Return of the Sirens -- About

Return of the Sirens is going to be the second book in the Desiphent series. It will be shorter than the first book, but only because that is when the Sirens meet the Multis. . . more on that later.
     Return of the Sirens will be a little less, er, messy than Foes Down Under (I hope), due to it's shortness.
     That's all for now. Enjoy book two of Desiphent!

Desiphent

Desiphent Book Two: Return of the Sirens | Work-In-Progress

Desiphent

Return of the Sirens

By: Daphne Liang

The underwater Desiphai, the Sirens, were gentle, shy, private Desiphai. Okay, fine. Maybe they would enchant some sailors so they would crash into rocks and shipwreck. And maybe the Sirens would eat the carcasses of said sailors occasionally. And, fine, they would sometimes morph into sharks and jump onto ships to either swallow sailors whole (and ocasionally drag them down into the sea to drown in a slow, bloody death). But they were still gentle. Right?

If you are reading this, please do not drop your water bottles in the sea, unless you want the Sirens throwing them back at you.

PROLOGUE: Three Months Ago

Three months ago, a group of children fell asleep under a bridge, unaware that their magical Scroll was showing them a prophecy to be interpreted in three months:

The journey to Australia may have ended

but Alaina’s faults have not been yet mended

And the farther you go the farther you’ll find

the rest of the Desiphai are not of your kind

For to the sea you must make an alliance

therefore, Multi, beware of the Sirens.

And these children will find not just themselves, but another group working together unknowingly to solve this word puzzle. Because if they don’t, the consequences will be grave.

Very grave.

Chapter One:

Scalina

If there was one thing Princess Scalina of the Sirens hated, it was plastic bottles. She was okay about other things.

But plastic water bottles? No. Just, no.

She scowled as she dug up another one from under a mangy plastic bag. Plastic. The bane of every Sirens life. It didn’t matter if it was getting tangled around you or plain being annoying, it was horrible.

Scalina picked up the dirty bottle, labeled Vitamin Water (whatever that was), and tossed it back up, up, up, until she heard the faint pop that told her it had flown through the water and hit a human on the nose.

Satisfied, she began to turn around and around until she was dizzy. Then she stopped, and in her place was a sleek young eel.

Satisfied with it’s long, smooth body, the eel flicked it’s tail in a very un-eellike way and swam off towards the west.

Scalina was a Siren. Thus, she was also a Desiphent. Except she lived underwater.

Desiphent were, simply put, interesting creatures. They could live on land (normal, boring Desiphai) or they could live underwater (amazing, unique Desiphai), but they were nothing alike.

All Desiphai could control certain natural elements (earth, fire, air, water, soul, body, animal, etc.) but the onland Desiphai were normal and could do just that. The underwater Desiphai could morph. That means they could turn into other things, which was good if you were the Hider in Hide and Seek, but bad if you were the Seeker. Another great thing about them was that they were all Multis. That meant they could control all of the elements. The Desiphai on land could be Multis too, yes, but it was very, very rare. Not for Sirens.

The Sirens were gentle, shy, private Desiphai. Okay, fine. Maybe they would enchant some sailors so they would crash into rocks and shipwreck. And maybe the Sirens would eat the carcasses of said sailors occasionally. And, fine, they would sometimes morph into sharks and jump onto ships to either swallow sailors whole (and ocasionally drag them down into the sea to drown in a slow, bloody death). But they were still gentle. Right?

The onland Desiphai were a different story. They were vile, cruel, and selfish. They (namely a certain one by the name of Alaina Silverstar) had banished the Sirens to the sea, where they were stuck for one-hundred percent of their lives. In other words, the on-land Desiphai sucked.

---------------

Scalina swam and swam until she saw the distance lights of Downtown Atlantis up ahead. Then she stopped, and spun around until she maintained her original form, a barefoot, green skinned, blue haired teenage girl with gold eyes dressed in a seaweed gown.

Scalina walked through downtown (stopping sometimes to throw plastic bottles up at humans) , looking around through shop windows, occasionally ducking in alleyways as guards marched past. Strictly speaking, she wasn’t supposed to be downtown. It was what her sister and father, Princess Taleay and Lord Marlin, called ‘second-class’. Even worse (to them) was Atlantis Country. Scalina found it just fine. Where else could you buy sharkskin blankets and seahorse scale jewelery?  Not Uptown, that’s for sure.

Lord Marlin was constantly nagging Scalina to stay in Uptown, and constantly failing in his attempts to groom Scalina into the perfect princess that Taleay was. In the end he just gave up and had Siren guards patrol Downtown and Dolphin guards patrol Country, with orders to send Scalina back to the palace if they saw her there. He had also positioned guards outside Scalina’s chambers. But Scalina just left via window instead.

Now as Scalina watched the Sirens march around Downtown, she scowled. Stupid, stupid guards! Why did they care whether or not she visited downtown? She knew it was only her father threats of disembowelment  that kept them marching around. But she knew that they wouldn’t care if she skipped jauntily into the men’s porta-potty.

Of course, she would soon be away from all of that. . .

Chapter Two:

Anti-Gill

Scalina quietly tiptoed to a large pile of trash that consisted of quite a bit of plastic. It took all of her will not to throw the garbage up at the polluting humans.

Wrinkling her nose, she thrust her hand into the pile and felt around underneath the plastic until she found a coral ring. She tugged it, and a small hole opened next the trash.

Holding her breath, Scalina hopped into the hole.

