Part 5.5

Yeah, I kinda just dumped the old prophecy.  Sorry ’bout that and all.

Anyways, looks like I’ll have eight parts, but part eight is teensy and mostly comprised of pictures and I’ve already finished it and I’ve already written half of part six (my favorite part), so I just have like another 7,000 words to write and I’m done!  WOOOOO!

            “Well are you coming or not?” she asked and turned around to face us after we just stood there for a minute.

            “Shh!” Moht said, “Listen!”

            I guessed that Moht had heard the same thing as I had: large footsteps.  Clara tilted her head, and immediately sighed.

            “It’s a Moffit,” she told us, “I don’t think that they are carnivorous.”

            I let out the breath that I had been holding in.  “You’re sure, right?” asked Moht, and I could tell that he was still a bit worried.  She nodded.

            “Well, let’s keep going then,” and I quickly began walking into the woods.

            I was a little startled by the fact that I was supposed to kill someone.  I mean, what would your reaction be if someone told you that you’re gonna kill someone?

            We continued hiking towards the volcano near the centre of the island.  As we approached it, we began hearing water from a nearby stream.  Then, we almost ran straight into it.

            The remaining three of us looked over it, trying to calculate a way to cross it.  “Hmm,” muttered Moht, and began walking further to the left.  I quickly followed him, and then realised what he was looking at: the river fell into a waterfall.  It seemed to be quite the gorge around it, but there seemed to be a log going across it.

            “We can cross right here!” announced Moht back to the two of us.

            “It’s too dangerous,” proclaimed Clara, “We need to cross more to the right, where there may actually be a place to cross.”

            I glanced back in her direction, and did see something.  But it wasn’t a way across.  “Giant Veespa!” I shouted, and ran towards the log.

            Clara quickly came up from behind me (since she wasn’t lugging around a rather large machete), and sprinted across the log.  Moht hurried behind her, but he slipped.  I dropped the machete, and yanked out my rope from my backpack. 

            I tied it as I ran, and, finally, tossed it up onto a tree branch.  Wrapping it around my wrist, I jumped.

            As I soared through the air, I felt the tension on the rope release.  Glancing back over my shoulder, I realised that the Veespa had run into the rope, causing it to break.  And causing me to fall.

            “Ahh!” I shouted as I rapidly descended into the gorge.  Moht was falling near by, and I quickly grabbed his arm.  Then, without thinking very much, I reached out and grabbed a vine.

            We swung around, and just as I was about to hit the side of the cliff, I felt a sharp tug at the vine.  Alarmed, I looked up, and saw two people pulling us up.  Using all of my strength, I pushed us from the walls of the cliff, and swung up and over the edge.

            Clara had fallen backwards from the lossage of weight that she had to pull, but she wasn’t the only one there.  Standing next to her was a young fire faerie.

            “Oh, hullo!” she said, waving her left hand.  She wore an odd crimson uniform, and held a metal shield under her right arm.  But the strangest part about her was that she was wearing aviator goggles.  “I’m Evreness Wick!  Evre for short!” she was very young for a faerie; since faeries mature slowly, I placed her around fifty.  She happily stated each sentence, talking quickly.  “I’m glad to help you all!  I live here on the island with my sister!  I’m on my time off, so I decided to do some exploring!  And I found you!  Maybe I’ll get bonus points!”

            “Um, well, I’m May, this is Moht, and I think that you’ve already met Clara,” I said as Clara picked herself off of the ground, brushing away the leaves and dead grass that clung to her.

            “Wait a second,” Moht said, “there are faeries on the island?”

            “Oh yeah,” she said, “a whole bunch!  We live in the volcano over there,” she pointed towards the volcano, “and there’s a bunch of others there too!  Like, I have a friend who’s a green Korbat, and my sister’s another faerie!  She’s the master of spies!  It’s so cool!  For now, I’m just a dungeon guard, but maybe I’ll be a spy like my sister one day!”

            “Dungeons?  Spies?  Faeries?  What’s going on?” I asked her, starting to get seriously concerned.  Something bad was happening here.

            “Oh, yeah!” she said, but then glanced at her wrist.  On it was a sundial, and it said that it was about 10:45.  “I have to go in fifteen minutes,” she told us, “Since that’s when my shift is.  But if you want, I can help you get there!”

            I glanced at Moht, really quite concerned, but before I could say anything, Clara said, “We’d be delighted!”

            “Allrighty then!” Evre squealed, “Off we go!” and started skipping into the forest.

            As we followed her, Clara dropped back next to us.  “Look,” she said, “the way I see it is that maybe she can help us at least figure out where everyone is.  We can tell her that we want to stop outside the entrance, and go in a few minutes later.  It even sounds like she might be guarding the dungeon when we’re trying to break in.  Sound like a good plan to you two?”

