Winx Club - Eternal Spark

Prologue 2: No more hope

Back in the cave where they had been fighting Valtor, the whole group of friends was avoiding eye contact as if it meant being infected with the plague. Some of them were looking down, eyes fixated on the ground, others were checking out the ceiling, one of the specialists even had his head buried inside his cape. Everything so as not to look into each other's eyes, because if they did look into each other's eyes, that'd mean they'd have to talk. And if they did talk, they'd need to address the elephant in the room, that being that Bloom was looking awfully not alive.

Sky hadn't let go of Bloom once since she had lost consciousness. He had managed to stay composed for the first thirty minutes, but couldn't do it anymore. He had witnessed her face gradually get drained from all its colors and he had the terrible feeling that her breathing had gotten weaker. He wasn't even sure she was still breathing, but he was too scared to check. He started shaking her, gently at first then more virulently, but she still wasn't responding. She was as alive as a ragdoll. In short, she looked dead.

The silence was suddenly broken by the sound of Stella's crying, as she couldn't hold it in anymore. The fairy of the sun and moon collapsed, desperately calling for her best friend, pleading for her to come back. The others looked at her with pained expressions, as if she had just broken some tacit agreement of denial. Now there was no way they could avoid addressing the situation any longer.

Suddenly, as Brandon was coming up to Stella to comfort her - though he wasn't too sure how he was going to manage such a feat - a light appeared at the back of the cave. What looked like a glowing sphere slowly floated its way toward them. The sphere was minuscule, but it created an awful amount of light, so much so that everyone had to close their eyes. Everyone, except Stella. It was going to take a lot more than that to blind the princess of Solaria.

Squinting her eyes to get a better look at the sphere, she realized it wasn't actually a sphere, but a spark, a spark which seemed to be moving toward Bloom. The blond fairy stopped breathing, feeling hopeful again. She wasn't sure, but she had a feeling this tiny blue spark was what was missing for Bloom to wake up. The spark floated to Bloom, placed itself on her chest, then disappeared. The whole team reopened their eyes.

The whole team, including Bloom.

Screams of joy started resonating inside the cave. Musa, Aisha and Flora hugged each other tightly. As for Tecna, she discretely wiped a tear which was on the brink of falling from her eye. As discreet as she was trying to be, Timmy saw right through her and laid a comforting hand on her shivering shoulder. As for Stella, she let out a loud cry of relief and roughly wiped away the streams of tears that had run down her face, making a mess of it. She ran up to Bloom to hug her, but stopped once she got close enough to see the livid expression on her best friend's face.

Bloom, albeit a little stunned, was already looking for Valtor, completely missing her friend failed attempt of a hug. Her eyes quickly fell upon the wizard who was getting up a few meters away, visibly struggling. The man seemed greatly weakened, at least as much as she was herself. She had never seen him look this miserable. It seemed he had used up a whole lot of magic to get her out of his system. She could see his chest back-and-forth movement under his white ruffled shirt as he was panting, grasping for air.

He lifted his gaze and his pale eyes finally met hers, filled with rage. Then, for some obscure reason, his lips formed a smile. It was nothing short of a cunning smile. It was so subtle she could have easily missed it, but it was all she was able to see. She opened her mouth, eager to articulate one of the thousand questions which had just popped inside her head, but no sound came out. Instead, she blinked stupidly.

What was this masochistic waste of good oxygen smiling for?

Without breaking eye contact even for a split second, Valtor vociferated a spell which Bloom, whose head was in a deep fog, couldn't decipher. A black cloud of smoke left his hands and started surrounding him, completely blocking Bloom's view of him. When the smoke dispersed itself mere seconds later, Valtor was nowhere to be found.

An overwhelming feeling of panick got the better of Bloom. She snapped out of her torpor and jumped on her feet, ordering him to stay right where he was, but he was already gone. She had jumped a little too fast apparently because she almost fainted, fortunately Stella was here to catch her. Her mind was in a maze. She couldn't quite grasp what had just happened.

All she knew was that she had allowed him to escape, again. She had miserably failed, again.

In a last desperate attempt, she threw herself at the spot where Valtor had been standing, hoping that she could use his magic to track him down or find some clue as to where he had teleported to, when someone grabbed her by the shoulder, pulling her back. That someone was none other than Sky.

"Bloom, it's no use!" Sky shouted while tightening his grip on her trembling arm. "No magic will allow you to find him! Let it go! The fight is over!"

"You don't get it! I have to stop him!" She implored him, violently shaking her arm to get away from his grip.

She turned to Sky, ready to shout at him for even suggesting that she was to let Valtor be, but what she saw extinguished any desire she had had to scream at him. Sky looked devastated. He had glassy eyes and a crack had formed between his eyes, probably from his crying. His eyes were begging her to let it go. She realized, horrified, that he probably thought she had been dead. She wasn't sure how long she'd been unconscious for, but she suspected it had been for a long time. She sighed, then collapsed to the ground. Fine. Valtor could very well do whatever he wanted; she couldn't bear to see Sky in such a miserable state because of her.

She took a quick glance at her friends. She knew she had to say something, but she felt incapable of doing so. No words would be enough to describe the mess which had just occured because of her. Her shoulders slumped and she looked at the ground, unable to bear her friends' gazes.

Stella came to her and laid her hand on her shoulder. She felt Bloom stiffen up under her fingers.

"We did our best, Bloom." She whispered, gently patting her friend's shoulder. "That's not your fault he got away. There's nothing you could have done about it." She stopped to think for a second, then resumed talking. "And we never know, he did seem quite banged up." She said in a smirk, making odd moves with her eyebrows.

It took a few seconds for Bloom to make sense of whatever Stella's face was doing, but she did, eventually, make sense of it. What Stella meant was that Valtor could very much be dead. Nothing guaranteed that he could even survive the teleportation spell, seeing as he was barely able to stand up.

She looked into the deepest parts of her being for the tingling sensation she would always feel when Valtor was nearby. She knew he was probably miles away from here already (probably planets away actually), but she just needed a little something to know whether he was alive or not, just a little tingle. At first, she didn't feel anything outside of the ordinary, whatever that meant. Maybe he was dead. Or maybe he was just way too far. But right as she was about to let go, she noticed something. A weird warmth inside her chest, barely tangible, but very much here. Unperceivable and ubiquitous at the same time.

...

He damn sure was alive.