W.I.T.C.H. doesn't belong to me. I'm just doing this for fun.
Many thanks to Aesop for his help in editing and consulting with ideas!
Set shortly after the end of Season 2.
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Kandrakar:
"And the rest you know," Nerissa explained to everyone, the council, the Guardians and even her own family, Julian and Caleb. "I spent my years on Meridian posing as both Trill and the Mage. Before Queen Weira and Zaden had passed away, whenever anyone here from the council contacted me, aka the Mage, I simply told them I was unable to talk because of the situation with Phobos." She smiled. "In a way he provided me with the perfect alibi. Because of him, no one here suspected me of not being who I was."
Some of the council looked at her with disdain, clearly angry with themselves for not realising who the Mage had really been all those years ago. For Nerissa was right, as all the times when they had contacted her, she had simply told them she was unable to talk, and they had just taken her word for it. Even the Oracle had not been suspicious, as his sight did not always reveal anything going on on other worlds.
Julian and Caleb also looked at her angrily, but Julian more so. He had always found it hard to think back on his past with Nerissa/Mage. He had always believed that their first meeting was like love at first sight, and he had always looked back on it with fond memories. He had also taken the Mage on her word every time she spoke, trusting in her supposed divine wisdom, and believing what she asked of him was for the good of everyone concerned. Now…now he didn't know what to believe in anymore.
"So you did not create me specifically to lead the Meridians against Phobos?" Caleb then asked, looking at his mother in contempt.
Nerissa looked back at him for a moment, her eyes akin to something of regret, though it lasted for only a second. She shrugged, as if uncaring. "I will admit that when you were first born, it was…something unplanned. But when Phobos took control, I saw a golden opportunity! Thanks to my resources as the Mage, and my place in the castle as Trill, I had the power to mould you into one of the greatest warriors of all time! Your father is a fine warrior, Caleb. Give him a sword and point him in the direction, and he's awesome. But when it comes to planning, espionage and such, I'm afraid he's a lost boy."
Julian's teeth looked as though he were chewing on tinfoil. The sad truth was that Nerissa was right about what she was saying. Julian had taught his son all he knew about how to fight, but everything else concerning battle-tactics…etc, that had all come from the Mage…her!
Julian was no military genius, as he knew. That was no secret, as it had been his brash attitude that had first got him captured and sent to The Underwater Mines, and then again when he had led the rebels against Phobos's palace, only to get them all captured by Queen Elyon when she had been under his influence and lies.
"When Phobos gained full control, I had Julian reintroduce Caleb to me when he was a small child," Nerissa went to explain. "I thought it best not to reveal to him who his mother was, so to him I was nothing but a special lady who his father sent him to see every once in a while. I spent years grooming him, training him in battle strategies, how to use his enemy's power against them and such, and might I say he's turned out to be every bit the perfect warrior as I always knew he would be!" She turned to give her son a look that was nothing less but pure pride.
"Without my tutelage, Caleb would never be half the warrior he is today!" she said confidently. "Thanks to my training, and under my guidance, he brought the rebels together and led them as an army against Phobos! ALL THANKS TO ME!"
"You overestimate yourself, Nerissa!" Caleb snapped at her, but was silence by Julian who slowly shook his head at him.
"No, Caleb," his father whispered to him. "She's right."
"Dad, I…"
"No, son," he repeated. "She maybe ranting now, but she's also not wrong. I taught you how to be a fighter, but she was the one who taught you how to be a warrior. Or have you forgotten all the times you went to the Mage as a child, learning from her, and then later all the times you went o her whenever you or the Guardians had to deal with some beast or another sent from Phobos?"
Caleb fumed, but knew his father spoke the truth. Whenever it hadn't been the Mage he had been going to for help, it had been Trill. Both of who, it turned out, had been the same person…Nerissa! He hated knowing that all of Meridian owed his mother a great debt for everything she did that brought about the downfall of Phobos, but he also knew he had to acknowledge it.
Julian was the same. Even now, he found it unbelievable that for all those years it had been Nerissa, not the Mage, who he had had a relationship with, had reintroduced Caleb to so that he could call on her whenever in need, who he had allowed to tutor his son in whatever field was necessary for what she had said would be his destiny. He had loved her so much. Had everything been a lie?
"What does this all mean?!" Cornelia demanded. "If this Beata girl was the last Heart of Earth, and she died with no family left, then how come Lillian is the new Heart then?!"
Nerissa just shrugged, not saying a word, making Cornelia frown impatiently.
"So you spent years spying on Phobos in one form," the Oracle queried. "And helping Caleb and the rebellion in another?"