            We both nodded our heads in agreement.  It seemed like a good idea at the time.

***

            Jessalia sighed and rubbed her temples.  Her elbows on the table, she looked at Imerdia.  “So what you’re saying,” she told the magma Poogle, “Is that I am not the huntress.”

            The Fyr’s master of symbols and prophecies shook her head.  “It was not as I had originally anticipated.  If this one was to be the eighth one and the third one, that would make little sense.  We suspected that he will take the eighth, but it said,” she picked up a small stone tablet with a copy of the prophecy on it.  If you’ve lived underground with no trees your whole life, you’d write everything down on stone.  She cleared her throat and read:

“‘Twelve destinies

Intertwined by the thread of life

Some warped

Rapidly changing direction in time and space

Some simple

Straightforward and plain

One

Will survive to reign free

Two

In incongruity with the with the first and shall fall

Three

First to see the world, and will see the end

Four

Wishes to see the world

Five

Has seen this before

Six

Will wish for revenge

Seven

Does not know itself

Eight

First taken and will give his life to another

Nine

Cursed by the second

Ten

The decision maker is angry at the third

Eleven

The lonely child

Twelve

Will help the child

Thirteen

The huntress kills the child’

Granted,” Imerdia said, “We know that there are thirteen listed even though it says that there are twelve.  We had a feeling that two might overlap, we didn’t know which ones of course, but as I’ve said before three and eight contradict each other entirely.  The problem is that our prisoner falls under both categories.  Perhaps there is someone else who we have not taken into account?”

***

            Evre lead us through the forest, prancing along happily, a smile on her face.  I wondered how she could be so carefree.  It was bizarre to look at her; the uniform and the happiness collided against each other harshly, in a battle to show her true personality.

            Eventually, as we walked along, Evre chatting very quickly, we saw a strange sight.  There, sitting in a clearing, sat a small hole.  I guessed that I might have been able to slide down it, but just barely. 

            “Here we are!” she exclaimed, her happiness really starting to bother me, “This is where we enter!” and with that, she announced a spell: “Volo Acendere Igitur Pottero Descendere!” she chanted, and suddenly the hole began to glow. 

            The way that the hole glowed was less like a light coming out of the hole as opposed to the hole itself.  I guess you could say that its edges glowed, but it was almost as if it was an object as opposed to a lack of an object that was glowing.  It was rather strange to watch as it did, but suddenly it expanded into a door.

            We had been standing near a cliff wall, which was actually the side of the volcano we later discovered, and the hole/door shifted up onto the wall.  The door it became was a large, metal, and a little bit slanted, with big handles the size of my head.

            “Oh my gosh,” whispered Clara, and I looked at her, agape, staring at the door, “This looks exactly like-”

            “Welcome!” announced Evre, apparently not having heard Clara, “To the second entrance to Moltara!”

***

            Jessalia had found the second entrance only a few days before she met Illisiy.  She had said to the mysterious faerie whose face she could still not see, that she had finally found it.  After that, they began rallying Moltarians, faeries and pets alike, and gained an army of supporters.  They built a base inside of the volcano, slightly fearful of the giant petpetpets that roamed the island, but overall safe. 

            Then it was decided that Jessalia was chosen to go out and explore Neopia.

            The mysterious faerie had sent her off to Faerieland, and Jessalia had been amazed.   She told everyone that she was from Moltara, and they were amazed in return.  But then word had spread of the secret organization plotting to overthrow Fyora, and Jessalia had to flee with Illisiy’s help.

            Illisiy was an earth faerie who had apparently never fit in with other faerie and had decided to join the movement.  Illisiy was brave and maybe a bit reckless, and hardly fit in with her vain friends.  She and Jessalia discovered an old prophecy, written on the walls on a temple on the island.

            They had been great friends, uncovering the prophecy and the same text that had been in the Atlas, and found that they were both sent to discover what it meant.

            That’s when everything went wrong.

***

            Before we could stop her, Evre slammed a giant knocker on the door.  The gigantic door creaked open, and a raspy voice asked, “Password?”

            “Oh don’t be silly Melissa!” Evre exclaimed with a laugh, “You know that it’s just me!”

            “But who is everyone else?” Melissa asked sceptically and she stuck her Korbat head out the door.

            “Oh, these are just some travellers I picked up in the forest!” Evre said light-heartedly.  I glanced around nervously.

            “Guards, seize them!” Melissa shouted, and suddenly pets all wearing the same uniform as Evre came out and grabbed us.  We all struggled, and I wished I still had a machete, but to no avail, and we were brought through endless corridors and Clara and I were thrown into a dungeon cell, Moht in another.  And we weren’t alone.