information. "The Arcane Guide to Secret Travel and Eldritch Magic"

Marco quickly searched through the shelves and piles of books for one with a matching title. What he found was a leather bound book with gold embossing on the spine. The pages were yellow and brittle to the touch. Within was a series of complex glyphs he immediately recognized to be from the elders who taught him to translate ancient texts. This could be the key to getting to Mewni.

He put all of the other books back on their shelves and headed to the front counter. "I'd like to buy this book from you. And no, I'm not interested in checking it out."

"Kid, you can just take that book. No one has ever checked it out and it's been here since the library opened." The librarian looked up at him. "Not sure why you'd want it though, the thing's just full of gibberish."

"Oh, I uh... I wanted to see if I could translate it for a summer project." Marco lied. In reality this book could be the deterring force for an impending catastrophe.

"Well~ Good luck on that, kid." The librarian waved her hand in dismissal and looked down at her book again.

It was around five in the evening when he made it home and holed up in his room again, this time with a pencil and a plan. The book was fairly easy to translate and held a surprising amount of information despite its thin appearance. Marco thought about stopping once he reached the section containing maps for traveling between Earth and Mewni but kept going on a gut feeling. There might be some spell in here that could save his bacon and in light of Toffee's threat he needed every countermeasure he could muster.

"Phoenix Ashes?" The gut feeling couldn't be more right. "Revive yourself or a party member as long as they have died within seven minutes. Once learned, the spell will auto-cast upon death of the caster." He read. "This is amazing!" Now if only he could remember the tips and tricks Glossaryk had taught him for casting magics.

"There's a whole lot more to magic than a wand and a fancy incantation, my boy. I'm only teaching you this so you don't get drawn into Eclipsa's power lust again. Just remember to dip down, there's a whole world full of magical potential out there and the deeper you go, the more powerful it is." Marco recalled the lesson as best he could.

He sat down cross legged like the monks had taught him and began to meditate, trying to grasp the power within. It only took a few minutes before his eyes flicked open, now glowing an intense fiery blue. Time to test out a spell. Focusing on an image of a sword, he acted out drawing the blade from a sheath. The result was a short blue blade in his hands, it flickered and sputtered then gave out.

"Well, that's a good start." Marco mumbled before faceplanting onto his bed. Drawing magic from the cosmos was exhausting. Soon he drifted off into sleep.

"Marco!" Star called out happily. "You came back!"

"Yeah. I did promise, didn't I?" Marco replied with a smile that faded. "Look, something happened and we really need to talk."

She started panicking. "It's not about last night, is it?" A frown formed on her face.

"No, nononono. Star, last night was amazing. What I need to talk to you about is Toffee."

Star's eyes went wide and her face paled. "What about Toffee?"

"He showed up after I woke up today." Marco explained the situation. "He told me that If I tried to interfere with his plan he'd kill me in front of your eyes."

"Oh, Marco... This is bad! I need to tell my parents about this!" Stars panic was growing by the second. She stood up and walked towards the door, grabbing Marco's hand and dragging him along.

"Star! Wait!" He tried to stop her but she wouldn't listen. Before long she had dragged him to the royal bedchamber.

"Mom! Dad!" She bellowed out, stirring them from their sleep. "Marco's in trouble! Toffee attacked him!"

At the mention of Toffee the king and queen of Mewni sat bolt upright. "Toffee?!" they yelled in unison.

"Yup." Star nodded enthusiastically. "We need to go get Marco, right now."

"Hold on, Star..." Marco tried to speak up again but was completely ignored.

"What do you mean, Star?" Queen Butterfly questioned. "How do you know Toffee attacked Marco?"

Star looked to Marco. "Tell them what you told me."

"I don't think they can see or hear me, Star." He replied.

"Oh..."

Marco contemplated for a moment before speaking again. "Tell them about the Blood Moon Ball and how our souls are bound together forever now." That seemed like a reasonable explanation. It was the only one that made sense, anyway.

"Are you sure, Marco?" She waited for a reply.

Marco nodded at her and smiled. "It makes more sense than 'Marco visited me in my guarded room without using dimensional scissors and told me'."

"Oh yeah. True true..." She mumbled before recounted the event in as much detail as she could, finishing off with a "-and that's how I know he's in danger."