Nerissa nodded. "When Phobos' reign started, it didn't take the people long to realise just how much of a tyrant he was. Before his parent's demise, he had just been a spoilt brat with too much power. He may have been evil to the core, but even true evil had a weakness. In Phobos's case, it was his mother. She supplied him with power, yet at the same time he could never bring himself to refuse her, as she kept him from doing any of the dastardly things he did in later years. When she eventually passed away, nothing stopped him."
Julian agreed, as Phobos's real reign of cruelty did not truly begin until after his parents had died.
"By then, obviously, his sister Elyon had been born," Nerissa continued. "And with his mother gone, he had no magical source to feed on, save her. That was, of course, why I told the rebellion they had to do their utmost best to kidnap Elyon and get her away from Meridian."
Caleb and the Guardians all turned to stare at Julian, but he just met them with a downed gaze, nodding his head. The six youngsters had all known that many people had risked their lives to save Elyon as a baby, but they hadn't known that it had been the Mage who had first come up with the plan.
"As Trill, I was able to steal Phobos's Seal, which he had stolen from his mother and renamed after himself. I gave it to Elyon's nanny who used it to open a portal to earth." Nerissa sighed. "I was…disconcerted about using the Seal to open a portal, in case Hexin was there, but luckily the Seal's magic seemed only able to open portals to Heatherfield. I didn't know at the time that the reason for that was because Heatherfield was the source of all earth's magic. But I also made a back-up plan."
"What plan was that?" Will spoke up, curious.
Nerissa chuckled. "How do you think the portal closed right after Elyon and her nanny went through? Did you think it just closed by itself?"
The Guardians all looked at her, amazed. "That was you?!" they all said in unison. Although there had never been any proof of it, many people had all just assumed that Elyon's power had been so great, even as a baby, that she had somehow managed to close the portal behind her when she and her nanny had escaped. Now it turned out that Nerissa had played in a part in it?!
Nerissa shrugged. "Someone had to make sure that Phobos could not follow Elyon to earth, and that Hexin could find his way to Meridian. "
"How?!" Will demanded.
"I was the Mage, remember?" Nerissa replied snidely. "It was all a matter of finding the right charm that could dispel the portal, sealing it behind Elyon. I didn't know that that stupid overgrown kangaroo had lost Phobos's Seal on the way," she added, referring to Elyon's nanny, "or that it had been on Meridian the whole time, of course! But no one ever went looking for it, so everything turned out all right."
"Define all right, mom?!" Caleb added snippily. "Phobos began sucking Meridian's life force right out of it through those blasted vines of his!"
She gave him an almost disgusted look. "Would you have preferred it if he had gotten his hands on Elyon and usurped her power instead?!"
Caleb said nothing, and just glared at his mother.
"Then stop complaining!" she added.
"But weren't you worried that Hexin might have gotten to her?" Taranee then asked. "You said all he needed was a mystic Heart to fuel that spell of his, to find the Heart of Kandrakar. By sending Elyon to earth, you could have been sending her right into harm's way!"
Nerissa sighed. "No matter what I did, there were always going to be complications," she explained. "With every action I did, there was always going to be someone or something that was going to be in danger because of it. I knew that, and I tried my best to counter them, taking into account any measures. Of course I realised that Hexin might get to Elyon, but only if she revealed herself! Elyon and her parents went to earth specifically to hide. They just didn't know that it was not only Phobos they were hiding from. And because Elyon was away from Meridian, the world whose magic that she is the source of, she wasn't able to access her power much sooner than she did."
She smiled. "Hexin has many resources at his disposal, that is true, and he can detect certain energies here and there around the Earth, but not even he can find the power of a Heart. That goes way beyond any tracking he can do. The only way he could have found Elyon was if she had started using her power sooner, and he had been hearing reports of…weird occurrences."
"Occurrences?" Hay Lin queried.
She shrugged. "Such as a big castle taking the place of a block of apartments, or monsters rampaging through the streets on Halloween. Or any of the other things that have been occurring in Heatherfield in the past 2 years! Hexin may not be able to detect a Heart's power, but he can keep an eye out for anything that might indicate magical activity, especially anything big enough to indicate the involvement of a planetary heart. And with everything that's happened in your town, it was only a matter of time before Hexin came to Heatherfield."
"Lillian!" Cornelia said in fear. "He could…"
"This is why I was after her power, too," Nerissa suddenly added. "Her power came on much sooner than it should have. I knew Hexin would track her down eventually, so I…"
"So you decided to grab her power before Hexin could find her, huh?" Irma said, looking at her suspiciously.
