"Wow, this is incredible." Amy breathed as Ben walked her and Mal into the library of the castle where he had grown up at. She did a cute little twirl as she tried to get the full scope of the library. "Oh my pink, look at all of these books!"
Mal laughed affectionately at her little sister's affections. "She's always been a big reader." She said to Ben idly. "It was too bad for her that there weren't many books on the isle, and most of the ones we had pertained to evil, the one subject she tried to avoid whenever possible."
At one of the couches they saw Belle sitting there, just lowering one of the books she had been reading. Amy could tell from its condition that despite every attempt to keep it looking pristine there was no way to hide how often that particular book had been read. Adam was by a small table looking over some of the parchments, he looked up at the interruption as well and both smiled softly.
"Ben, Mal, Amy." The queen said with a smile. She got up and gave Ben a hug and a kiss on the cheek. She did the same to Mal. As she sat down she instinctively sat Amy down beside her, handing her the book she had been reading. "What brings all of you here?"
"I wish I could say it was just because I wanted Amy to see your book collection." Mal said as she saw Amy open up the book she had been handed. "But it's more than that."
"What happened?" Adam asked.
"Well we got our powers back a couple of hours ago." Mal revealed. They seemed happy to hear that. "And we got Amy to take the rose ranger powers." She added and Amy managed to look both pleased and annoyed by that point. "But we ran into a monster and it did this." She summoned her staff and showed Belle the damaged dragon's eye.
"Oh, my." Belle whispered as she ran her hand across it.
"I'm sorry." Mal said, managing to look as upset as Amy had ever seen her. It made Amy happy to see that her older twin seemed to see Belle as a surrogate mother figure too. "It wasn't my intention to damage it."
"Oh honey, I know it wasn't." Belle assured her as she reached out to stroke Mal's hair softly.
"We were hoping you would know a way to get it repaired mom." Ben said to Belle.
"In truth that would be so much easier to answer if we had ever been able to find out what kind of material it was made from." Belle answered as she leaned back on the couch to consider their options. Amy seemed engrossed in the book that Belle had given her. "We already know that it isn't made from anything here in Auradon."
"The information Fairy Godmother has from the Earth the other power rangers are from also don't have anything that corresponds to this." Ben added. "But it had to have come from somewhere."
"You know that the appearance of Zordon had already lead to discussions about other worlds parallel to ours." Adam mused. "As well as discussions about the past and the future and alternate universes. It also lead to discussions about other forms of life and material in space." He looked to them. "Did Fairy Godmother have any insights into that?"
"I'm afraid not." Ben said with a frown.
Though it seemed that Amy was not listening to the discussion at all she suddenly perked her head up. "Evie said that anything from the past, the future, or another parallel world would leave," She squinted her eyes as she tried to recall the blue haired girl's exact words. "Distinct quantum signatures that would stick out like a sore thumb to our sensors." She filled in for them.
"If that's true that would just leave us with a material of some sort from space." Belle said. "It would make a certain amount of sense.
"But it doesn't help us to repair it." Mal reminded them softly.
"No it doesn't." Ben agreed seemingly absentmindedly as he rose and went to one of the bookshelves. "But Jane said that Fairy Godmother used a particular spell to even uncover the power behind it, maybe there is a spell that could repair it."
"There is another way actually, but I have to warn you all that it is risky." Adam said to them quickly. It was enough to make Amy and Mal exchange curious glances with each other. The younger girl had not been around Auradon long enough to realize that lack of magic was not just limited to the Isle but she could see from her older sister that this was not an isolated comment to avoid magic use.
Ben however had been. But what was important now was repairing the dragon's eye, not trying to drag that knowledge out of his parents. Especially when he didn't think it would help. It was a miracle that they got away with using what Jordan already did but most of it was either harmless or benefited the ranger team. "What do we need to do?" He asked his father.
"On the far side of the mountains where the Auradon Megazord is there is a volcano called the Heatmor volcano." Adam revealed to them. "I think you can use the molten lava and some of Jordan's magic to repair the damage."
"Great, all we have to do is waltz into the heart of a volcano." Mal said with a dramatic eye roll. She took a deep breath and said. "Alright, let's go then."
"Hey wait a second." Amy said as she finally set the book down on the table. "I know we need to repair your staff but Paradias has to know what happened. We should get everyone together and tackle this all together."
"She's right Mal." Ben agreed. "You would never sanction anyone else doing something like this without the team."
Mal knew her boyfriend was right. "Alright, I'll text Evie and have them meet us at the foot of the mountain. We'll make the journey together." She decided. She looked to Belle and Adam. "Thank you for helping us." Belle embraced her son and the two girls.
"You can come and borrow whatever books you would like Amy." Belle told the rose hair colored girl. She practically beamed at the invitation, making Mal laugh. She mouthed thank you to Ben's mother before they left.
