Faerie Palace, Faerieland
Point of View: Owners
"I have to see the Faerie Queen. All the pets on my street
disappeared!" sirSquire panted to the guard. He had run all the way from Neopia
Central to the Faerie Palace, and it was almost noon.
"Queen Fyora has already received word of this
problem which seems to be occurring across all Neopia. She is doing all she
can and any interruptions will only slow the process of correction." The guard
sounded as though this was a standard thing to say, and was rather bored of
saying it.
"It's all right, Hannah, let the him in," said
someone from behind the guard.
Hannah turned around to see who had ordered her
aside, and was shocked (although not as much as sirSquire) to see Fyora herself
standing there.
"Your highness..." murmured Hannah the guard,
curtseying.
SirSquire bowed respectfully.
"Come. I sense the magic within you," commanded
the Queen, turning and walking back into the palace.
Wondering vaguely if she meant that he was going
to turn into some super-powered hero and defeat an ancient evil, sirSquire followed
her in.*
I've been reading The Neopian Times too much,
he thought to himself.
Outside the Healing Springs, Faerieland
Point of View: Pets
As Fyora, Queen of the Faeries was letting her owner in, Serennaa stared at
the cloud ahead. Unlike the others, it was a dark purple, with a whirlpool in
the center puffing out green smoke every so often. She could tell something
was wrong. Besides having been turned purple by becoming the headquarters of
an evil Faerie, a bubble that looked like glass surrounded it. Black smoke swirled
as part of the bubble. Within there was Jhudora. Within there was the thing
that had taken her owner and her brother.
"Jhudora, I'm gonna --" Serennaa whirled around
to see a blue Meerca glaring at Jhudora's cloud as well, muttering under her
breath.
"Is your owner gone, too?" Serennaa asked.
The Meerca looked at her. "And my brother. Yellow
Mynci named 14265, katrika adopted him from the pound. I'm Meeki, by the way.
Meeki137. She held out her paw, and Serennaa shook it. "This is Reexam." Serennaa
noticed a small yellow JubJub behind Meeki.
"My owner, Reexam_aragiR, disappeared last night,
along with my sister Rigara."
Serennaa nodded. "So we were the only ones brave
enough to come here and defeat Jhudora."
"My friend said I was the only one on our street
stupid enough to come, but you have to wonder if there's any difference," smiled
Meeki.
Serennaa grinned, then frowned as she remembered
why she had decided to come. "Whatever took our owners took my brother, too."
Meeki nodded sadly. "And my brother. And Reexam's
sister. You think that we're the only ones who came here because we're the only
ones who lost a brother or sister besides our owners?"
"That makes sense, we're more angry at Fyora
than anyone else, so we come," said Reexam.
They stared at the cloud a moment more.
"Well, we'd better get going if we want to rescue
everyone." Serennaa marched forward to the magical bubble.
Faerie Palace, Faerieland
Point of View: Owners
Queen Fyora led sirSquire through so many rooms he lost count, but he got to
forty-seven corners turned before he did. This must be that white thing in
front of the Faerie Palace, he thought. They went down a staircase, and
suddenly everything was white and fluffy. They were inside the cloud that made
up Faerieland itself.
The two came to a cloud door guarded by two Fire
Faeries. Fyora turned to one.
"Summon the Faeries. Emergency meeting." The
guard nodded and fled, following the Queen's command.
The other guard nodded two the pair, and the
door dissolved. sirSquire tried not to stare at it like he'd never seen it happen
before. Inside the cloud room was a giant square table, surrounded by about
twenty cloud chairs.
"Please, sit," said the Faerie Queen, gesturing
to a chair. As sirSquire got close to it, it pushed itself away from the table
like it was smoke billowing on the wind. He raised his eyebrows, and sat down
rather slowly, making sure it would actually support his weight. It did, and
as soon as he was settled, it blew itself and sirSquire in.
"Cloud-runner," Fyora ordered, looking at the
table. Out of it rose a bit of cloud that formed into a ball, then a roughly
Faerie-like shape, about as large as a bottled Faerie "Fetch the pets from their
rooms. Tell them they must come now, all the faeries will be here soon and they
wouldn't want to keep them waiting, now would they?" The Faerie-cloud nodded,
then turned into a ball again, and dissolved into the ceiling.
There was a pause.
"So, sirSquire, I believe I owe you an explanation."
Jhudora's Cloud, Faerieland
Point of View: Pets
The trio of pets stared at the thing.