"As a matter of fact, yes!"
All of the Guardians laughed then.
"Get real!" Will scoffed. "You made your intentions more than clear that night! You were after her power, plain and simple!"
Nerissa glared at her. "You have no idea about my intentions!" she whispered dangerously. "Everything I have done since I learned of his existence has been done to find a way to fight Hexin."
"You can stop right there, lady!" Hay Lin spoke up. "Maybe that was your original intention, but it wasn't what fuelled you later in your life! You proved that all the times you were going on about gathering more and more power."
"There's an old saying," Taranee offered. "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
"Maybe you did set off to defeat Hexin in the only way you thought possible," Will continued. "But over time you lost sight of your purpose, and you began gathering power for your own ends instead, and no one else's!"
Nerissa glared daggers at them, but she said nothing else about Lillian.
"Never mind that now!" Cornelia insisted. "What if this Hexin finds out about Lillian?!"
"Don't be afraid of that for now," the Oracle offered. "Lillian didn't manifest her powers for very long before her Regents siphoned them from her, and even then whatever powers she used did not do anything extreme that attracted anyone's attention. No one even saw the castle or mystical creatures she conjured, as they were all under a spell of illusion, and those she did affect had no memory afterwards."
"But he still could find out," Cornelia said lowly. The rest of the girls stayed close to her, Hay Lin offering her a shoulder to cry on, if needed.
"None of this can be true!" Tyburn, the old grey bearded man who was one of the Oracle's most loyal followers, suddenly said adamantly. "If this Hexin truly existed then we would have surely discovered him by now."
"You councillors would never have discovered him even if you had another thousand years!" Nerissa said spitefully, earning a hot glare from the old man.
"Peace, everyone!" the Oracle demanded. "Nerissa is sworn to tell us all what she knows to help us against this common enemy. If she was lying, her oath would be broken and she would be back at Mount Thanatos by now. Denying this man's existence will do none of us any good now."
Tyburn grumbled, even more as he saw Nerissa grinning smugly at him.
"I will admit," the Oracle added, "that finding out about this Hexin, or Xin Hei-an, or whatever name he uses now, is most disconcerting. But we now know he is real, and now that we know of him, we can start preparing to deal with him."
"How do we deal with him though?" Taranee asked worriedly.
"Yeah," Hay Lin added. "This guy isn't like Phobos or Ner…umm, Cedric. He is the legitimate heir to Kandrakar, and the original owner of the Heart. That means…"
"That means…" Will finished for her, her tone indicating her own worry. "He can take the Heart from us whenever he wants. As the heir, he's the only one who can take it by force, and if he does…"
"That must never come to be!" Nerissa snapped. "If Hexin were to ever reclaim the Heart, his full power would be restored, and then who knows what it will take to subdue him?!"
"Is there anything else you can tell us?" Will asked.
"Like what?"
"Well, for one thing, I would like to know more about the Heart of Kandrakar," said Irma. "Since the story we heard about how it came to be seems more or less baloney. I'd like to know the real story. For starters, if Xin Jing destroyed her own world, then how did the Heart get created."
Nerissa frowned. "I don't know," she said admittedly. "All I know is that the Heart of Kandrakar was on Meridian for many centuries before it was eventually brought here to this place, where it was used to create the New Kandrakar."
"New?"
The Oracle nodded. "It was the Mage of Meridian who founded all you see before you. She used the power of the Heart to build this fortress, and then explored the universe to find the wisest beings she could to form the present council."
The Guardians, as well as Julian and Caleb, looked at him. "The Mage founded the council of Kandrakar?!"
He nodded. "She was the first of us to possess the Heart. She told us it had been on Meridian for many aeons, where the first Mages found it and passed it down through the generations to her. Over the centuries, the Mages had visions and omens that told them about Xin Jing and the dragons, and centuries later after Kandrakar was formed, we tracked that legend down to Earth. But beyond that we know nothing else. We didn't know for certain how the Heart came to be, as everything we know came from visions, and those can often be open to misinterpretation."
"So you never knew for certain that the part about the ancient emperor and Xin Jing turning herself into the Heart was true?" Hay Lin asked, looking almost disappointed, as she had always enjoyed that story.
The Oracle shook his head. "As I said, everything we knew came from the visions, both me and those of the past Mages of Meridian."
"How did they even find it in the first place?"
"They just did," Nerissa answered for her. She had read all the Mage's journals, so she knew the true origins of the finding of the Heart. "Apparently, it was just found in the dirt one day by one of the first Mages. They used its powers to help found the first empire, what is now called the ancient empire, and brought the first taste of civilisation to Meridian. At first they used only the power of the Heart of Kandrakar, but eventually they found their own Heart, and they decreed that having two Hearts was too much power for any one world. So they kept the Kandrakar Heart away, using it only in matters of extreme urgency, when the Heart of Meridian was unavailable."
