The Fifth Element

Greta looked to the ceiling like something was floating up there just above our heads. Letting curiosity get the best of me, I followed her gaze. There was nothing there of course, but when I went to look at her again, she was way closer than she had been before, which unnerved me greatly. I

She looked at Henry, “Release her,” she commanded, and I felt Henry’s arms loosen around me, and then disappear altogether.

“Henry-, “I said, the words “don’t let me go” forming on my lips then dying when I looked at him. His face was empty, and his eyes were two vacant glass windows.

I grabbed him by the shoulders and began shaking him. “Henry!” Henry!” I called into his face, but he gave no indication that he could hear me or even saw me.

“What did you do to him?” I snarled, my voice filled with venom. I looked towards Greta.

She patted down a piece of hair that had to escape her hairdo. “I just simply subdue him for a bit so we can do this without too much of a fuss.”

I stopped shaking Henry and glared at Greta, trying with all my might to murder her with my eyes “Well this isn’t making me want to do anything without a fuss. In fact, I’m ready to raise hell in five, four, three, two-”

“Raise all the hell you want, I wasn’t talking about you causing a fuss I was talking about him,” she said and indicated to Henry, “I’m not worried about you at all, you’re just some little girl who can’t fully graps her powers. But now I see that those powers are enough for what I have planned. Shirley! Hampton! Grab Henry and put him in a holding cell for a future date, but first put the magic inhibitor amulet on him.”

I gritted my teeth together like I was going to let that happen! “Stay away from him!” I yelled and went to step between them. That’s when I felt Greta’s cold hand clamp around my right hand, and I was suddenly being dragged down the hallway and away from Henry. I of course immediately went to pull away from her, but I suddenly found I was unable to do so.

“Don’t bother trying to fight me, I have you under a very light mind control, but the more you fight it, the heavier it will become. You have no chance against me, but you can still try to resist. How would you like to become my daughter again?” she asked, and I shuddered in repulsion. “Thought so,” she said in reply to my shudder.

“Wait I didn’t get to say goodbye!” I said as tears began to stream down my face. I had the feeling that I was never going to see Henry again, and I didn’t want to part with him without a goodbye. Greta sighed heavy in annoyance, and I felt some control return to my body. I turned my head to look behind me, “I love you, Henry!” I shouted, knowing how cheesy it sounded but at the same time not caring.

Henry’s eyes came back into focus, but not before Shirley and Hampton had stepped forward and placed a green amulet around his neck, which glowed a bright red when it touched his skin.

“Violet,” he yelled, his eyes widening with panic. Shirley and Hampton, with the assistance of the evil twins, began dragging him in the opposite direction, he started to struggle against them. “I’ll come from you so just hang on!” he yelled, right before I was yanked around a corner, and my view of him was lost. I began to sob uncontrollably, even though I had promised myself I wasn’t going to cry. I was just so sad and scared.

“You’re a monster!” I said to the back of Greta’s silver head after I had calmed down enough to speak again “I hope you know that!”

Greta scoffed, “Is that the best you can come up with dear? Please, I’ve heard much worse from people I’ve done much less to,” we took a couple more steps. “Our destination is on the other side of the school, and it will take some time to get there, so how about I’ll tell you a story, or more like so facts to pass the time?”

“What, a story about what you plan to do to me!?” I said bitterly.

“No, but that will come at the end. I want to tell you the story about the other world.”

I vaguely remembered Henry mentioning something about it a while back, “What about it?” I asked.

“You see there’s another world besides ours, it’s separated by a very thin veil, and some places that veil is thinner than others.”

“Like where I live,” I said.

Gretta paused for a second, “Correct, how did you know that!?” she asked, sounding a little impressed. We turned down another hallway.

“You aren’t the first one to tell me about this veil,” I told her. Where was she taking me?

“Well, then you must know that there was a lot of crossing between it lately...”

“Let me guess. You’re the one responsible?”

“No,” she replied, surprising me. “These large amounts of crossings are completely natural. When I was a student here-,”

“What, like a hundred years ago?” I said, earning myself a warning glare from Greta’s steely gray eyes, not that I cared. I just wished I was a meaner person who could come up with meaner things to say. I was a third grader when it came to insults.

