Guardian: Protectors of Light (18 page)

“
Feared One?”
Bella repeated. “Who’s that?”

“
That’s how
pixies call the Master,” Violina answered. “He is feared by all of
us, and that has practically formed the nickname. Kind of obvious,
don’t you think?”

“
Violina, if
I may be so bold... Now I am the one with a question for you,”
Thomas said. “I was wondering how you can shift between your small
and tall shape?”

“
That is
because I am practically not a pixie,” the silver-haired girl said
as she sat down on Thomas’s shoulder. She looked at the others. “I
am a fixie.”

“
Fixie?”
Bella repeated. “Like some kind of half-fairy,
half-pixie?”

“
Correct,”
Violina said. “I can swap between a small fairy and a big pixie.
That’s actually why I am taller than the most of the pixies, but
smaller than a fairy. It’s the Royal Fairy Race.”

“
Are you the
only one who’s that way?” Samira said, while taking the ribbon out
of her hair and redoing the sank-out braid. Strands of hair had
been sticking out everywhere, and Samira didn’t like it whenever
her hair was a mess.

That was practically also
the reason why she hated the heck out of high humidity, as her hair
would become all frizzed up. That had happened quite a lot in her
life, especially during summer. When it happened during the weekend
or a vacation, like summer vacation, it didn’t really bother her,
but she could be extremely embarrassed if her hair suddenly started
to frizz halfway through a school day. There she sat in the
classroom, with a blonde afro-like haircut.

She quickly swapped the
strings of hair between her fingers, braiding it all back together.
In a matter of seconds, she was done, and bound it back together
with the ribbon.

“
Certainly
not, Samira,” Violina replied to Samira’s question. “There are
thousands like me. Or... there were. The Master either destroyed
most of the Royals or forced them to submit to his
power.”

“
And your
sister? She lives in the forest, right?” Bella commented. “How did
she protect herself?”

“
Very few of
us escaped,” Violina said. “My sister is a fixie as well. I believe
there are two more of us out there, which makes four in
total.”

“
Well, that’s
a lot of confusing information,” Bella said. “I think I’m never
going to understand everything before we di- I mean, before we
reach the Land of Void.”

“
If I may add
more information to the list, Bella,” James said. “Warlock
Spirits-”

“
Please
don’t, James. I think I’ve had enough for tonight,” Bella cut James
off mid-sentence.

“
Um, okay,
but if we get attacked again and you don’t know something
important, it’s not my problem,” James replied.

“
Fair enough.
My answer is still no.”

“
Okay,
whatever you say, Jingle Bells.”

James shrugged and
started to walk slightly faster. He didn’t know why, but he had
to.

During the rest of their
journey toward the Fairy Forest there wasn’t much time to talk;
there was tension in the air. Strange tension

The pixies that framed
the shield around the Guardians remained loyal and didn’t move from
their side for a second, so they wouldn’t have to worry about any
further attacks while the night lasted.

The shield the pixies
formed around them reached from their ankles to just about halfway
their chests, so the five teens could all clearly see where they
were going.

Violina floated about
twenty centimetres above the edge of the shield, giving directions
to either James or Thomas, depending who she was the nearest by at
that moment or who would hear her first.

She knew the Valley like
the back of her hand; she knew exactly where the dangerous plants,
like the flesh-eating ones grew – and it wasn’t quite a good idea
to have to pass any of those in the dark.

James knew they could
trust these pixies blindly, and the level of trust they had allowed
him to get wasn’t easy to let him gain in these lands. Not by any
creature. It was different with people like Gabriel and Rikki,
because they were clearly human. And they were two of the many
Guardian’s Keepers. How many were there again? Ten? Four Main
Keepers, and a bunch of hidden ones – the ones that usually didn’t
count. Violina was one of those hidden Keepers, James then
realised.

But trust wasn’t
something the red-haired sixteen-year-old could give away easily.
Especially not now he could feel the presence of Shadow Walkers
around them, lurking in the shadows, ready to attack whenever
they’d get the chance.

Though they hadn’t been
bothered on the rest of the journey since the last ambush a few
kilometres ago, James was alerted twice as alert as he was before,
and he had a lot going on in his mind. He kept worrying about the
same things.

If the Warlock Spirits
and Shadow Walkers could even reach them in the safest realm in
Lunaria, they could find them everywhere. They would never be
completely safe without having to worry about a possible enemy
popping out of the blue and attacking them.

Nowhere.

If every time it would
turn night the Shadow Walkers would come after them, and the
Warlock Spirits, who could even appear in broad daylight, would
grow twice as powerful than they were at daytime, they would be-
be- screwed.

James couldn’t think of a
different word to explain their situation more politely. No. They
would just be screwed, full stop.

Like they hadn’t been
doomed to die already.

“
Don’t worry,
Mum. We’ll come back. I promise.”

“
Don’t make
promises you can’t keep, James.”

“
It’s not a
promise. It’s an oath. We will come back.”

“
Then I’ll
trust you with that.”

The promise he had made
to his mother started to get to his mind more often lately. Was it
because he felt guilty?

James felt kind of lucky
that Thomas and his friends had been too busy saying goodbye to
their own friends and family to hear the conversation between him
and his mother. Samira and Anna understood the way he felt of
course, after all.