She momentarily smirked at the Oracle, glad she had stolen his thunder, but all he gave was a simple nod of acknowledgement over all she was saying, something that ticked her off to no end.
"And when the ancient empire folded, and the Heart of Meridian became its official ruler, the last Mage was imbued with all the empire's vast knowledge and power, to ensure that their history would never be forgotten." She continued. "They also gave her the Heart of Kandrakar to keep safely locked away, using it only in times of great crisis. The Mage did this, until she decided that Meridian no longer needed the Heart of Kandrakar as a back up. There was peace in her world, the rulers were wise and just, and they had their own power to sustain them and the planet. So she decided to use the Kandrakar Heart to bring about a new…organisation, one that would watch over all worlds. Hence this council came to be."
"She used the Heart to make all this?" Cornelia asked, astounded.
Nerissa smiled. "The Heart of Kandrakar can do many things, even more than the Oracle here realises."
Tyburn glared angrily at her, but a look from the Oracle and a shake of his head convinced the old advisor to keep his peace.
"What about the Aurameres? How did they come about?" Irma asked.
"Although the dragons were dead," the Oracle explained before Nerissa could, "the energy of their powers still continued to exist. They had remained in a state of limbo until the Mage came here and gathered them with the Heart."
"Fascinating as all this is," Will noted. "What are we going to do about Hexin?!"
A silence came over the rest of the group. All of them bore grave expressions, except Nerissa who merely looked at them with something akin to disdain.
"Don't expect any help from them," she said to Will, almost laughing at the council. "Even if they had a full millennium head-start, Hexin would still be able to pummel them into the ground!"
Tyburn broke his silence then, turning angrily on her. "You underestimate us too easily, Nerissa! We defeated you, didn't we?"
She laughed. "Two things… One: it wasn't you who actually defeated me, as you were all stuck in your little veil bubble. You didn't do anything much besides brood. And two: in case you've forgotten, it wasn't that hard for me to infiltrate your castle in the clouds!"
If looks could kill, Tyburn's would have incinerated Nerissa.
"Peace!" the Oracle demanded. "This is not helping any of us!" He turned to look back at Nerissa. "Think, Nerissa, is there anything else you know of that could help us?"
She paused briefly. "Nothing that can help you," she stated.
Her brief pause had lasted only a second, but it was a second that the Oracle noticed. There was something she was not telling them. But whatever it was, she was not willing to share, and because of the oath, if she said it was of no use to them than she had to be telling the truth.
"What if we were to attack him outright?" Irma suggested.
"Yeah," Will moaned, rubbing her head. "I'd really look forward to that," she said sarcastically. "Hexin has already proved himself to be a more than capable fighter."
"And more," Nerissa added. "And even if you did stand a chance of winning, out of all the people, you girls are the five who definitely must not fight him! How you've managed to escape him so far is beyond me, but if you were to meet up with Hexin again, and should he get his hands on the Heart…the war would be over before it even begun!"
The girls and everyone else all shuddered.
"I have told you all I know," Nerissa then added. "I have kept my part of the bargain, now you keep yours! Return me to Meridian at once, to the Infinite City!"
The Oracle sighed. "Agreed," he said, and looked over to Caleb and Julian. "Would you please accompany her back to your world? I have no doubt Queen Elyon would not object to you keeping her under guard while she is in the Infinite City."
Nerissa looked ready to object, but a warning look from the Oracle soon silenced her. "Remember the terms of your release, Nerissa," he reminded her. "The oath prevents you from using any power you have or may obtain from harming anyone else, or stealing another's magic. And you will not enter the Infinite City without an escort, understand?"
Nerissa grumbled loudly, but nodded, relenting.
The girls wanted to accompany her back, too, but the Oracle said they would need them there, to discuss options. Reluctantly, they agreed.
The Oracle raised his hand, opening a portal back to Meridian, through which she and her family soon departed.
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Heatherfield; Same Time:
Hexin poured over the last of his reports concerning the Guardians. So far he had been playing his game of chicken with them to a T. They now knew that he knew most of their little secrets, minus the one important detail that he craved most of all…which one of them had his Heart?!
"I need to pick up my game," he said to himself. "Events are proceeding too slowly for my taste." He picked up his phone.
"Agent H," he said, speaking into the receiver. "Gather my elite. I want us to start preparing for another offensive against these so-called Guardians."