She was immediately met with a strangely sickening swirling sensation as she fell into a whirlpool.

Said whirlpool whirled Scalina around and around for about three minutes before depositing her in a cavernous cavern.

Scalina stood up shakily and walked towards two huge, rusted iron doors and knocked.

“Password?” a deep, echoing voice rang through the chamber.

“Anti-Gill,” replied Scalina.

“Correct.” the doors swung open and Scalina stepped into a marble temple full of water.

Scalina stretched and lay down on a seaweed hammock. “I know you’re there Taleay. Not as much as a good girl as  you thought, eh?”

Two red eyes suddenly appeared against the snow-white marble wall. A figure drifted away from the wall. “How did you know I was there?”

“Puh-lease.” Scalina leapt off the hammock and swam upward to a marble shelf near the roof of the chamber. “It’s easy to know when an albino Siren’s pressed against a white wall when you know there’s such thing as an albino Siren.”

Taleay sat down on the hammock Scalina had just leapt up from. She looked identical to her sister, except that she had a shark’s tail instead of legs and was pure white. So white, in fact, that she slightly resembled a patch of freshly fallen snow. Except for her eyes, which were red. “I don’t want to do this, Scalina. This is illegal. This is,” she glanced around nervously. “This is rebelling.”

“You noticed?” Scalina was shifting through a mess of bottles and flasks and tubes on the shelf, looking for the stone cauldron.

“Yes, I noticed.” Taleay was now pacing around the room -- well, as much as you can pace with a tail for legs. And it’s dangerous. Don’t you remember the lecture we got from Father when you were three?”

“When I was three? Taleay, I’m two hundred and six. I can’t remember stuff from two hundred and three years ago. And I don’t think a four hundred and twelve year old should remember stuff from four hundred and nine years ago.”

“Still.” Taleay had leaned back against the wall. “Rebelling is illegal. And Anti-Gill is illegal as well. You of all Sirens should know that. You’re the best potion brewer in the sea!”

“While I thank you for your praise, I just can’t stay here any longer. Did you see what Mar’s doing to those shark farmers in the Country? Never mind,” she said, cutting of Taleay, was was about to say something. “You’ve never been there. The point is, the sea is awful. I can’t stay here anymore.”

“Neither can we.” two new Sirens came in through the door.

The one on the left had a long, deep blue, seahorse tail and skin. Her eyes flashed a bright orange and her hair was in a short, purple pixie cut. The one on the right had legs and skin that were cherry red, and hair that was greyer than mist. Her eyes were thin and white, almost as white as Taleay’s skin.

“Drana, Satinay.” Taleay inclined her head to the newcomers.

“Heya.” Satinay (the blue one) swam up to Scalina, who had come down with a midnight-black cauldron, with smoke bubbling out of it.

“Is it ready?” Drana (the red one) looked down into the cauldron (Which was pretty pointless, considering that she could only see the white mist that was bubbling out of it).

“Not yet, no.” Scalina sighed. “But it will be ready tomorrow.” she placed the mixing stick on the marble ground. “We need one more ingredient. A bit of human.”

“I can do that.” Drana piped up. “There’s an old shipwreck near an iceberg. Accident, or something. It has plenty of skeletons there. I can break of a toe, or something.” she winced, disgusted at her own words.

“All right. Then you can bring it back and add it to the Anti-Gill.” Scalina stood up, yanked out some of her hair and tossed it onto the brew, which sparked and began to stop spewing smoke so much. “Taleay and I need to get back to the palace.”

Taleay nodded.

“All right. And once I add the bones, I’ll stay and mix it around.” Drana made as if to get up, but found her legs were stuck to each other.

“You can’t just mix it around, Drana.” Satinay scolded as Drana unstuck herself. “Five times counterclockwise, add a bit of bone. Five times clockwise, add a bit of bone. Keep doing that until it stops spewing mist and turns a nice teal colour.”

“Gotcha.” Drana stood up. “I’ll go grab the bone tomorrow, shall I?”

Scalina nodded, and the little group went their separate ways.

Chapter Three:

Undecided Fates

Scalina and Taleay swam/walked towards Atlantis Uptown, where the palace was located in an awkward silence.

When they reached the palace, they stopped short.

“Well, later.” Scalina swam awkwardly towards the west wing, where her chambers were located.

“Yeah.”

Taleay watched until her sister had crawled into her room via window, and swam towards the throne room for her daily meeting with Lord Mar.

---------------

The throne room wasn’t actually a room. It was better described as an extremely long hall with numerous doors on either side and a giant rock at the end.

Taleay approached the throne cautiously, and placed her hand on a silvery globe hovering over it. “Princess Taleay to Lord Marlin.”

A grey mist filled the globe, and a figure appeared. Even though she had seen her father over a million times before, she still had to stifle a scream.

Lord Marlin had the face of someone who might have once been handsome. But it looked like it had been through a blender, repeatedly slashed by knives, and burnt by fire. His hair was matted and bloody, and one of his ears looked like it had been chewed by a shark and sat on by a humpback whale. His eyes were wild and glassy. And his body was just plain wrong.

Where the torso might of been, there was a sea urchin (that greatly resembled a shark victim); where his legs should have been, there were two golden strands of seaweed (with numerous teeth marks on it); where his butt would have been, there was the back of a humongous Chinese dragon (that looked a sponge that a butcher had used to wipe up his cutting board); and as for his arms. . . simply put, they were a diaster.. And his body was made up of multicolored strands of smoke, so it looked like he was going to break apart into a billion pieces of Marlin particles.