"What do you think it is?" Meeki wondered aloud.
"It might be some sort of shield to keep us from
coming in and finding out what happened," suggested Serennaa. "Maybe even one
of those things that hurts you if you touch it..."
They were standing in front of the magic shield.
Reexam pulled out a Green Apple. "Stand back,"
he said, and tossed it at the magic barrier. It bounced off harmlessly.
"Well, it doesn't look like anything that'll
make you a slave of the shadows..." muttered Serennaa.*
Meeki balanced on her tail, and beat her head
against the shield in frustration.
She passed right through.
There was a moment of silent thinking. What was
Meeki that Reexam's Apple wasn't? Meeki mouthed something.
"What?" asked Reexam.
Meeki paused, and poked her head through the
shield. "Maybe only Neopets can pass through."
"That would explain why we couldn't hear you
through the shield, the air particles couldn't carry the sound through," thought
Serennaa.
Meeki nodded. "Come on."
Serennaa and Reexam hesitated, and walked through
the shield also. Inside, the light was dimmed, partly blocked out by the black
smoke in the shield.
Serennaa gestured towards the portal. "Think
this is the way into Jhudora's headquarters?"
Emergency Meeting Chamber, Faerie Palace, Faerieland
Point of View: Owners
"Do you know what's going on?" Fyora asked.
"Wild guess... I can turn into a Neopet, so I
need to become the Essence of Neopia and defeat the source of evil shadows?"
sirSquire suggested.*
The Faerie Queen smiled. "No, actually, but you
do need to help save Neopia."
The cloud door dissolved, letting through the
cloud-ball that Queen Fyora had sent for the pets. It turned into a cloud-Faerie
again, and gestured to the chairs next to sirSquire. "Please, sit down."
SirSquire was confused; the cloud-Faerie was
talking as though the pets were right there, in the room, but... there were
none. Suddenly three of the chairs on his side of the table blew out. A pause,
and they billowed back in, only partway - they stopped when they were about
even with sirSquire's chair, so that someone sitting in them wouldn't squish
into the table.
A few moments of silence.
Fyora looked at something, or someone, behind
sirSquire, smiled, and said, "Because that chair is occupied by your owner,
Dany. Try the one down by 14265."
SirSquire looked down the row of chairs. The
one just past the ones already out billowed, paused, and went part way back
in. He looked at the Queen, confused, and asked, "You've seen Dany? Is he okay?
Where..." Fyora smiled, and he stopped.
"Dany is to your right, at the end of the row
of pets." She turned to one of the empty chairs. "I'm talking to sirSquire01,
who is Dany's owner. I suppose I should explain this to all of you.
"Jhudora, for reasons of her own, tried to curse
an owner and her pet. We think that one of them tried to stop the potion from
working by adding something. Unfortunately, whoever did it didn't know her potions.
The new potion was much stronger. The thing that got added mixed with something
already in the potion to release a surge of pure magic. The explosion formed
a bubble around Jhudora's Cloud, through which nothing can pass. The curse hit,
not one owner and one pet, but all owners and pets in Neopia."
A pause; Queen Fyora looked at one of the empty
chairs.
"The curse was that no owner could hear, see,
or touch any pet, and no pet could hear, see or touch any owner. Faeries, being
neither owner nor pet, are immune to the curse. Thus, we can hear, see, and
touch any owner or pet. In this seat -" she gestured toward sirSquire, "- is
sirSquire01, Dany's owner. To your right, sirSquire, sit Rigara, 4_ears4444,
14265, and your own pet, Dany770. Unlike what you may have thought, all the
pets - or owners - did not disappear, they simply became invisible, silent,
and insubstantial to you."
So that was why everyone acted as though there
were pets in the chairs - there really were!
"The shockwave of magic from the curse formed
into four clumps, which landed in four pets, the four pets sitting here."
Another pause; sirSquire guessed there would
have been excited murmurs, if he had been able to hear the pets.
"One clump, however, split into two before it
landed. One part landed in Dany. The second part landed in you, sirSquire.
"I said before that nothing could pass through
the shield that formed around Jhudora's Cloud. That is not entirely true. Only
those with this magic can pass through the shield. And only the magic of the
curse itself can break it."
To be continued...
*Authors Note: sirSquire (me) thinking about defeating ancient evil, his
(my) line about turning into a Neopet and defeating the source of the shadows,
and Serennaa's line about something turning you into a slave of the shadows
were all references to child_dragon's As
Told By Child_Dragon. Very good story.
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