"As you wish, sir," came the crisp reply of one of his agents. "Oh, and, sir, some of our undercover agents have uncovered some new information concerning the girls. Curious events that took place some time during last year. Shall I bring them to your office?"
"Yes, do that." Hexin's confirmed, and then hung up.
After a while, he smiled. "Everything's falling into place," he said, chuckling.
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Meridian; Infinite City:
The Fold opened in the underground city, dropping Nerissa, her one time lover and her son back home in Meridian.
"There's no need for you to accompany me further," she told them crisply. "I can find my way from here."
"Nice try, mom!" Caleb sneered. "But you know full well someone, anyone, is to accompany you whenever you are in the city fulltime!"
She looked back at him for a moment, but then just shrugged. "Can't blame a girl for trying," she said, and continued walking toward the waterfall entrance to the Mage's quarters.
Julian deliberately walked on ahead, indicating Caleb to walk behind them while he talked to her. "Nerissa," he started.
"Mmm?"
"I need to know," he asked. "Was it all a lie?"
She paused briefly. "What was?"
"Everything!" he demanded. "Our love, Caleb, everything! I once said that if our love could create a magnificent son like him, there must have been some good in you once, but now…after hearing your life story, I need to know…was there ever any love between us?"
Nerissa did not stop walking, but she did look at him with a deep sadness, it seemed. "Not at first," she admitted. "When we first met, though I did not want to admit it, I was lonely after spending so many years alone with no other male companions. I never found time to socialise again, even when I was one of Hexin's agents, and certainly not when I was here on Meridian where I was posing as The Mage and later as Trill." She sighed. "Then you appeared. At first, I just stuck with you because I thought you fascinating, and that you might prove useful to me one day. But after a while…I realised that what we had, was something…stronger than mere interest."
Julian looked at her. "Do you love me?" he finally asked.
Nerissa paused again, but this time she did not answer, as they had finally reached the Mage's home. "We're here," she simply said, and walked beyond the waterfall, which split in two as she walked on through, then back again.
Julian stared at her sadly for a few moments, but followed her nevertheless.
When they entered the late Mage's home, the first thing that greeted them was Vathek and the other prison guards for Phobos and his followers. To say they were less than pleased to see Nerissa again would be an understatement.
"What in blazes is she doing back here?!"
It had taken a short time to explain to them the council's decision regarding Nerissa, not that Nerissa had been terribly forward about explaining anything, as she had just wanted to walk on past them, straight to her study. Eventually, the guards had begrudgingly let them pass, but not without Nerissa a much-heated glare from each of them, Phobos included.
Caleb and Julian followed her into the study, and then into her sorcerer's chamber, where she immediately began lifting boxes and books, shifting through papers and scrolls, seemingly searching for something.
"What are you looking for?" Caleb demanded.
"I need to check on something," was all his mother said, not once pausing in her search.
Caleb watched her for a few moments, seemingly looking at her in interest before asking, "Let me ask you something. Did you turn into a power hungry maniac overnight or was it a gradual thing?"
Nerissa turned to glare at him. "I am not a maniac!"
Caleb laughed. "Oh no, that's right! You're out to save the universe because you're a cosmic force for order. Give me a break!"
"Whether you want to admit it or not is no concern of mine, Caleb!" she snapped. "But like I told you once before…what I have done, what I will do, is not for me alone! Everything I did, I did with the goal of defeating Hexin and ending the threat he represents to the rest of the universe. And if you and those girls hadn't stopped me, we wouldn't be in this mess now!"
"No, we'd be bowing at your feet, licking your boots, wouldn't we?!" Caleb shot back. "Face it, mom, the Guardians were right! Maybe you started out with the best of intentions, but now you're just as obsessed with getting power as Hexin is, if not more so!"
Nerissa glared at him, her fists tightened to the point where the knuckles turned white, but she said nothing, and just continued searching through the endless boxes. After a few moments, she found what it was she was looking for.
It looked to be no more than a small green pendant with a gold chain. "The Pendant of Ma'blos," she said out loud, turning the pendant in her hand.
"What is that?!" Caleb asked fiercely, not liking the way she was holding the jewel in front of her. But Nerissa gave no answer. She merely put the pendant on around her neck, and said "Earth."
The second she did, the pendant glowed slightly for one second, and then exploded into a bright ball of light that completely engulfed Nerissa, and when it was gone, so was she.
"NERISSA!" Caleb yelled, while Julian looked on in shock where she had been. "She tricked us! I knew we should never have brought her here!"
"Caleb, wait!" Julian told his son. "Remember the oath. She can't do anything to us now."
