Chapter 25: Sophie

Stina asked the question everyone was thinking, "Where are we?"

Sophie and her friends had leapt to a dark and dusty room, with shadowed corners and... nothing.

The room was empty, exempt for a single wooden table in the center.

Sophie almost laughed, the place looked like the perfect spot for a horror movie. Actually, all that was missing was some fog and a few clowns.

"Is this where they want us to meet?" Dex asked, confused.

It looked like there was nobody in the room except for Sophie and her friends.

"Hey look what I found," Biana whispered. She was standing next to the table, holding a tiny piece of paper. "It says, we're glad you came to meet us here, alas this is not the stop. Follow the light then you'll be near, but make sure not to drop. What does that even mean?"

Keefe laughed, "at least they rhymed this time!"

"I think it means that we have to follow another crystal to actually meet them. And then not drop? I guess we'll find out when we get there," Sophie said, ignoring Keefe.

Biana looked at the table again then picked up another small, clear crystal with the black speckles.

"Oh, here it is. Well I guess we have no other option but to follow the light."

"Here goes nothing," Wylie remarked as he picked up the crystal and created a beam.

And they all stepped into the light.

...

"So you finally came. We were expecting you," a voice called from the shadows.

This time Sophie and her friends had leapt to a grassy area with nothing in sight except for the moon and stars. Sophie heard the rushing sound of running water coming from behind her, but she still couldn't see anything.

Why was it so dark?

The voice called out again, in an almost lilting tone, "You were so late that we thought that you weren't going to come. You're lucky we were wrong."

Then suddenly, as if a light switch had been turned on, the darkness disappeared in a flash and Sophie's surroundings became visible.

They were standing on a flat hill outside and behind Sophie... a steep cliff. Most alarmingly, there was a waterfall rushing down it, strangely muffled. If they had leapt just a few feet closer to the edge, someone would have fallen off.

"Wow, glad we didn't walk over there," Marella whispered, pointing at the cliff.

Sophie was too busy trying to understand where they were that she didn't respond, but when she turned away from the cliff she gasped.

In front of her stood Gisela, Ruy, Gethan, Vespera, and a cloaked figure, all standing under a dome of light.

Clearly Ruy was able to produce shields again.

And who was that cloaked figure with them? They must have been the cause of the darkness, so they were probably a shade, but Sophie didn't know who.

"So, back to hiding behind your little pisionpath again?" Keefe smirked, pointing to Ruy.

Ruy laughed and said, "It works every time so why should I stop? Though I've heard you recruited one of your own. Too bad she doesn't have enough skill to actually do something. Last time didn't go so well, did it?" He taunted, looking at Maruca.

Just keep him distracted, guys. Don't listen to what he says. Sophie transmitted, needing some time to gather up enough power to actually do something.

Ok, they all replied back.

"Last time... was a mistake," Maruca answered back, staring at her nails. "But this time I intend to destroy every shield you decide to put up."

She snapped her fingers and the force field flickered out, but was immediately replaced by one of Ruys.

"I can do this all night," he laughed.

"As can I," Maruca gritted out as she dissolved yet another shield.

"Shush, shush, calm down everyone." Lady Gisela interrupted, moving her arms with the words.

"We didn't come here to fight. We came here for revelations! But first off, I see that Keefe was well enough to join. How has the transformation been so far?" She asked, directing the last sentence to Keefe, in a slightly sweet voice.

Keefe must have noticed her voice also, as he answered in an expressionless tone, "Why do you care? It's not exactly any of your business."

"Oh it's all my business Keefe. As I seem to remember, I was the one who gave you your powers. And you have absolutely no idea how far they really stretch. Have you been noticing the slight changes recently?"

Keefe laughed and stalked as close to Lady Gisela as the force field allowed. "Actually I haven't! See, after running away I learned to control your creepy ability and now it's like I never even had it. Thanks, mom!"

Keefe sounded almost convincing but Sophie knew him too well to hear the bitterness underlining his words.

All Sophie wanted to do was tell him how sorry she was for the terrible parents he was forced to live with, but she knew that would make things worse.

Keefe hated when people felt pity for him, so for his whole life he had hid behind the jokes and humor to cover up the pain he constantly felt.

Lady Gisela let out what sounded like a muffled scream, but quickly controlled herself and murmured, "Well, that changes things. At least we had a separate plan in case our treatment backfired."

She raised her voice and arms up again. "Time for a history lesson!"

...

"Our world has always been extremely unevenly divided since the councillors took power and established the treaty. As you all probably know, we Elves have always taken our rightful position on the planet. We have all the space we could possibly need while the other intelligent species are forced to stay in their own kingdoms. This was intentional, of course." Gisela paused, then motioned for Vespera to continue on.

"We all believe that the Black Swan has already told you who we have been targeting. Yes, we know that much about your plans," Vespera said, responding to Sophie's gasp. "As I was saying-and hopefully you know by now- that we are, and have been targeting the goblins for some time in hopes of dividing them. We didn't have a good strategy to approach their large military until we realized that it would be smarter to start small, then expand our vision."

As Vespera took a breath, Gethan interrupted her and added, "Months ago, we started designing a device that would give us complete control over the goblin regimen. To be honest, we were stumped until Gisela gave us the idea of using Ethertine. We realized that it would affect different species in different ways and once we did the necessary research, we came to the conclusion of what Ethertine would actually do to the Goblins."

"What does it do?!" Sandor yelled. Sophie turned her head to face him and was surprised to see the emotion written in all the hard lines in his face.

"Now, now. We'll get to that part later," Lady Gisela answered, just before Gethan could.

"Just as Gethan was saying, once we realized what we needed to use, the rest was easy. All that was left was forcing the Ethertine among chosen goblins, and Voilà! Our work would be almost done! But something unprecedented happened that set us back weeks. The Moonlark decided to finally take action. To act ruthless! Her decisions would have been interesting for us to observe, but alas, she destroyed our storehouse where the Ethertine was kept."

Sophie tried to channel Keefe's spirit and smirked. "Well I guess my accident in destroying your storehouse worked out for us!"

Gisela laughed and wagged her finger, "You didn't honestly expect me to not distribute the Ethertine to other places in case something like that ever happened? Wow, I knew you were ignorant but it seems like you grew even more naive than I thought was possible. Notice that I didn't say all the Ethertine. Well, we were able to save some even though annoyingly enough, your accident set us back some time."

She produced from her cloak a vial filled with the same bright shard that Queen Hylda had found and held it up. "Care to take it from here?" Gisela asked Vespera, handing her the vial.

"It would be my pleasure. Well once we were back on track, we needed to start distributing the Ethertine to a select group of goblins. This proved harder than we thought. We had to take our time making sure that we were as inconspicuous as possible, while still working fast. In the end, our calculations were almost exact, but our efforts brought us better results than we thought." Vespera paused, letting the words sink in.

"This will be the downfall of the goblins."

The hooded figure waved their arms and they appeared, taking up the whole right side of the cliff.

There looked like hundreds of them, standing side by side, with their arms down, holding huge swords.

The goblin bodyguards yelled and scrambled to move in front of Sophie and her friends, protecting them from the hordes that appeared out of nowhere.

Goblin hordes.