Chapter 3: The Fairy Council
The Lums made the forest so bright that I didn't realize that the sun was already setting beyond the wall of stone and more forest. The large structure was settled in the middle of a crystal clear, shallow pool almost like a mirror with small islands scattered about.
"Heh, the Fongoids have better looking, old-fashioned temples than this," Qwark commented. The residents of this planet obviously didn't like that comment, even though I doubted that they knew what Fongoids were.
"Qwark."
"What? I'm being honest."
"Try saying that in front of other fairies," Ly challenged. "I can assure that they can do worse things to you than I can."
"Er, just how much worse are we talking exactly?" Qwark then asked with a hint of hesitance I could clearly hear in his voice.
"Trust me, you do NOT want to know."
Qwark then gives an audiable gulp with his eyes widen to the size of saucers. Heh, he was always such a coward, so it was good seeing someone shut him up when he was acting out of line.
I asked Rayman, "Just so we know who we're dealing with, is there anything important that we should know about the Teensies? They have your jewel, so they must be important if you trust them that much."
"Teensies are the most common inhabitants of the Glade of Dreams," he answered, looking like he was trying to find the right words. "They're short, and they're all over the place, in every part of this world with different features."
"These Teensies must have been around for much longer than say 400 years for them to evolve in different enviroments," Clank stated.
"Well, they are the first creatures created by Polokus, so that's easy enough to get."
"And Teensies have bigger noses than this fella here," Murfy pointed out, trying to sound funny as he pointed at Rayman.
"Yeah, don't say that to their faces. They can get easily offended."
"Note taken," I replied. "Anything else?"
"Yeah, you might want to cover your ears before you meet them," Globox piped in.
"Cover our ears? Why?" Talwyn asked.
"Let's just say that Teensies know how to throw a wild party," Ly said.
"They do?" I asked in surprise. "From what you've been telling us about them, I would've thought they were these orderly, regal guys that takes thing very seriously."
"Believe me, they look like they could be at first glance, but looks can be deceiving, as they say," Rayman says with a chuckle.
Yeesh, this place really does have some odd characters, huh? And that's coming from someone who's meet tons of weird faces in the past.
"Clank and I have seen a lot of weird people where we come from. We're prepared for anything this place can throw at us."
All that got me out of our limbless friend was a challenging smirk. With that, he leaped over the edge, to a rock island below us.
Okay, I could see why he gave me that look. There's no way hair worked like the heli-pack Clank currently had installed, right?
None of Rayman's friends were phased, just followed his lead. Me and my group, that was a surprise.
"You coming or not?" the big bug teased. Without further delay, the four of us got down (Qwark misread his landing and landed in water instead) and most of us were then leaping rock to rock like hopscotch. We reached the building in little time, and the front door was closed.
"Is there a secret password you use to get in?" I inquired. What answered that were sighs from the four residents of this world.
"They still haven't changed the light switch to the doorbell, I forgot," Globox groaned.
"Stand back," Rayman told us in a flat tone, like this was nothing new. He walked up to the door, pulled his fist back, spun it so fast I thought I was going to get dizzy, and launch at the door. THe wood easily broke apart into splinters, and I just felt my jaw drop.
"Excellent manneuver as always, Rayman," Ly said casually, clearly unfazed by what just happened before us.
"I mean, I guess that's one way to get inside," Tal, who was just as perplexed as I was, commented.
"Was it really that necessary to smash the door to bits, though?" I asked. "Won't the Teensies be upset over that?"
"Believe me, this has happened more times that you any of you can count," Rayman says with that same flat tone. "At this point, it's pretty much normal for me to resort to doing that."
I responded with, "There's so much my group doesn't know about the history of the Glade and the people living in the area... hopefully we learn more later. Let's get going."
"Before we lose a brain cell, or in one's case, the last of them," Tal tacked on, obviously meaning Qwark with that last part. Deciding not to dwell on anything else, all of us started climbing through what's left of the front door to the inside.
"Good thing those Teensies make a lot of spare doors nowadays," Murfy commented. "Now if only we can find the key to all of- Doh!" My line of sight snapped to Rayman, who had practically sucker punched the only flying guy.
"You nearly got fired for this, remember?"
"Hey, it slipped! Can ya blame me?"
"I beg you pardon, but what are you arguing about?" Clank asked.
"You wouldn't be able to get it, at least I doubt it." The conversation died from there, and the hallway just seemed to get bit more narrow as we walked.
A rock wall was pulled up, and we were suddenly pelted with booms of cheesy disco music. I had to instantly cover my eyes, as did the rest of my companions and even Clank. The Glade inhabitants cringed for a few seconds before righting themselves.
"What are those Teensies doing!" Ly shouted over the noise.
"They never had the music this loud that you can hear it by the entrance!" Globox followed.
"Well, find a way to turn it down or something, this is ear torture for us!" I exclaimed to them.
It was a few seconds later that there was a boom like when a speaker blew out, and the music instantly stopped. The ringing in my ears left me a bit disoriented, and I had to shake my head a bit to get it out. Apparently, Rayman had slammed his fist on top of a large, stone speaker like device.
"Okay, this is pushing it," he grumbled. "I need to have a word with those Teensies. Again."
"Again?" I asked with disbelief. "You're telling us they've done that before?!"
"Yeah, but they've never blasted that music THAT loud before!" Rayman firmly states, clearly and understandably annoyed from what just went down.
"When we said that they knew how to throw a wild party, we weren't kidding," Ly says with a deadpan expression on her face.