"That's never stopped Nerissa before, so why should it now!" Caleb turned and immediately went to go find Blunk, to fold him back to Kandrakar and get the Guardians.
Julian stood where he was for a few moments longer, looking at the spot where Nerissa had stood just a moment before.
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Hexin's HQ:
Hexin looked through the stack of papers, containing everything about each of the Guardian's lives and families. He had gone to the trouble of visiting each of the girl's homes to gather any information he could, concerning their families. He didn't have any definite proof yet, but perhaps the Guardian's powers were similar to those of a mystic Heart, which meant that maybe the girls had inherited their abilities from their elders.
It was possible, but after just one meeting with each of the girl's parents, he knew right away that none of them had any magic in them. None of them seemed the type for sorcerers. But he knew that magic could sometimes skip a generation or two, which was why he had his sources look into the girl's family lines.
So far, none of them had turned up anything particular interesting, except for the Hay Lin girl. Her grandmother, Yan Lin, as a youngster, had been involved in various unusual circumstances growing up. Many people had sworn they had seen her fly more than a few times, but just put it down to their imaginations. That seemed to certify that at least the Chinese girl's abilities were second, or maybe third, generation.
He had gone through Hay Lin, Irma Lair and Wilhelmina Vandom so far, but aside from Hay Lin the others all seemed your typical flighty teenage girls. He was beginning to think this was all a waste of time.
He opened the file on Cornelia Hale, supposedly the Earth Guardian, and read into her family's life history. She was typical, like the rest of her friends, average grades, popular at school, a spoilt from the sounds of her, and a Vance Michael Justin fan.
'Seriously,' he thought. 'What is it with these young girls and this Vance person?'
He read down to the girl's family life…
Siblings: One adopted sister, Lillian Hale aged 8.
That gave him room to pause, as he went through the file and found a photo of the girl in question. Considering that she was adopted, she bore an uncanny resemblance to her sister.
The second he had seen the girl Cornelia, he had been intrigued, as she also bore an uncanny resemblance to the late Heart of Earth, Beata Serce. He knew she couldn't be a descendant, as he would have located her long before now, but this child…
She was the right age, the right physical type, the resemblance justified. And according to the reports from his agents who had interviewed some of the Hale's neighbours in their apartment building, when asked if anything strange had occurred lately, many of them mentioned how a lot of them had all had the same dream. A dream concerning a castle and a dragon, and some even talked about a dark haired girl in a pink dress, waving a staff about like a wand.
The story of the dark haired girl made Hexin smile. "Got you!" he said.
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Kandrakar:
"If we could lure him somewhere, maybe trap him in a veil bubble like the council were…" Taranee suggested.
"Somehow, I doubt Hexin will be that gullible," Will muttered, frowning miserably. The rest of Kandrakar were all busy going through every scenario of how to trap their new enemy, but so far every plan they came up with was a bust.
Just then, a fold opened in the middle of the room, and Blunk came bursting out…with Caleb behind him.
"Caleb!" Cornelia started, staring at him incredously. "What are you doing here? I thought you were supposed to be guarding Nerissa!"
Caleb scowled. "I was," he said. "Until she ran out on us!"
"She WHAT?!" all the girls cried out.
"She used some kind of pendant to transport herself out of Meridian."
"How?!" Will demanded. "I thought you and Julian were keeping an eye on her?"
"We were!" Caleb frowned. "But I don't know why you're all surprised by this! Letting Nerissa back into the Mage's home was bound to cause havoc!"
"Caleb!" the Oracle suddenly spoke out from behind them having heard all the commotion. "Be calm, and remember that because of the oath, Nerissa cannot cause any harm to you or any others."
"Since when has that ever stopped her before," Caleb grumbled.
"Where did she go?!" Will asked urgently.
"Before she disappeared, she said Earth, so I assume that's where she was intending to go."
Cornelia gasped. "Lillian!" she cried. ""She must be going after Lillian again!"
"Hang on, Cornelia," Taranee interrupted, trying to calm her friend. "Why would she do that? She knows she can't take Lillian's powers by force, unless it's Halloween and that's months away. And she's got Matt and the other Regents to look after her. She wouldn't risk a confrontation with them so soon after she's just been released."
"Yeah, and like the Oracle said," Hay Lin chipped in. "She can't cause us any harm or steal anyone's powers anymore."
"Yeah, but like Caleb here said," Cornelia retorted. "Since when has that ever stopped her?!" She turned to look at Blunk. "Blunk, get me back to Earth ASAP!"