Star's parents stared at her, dumbfounded, then looked at each other and nodded. "Alright, we'll go get Marco." King Butterfly announced.

"Thankyouthankyouthankyou!" Star bounced up and down excitedly. "I'll go get ready!" She took off with a bunny blast and zoomed down the hall to her room, knocking over all of the guards in the process.

After the Butterfly company readied themselves and Marco had managed to wake himself up, Queen Moon sheared open a portal with her scissors. It led right into Star's old bedroom where Marco sat waiting. Instead of his usual red hoodie, he was wearing a leather jacket and had his sword strapped to his side. A peculiar book tucked under his left arm.

"I'm ready to go whenever, I already told my parents I was going to Mewni for the summer." He began walking toward the portal as Star and her parents stepped through.

"Good, good." King River rumbled. "Now please do hurry, we don't want to attract any unwanted-"

Before the king could finish his statement, there was a loud explosion and the room filled with a mist.

"What did I tell you about interfering with my plan?" Toffee's voice sounded. A gnarled green hand shot out and grabbed tightly around Marco's throat. Star and family, weapons at the ready, began to charge.. Toffee simply raised his free and and a large transparent box formed around them. "Now Star, don't look away."

Marco struggled, dropping his book as he tried drawing his sword. Toffee was quicker to the draw, though, and promptly stabbed the teenage boy through the heart. "GUAHH!" Marco wheezed out as the life drained from him.

"NO!" Star screamed. "MARCO!" She collapsed to the floor, sobbing inconsolably.

The king and queen of Mewni just looked away. It was too late to save Marco and they couldn't do anything to escape the box. "I'm so sorry, Star..." They both started out, but it didn't help the situation. Queen Moon turned to face Toffee and gave him a look colder than dry ice.

"Even after I warned you..." Toffee muttered, throwing Marco's lifeless body to the side and turning to face the trapped royal family. "This is a warning to all of you. I will get my way." Another puff of mist and the demon and his trap vanished.

Star ran to Marco's side and collapsed yet again. She checked his vitals, no breathing, no pulse. "No... You can't be dead. Wake up! Wake up, Marco! You can't leave me alone." She pulled him into a hug cried into his chest.

King River had to pull her away from the fallen boy and received a few bruises from her kicking at him. "Now Star, there's nothing we can do. He's gone." He graveled. This statement got her to stop flailing.

A new portal was cut open and the three stared to step through, but the sound of rapidly turning pages caught their attention. Marco's book flipped open to the page titled "Phoenix Ashes" and began to emanate a blinding light. The lifeless body of Marco Diaz began to levitate, the sword removed from him. The light got brighter, flashed red, blue, and then the room fell into darkness.

Marco groaned loudly. The last thing he remembered was the blade running him through. "What happened?" He tried to move but it became obvious rather quickly that he shouldn't do that when his pain intensified tenfold.

"Marco?" Star hesitated. She was fairly certain he had died, after all there was no way someone could survive being stabbed in the the heart.

"Yeah?" He replied sheepishly though labored breaths.

She ran to him and glomped him, squeezing tightly much to Marco's discomfort. "I thought you were gone!"

Even Queen Butterfly had no idea what had happened. It was obvious that magic was afoot. None that she'd ever seen and that made her nervous. "Where did you learn that?" She asked authoritatively.

"Phoenix Ashes?" Marco replied with a grunt. He hadn't ever known how difficult it could be to pry an overexcited princess off of his person. "I learned it from that book. I found in the library."

Moon walked over to the book on the ground and picked it up. It was written in the language of dimensional monks. "Who taught you to read this?"

He tried with all of his might to get Star to let go of him while answering the queen. "Monks from Heckapoo's dimension."

"Star." Moon sighed. "Let go of him. Marco, we'll have to discuss this more later."

"Awe." Star loosened her grip with a grumpy expression. "Fine, but first..." She kissed Marco on the lips, in plain view of all present.

Queen Moon, King River, and Marco all stood in shock.

A/N: Sorry if things got a little too weird or boring in this chapter, things kinda started writing themselves... I tried not to let the dialogue go stale or use the same words too much. Let me know how I did. Thanks for reading. :)