“Taleay.” Marlin’s voice sounded like one that belonged a person who was drunk on acid. He held out his arms, “My dear girl, how are you?”

“Fine, father.” Taleay brushed a stray strand of hair that had escaped from her tall (and extremely uncomfortable) hairdo behind her ear. “You?”

“Ah,”  Marlin flexed his fingers (which resembled bits of sliced up raw bacon), “In pain. Made of mist. Trapped in this crystal ball. But healing.” Marlin smiled up at his daughter; and even as Taleay watched, slowly but surely, one of his many cuts began to crust over into a scab.

“When will you gather up enough strength to escape?” Taleay asked, biting her lip.

“As soon as that disgrace of a daughter, that fool Scalina, is out of the sea.” Marlin smiled slyly. “Then that spell she put on this glassy prison will die, and I will be able to shatter the protective spells that human Queen cast. And then I will be free!”

Taleay gulped.

“And of course, then I will need a body.” Marlin looked Taleay up and down.  “And you know that I always prefer royal blood.”

“What? No!” Taleay jumped back (well, as much as you can jump when your butt is a shark’s tail). “You can’t possibly consider inhabiting me?”

“You should be honoured!” Marlin snarled. “I need an anchor!”

“No!”

Marlin seemed to deflate. He sank down and buried his head in his bacony hands “I’m sorry, daughter. I don’t know what came over me. I just. . .” he shook his head. “I’m sorry.” he straightened. “Accept this as a physical apology.” he held out his hand, and a necklace appeared. It was coral and stone, with a red ruby set in the centre. That surprised Taleay the most, as her father normally hated human jewels.

“I -- father -- thank you -- I mean,” she cleared her throat. “I accept your apology.”

Marlin smiled, “Good choice,” and clicked his fingers.

The necklace vanished and appeared in Taleay’s hands, glowing with a ghostly light.

“Until next time.” Marlin evaporated.

---------------

Taleay sat down in her sleeping bowl and turned the necklace around in her hands. She felt something on the inside and turned it inside out.

She gasped. Inlaid within the coral were words. Symbols. Hieroglyphs. And Chinese characters.

Taleay was shocked. It was normally her sister who used illegal magic, such as Egyptian and Chinese spells. But their father? . . . Taleay shook her head, mistified. Perhaps her father had a rebellious streak in him, just like Scalina.

She tried reading the words, but she wasn’t as good as Scalina. Something about bind and soul.

She clasped the necklace around her neck and instantly she was in the centre of a whirlpool. She let out a scream that went unheard. The necklace glowed white hot as the hieroglyphs and characters melted into Taleay’s skin.

Then, just as suddenly as it had come, the whirlpool vanished and the necklace returned to room temperature. Princess Taleay collapsed into her sleeping bowl, the hieroglyphs and characters tattooed onto her neck, cold and still as death.

--------------

Deep within his prison, Lord Marlin felt a new surge of power and, for the first time ever, solidified without being invoked by his daughter. And, as he began to turn into flesh and blood, he let out a bone chilling laugh.

Chapter Four:

History

Drana sat in her cold little cave, fingering the fringe on her dress.

Drana hated the cave.

Drana’s mother, a beautiful Siren that was near identical to Drana, had tried her best to turn the abandoned cave into a proper home, and that had cost her more than just her freedom.

In an effort to make Drana feel comfortable, she had painted the wall of her little sleeping area a soft blue -- Drana’s favorite color. She had also filled Drana’s tiny sleeping bowl with soft blankets, warm sharkskins, and numerous pillows, so that Drana could sleep with comfort.

Drana had lived with ignorance for the first eight years of her life. She never knew that when she was at school, her mother was in the Country, performing hard farm labor to pay for Drana’s toys and food. She never knew that after her mother had tucked Drana in, she would wait until Drana was asleep and crept out quietly to work in the palace kitchens to pay of Drana’s school tution.

One day, when she was nine, Drana had come home from school early, as a whale had accidentaly sat on the schoolhouse. She expected to see her mother sitting at the kitchen table, talking with her friends, as she had told Drana she did everyday.

But the cave was empty.

Drana searched the cave inside and out, until she finally concluded her mother was not there.

She then searched all of Downtown, and even managed to slip into Uptown to look for her mother in the mall her mother had told her she owned. But Drana found that no such mall existed, and had tore out of Downtown, screaming, in a panic, much to the shock of the guard who was on duty.

Drana finally, grudgingly, entered the Country, thinking that her beautiful mother wouldn’t be caught dead in the Country, but was met with a suprise when she saw her mother pulling a plow at the biggest farm.

Drana had screamed. Her mother had tried to calm her, but Drana wouldn’t listen. Her mother had finally admitted to being a farm labourer during the day and a Palace kitchen worker at night.

Distraught, Drana had ran home and packed a few things in a rucksack -- some clothes, a bow and quiver, a knife, a blanket, some food, and a compass. Then she had turned around and marched out of the cave.

---------------

Drana spent the next two hundred years on her own, cutting her hair and selling seaweed as a boy. She had been perfectly happy and content until she received the news.

Her mother was dead.

After Drana had left, her mother had apparently been driven mad with grief and left her jobs. She had wandered the seas, wild and insane. Then, apparently, one day, she had been walking around a shark’s den, crazy and confused. She had upset a shark. And then, in a single chomp, well, she entered the shark’s digestive system.