I told Rayman, "I don't even want to know how long those parties take to clean up."
"You don't. Ly is still trying to get the glitter from the last one off her tail." For emphasis, the "fairy" took her in hand and shook it, removing some sparkles that had been buried under the fur before.
"Speaking of music, when did they get speakers installed in here?" Murfy questioned, looking over the remains. "They weren't in this room when we came earlier."
"We should go before the Ludiv Fairies start complaining or the Teensies literally send the whole building crashing down if they have even more of them."
"Why do you have such a dangerous thing in the first place?!" I couldn't help but yell. "I thought you guys didn't like technology stuff!"
"We didn't say that. We hate it when it's used to gum up our homes. But that's for another time."
It was a LONG walk towards where the Teensies were supposedly were in this surprisingly large interior. Rayman and his friends had to destroy several more speakers for us to progress. By the time they said that we were close, I could swear that I was going to need a hearing aid after this.
"We've finally arrived," Rayman informed us at a large door. The music was the loudest ever, and the door looked very sturdy and thick. My group and I braced ourselves, covering our ears before the door opened.
I was nearly blown off my feet by the soundwaves coming from what sounded like a twisted version of club music.
"What's going on in here!" I could barely register Rayman yelling over the volume.
On the other side of the doorway was a humangous, dome like chamber with a gigantic, glowing spear in the middle. Speakers were along the far walls of the chamber, and little, big nosed, blue things were running all over the place frantically. Seceral of them even had ridiculously large crowns on their heads.
"HELP US! WE CAN'T GET THE MUSIC TO TURN OFF!" someone screamed in terror.
"AND IT'S ONLY GETTING LOUDER! WE CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE!" another shrieked.
"RAYMAN, YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO!" Ly shouted at Rayman in a barely audiable voice.
"THIS ENDS NOW!" Rayman shouts as he dashes right into the chamber.
And with that said, Rayman immediately got to work destroying every single speaker in the room. I could tell he was cringing as he went around obliterating the speakers but thankfully, it was all worth it as the chamber slowly became more and more silent upon each speaker's destruction. Not that it's going to fix the damage done to my ear drums, though...
I said, "It's going to take a while for my ears to recover from that, but now I at least know what to watch for. Is everyone OK?"
"I thought for a moment my audio registers were going to crash," Clank moaned from the pain as well as a robot could.
"I'm never taking books for granted ever again," Talwyn stated.
Qwark looked on the verge of passing out.
"Oh, thank you Rayman," one of the creatures- Teensies, I assume- came up and spoke to Rayman. "Only a few minutes after you left, the speakers we just put in started blasting the music out like crazy. We weren't able to stop it."
"I told you to get those tested," he scolded. "And they nearly destroyed hundreds of pairs of ears in here."
"We did have them tested. In the middle of the Jibberish Jungle. But the volume couldn't even get that high."
"So what? They were just supercharged?"
"We actually believe that to be the case. You see, shortly after you left, that gemstone you gave us started reacting to the Heart."
From the look on Rayman's face, he wasn't expecting that answer.
"What do you mean it was reacting?"
"It was almost as if the Heart was synchonizing with the gem," another Teensie answered, holding a large glowing gem in its small hands. Just like Rayman said, it looked exactly like mine except purple. "We believe that it caused the speakers to get out of control."
"That single gem might've been causing the speakers to go crazy like that because it was reacting to the Heart?" Ly asked out of surprise. "But how is that even possible?"
"We're not exactly sure, but it appears that this odd gemstone contains some kind of extremely intense power," another Teensie chimes in. "Dare I say it, it may even be something no one in this world has ever experienced before until now!"
I told everyone, "If the jewels are that hard to control, I'm nervous about what they are capable of when someone is actually familiar with them.."
"Well, in any case, we can't keep it here anymore," a crowned Teensie spoke up. "Something worse might happen to the Heart if it stays any longer than it has. Rayman, you're the one who found it. Maybe you should bring the gem to Betilla at the Moonhenge and see what she knows about it."
"But it's not even from this world," he reminded. "What could she know?"
"Well, if she doesn't, you can always ask Polokus at the Snoring Tree. Or... Dare I say it, pay a visit to Jano."
The warm room seemed to drop a couple degrees at the mention of the third name that Rayman didn't mention before.
"Jano?" I repeated for an answer.
"A mellowed out Nightmare that's become the prison warden for more aggressive Nightmares," Rayman answered. "He's cool, but he still creeps out a lot of the other residents."
"Hurry and go, and take your strange, new friends and their tincan with you!"
"Beg your pardon," Clank began to speak up, until a portal of sorts suddenly appeared before us.
"This portal will lead you directly to the Moonhenge," yet another Teensie explained. "It will be there that you and your friends will find Betilla."
"Hopefully she can give us some sort of clue about that weird gemstone," Ly said before giving a bit of a nervous gulp. "I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't think I'd personally want to give Jano a visit as a last resort."
"What're we standing around here for, then?" Murfy impatiently asks. "Let's get our butts into gear and see the lady already! We don't have all day!"
I responded, "Agreed. I'm not sure what we'll find out while we are there, but it's worth a shot."
"And Murfy, watch what you say," Rayman warned the bug. "You know how Betilla gets."
"She's your mom, of course you do."
"Oh boy. If she's your mom, I wonder what she looks like," I couldn't help but comment. The others were already going through the portal with only me and Rayman left. The Teensie then handed the gem to Rayman.
"Trust me. First glance and you wouldn't believe that we're related." I decided to hold my tongue on that as we followed our friends through the portal.
End Chapter