The Fifth Element

♢Chapter 35

"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.