When Drana had received the news, she had been shocked. Not because her mother was dead, but because of how she died. The sharks all had strict orders to never ever eat a living Siren. Humans, fine, but Sirens, no. Another reason Drana had been shocked was because her mother had been a very powerful Desiphent. She had especially specialized in the animal category, and had convinced many a shark to take her on a ride. But to be eaten by a shark, even when she was crazy. . . That was just unheard of.

Drana hadn’t attended the memorial, but when a runner had (finally) caught up to her and told her that she had to move back into the cave, Drana was forced to move back into the cave.

Now, as she lay back in her sleeping bowl and stared up at the ceiling, remembering her mother, Drana sighed. Shed couldn’t wait for tomorrow to come.

Chapter Five:

Jitters

Satinay woke up, feeling like a hand was squeezing her guts. She swam over to a barrel full of fish liver, grabbed a handful, and swallowed it.

Even liver, her favorite food couldn’t make her stop feeling jittery.

She glanced at her clock and swam out the door, heading for Uptown.

----------------

Drana sat at the old stone table in her cave, twisting the fringe on her gown. She had a plate of salmon eggs in front of her, but she couldn’t eat. She swam outside and checked the sundial. Half past seven.

With thirty minutes to spare, she swam over to the shipwreck, and plucked off a chunk of some humans’ skull. Trying hard not to vomit, she raced off towards the Anit-Gill den.

It was nearly ready.

---------------

Scalina and Taleay sat at opposite ends of the twenty-foot-long table in the dining hall. Warriors and guards ate undersea delicacies with reckless care around them, so it was easy for Scalina to glance at Taleay once in awhile without being noticed.

Scalina glanced at Taleay for the sixth time in five minutes and frowned. There was something different about her sister; her regal posture was gone, along with her serious expression and severe looks. Instead, she was staring blankly into space; and every now and then, she shuddered and cracked a crazy grin, which would disappear as suddenly as it had come.

Scalina frowned. She would have to look into this.

---------------

Taleay was fighting a losing battle.

Her entire body was in pain, and there was something -- a creature -- that had invaded her mind, twisting her thoughts and actions, making her do things she did not want to do. And she had a pretty good idea of who the creature was.

---------------

Through his daughter’s eyes, Marlin saw Scalina stand up and nod at Taleay. He forced her up and made her follow her.

His plan was working.

More Coming Soon!

Desiphent Book One: Foes Down Under

Desiphent

Foes Down Under

By:  Daphne Liang

To my parents, for teaching me all the Chinese legends, which did a lot of good in this novel.

PROLOGUE

Listen carefully, because this is important.

 

If someone comes to you in the middle of the school year to transfer you to Kandy Kane Middle, even if you’re in kindergarten or university, et cetera, it means you’re different, like me.

 

When they say “You’re being transferred,” my advice is this: run for the nearest exit.

 

If they succeed in transferring you, you have to follow the rules, be in your dorm by lights-out (which is 12:00 am), and never ever use your powers on normal people (with Desiphai Hunters in Training as an exception).

 

One more thing.

The planet is being attacked by evil cyborg pig aliens (otherwise known as pigai) and you are one of the hundreds that have to stop them with crazy powers over nature stuff like trees or fruit..

 

In other words, be prepared for your life to suck.

Chapter One: My Day Ends With a Bang

Hello people of the big, fat universe. My name is Heimlich Hair.

   

Okay, okay, don’t go “What???” It’s true! My mom, Marie Hair, literally named me after the book she was reading.

(This just  make me think my mother is a psycho.)

But my mom was wrong to name me after a medical thingamabob, because the only thing I’m good at is the Heimlich maneuver, which I think is fitting, but my mom and teachers do not.

I’m so bad at school stuff that, even though I’m in ninth grade and go to a special education private school, my teachers have to tutor me in multiplication, spelling, and reading.

On Thursday, it was math class, and Mrs. Lear was quizzing me on multiplication.

“No, Heimlich,” she said, giving me an extremely strained smile. “5x8 is not 58. Think. 5 plus 5 plus 5 pl----”

“Okay, okay,” I grumbled, trying to do the math in my head. “Uh, 5 plus 5 is . . .  10. And then it’s, uh.”

It took me a while, but I finally got the answer. “It’s 80! I got it right this time, didn’t I!”

“No!” roared Mrs. Lear.”You---”

She took several deep breaths, and looked at me with a very forced, strained smile. “Heimlich,” she said in an even tone. “You know you’ve been having a lot of trouble in school lately.”

“Yeah.” I said, looking at my feet.

“May you please go to Mr. Means’ office and speak to him?”

“No!” I was aghast. I had never been to the principal’s office before! Not in middle school, elementary, or preschool! I’ve never been that bad!

“Yes.” Mrs. Lear’s voice was low and even. “He has details about your transfer.”

“No . . .” I had been listening to the teachers talk about my transfer to another school for a long time, but I’d never expected it to happen.

“Go.” Mrs. Lear said, opening the door.

And, as it turned out, I should have run away instead of go to the office.

---------------

I entered the office shakily, because Mr. Mean truly lives up to his name. I had always been sort of scared when I think about his office because when I envision it, I see whirring gears, electric chairs, torture machines, and spears to skewer bad kids.

Surprisingly, the only thing right about was the spear, and that was because it was decoration on the wall. Everything else was pretty much civil.

“Have a seat,” Mr. Mean said with his near-constant sneer. “We have much to discuss about your, ah, problems.”

