Henry!?" I cried out and ran to his bedside, or at least I tried to. All the bodies of the nurses crowding him made it difficult to get through.
Henry opened his mouth and began to scream at the top of his lungs, and I cringed at the terrible noise. Tears flooded my eyes and created rivers down my cheeks.
A nurse who was closest to the action raised her head and pointed across the bed to where Amber now stood.
"I need you to get out," she said in a firm but calm voice. Her attention shifted to me. "You..."she trailed off, and I saw a spark of recognition ignite in her eyes. "You either need to get back in your bed or leave!"
In the meantime, some of the other patients had woken up to Henry's shouts and were beginning to mumble and shout complaints and inquire at the nurses gathered around Henry's hospital bed.
"We're not leaving!" Amber and I said in unison and exchanged glances with each other, and turned our eyes back towards the nurse, who now had her hands resting on each of her curvy hips.
Another nurse shoved her way past me, carrying a jug of water with multicolored leaves floating at its surface. At that very moment, Henry's foot sprang free, and the nurse in charge of holding it stumbled back. This caused the nurse to bump into the nurse carrying the jug. She stumbled to the side, and as she did, she tripped over my foot and spilled its contents all over the ground.
The nurse looked down at her empty jug and back up. "I'm so sorry!"
"Don't worry about it, dear, it's not your fault that there are all these obstacles in your way!" The other nurse said that and gave me Amber and a hard look.
"Okay, we'll leave," Amber said, shooting me a nice-going look.
I stared back at her in disbelief. Really, she was going to blame this on me? It wasn't my fault...Well, I didn't purposely trip her!
Amber and I exited the tent again into the crisp nighttime air. Nessie greeted us outside. She sniffed at the entrance of the tent and let out a soft moan.
I gave her chin a quick rub. "I know, girl, I'm worried about him too."
"What happened to Henry?" Amber asked me. Under the dim light of the moon, I could see the dark circles under her eyes. Wherever she had been had not been a walk in the fairy garden, and coming back to find her brother like this, the same one that had been in the other world for a year, was probably not helping.
"Santana hit Henry over the head with a stick..." I said, and Amber raised an eyebrow at me."It was because he snuck up on her, "Amber raised both her eyebrows. "And speaking of Santana, she is apparently also a sixth-element user, just like Greta."
"Okay, before you start going into what Santana may be, where were the two for the last year? I thought both of you were gone. Why didn't either one of you try to contact me!?"
"Well, the place we were didn't exactly receive a scribing reception,"
I filled in Amber on how Henry and I had spent this past year in the other world, the lack of magic there, the investigation of the mysterious disappearances, getting sucked into the portal, finding Vivian, getting chased by the griffons, coming here, the second attack of the griffons, and what Santana had done. I also told her about the warning the doctor had given me about Henry.
Both of our heads turned when a nurse with brown hair and eyes came rushing out of the blue tent and hurried over towards us. Something was most definitely wrong. Her skin was too pale, and she could barely keep the tremble out of her voice as she spoke to us. "That boy in there..." she trailed off. And in that brief silence, I realized I didn't hear Henry's screams anymore, which I didn't take as a good sign.
"What is it!" we both said in unison and then exchanged looks. Seriously, what was up with us saying the same thing at the same time? It was like we were some freaky pair of twins.
"I think you need to come see for yourself", she said, motioning us back inside the medical tent and its blue canvas walls.
When we reentered the makeshift hospital, three things immediately caught my attention. The first was the silence. True, Henry had stopped screaming, but the other patients had also stopped fussing, and the nurses weren't shouting orders to one another. The second was that everyone was looking at Henry in a kind of frozen shock. The third was that Henry was standing completely upright on his bed. His face had a blank expression, and his face was tilted upwards.
I reached out and involuntarily grabbed onto Amber's arm. I was scared of what was going to happen next. One of the glass balls hovering in the air, Henry abruptly exploded into a flaming fireball that bathed the tent in a bright orange. Everyone let out a collective gasp, and it was then that Henry began to speak in a quiet and hoarse voice.
"In thirteen moons' time, two armies, one of crimson and one of many colors, will meet in the folds of battle, and one will be brought to slaughter. The veil will shatter, and the glimpse through it will be a world in shambles, walked only by the soulless. Unless the wounds in the sky are healed and the dead fight for the living once again..."
The fireball hovering above Henry abruptly extinguished itself. And with that, Henry's blue eyes rolled up inside his head, and he fell back onto the bed and began to convulse.
Amber and I were promptly ushered out of the tent while the nurses began to gather around him, and Henry resumed his screaming.