Cheyenne was everything
to him, and he knew he and Samira were the same to her. He always
promised his Dad after his death to take care of her, even though
he wasn’t there anymore to see him keep the promise.

And he wouldn’t break a
promise. Ever. And so he wouldn’t break the promise he had made to
his mother, either. They would return home at all costs, just
because James had promised her they would do so.

“
We’ll come
back, Mum.

I
promise.”

And for a second, it was as
if he could hear his mother’s voice coming from
somewhere.

“
I know you will,”
her
voice said.

*

It was about sunrise when
they reached the entrance of the Fairy Forest. The trees were
really high and seemed to be very ancient; once again, the leaves
were silver-coloured.

James couldn’t exactly
tell what kind of trees it were, and when he looked aside he saw
even Samira, who knew nearly every tree since she was seven years
old, throwing confused looks at the trees.

The kind of tree they
looked the most similar like were oak trees, so James told himself
it were oak trees.

A solution any adult
would consider childish, but it was the way James used to think
when he was younger.

When it looks
like it, it is most likely to be so!

More investigation
followed quickly afterwards, but this time, he wouldn’t have too
much time to get his utensils out and properly examine the trees,
so he left them with a simple and plain “oak tree”-stamp in his
mind.

It didn’t really matter
anyway, so why even bother?

As they entered the
forest itself, James felt the bad presences wrap around them, and
from the corner of his eye, he could see Thomas shudder.

The powers of the Spirits
were very strong here, because of the huge numbers they were hiding
in here. Thomas could feel a connection with Spirits through his
sceptre; it was a strange, yet magical sensation.

But now he knew that
Rikki didn’t tell everything about their Guardian’s Totems. Some of
the magical artefacts, mainly the ones that were supposed to help
them personally, also came with some unpleasant side
effects.

Thomas could clearly feel
the evil that surrounded them, the Shadow Creatures lurking in the
dark. But the problem was; it didn’t help him locate them or their
attacks.

It didn’t solve anything
at all, because the Spirits were resistant against
Magic.

Most Magic didn’t work on
them. You had to be a really powerful warlock to be able to begin
something against them.

Take the pixies, for
example; they would have to unite with hundreds at once to be able
to take on just one Shadow Creatures.

And then again, in this
forest, the Shadow Creatures were the ones that were with
hundreds.

And they were with five.
And about fifty pixies, at the most.

We’re no match for the
Spirits, Thomas thought. If they attack us while we’re unprepared,
we’ll be blown away within a second. The only luck we have at our
side is that their powers are slightly drained by the minimum
amount of sunlight that is peeping through the leaves of these
massive trees.

As they slowed down a bit
because they had to follow a pretty narrow path going through the
Forest, Thomas glided with one of his hands across the trunk of one
of the trees. He still hadn’t figured out what kind of trees it
were, and he wondered if it bothered anyone else what kind of trees
it were.

Perhaps it bothered
James, but Thomas thought it wasn’t the right moment to
ask.

As they travelled farther
through the Forest, the attempts of the sun rays to make their way
through the roof of leaves that became more tighter meter by meter
seemed to end in vain more and more.

The Warlock Spirits and
black fog kept circling around them, but the shield of pixies kept
protecting them in a circle around them and most of the time a
couple of trees as well.

James found himself
getting distracted by the area and sounds that seemed to be voices
whispering his name with a tense of violence and threatening, but
he knew he shouldn’t listen to them, because they were trying to
lure him to a trap.

But by his surprise,
every time he heard them, it were female voices.

The fairies were
whispering at him!

James...

James... Come
with us...

We can get
you home... Come with us...

But what James couldn’t
possibly have known, was that all of his friends heard the same
voices.

The fairies were trying
to get them away from the group, bringing each teenager a different
offer.

We can
protect your friends...

Join
us...

Come...

Let us help
you...

But the shield of pixies
protected the Magic from reaching their mind, so it wouldn’t be
anything more than idle whispers to their ears.

But Thomas knew that once
the pixies had to leave them, it would be hard to block the voices
out of their minds.

As he realised this, he
started to hope that the pixies could stick with him until they got
out of the Forest almost immediately.

He wished they could stay
with them even longer; he wished they could bring them to the Land
of Void.

But Thomas knew that in
these lands, no creature had ever left their own specific Realm, so
he didn’t know what kind of effect the other Realms would have on
the little pixies once they would leave the Silver
Valley.

Perhaps they
couldn’t
even leave;
that was another possibility that was left. After all, except the
things he had learned from the book – which happened to be about
the First Generation, he had no knowledge about the
subject-specific abilities of the creatures that lived all over
Lunaria.

There was one thing that
Thomas had learned in the past month; everything he thought to know
and had learned from watching fantasy movies and reading countless
numbers of books; it didn’t matter here. Everything was different
in Lunaria.

Every single
thing.

For example: Fixies, what are those
? He thought. He had never heard of that species of
fairy-pixie before. Never, anywhere. And yet, somehow it still
existed here.

What more was there to
discover about Magic that he didn’t know? He never understood it
completely, after all, even though James always had tried his best
to explain it.

They’d always had those
days they’d spend all day role-playing; when they were kids, they
would usually play out scenes from the stories James had written.
They were fun to play, and – for their parents, at least – fun to
watch.