She cleared her throat, “I was a student here once, not so long ago,” she added glancing at me, “So one day while I was exploring one of the older sections of the library, I stumbled across a very interesting and rare book. It was about the cycle of the veils. You see the veil weakens every 500 years or so and stays that way, before returning to their natural state of stability. Through more research I learned during those phases, there are a lot of crossing overs, mainly infants or younger children for whatever reason. Of course, when one child enters into one world, another has to come to the other to maintain balance, changelings as you will. Sometimes the children’s parent’s don’t even notice the change and go believing that the child is their own. Of course, these children are not from this world, so they have no inclination for magic, magic duds as you will.”

“Wait then that means...”

“Yes, your mother is not originally from the mother world, so that means you are only half of this world. So not only are you a fifth element user but a halfling too!”

I felt like a bucket of cold water had been thrown over my head. Wait for what!?First, I find out I’m a necromancer, and then I find out I’m some sort of two world hybrid?

“No, that’s not true,” I muttered even though my gut feeling was telling me otherwise.

“But it is,” Gretta’s tone of voice changed from one of calm to one of excitement. “and you aren’t the only one. Do you read the newspaper? Surely if you did then you’been seen the stories about the missing girls in the forest around your house. They were halflings too.”

“They were-”

“All the children here, all the special elementals, they are halflings too, that’s why they are so different. I need their power to rip the veil open!”

“What are you talking-”

“The book Violet, you’re the missing key! When Henry saw you in his visions, I knew that you were it! I’m just thankful that he was too focused on his sister, to be able to receive visions about this moment right now and erase it .”

“I had to make up that story about the other Necromancer causing the disturbance with the veil, to get them to let you live along enough. Of course, I used my mind control to make them believe my story. I just need you to do some soul balancing for precautionary measures.”

“Stop,” I shouted. My head was swimming with all this new knowledge. She was jumping from topic to topic, and it was confusing me.

Greta came to a stop, but not because I said to stop, but because we were in front of her two golden office doors. “You said before that in order to cross the veil to the other world someone from the other world would have to take your place here. Right? Then if you were to cross over with a giant army, then just as many people from there would be transferred over here. They might not have any magic, but they aren’t defenseless! They could cause a lot of destruction and chaos in our world!”

She smiled at me began stroking my cheek gently. Every cell in my body screamed out to slap it away, but I wasn’t the current owner of my body at the moment, “Those places don’t need to be filled by a person, they just need to be filled in by a soul. That’s where you come in. You’re going to bring souls from their world and put them in ours for me.” The doors to her office swung open behind us. She led me inside, “It could only be done by a halfling like yourself since you have a connection to both sides.”

I smirked at her, “Wait. I thought I was a little girl who doesn’t know how to use her powers? I can’t help you, sorry.” I said.

Her smile did not drop from her face, “I know you are, and that’s why I built a little machine to help you and me magnify our powers,” she said, in a voice, someone would normally reserve for when they talked to a six-year-old. My smirk disappeared from my face. I wasn’t sure why it even had been there in the first place.

“Wait here,” Greta instructed and walked to her desk. She reached under it, and the walls behind the desk slid open, revealing Henry’s sister, Amber, tied to a pole and gagged. Her entire body was cover in nasty looking bruises and cuts. I let out a small gasp of horror, but Greta ignored her and went straight to the wall to the right. She beckoned me to come with her, and my legs obeyed her.

“Henry’s here, and he’s going to get you out of here,” I whispered to her while I passed her. She didn’t make any movement or noise in response to my voice, and I had the sickening thought that she might be dead.

I entered through the entrance Greta had created in the wall for us. If seeing Amber in her current state had horrified me, then no words could express the terror I was feeling this moment.

The room was large, but not the largest I had ever seen at this school. In the center of the room was a giant crystal ball, which glowed a bright orange. The crystal ball wasn’t what was so terrifying about the room, though, it was the children that were connected to it by a series of red vines, that pulsed with lights of their own. The children all looked like there were on the brink of death.

“Look at me,” Greta said, and my eyes were drawn away from the children and to her eyes. I fell into their steely gray.