The Passling groaned. "Ohhh, but Blunk just got here. Can't I…"
"NOW, BLUNK!"
Blunk yelped, and quickly opened a Fold with his tooth. "Okay, okay, we go!"
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Earth; Heatherfield;
Hale Residence:
Lillian idly flicked through the TV channels, finding nothing good to watch. Not that she could see much, though, thanks to Napoleon's tail that forever swung in front of the screen.
"Napoleon!" she moaned. But before she could say anything further…
[ZOOM! CRASH!]
Lillian looked up in wonder at the sound of the almighty crash, coming from her sister's bedroom. A moment later, she could hear the sound of feet racing towards her, followed by her sister appearing around the corner, looking breathless.
"Cornelia…?" she started, but her sister wouldn't let her finish.
"Where's mom and dad?!" she said hurriedly.
Lillian blinked, then shrugged. "Mom's taking a shower, dad went out for some takeout. Why?"
"No reason!"
"What was that…?" Lillian suddenly stopped, and held her nose. "Ewwwww! What's that smell?!" She hurried off to open a window.
Cornelia looked behind her, frowning as she spotted where the smell was emitting from…or more precisely from whom. "Blunk!" she hissed. "Make like a tree and leave, now!"
He looked up at her with his big yellow and orange eyes, near pleading. "Awww, couldn't Blunk stay for dinner? Blunk missed dinner to bring…"
"Blunk!"
Grumbling, the Passling reached for his tooth and headed back to the Earth Guardian's bedroom.
"And next time, don't fold us right in the middle of my wardrobe, okay!"
"Cornelia, is that you?!" her mother's voice called out.
"Err, yeah, mom!" she yelled back. "Sorry I'm late! My friends and I were busy with this homework assignment, and we lost track of time!"
"Well, you're just in time! Your father should be back in a little while with some takeout form that new Italian restaurant down the road! We thought it would make a nice change from Chinese again!"
'Don't let Mrs Lin hear you say that,' Cornelia thought. "Thanks, mom!"
She went over to where Lillian was struggling to get one of the windows open. "Here, let me do that," Cornelia told her, reaching for the window…and stopped.
"Well?" Lillian all but demanded. "Are you going to open it or not?! My nose is dying here!"
"Yeah…sure," Cornelia said, hesitating slightly, as she opened the window. "Look, why don't you go back to your program, alright?"
"But I wasn't even…"
"Now, Lillian!"
Her little sister moaned, but went to sit back down and continue flicking through the channels, leaving Cornelia to pull the curtains shut, preventing what she had come to stop from looking in and spying on her sister.
0000000000
Nerissa stood on the building opposite the Hale's apartment building, spying through the windows of the Hale's living room. She watched young Lillian, the Heart of Earth, as she sat watching television, and her sister Cornelia when she came in. No doubt Caleb had told her and the rest of the Guardians where she had gone, and she knew they'd be most likely coming to find her any minute now.
"Enjoying the view?" a snippy young voice asked.
Nerissa only jumped slightly in alarm, as she turned around and saw the elder Hale girl standing across from her, her arms folded, with an icy glare directed right at her. "You move fast," she commented.
"We've all been getting in touch with our Guardian powers more," Cornelia revealed. "Including our tele-transport powers. Now, unless you wanna lose that pretty hair of yours, tell me what the hell are you doing here, near my sister?!"
Nerissa idly checked her nails, indifferent to Cornelia's threat. "I'm simply checking on her, that's all," she replied.
Cornelia laughed. "If you're trying to take her…"
"If you're going to comment on my previous attempts to capture your sister's power, Guardian," Nerissa interrupted her, "then remember three things… One, I am now bound by the power of Kandrakar not to steal anyone's powers anymore. Two, even if I wanted to, I couldn't, because Halloween is nowhere near. And three, your sister has already given her powers to my former angel of malice, Shagon, and his pets. She won't be able to give her powers to anyone until she's older."
"His name is Matt, not Shagon! And how do I know you haven't found another way to absorb her powers?"
She shrugged. "I will admit, there may be other ways of taking another's powers. But if there is, then I don't know of it."
"Why are you here then?!"
"I already told you…"
"To check up on her," Cornelia scoffed. "Since when did you become the maternal type, and why should you care…"
"Maybe since you told me that Hexin was close by!" Nerissa snapped. "Have you forgotten what I told you about him and his search for the Heart of Earth?!"
Cornelia paused at that. "Yeah," she started, looking uncomfortable. "I actually wanted to ask you about that… If this Polish girl was the last Heart of Earth, and she had no descendants, then how is it that Lillian is the next one?"
"How should I know?"