"Well how about that, looks like my traitorous little daughter had her pretty little staff damaged." Maleficent said with a laugh as she watched the image of Truesdale shattering the dragon's eye staff on her wand. She frowned in disgust. "And my other little brat followed in Mal's footsteps." She shook her head. "To have not one but two disappointments, it's sickening."
"But an opportunity none the less." Paradias said. "They will move to repair that staff. I have no doubt that the former king and queen can put them on that path. They will direct them to the Heatmor volcano."
"That inactive rock heap?" Chad questioned. "How is that going to help them?"
Nerissa laughed a bit. "The ignorance of youth." She mused with amusement. "You see, that volcano was not naturally formed. It was made as fallout from the destruction of a great monarch name Volcanus, a predecessor to the former leader of the United Alliance of Evil Dark Specter. That fight was lost but the monarch took down a mighty creature, a dragon that once roamed the galaxy with the arguably unfortunate name of Star Eater."
"And the piece of the staff that Mal possess came from it." Gregory surmised.
"Just so." Nerissa confirmed. "Some of that essence was mixed into the volcano as well. The molten lava will not only restore the dragon eye's structure it may very well make it more powerful."
"Then we have to stop them from making those repairs." Chad said.
"Indeed we must." Paradias agreed. He looked again toward the screen as he witnessed the damage done to the dragon's eye. "Nerissa, send down Infernal Flame."
The team met at the foot of the mountain and Ben told them what his parents had told them they could do to restore the dragon's eye.
"So we get to scale the mountain?" Carlos asked, not looking forward to that one.
"We'll take the trolley up to the top." Ben said to them. "And once we reach the top we just have to get up further to the volcano and put the dragon's eye into the magma."
"Wait a second." Jay interrupted confused. "There was a trolley? How long has it been there."
"Oh, years." Audrey answered.
"Then why didn't we use it the first time when we went looking for the Auradon Megazord?" He questioned.
"Because we had to inside the mountain to track the megazord." Evie reminded him simply. "We aren't going inside the mountain for this. We're going just beyond that to the volcano."
They headed toward the side and boarded a trolley. It was a bit crowded but they didn't want to take two of them. Audrey sat on Jay's lap. Lonnie sat on Will's lap. Ally sat on Aziz's lap and Mal sat on Ben's lap. Amy crowded up next to Ben and Mal. Carlos and Jane were all but on each other's laps. Jordan was just thankful she could levitate a bit above the floor for a little more room.
"Are we just supposed to dip the dragon's eye in any spot of magma?" Audrey asked even as Jay stroked her hair.
Mal frowned a bit as she thought about it. "Good question." She conceded. "There has to be something specific we need." She was rubbing the top of Ben's hand even as he held hers.
"If there is something specific we need, I might be able to get a better sense of it when we reach the volcano." Jordan said. "It would have to be real subtle magic to not be detected or sensed on some level beforehand."
"Perhaps that would be because it might not be magic." Ally suggested even as she enjoyed the feeling of Aziz stroking her blonde hair.
"What makes you say that?" Carlos asked her.
"Just what Jordan said." Ally replied. "If it were magic it would have been sensed. The truth is that while Jordan is powerful she's still a beginner compared to her father and her mother. Likewise I would think that for as long as the volcano and the dragon's eye have been around that there would be no mystery about it to Fairy Godmother."
"She's right about that." Jane had to agree. "Mom had to use magic to even get an idea of what it could be. She would even point out that despite the name the former queen gave it, the dragon's eye is in fact not an eye but more of a scale."
"You know the idea of alien intelligence or anything like that would have seemed ridiculous to me a few months ago." Will lamented with a slight chuckle. "But ever since Paradias and Sermaya started attacking Auradon those aspects don't seem like that anymore."
"Maybe somehow there was something from up there," Ally looked to the skies as she spoke. "That came down and left that behind or created the volcano or something."
"Now that's something that we won't ever find in history books." Jay said with a slightly sarcastic tone, referring to when Jane had said her mother believed the magic was in the history books.
The trolley came to a stop at the top and the team got out of the car. They could just make out light gray powder falling around them. "Is this snow? "Amy asked. She had never seen snow. No one on the Isle of the Lost had really seen it.
"No, this is ash from the volcano." Lonnie answered her newest friend. "Snow tastes like water while this ash would taste…well truth be told I don't know what it would taste like because as a rule you're not supposed to taste ash."
"We never got snow on the Isle." Amy admitted to her.
"We rarely get it in Auradon." Ben informed her as they started to walk upwards toward the mouth of the volcano. "Agrabah never gets it."
"I saw it a couple of times when I was younger back in my homeland." Lonnie said. "It has to be really cold for that to happen and a lot of Auradon never gets that cold." She shrugged a bit. "I hear that those who grow up in Arendelle are pretty familiar with it though."
They heard a slight rumbling and they glanced around nervously. "I thought your parents said that this volcano was dormant." Audrey said to Ben.
