Pishicu and the Wisdom Council: Part Three

Pishicu was quite taken aback. The Faerie Queen? Fake? She wouldn't believe that, she couldn't.

The Poogle fixed her thick, black, glasses like she always did when she had received some shocking news. "Th-that's not true!" Pishicu protested. "The Faerie Queen does a lot of stuff! She saves Neopia from countless tragedies!"

Fedle smirked evilly. "And have you ever pondered how she manages to do that and run the Hidden Tower at the same time?"

Pishicu frowned; she hadn't.

"Like I said before, the Faerie Queen is eye-candy. All she does is run the Hidden Tower, and talk to people as if she knew a whole lot. We just put her there because we could be in serious danger if we really exposed ourselves. The group who runs the show is actually hidden behind the seens. No one knows about them; well, with the exception of the ones who are in the group and ones who are elligible for joining the group," Fedle said thoughtfully.

"And let me guess, you and Terskun are part of that group?" Pishicu observed.

"Correct," Terskun remarked.

"Anyway," the Cybunny continued. "The group is made up of five pets and five Faeries. Every single one of them possesses great wisdom, as well as a special power. For pets it must be unique for their species, or just a really advanced form of what they already know. As for Faeries, just about any of them that know a whole lot of magic and are really good at it can join. Basically, it's only for the elite.

"The pets and the Faeries are joined together in a council. Every time a trouble arises they put their heads together and come up with a decision. Everyone in the council must consent to a decision before it is carried out. Sometimes the decisions are very easy, and we can carry them out ourselves (that's why we all have special abilities. They assist us in times such as those), while sometimes we must call upon the inhabitants of Neopia to carry out our plans. Have you ever wondered how wars and things of that nature only happen very rarely? It's because the Wisdom Council quiets most other threats down by themselves."

"The Wisdom Council..." Pishicu muttered. The words gave her a weird feeling, however it was not an unpleasant one. "That's what you call yourselves?"

"Yes, but never mention the name to anyone else. It is not supposed to be known by just anyone. I am very annoyed that we have to give that information," Terskun hissed.

Fedle lowered his head in guilt.

"Oh shut up Terskun, no one was talking to you anyway," Pishicu retorted. Terskun looked quite taken aback, but he said nothing. "Please continue Fedle."

The Cybunny smiled appreciatively at Pishicu, though he tried hard to hide it from Terskun, and then continued with his story. "Unfortunately, recently the Council became corrupt, for something happened to one Faerie, and we hired a Dark Faerie in her place. One by one, the rest of the Faeries disappeared and we were forced to hire more Faeries. All of which were Dark Faeries."

Pishicu gulped, she knew that wasn't good.

"The Dark Faeries were fine at first. They made wise decisions, and I had to admit that I approved of them. We all got along fine, but then that one request came.

"It was from a Dark Faerie named Jhudora. She claimed that she wished to settle in Faerieland. All of the pets protested, but the Dark Faeries said that she should be allowed. No matter how we tried to reason with them, they refused to hear otherwise. Finally, when we wouldn't change our minds they changed them for us," Fedle mumbled spitefully.

"How did they do that?" Pishicu inquired.

Fedle shivered uncomfortably. It was obvious he did not with to tell.

"It's okay old friend, you don't have to tell her that," Terskun said as he patted him on the back.

"H-hey! What do you mean by that-- Oh yeah, our agreement..." Pishicu rolled her eyes, wishing she would have made a deal that was more in her favor. "So, you had to get out of the Wisdom Council, I get that. So why couldn't you just quit?"

Fedle opened his mouth to speak, but the Draik interrupted him. "Once joined in the Wisdom Council there you shall remain joined 'til the day you depart from life. It's one of the most sacred codes the members of the Wisdom Council are bonded by. We could quit by out own will, but it was very shameful and you would be banished from this side of Neopia for life, and that would do no good to stop the Dark Faeries. Another rule is Thou shall not hurt thy fellow member, no matter thy differences between thee. The Faeries violated this law, but all of the pets were to dignified to do so. We had to get out, and yet we had to make sure we could come back so that we might be able to stop them. So, we leaned on another rule, Thou members shan't be any less than three months of age. If we were young again, we would have no loyalty to the Faeries and we could plot their demise. It was risky, but we had to try," Terskun said heroically.

Pishicu looked at him, almost in awe. Then she remembered he was her little brother and he practically destroyed her life so she snapped out of it.

Terskun continued, "So we all looked in ancient scrolls, looking for a spell or potion that might assist us. Finally we found one. The Potion of Regnuoy."

"Gasundheit," Pishicu said.

"I wasn't sneezing. 'Regnuoy' is the name of the potion'"

"Gasundheit," Pishicu persisted.

Terskun rolled his eyes. "'Regnuoy' is an ancient Faerie word Pishicu. It means to basically means to regain youth, but an extra plus to the potion is though you would get young again, you would not lose your memories or anything else."

"Oh!"

The Draik shook his head and mumbled something about inaccurate intelligence levels. "Anyway, we gathered the ingredients for the potion, which was not easy for they were very rare. Unfortunately, there were only enough ingredients for four of us, and Fedle so valiantly volunteered to be the one to stay and gather us when he sent us back in time. The last thing I remember was drinking the potion and starting to feel youthful, like my body was rewinding or something... Now what happened after that I'm not quite sure, seeing as I was an egg," Terskun declared, with a tad bit of annoyance.

The Cybunny, realizing his cue, immediately jumped into the conversation again. "Three months later, when they would be old enough to rejoin the Wisdom Council, I searched everywhere for the members of the council. Needless to say, this was not easy. I had to do this unnoticed by the Faeries, and most of the time I did. They knew I was up to something though. I could see it in the way they looked at me. They wondered what had happened to the other Neopets in the Council. I said they disappeared in a spell they tried to cast, but I knew that they didn't believe me. It was incredibly hard to go anywhere. Luckily I cast a spell to where they couldn't cover my tracks. It actually helped.