"You were Hexin's right hand girl, remember! He told you he was searching for that girl's bones! She had no heirs, and then suddenly, years later, my sister shows up outta nowhere with her powers…Tell me you don't see a connection!"
"What do you want from me? I haven't been in touch with Hexin for years. I have no clue as to what he's been doing since I left! As for Lillian, obviously Hexin's records must have been wrong. Remember, a lot of World War 2 files were lost at the end of the war, and many could have been misread or mis-documented. Obviously your sister must be a distant relative of Beata Serce."
"None of our family were from Poland or Jewish," Cornelia retorted. "Even if Lillian is…" She paused.
"Even if she is what?"
"Nothing!" Cornelia insisted. She had no intention of telling Nerissa that her sister was adopted. "It's nothing to do with you, Nerissa!"
"Maybe more than you realise," she added darkly. "But the whole reason I'm here is simply to watch over your sister. Everything I ever did was to help stop Hexin."
Laughing, Cornelia snorted in disgust. "Oh, so imprisoning Elyon, the council, attacking Meridian, trying to steal Lillian's power, enslaving Matt and the others…that was all for our benefit?!"
"Yes!" Nerissa all but yelled. "Sometimes, to gain victory you have to be willing to go a little over the line…"
Cornelia scoffed, but Nerissa ignored her and continued.
"I sought to gain all the power I could so that one day I would be strong enough to take on Hexin! Even without his original powers, he is still a mighty foe, one not easily vanquished, which you and your friends have found out for yourselves…"
Cornelia shrugged, as she had to admit she was right there.
"I admit I did do some wicked things, and maybe I made some mistakes, but everything I did was for the good of everyone! Hexin has to be stopped, by any means necessary!"
"And then what?" the earth Guardian then asked.
"What?"
"What would happen then, if say you defeated Hexin? When he was gone, and you had all that power that you had stolen to defeat him… What would you do with it then?"
Nerissa said nothing at first, seemingly confused, as she hadn't thought that far in advance.
"Would you have given it all back to the ones you stole it from?"
Again, she said nothing.
Cornelia smirked. "Thought not!" She turned away in disgust. "You are no different from Hexin!"
Nerissa's body suddenly sparkled from the energy overflowing in her. "If you think I am anything like him, then you have no idea!" she said warningly. "Any evil I would have done with my powers, would be nothing compared to the carnage he would bring!"
She then stepped up to Cornelia, but did not touch her. "And for the record," she said, "I aimed to steal your sisters power for two reasons… One, to add them to my own, and two, to save her life!"
Cornelia's eyes widened, as she turned back to stare at her.
"Her life?"
Nerissa nodded. "When Lillian first manifested her powers, it did not take me long to sense them. If I could do this in so short a time, then how long do you think it would have been before Hexin, who has tracking all forms of mystical activity for centuries, would have found her?" She lowered her head to stare straight at her. "Remember what I told you and the others at Kandrakar, about how Hexin wanted a mystic Heart so that he could reclaim his own?"
"But Lillian doesn't have her powers anymore," Cornelia replied.
"He doesn't want her powers! He wants her!"
Cornelia felt her chest go cold. "Lillian…"
Nerissa nodded. "I did not tell you and the others everything," she admitted. "I left this out because it wasn't important at the time. You all knew that Hexin would want Lillian, or some other Mystic Heart, and that was all that mattered."
"Left out what?!" Cornelia demanded.
Nerissa sighed. "As I told you all, there is a spell that would allow Hexin to locate and bring his own Heart back to him. To do that spell, he needs a number of things, including one very special and specific power source."
"A mystic Heart."
Nerissa shrugged. "Not…exactly…"
"Wha…?"
She sighed. "He does require a mystic Heart to complete the spell, but he does not need the actual power of the Heart itself."
"Then what?!"
Nerissa closed her eyes briefly. "To complete the spell, he has to…to…"
"WHAT?!"
"He needs a sacrifice!" Nerissa snapped finally.
Cornelia felt her legs go numb, as she replayed Nerissa's words over in her head. "A…sacrifice?" she said.
She nodded. "To do a spell as powerful as the one Hexin is planning, it requires a sacrifice to complete it. But it cannot just be any type of offering. It has to be a living being, one who is pure of innocence yet possessed of great power. In the entire universe, there is only one being that has both of these characteristics…"
"A Heart," Cornelia finished for her.
Nerissa nodded again. "Yes, and with Elyon now back on Meridian, Lillian is the only Heart available on this planet." She gave Cornelia a long look. "If Hexin gets her, he will use her to do his spell, and then…she will die!"
To Be Continued…