“I don’t have problems.” I said, hoping I sounded definant.

“I just don’t learn thanks to the way your school teaches.”

Uh-Oh, bad idea. Mr. Mean fixed me with a cold stare. “You are being transferred, Heimlich, to Kandy Kane Middle School in Canada.”

He tossed a pamphlet onto the desk, in front of me. It read:

Kandy Kane Middle

School For . . .

I couldn’t tell what the rest said, because it was smudged in the most horrible way. That school must have terrible printers. But to me the words looked like Chicken Didees.

I looked up at Mr. Mean, who was sneering that way where he smiles and frowns at once. “Chicken Didee. You’re transferring me to a school for chicken didees?! What the heck is a chicken didee?”

He shrugged, half apologetically, half meanly. “The school principal personally contacted me telling me her ‘research’, led her to believe that you were supposedly ‘meant’ to go to her school, as if you were special enough to even go to a private school run by me. Personally, I think you fit the chicken didee (whatever that is) part just fine. I mean, you can’t even write!”

(He still didn’t answer my question.)

That did it. I stood up so fast my chair toppled over. “Just because you are the principal.” I said, as my vision started going red, “It doesn’t mean you get to push me around.”

I’ll admit, I don’t look very intimidating. A five-foot-six blonde fifteen-year old with shoulder-length hair isn’t exactly scary.

Mr. Mean looked still shocked. “You, you, you miserable little---”

Before he could finish, my vision went completely red and I roared. A glass of water that had been sitting on the desk flew up and smacked him in the head.

You probably wouldn’t expect that to be to bad, except that the empty glass hit a button on the wall labeled EMERGENCY EXPLOSION (to this day I still don’t know why that was there). There was a rumbling sound and the office blew up, making a huge crater in the side of the school and blasting me and Mr. Mean to opposite sides of it.

Mr. Mean, dripping wet and furious, stood up and yelled, “Mrs. Lear! Mr. Poriay! Catch that miserable, delinquent girl and make sure she is arrested! I want her mother to pay for this damage!”

(Obviously, he thought I had hit the button.)

The two teachers appeared from different classrooms and started running towards me. Mr. Mean had taken out his cell phone and was yelling into it, no doubt calling the police. There was only one thing I could do.

Run.

I ran, dodging cars and pedestrians, and evading the people and police cruisers after me. I ran all the way home (which, by the way, is an apartment located over a pizza shop), ran up the stairs, threw open the apartment door, and slammed into my mom.

“Heimlich!” she gasped, shocked. “What are you doing home so early?”

“Mom,” I had a feeling she would kill me when I told her what had happened. “Police, explosion, chickens---”

The look on her face told me she understood everything.

“Heimlich! Are you insane?!?! They’ll sue us! We’re poor enough as it is!”

(True . . . )

Suddenly, there was a megaphone screech and a booming voice reached my ears: “This is the police. We have the perimeter surrounded. Come out.” Jeez, what short speech is that?

My mom turned to me, with an expression of betrayal. “I am so disappointed with you.”

She grabbed a spatula and headed out to whack the police upside their heads.

Chapter Two: A new school (of weirdos)

I stood on the front steps of Kandy Kane Middle, stared at the massive stone walls in front of me, and gulped.

Awhile after Mom had gone out to kill (I’m sorry, negotiate with) the police, she had come in with two police behind her and she had a tired look on her face.

“Honey,” she said in a strained voice, “I will have to pay the fine, and you are to be deported.”

“What?” I had asked, my throat was practically closing up. “Deported???”

“I’m sorry, but yes. They are sending you to Canada, since you truly need special, special help. You will be going to Kandy Kane.”

“That’s not a deport, that’s a transfer, and I don’t want to go to Canada!” I protested. “And plus, Kandy Kane is a stupid name.”

One of the officers gave me a steely look. “Young lady, it is not for you to approve of. You are going to Kandy Kane, and that is that. You are truly a chicken didee (whatever that is).”

So after a bunch of packing, being yelled at, and constant whatnot, I finally got packed onto a plane and transported to B.C., Canada.

I climbed up the steps nervously. Supposedly, and older student in grade twelve (grade twelve!!) would meet me in the foyer and show me around. I hoped she wasn’t crazy.

The huge doors opened in front of me, and stopped dead in my tracks.

The courtyard was Chinese. That was for sure. There were fountains, steps and statues, all of them Chinese. It was actually pretty nice. But it was the girl in the courtyard that was startling. She had long, brown hair, but that didn’t stop me. Not the war clothes, which were a grey tank top, grey camouflage jacket, black jeans, military badge, and silver-tipped grey combat boots,  and bow and quiver on her back (though that was pretty creepy). Not the tin belt around her waist with at least ten daggers hanging from it. Not even the scar on her left eye. No, it was the massive pink (pink!!!) pegasus that she was riding. I’m pretty sure pegasi counted as pets and the sign on the wall clearly said no pets allowed.

The girl acted as if it was the most common thing in the world to ride up on a pink pegasus and say “Hey, my name’s Kiwi, your new dorm-mate.” in smooth Southern accent.

She had friendly blue eyes, specked with gold, sort of like lapis lazuli.

I ignored her outstretched hand. “Kiwi? Your name is Kiwi? Ain’t the publicly of being a chicken didee enough for you?”

Kiwi shrugged. “Not nearly as public as Heimlich, is it?”

I was quiet. She had hit home.

