Marcus's skin was buzzing with power as he stepped onto the shores of Mako. Magical energy surged just beneath his skin. More. He found himself thinking almost desperately. More. He looked up at the moon and felt the magical energy it seemed to exude. He needed to be closer. He set off into the jungle heading straight for the highest cliffs on Mako. Already he could feel the magic beginning to settle beneath his skin. It was almost as though it was no longer the infinite resource that it had been before.
Marcus climbed up the cliffs, his eyes locked on the moon. He didn't pay attention to where he placed his hands and he truly didn't care. By some miracle he managed to make his way to the top of the cliffs. He stood up tall and spread his arms out to his side. The moonlight pushed against his skin, the magical energy slowly absorbing into his flesh. Marcus's breath was harsh and his heart seemed to be racing a mile a minute. His skin grew uncomfortably hot and every breath seemed like he was drawing in ice. But he barely noticed the conditions. He didn't even notice when his legs gave way. He could only feel the magic, the only thing that mattered was the magic. He needed to draw in as much as he could, though he couldn't begin to guess why.
His whole began to shake. It started as a gentle tremble but soon he was wracked with spasms. He fell back onto the stone, his right arm outstretched towards the moon. He gave another involuntary spasm and the back of his head hit the rock. The shock of the impact and the pain it brought somehow managed to pull Marcus from his moonstruck reverie. He began to cough violently as he drew in another breath that seemed to be filled with ice. He clawed at the skin at his throat in a vain attempt to alleviate the burning. The moon no longer seemed as friendly as it had only seconds before. Now that Marcus had broken through the moon spell he became aware of a soundless voice calling for him. It told him to continue to absorb the energy of the moon. "Not a chance." Marcus growled. He didn't know if the voice could even 'hear' but he'd had enough. The Moon Pool shown below him, but he knew that he couldn't risk falling into those waters. Not with whatever was happening to him. Which left only two options. Let the voice have its way and continue absorbing the magic of the moon or fight it. There really wasn't a choice as far as Marcus was concerned. The magic he had absorbed seemed to be pressurized inside of his body, like a balloon that was reaching its limit. He wasn't sure how but Marcus began to summon a storm. It hadn't been his wish, he had only wanted to conjure up a few clouds to cover the moon, but the storm was what he summoned nonetheless. This storm was not some small thunderstorm either. Lightning crackled around the island and gale force winds ripped through the air. A torrential downpour of rain began to pour from the sky. And yet even having summoned such a storm the magical pressure that had built up inside of Marcus was barely diminished. His focus was centered on the storm around him so he did not see the Moon Pool began to bubble and glow.
Standing in the middle of the storm with wind whipping heavy rain droplets through the air, Marcus should have been soaked to the bone. His tail should have appeared and he should have fallen to the stone. But he didn't. He was dry. The rain seemed bend around him almost as if the water had abandoned him. He fell to his knees and stared up at the dark clouds that hung overhead.
Below, in the Moon Pool, seven merpeople emerged and cast their eyes upwards. A lightning illuminated the sky and they were able to make out the outline of Marcus against the dark background for just a moment before the light faded away and Marcus disappeared. "What's going on?" Zach was forced to shout to be heard above the roar of the storm. "How is he doing this?"
"It must be the chamber." Rita shouted back. "It must have been using him to absorb magic."
"When Rikki, Emma, and I first got our powers we did something similar to this." Cleo shouted. "We had no control over ourselves."
"How do we stop him?" Ondina asked. "And what's happening to the Moon Pool? The water feels like it does on the full moon. But the full moon isn't until tomorrow."
"I think the Moon Pool wants us to stop him!" Rita shouted. "We are at our most powerful when the moon is full. The moon pool must be drawing all the energy it can from the moon right now."
"What do we do?" Cleo demanded. "How can we stop this?"
"Fight magic with magic!" Rita told them. "Focus on controlling the storm! Marcus might be extremely powerful right now, but there are seven of us. And by the feel of his magic I don't think he is trying to control it. It feels like he is just trying to expend a large amount of magic all at once and it manifested into a storm."
The six mermaids and one merman raised their hands skyward and began to combat Marcus's magic with their own. Marcus felt the other's magic immediately, felt it begin to push back his own. The storm seemed to sputter and begin to die. Marcus didn't fight it. He felt burnt out, hollow, as if the magic had burned him up from the inside and left nothing but a husk behind. He still had magic, the burning was still there, but it had been vastly depleted. During the course of conjuring the storm Marcus had discovered that conjuring bolts of lightning took a tremendous amount of magical power. The rain had been reduced to a small shower and the wind was a gentle breeze. Marcus slowly got to his feet and looked up at the sky. The cloud's dissipated and the moon slowly appeared. Marcus felt the magic immediately seep into his skin. "I don't want it." He said suddenly. Like the parting of the clouds in the sky, he was suddenly struck with a moment of clarity. "I don't want any of it."
He didn't want any of the memories that he no longer shared with anyone but himself. He thought back to how Ondina and Mimi had tried to take his memories so long ago. With the power of the moon at his beck and call Marcus was certain that he could pull off the spell, no matter the cost. He put his hands to his head and he quite literally pulled the memories out of his head. He blinked, no longer certain where he was or what he doing. The memories and the magic that went with them had to go somewhere however. And the closest bodies were the ones in the Moon Pool.