Once we were out, I turned to Amber, "Are Henry's predictions ever wrong?" I asked.
Amber shook her head solemnly, "They're always right. Although he might not always interpret them correctly."
"Well, there is no mistake that we are the army of many colors, and Greta's army is the crimson army. Which means of we meet in battle, she's going to destroy us, and invade the other world, and when she does, she is going to end up killing everyone there with the "soulless". Almost everyone who crosses between the two worlds gets their soul ripped from them and becomes soulless. Henry and I experienced one of the souls when we went over to the other world, and we barely survived one. They
"Unless the wounds in the sky are healed and the dead fight for the living again. Hope is not lost." Amber replied.
"But how could we heal the wound in the sky? What does he mean by that?" I asked, and then it clicked. He must have been talking about the black vortexes, the portals, which meant...
I turned excitedly towards Amber. "After Henry and I were pushed into the portal to the next world. Was the orange globe thing in the room with you destroyed?" I asked.
"No, when I came too, a lot of soldiers came flooding in, and I had to escape. I didn't see what was around me. What's its significance?"
"It's Greta's power source and what she used to make the portal for me, Henry, and the others. She must be using it to make the other portals "the wounds in the sky". You were in the room right next to it when you were being kept prisoner by Greta. Surely you must remember if it was still intact when you last saw it. If so, its destruction might solve all of the problems!"
"I was also blindfolded, gagged, and beaten nearly to unconsciousness. I wasn't exactly aware of my surroundings during my stay there," Amber replied dryly, and I cringed.
How could I forget that?
Amber crossed her arms over her chest. "But that thing you said earlier, about the soldiers becoming soulless if they crossed over to the other side. I'm wondering how your soul and my brother's are still intact."
"Well, that's because I'm a Halfling, half of this world and half of the other. Your brother is, too. Almost all magic duds are babies from the other world that were accidentally switched with other babies of this world. The purity of their souls lets them cross over intact with their bodies. My mother was one, and probably a couple of your ancestors were as well. Henry mentioned that your parents were special element users."
"So if we destroy that thing that Greta has been using to open these portals, the sky will be healed. So all we need to do is have the dead fight for the living according to the prophecy....Do you think Neeva could raise the dead again as he did hundreds of years ago?"
"I can no longer accomplish that type of task," Neeva said from somewhere in the dark.
Amber flinched and went for her knife.
"Relax, it's just Neeva again," I reassured her, and she relaxed and replaced her knife back into her belt.
"I, too, witnessed the prophecy from the boy that is Violet's boyfriend."
"What do we mean?" Amber said, and in unison, both glared at each other. "Stop saying things at the same time as me," we both said in unison again and smacked our heads with our hands and simultaneously groaned.
Neeva stepped out from behind the blue medical tent. He had changed out of the hospital gown, in the course of the time since we had last seen him, and into a pair of black boots, shoes, and a long-sleeved black shirt. He had two arms now, and cradled in them he held a semi-conscious Santana.
I was grateful he was actually dressed in clothes this time, or this scene would've looked ten times creepier than it already did.
He looked down at Santana, "Can you now stand, possessor of the sixth element?"
She nodded, and he helped her gently to her feet. I saw she wore a hospital gown like me.
Neeva reached down and pulled off his shirt, exposing his bare, pale, toned chest, rippling with sleek muscles in the moonlight, and a symbol that was carved deep into its center. It was a star within a circle, and the circle had a long jagged line running through it.
"I gave this injury to myself after I had raised the army of the dead that first and last time so many years ago. It was to ensure I could not accomplish anything of its likeness again. It permanently sealed most of my magic of the dead within the vessel of my body," he said, putting his shirt back on.
(AN; Much to the dismay of all the Neeva fans out there)
"So the dead aren't going to rise to fight the living, and we're all doomed," I said, letting the shock and despair of this whole situation settle in.
"No, they are, daughter, and you're going to be the one that does it."
"Me!?" I said, pointing to my chest. "I can't even raise a couple of the undead without almost passing out!?"
"Yes, you aren't ready. You have not lived enough days and nights under the sun and the moon. I was three hundred years old when I raised that army. You will have to be at least two hundred before you will have that power to raise your own."
"But we don't have that long, we have one year!? I cried, my voice becoming shrill.
"Calm yourself, we will, with her help," my father said, gesturing to the still very sleepy-looking Santana. Her shoulder-length brown hair was in knots, and she looked half dead. Her image didn't exactly inspire confidence in me.
"How can she possibly help with this ?" I asked.
"I'm about to tell you," he replied.