Kiwi laughed. “Oh, come on. All of us have crazy names here. Our other dorm-mate’s --- she’s really nice, by the way --- name is Lendra of Lions.”

“Lions?” I wa shocked. “Does she have a lion, then?”

“Yup! Don’t look so scared. We have our own rooms, even though I have to share mines with Lulu Pink Lemonade.” Kiwi patted her pegasus’s mane affectionately. “Same dorm, different rooms. Awfully straightforward. Everything here is straightforward!” She swung Lulu Pink Lemonade (ugh, do I really have to say that?) around and galloped through a door that led into a Chinese building while I struggled to keep up.

----------------

“This here is Homeroom Hall, the hall for all homerooms!” Kiwi sounded like an announcer and her voice boomed as if she was speaking through a megaphone. “It houses homerooms, lockers, and a gym!” Kiwi gestured to a pair of huge ivory (yes, I said ivory. Nothing is normal anymore.) doors at the end of the hall. “You will find a gym on each level, except for the cafeteria, which is on the second floor.”

Kiwi rode Lulu Pink Lemonade onto an elevator which was, oddly, placed in the middle of the hall. I followed her to the next floor and nearly gagged from the awful smell. We were in the cafeteria, which was painted pink, and had a row of lockers along one wall. There were tables spread all over the place, and along the other wall, there was a serving area, where some people were mixing stew and tossing pizza dough. I decided to eat as little as I could here.

“On Monday, we serve monkey stew, and all other days we have a choice of stick fries, mud salad, or swamperonni or vine cheese pizza.” Kiwi told me. Or at least she tried to, but she sounded weird because of a clothespin on her nose. Her speech sounded more like this: “Ohn Mah-dai, we shurv muhcky stoo, adh aul ather dais we av a twoice ov thick fwies, mahd salahd, or thwamp-a-woni or vime theese pita.”

She plucked the clothespin off and took short breaths through her mouth. “Sorry, this place smells horrid.” she smiled at me. “But you knew what I said, didn’t you?”

I nodded, “Yeah. But how?”

Kiwi shrugged. “Don’t know. Most Desiphai have abilities to understand any language as well as control their Element of Nature. And the cooks don’t like our food either, but we have to eat. It encourages our magic. ” she rode out of the cafeteria and onto a set of stairs.

“Wait,” I chased after her. “What’s a Desiphai, and what’s an Element of Nature? And what’s that about magic? You haven’t told me anything about why I’m a chicken didee (whatever that is) and why do I have to go this school!?”

She stopped, dismounted, and whispered something into Lulu Pink Lemonade’s ear. It sounded like “Hui jia”. Lulu Pink Lemonade cantered away, and Kiwi looked me in the eye. “I suppose we must speak.”

---------------

Kiwi scared me.

I mean, her look, her hair, her delicate but strong frame, but the weapons were a bit overkill.

(Do I get a weapon to?)

“Here’s the armory, grab a weapon.” Kiwi said suddenly, as if she had read my mind. “You’ll need one, if you’re going to fight pigai.”

“Pig pie? Why would I fight pig pie? What is pig pie?” I looked around the room in awe.

The room had a domed ceiling and the walls were lined with weapons, all of them Chinese. I selected a huge knife with separated points. I remembered seeing some Chinese god statue carrying one from a trip to the museum, but I forgot who.

Kiwi told me, “We are Desiphai, which you’ll learn about later. I can’t tell you everything now, but I’ll put it in  a very depressing nutshell. There are a bunch of monsters and Desiphai Hunters out to get us, there are five Houses of Desiphai (Greek, Chinese, Roman, First Nation, and Egyptian), and we are the only surviving five. The other ones were destroyed by the pigai and their leader. This House is the Chinese House”

“Right,” I grumbled. “So again, why do I have to fight pig pie?”

Kiwi walked on. “Not pig pie. Pigai. Magical creatures with evil thoughts. They are minions of evil, with no ambition but to kill.”

“Nice guys.” I muttered. “Cheerful and kind.”

“Agreed.” Kiwi unlocked a door and ushered me through. “Very cheerful.”

The room was the strangest room I’ve ever seen, and that was saying something. The walls were solid stone, with moss creeping up them. There were fifteen statues of animals (also moss-covered) in the back of the room. There was a tiny pond full of yellow-tinted liquid in the center of the room with  tin cup beside it. In front of the pond was a small silk cushion. Sitting next to the pond was a girl, younger than Kiwi, but older than me. She had long blonde hair, green eyes, and the same getup as Kiwi, except her tank top, jacket, and jeans were a different colour: blue. She had a playful smile that lit up when she saw us.

“Finally. Been waiting a long time Kiwi. Thought you were taking the detour.” she had a slight Middle Eastern accent and even though her words were accusing, her eyes told us she was joking. She had a gentle, sad smile a lot like Kiwi’s and her eyes had the same dangerous but beautiful look as Kiwi’s. I wondered if they were sisters.

“Sorry, sis.” (I was right! They were sisters!) “We had to pick up weapons and then the tour, blah blah blah. But  yeah, we’re here.” she sat down next to the other girl.

The other girl picked up the cup and scooped it full of that weird liquid. She offered me the cup. “Drink. It will open your muo he.”

I stepped back. “Who are you, and why do I have to open a moo head?”

The other girl laughed. “All right, I’ll tell you. I’m Lendra of Lions, Lendra or Led for short, Kiwi’s sister. And this liquid is long niao, a powerful, ah, bladder liquid that opens your muo he, which is kind of like an eternal box full of power, strength and magic.”