"Technically they never said that." Amy pointed out. She knew though that Audrey had a point, they never would have sent them up to a volcano that was anywhere close to erupting. Plus this close to the mountains it would probably destroy the forests and even some of the towns in Auradon.
It was then they got their answer as their iPhones went off. Amy was still adjusting to the sound but everyone else knew what it meant. "There's a monster somewhere around here." Mal said. "What did Paradias send down now?"
Then some boulders burst apart. They practically melted into a puddle as a creature that looked vaguely to have the upper body of a lion if they were bipedal and the lower body of a manticore landed in front of them. The monster was literally on fire.
"Oh, this is not a good thing." Carlos said.
"Welcome to my territory rangers." The monster said with a laugh. "You can call me Infernal Flame."
"Your territory?" Audrey questioned. "You're on a dormant volcano in Auradon."
He laughed a throaty laugh. "True enough girl, this is your world of Auradon." He spread his fiery hands. "But fire is a pretty universal concept and I am the embodiment of fire. And as for this volcano being dormant, well the truth is that no volcano is ever truly dormant, at least with the right kind of persuasion." He replied.
"You won't get the chance to try that one out." Audrey declared. She looked to Ben and Amy. "Get Mal to that volcano and get the dragon's eye fixed, hopefully this idea works. The rest of us will deal with this Infernal Flame guy."
"Be careful guys." Ben said as he placed his hands on both of the backs of the daughters of Maleficent and started to lead them a different way.
"Let's get to work." Audrey said. As Jane used the magic wand to transform the rest of the rangers took out their iPhone's input their numbers and transformed.
"Tell me rangers, are your suits and equipment fireproof?" Infernal Flame questioned with some delight as he unleashed a stream of fireballs that exploded all around the rangers and sent them scattering.
Evie had her mirror force shield out and ready to go.
Lonnie had her hurricane tessen's out as well. "A weak enough flame doesn't need water to be taken out." She said, almost as if she were quoting a proverb. "Because all it takes is a strong breeze." With that she unleashed a stream of energy with the gale forces of a hurricane right at the monster.
The winds struck the monster and he took a step back but laughed. "And a strong enough fire will simply ride the winds and fan the flames out." With that he unleashed a huge firestorm right at Lonnie.
Evie got in the way and did her best to collect the firestorm the monster had used. She wasn't entirely successful and it damaged both girls. Whatever power the blue ranger had collected she unleashed at Infernal Flame even as she fell. To their dismay he seemed to take it without a problem.
"Never fight fire with fire." Infernal Flame reminded them even as he unleashed a stream of fire at Carlos and Jane, striking them hard. "All you do is get burnt."
Jay, Will and Aziz looked at each other. "Dudes, anything we try will just hurt us." Aziz pointed out. While their weapons could stand up to some amount of heat, the level their adversary was packing would probably all but destroy their weapons.
"I'm not too well of either I'm afraid." Ally pointed out. She was pretty sure the intensity of the fire the monster used would melt her crystal cards.
"I don't have that problem." Jordan stated and unleashed a stream of energy from her lamp cannon. The monster dodged the attack and then unleashed a massive fireball straight at her that the gold ranger barely was able to dodge.
"Okay, let's try this." Audrey said and unleashed several ice arrows at him. They all quickly learned the heat that the monster generated was enough to melt ice as well. "Well that sucks." The red ranger noted.
Ben and the twins had almost reached the top of the volcano when Reviveslime appeared in front of them. "Going somewhere?" He asked with a laugh. "Surely you can stop and smell the roses." He looked to Amy. "No pun intended to you little ranger."
"What kind of creature is that?" Amy asked.
"One of Paradias's generals." Mal told her little sister. "Evie thinks it's some kind of anaphasic organism thing that managed to replicate a life of its own."
Ben formed his sword and shield and then transformed. Amy and Mal pulled out their iPhones and transformed. "We have to Mal by him so she can get to the volcano." Ben said to Amy. She nodded in agreement and the young king said, "Let's do it."
Ben attacked first and as he intended the slime general blocked the attack. Amy and Mal both tried to get by him, though the new rose ranger intended to try to flank him. Instead Reviveslime brought his other arm down hard onto Mal's back. She lost her grip on her staff as she fell.
Reviveslime then turned and slashed Ben hard, making him roll down the path a few feet. He turned as Amy picked up Mal's dragon's eye staff and started toward her sister to return her weapon but stopped as she saw the slime general's eye on her. "Well, let's see if you can take a hit as well as your team mates can." He said and then pulled his slime sword back and unleashed a massive stream of energy that impacted Amy hard and sent her sprawling into the mouth of the volcano. She could see boiling lava as the attack rotated her around.
"AMY!" Mal called out in horror.
"Plan B, let's go with the blasters." Audrey said to them.
"Good idea." Will said. "We don't have to get in close to him." The green ranger just hoped that their blasters were strong enough to get through his apparent heat shield.