"So after a while I stopped worrying about them. Meanwhile I had found all of the other Neopets except for Terskun here. I was even able to find the one who was still a petpet; he had managed to send me a neomail. I knew that I had especially delivered Terskun to an owner with only three pets so she could make Terskun, but then something went wrong. The owner put Terskun in the trades, and he was traded to another owner while I was in a three-day meeting about what to do about the statue that landed in Maraqua. It turns out the Faeries, err, persuaded me to allow it to stay. Anyway, by the time I got out of the meeting Terskun was gone. I waited forever to find him, but finally I received his letter that he told his Weewoo to take to me. So that's what I meant by Terskun wasn't with the right person. It was because I intended him to be with a different owner."

Pishicu stared thoughtfully at the two pets; soaking in all of the information they had just provided her with.

"So, my second question. Was anyone else with you when you came down here? Like Sparkle or his Cooty?" Terskun inquired nervously.

"No, it was just me," Pishicu replied. "Now, second question for me. What did the Dark Faeries do to you to make you agree with them?"

Fedle and Terskun gave each other uncomfortable looks.

"I'll- I'll-" Fedle tried to offer to tell, but somehow he couldn't. His voice cracked and Pishicu could see him shaking with fear.

"Don't worry my old friend. I understand completely. I'll tell her," the Draik said as he put a comforting hand on Fedle's back. "You see, he probably has gone through it more than anyone else in the Council. After all, he has been with them longer." Though Terskun said this calmly, Pishicu could see fear flicker in his eyes.

"Yes... If this is to painful I could answer ask another question--" Pishicu started to say.

"No. A member of the Wisdom Council must always keep his or her word. I'll tell you what the Dark Faeries did to us," Terskun said determinedly. "Like it has been said before, everyone in the Wisdom Council must have a special power, or more like a developed skill. Neopets are magical creatures by nature, and they all have a power deep inside them, but so few can recognize it, and if they do even fewer can control it. I suppose you can guess what our powers are."

"You have the evil finger thing," Pishicu remarked spitefully, "and Fedle can see through walls and the like, right?"

"Right. Now the Dark Faeries' used their powers in awful ways. They all had the typical Dark Faerie powers, but some they also had some special ones. One of them could hypnotize you and make you go to sleep if you looked at her too long and the other one naturally knew just about every single charm there is, up to a certain difficulty level, and she used them to lull us to do our bidding."

"But that's only two Dark Faeries, and their powers don't sound too terrible. I mean, it's awful for they manipulated you, but it doesn't sound painful," Pishicu mumbled.

"True, their spells weren't painful, just unjust and used for evil. Besides, we could avoid falling for those spells if we tried. As for the other two Dark Faeries, one could control ice more skillfully than the Snow Faerie. She could freeze anything, no matter what the heat, as long as it contained a bit of water. I had frostbite constantly, and it wasn't pleasant. The other could make people switch bodies once a month (which she would occasionally use to make us and a Dark Faerie switch so we would agree, even though we weren't really agreeing). No, the one everyone feared was Sisle, who had all of the other Dark Faerie's powers plus one more," Terskun said coldly.

The Poogle shivered at the sound of the name. She could tell that it meant bad news. She straightened her glasses and motioned for Terskun to go on.

"She could fool anyone by her appearance; I myself interviewed and approved her for the council. She didn't even look like a Dark Faerie! But oh, how corrupt she was, and still is I'm sure. She basically forced the other Faeries on the Council to 'leave' with the powers she possessed. They were all mysteriously found deceased a week later, and we assumed it was some kind of disease. I can't believe I actually worried for Sisle's safety at on time... Well, later we reviewed some more Faeries who applied for the job. We were about to choose two Earth Faeries, a Water Faerie, and an Air Faerie, but then Sisle came into the room where we were making our decision. When we judge for who will be the new council member, or members, we do it in the way that pets judge Faeries and Faeries judge pets, so when Sisle came in we were all quite surprised. We asked her if she had forgotten the rules, but she made no reply. Instead she smiled, and her eyes glittered with hatred and spite. Suddenly we felt horrible, too horrible to describe. It was as if someone had brought all your fears, all your bad memories, and all the pain you had ever experienced in your whole life back to you in one instant," Terskun said in barely more than a whisper. His eyes had grown wide with sorrow as he remembered it. Fedle, however, started to shiver like mad and Pishicu spotted a few large tears roll down his face. The Poogle felt sick, how could something be this horrible to where these two noble pets would feel bad just from its memory? "An-anyway, she continued to let it go on, until we were positively moaning with gloom and pain. She had never told us that she had that hidden power, and then was the first time we saw it.

"'Your decisions on who will join the Council next are not to my liking,' she had said to us all, while still invoking her curse on us. 'I do not want those four Faeries, I want these four'-- she then scooted four portfolios of Dark Faeries close to us--'and until you give me what I want, I will keep up this spell on you and your comrades. Do you really wish to see them suffer?'

"So in the end we all gave in to her, and felt sick knowing what an awful, awful person she really was. If we could have, we would have impeached her, but a person can only leave the Council by choice death, or the ancient Eternity Orb ceremony, but that was out of the question since she had hidden hers from us, so she was there to stay. The other Dark Faeries turned out to be very bad too, and we were controlled by them ever since," Terskun sighed.

The Poogle wondered what these Eternity Orbs were, but said nothing since she was to busy looking at her brother and Fedle in awe, wondering how they could have managed to take such torture. But she also felt terrible for herself, knowing that Terskun was really stronger than her after all, because she would have never been able to stand up to a torture such as that.

To be continued...