Somehow, I understood what those words meant. “You want me to drink dragon pee???” No way. And I don’t have any magic!”

Lendra looked at me. “Ah, you still do not know?” she beckoned me over to the silk cushion and told me about everything.

“I am a Desiphent. So is Kiwi. Desiphent - Desiphai, for plural - are people/sorcerer/animal/natural element hybrids. Every single Desiphent controls something in nature. For example,” Lendra and Kiwi, almost simultaneously, pushed back their hair to reveal a tattoo on their forehead, “Kiwi controls plants” Kiwi had a leaf imprint on her head, “And I control animals.” Lendra had a griffin on her forehead.

“Lovely. So how many people are Desiphents in the world? Last time I checked, there  were only four natural elements. Fire, earth, water, and air. But now you tell me theirs plants and animals to? So are there like, a million elements? Cheese and Snapchat? Sad movies and Leonardo da Vinci paintings?”

“Actually, more than one Desiphent can control and element. In this school, there are twenty-seven Desiphai that can control animals, and thirty-one that control plants.” she stood up and placed the tin in my hand. “And no, Snapchat is not an element.”

“Then cheers.” I slurped down the pee and, to my surprise, it tasted more like ginger ale than dragon pee.

When I finished, I felt a burning sensation inside. I gasped. And then everything started to glow purple. There was a noise that sounded like glass breaking (Kiwi told me later it was my muo he opening and letting the power into my body), a searing pain in my forehead, and everything went black.

When I woke up, Lendra and Kiwi were staring at me like I had turned into a horrible monster (I had no doubt I did) and a bear was snoring at my feet.

Chapter Three: I receive a Belt of eternal messes

It took me a while to figure out what happened, and when I did,  I still didn’t believe it.

“So let me get this straight.” I was pacing the room, holding my forehead, which, judging from the heat, was smoking from the fireball that had (supposedly) hit my forehead and caused the pain (and smoke). “My eyes turned blue and started to glow purple, I rose of the ground in a bubble of red power, turned into a griffin with green eyes and golden yellow feathers and then exploded back into human and fell to the floor.” I wasn’t sure I had heard them right the first twenty-eight times. “And now,” I turned to face them. “I have a Desiphent tattoo???”

“And you got a Dona.” Lendra nudged the bear (which had gold wings). “Big honour.”

“I’ll name her Donna.” I said, scratching her under the chin. “But what about me turning into a griffin?”

Kiwi shrugged, a little scared, I think. “ The animal happens to all of us. Lendra turned into a brown lion with pink wings. But the tattoo. . . “ she handed me a mirror, which I reluctantly looked into.

“Oh, jeez. . .” on my forehead, there was the strangest mark ever. It looked like a stick man curling around a line of rocks, which curled around a griffin, which curled around a ring of fire, which curled around some leaves, which curled around a thin circle of purple which had a water droplet in the center.

(Too lengthy for you? Well, I’m sorry, but it’s the truth.)

“You’re a Multi.” KIwi shook her head solemnly. “And the center of your tattoo is a water droplet, which means your dad was. . .”

“Noooo. . .” Lendra stared at me, aghast. “Not Lord Aqpigain. Anyone but him.”

“It’s Aqpigain.” Kiwi looked at me sadly. Then she brightened. “Hey! You’re a Multi! A Multi!”

“A Multi! A Multi!” Lendra grabbed my arm  and pulled me back into Homeroom Hall. Donna padded after us. All the students were in the hall  now, many with animals.

“Listen up!” Kiwi’s voice boomed around the Hall. “Today we brought in a new recruit! Heimlich Hair, daughter of Marie Hair and Lord Aqpigain.” (that caused nervous mutterings and resentful glances at me)  “The good news is, that she is the first Water Desiphent since her father, which was a five-thousand-and-twelve-point-six-seven years ago, and she will (hopefully) use her strength for good.” The resentful looks and mutterings stopped. “And the better news is,” Kiwi was practically shouting with joy now, “She is a Multi! And we all know that the last Multi was her father - Lord Aqpigain himself!” Kiwi turned to me and said “As the Multi of the Ages of War, you are to lead your fellow Desiphai into battle.” she turned back to the crowd. “Let’s hope she doesn’t turn into a pig-human hybrid.”

Lendra looked me up and down. “We need to change your clothes, get the human taint of you. We also need to get you a Belt.”

“Belt? Okay, look here. I don’t even know what a Multi is and why do I need a belt? Plus, what on planet Mars is wrong with my clothes?” I was wearing a pair of yoga pants (with cheese stains from lunch on the plane) and a I <3 SEATTLE shirt from the time my mom drove me to Seattle for Spring Break (it was covered in orange juice stains, also from lunch on the plane).

“Honestly, Heimlich. I <3 SEATTLE? Really, and your clothes are covered in human food stains.” Kiwi shook her head. “They’ll have to go.”

“Fine by me,” I grumbled crossly. “But I don’t have other clothes.”

“Don’t worry,” Lendra was trying to make her way through the crowd. Everyone seemed to want to touch my tattoo. “They’ll be in your closet tomorrow morning.”

“Right,” I turned to Kiwi. “Now what is a Multi?”

“Ah, hai zi, the da jian has yet to tell you?” a voice that sounded unused to English rang through the Hall and all went quiet. A dude about eighteen pushed his way through.

The guy was obviously Chinese. He had slicked-back black hair and dark brown, almost black, eyes. He wore camo pants and a dirty white workout shirt. He had skin so pale, you could see his veins and bones underneath. His smile was friendly but their was a cruel look in his eyes.

“The da jian” he sneered at Kiwi, who looked like she wanted to fly towards him and rip his head of, “Is supposed to be yuan shuai while the Multi is gone, and to explain everything to her when she returns. But, alas! She has not fulfilled her oh-so-important duty. So, as Commander, I shall tell you.” (I did not like this guy).

“The Multi is a grand Desiphent with power over all the elements. You are the Multi. Thus, the da jian has lost her post as posing-yuan shuai. Thus, I suggest you send her back to her old jobs (which I have been taking care of for a while). Thus ---”

“Enough with the thuses.” Kiwi snapped, “Go away, Leefringe. And I suggest you actually start to study your english.” (The dude’s name was Leefringe? Okay. . . not the weirdest thing that I’ve learned today.)

Kiwi pulled me up a flight of spiral stairs muttering angrily. For the first time, I noticed that her military badge was World War || style but had chinese engravings all over it.

“Whoa,” I grabbed onto a railing to stop Kiwi from pulling me all the way to the sun. “Who was that dude? And what’s a yang shai, or whatever he said? And where, in the name of pears, are you taking me?!?!?”

Kiwi stopped trying to yank my arm out of it’s socket. “That was Leefringe Hagdin. Don’t trust anything he says. He’s the reincarnation of the  White Skeleton Lady, a Chinese monster. You can never trust monsters.”

“Excuse me if I’m deaf,” I said, “But did you just say the White Skeleton Lady? He. Is. A. Boy! Not a girl.”

Kiwi sighed. “Really, you have got to learn this if you’re the Multi. Gods and monsters can reincarnate into anything and anyone.” she looked me up and down. “Seeing as you are the only other Multi in all the Houses, you’re probably a reincarnation to. Our only other Multi, Ana Mels from the First Nations House, is the reincarnation of Raven.”

“Yup,” I muttered as Kiwi led me into a room. It was huge, and must’ve been over twelve feet long and ten feet wide. The walls were lined with jade and there was a long golden table down the middle carved with Chinese pictures of gods and monsters. At the end of the table, there was a jade box built perfectly into the gold of the table.

Kiwi unlocked the box with a key from her infinite ring of keys.

“Here,” she carefully picked up a belt carved out of jade  with an glowing purple amethyst set in the middle. “The Belt of the Multi.”

---------------

I gingerly took the Belt. It was lighter than I expected, and much more complicated.

The jade had been carved to make pockets in the belt and to make it look like a Chinese dragon curling around my waist.

“Ooh,” I said in awe. “This thing must be worth a hundred dollars!”

“More.” corrected Kiwi, “Much ,much more.”

She ran her fingers along the belt and took a thin leather cord out of a pocket. “Here,” she strapped it to my back. “You can use that to hold your blade.” she looked uncomfortably at the spear that I still held in my hand. “No one would choose that weapon, normally. It’s the san jian lian ren Blade of Er Lang. Er Lang is one of our most important and powerful gods, but he’s not exactly the nicest.” she said. “He was extremely unkind to the Monkey King, who is also a god. And by ‘unkind’, I mean fight-until-your-opponent-get’s-knocked-out-by-another- god-and-claim-the-glory-for-yourself.” she let out a long, deep growl that sounded uncannily like a gorilla’s.

“Right.” I strapped the blade to my back. “Er Lang: Mean guy.”

“Uh-huh.” Kiwi watched as I took a tiny glass jar full of blue liquid from another pocket. Her eyes widened as I started to take out the cork. “Uh, Heimlich, I wouldn’t ---”

Too late. The cork fell on the ground and the contents sprayed out onto the walls, the table, and the silver floor.

Kiwi looked at me with wide eyes.

“Sorry,” I stuffed the cork back into the bottle (containing the last few teaspoons of liquid) and stuffed it back in my Belt. “Maybe I can clean it up, I think I have a broom somewhere. . .”

“Nah,” Kiwi stepped over a puddle of stuff. “It’s Eternal Mess, supposed to be used for melting pigai. Never cleans up.”

“Oh.” I guiltily followed Kiwi out of the Eternal-Messified room.

Chapter Four: The Loft

I followed Kiwi through the courtyard, into another Chinese building (“Dorms,” Kiwi informed me), up the stairs, and stopped at a door.

I looked at the door. It was ebony carved with Chinese dragons and phoenixes. There was a battered sign on the door that read:

E’s The Loft

“Why are we going to a loft?” I asked Kiwi as she pushed open the door. “Aren’t we going to our dorm?”

“This is our dorm.”  Kiwi entered and I followed her in and I saw that it truly was a (I’m sorry, The) loft.

Well, rather four huge lofts around one big center room.

The first loft, I guessed was Kiwi’s. It was the same grey as her clothes, and had a queen-size pine-bed with green sheets on it. There were shelves in the back of the loft and a desk with a laptop on it it one corner. A closet sat in the other corner.

The other lofts were the same except for different colors. I recognized Lendra’s, but the other two were completely alien.

The first was done up sky-style, with sky-blue walls and fluffy cloud pillows. The carpet was soft and plush as mist.

The second one was mysterious. It had silver walls, and that’s all I could tell because there were huge silver doors leading to it, and no windows.

As far as I could tell there was nowhere for me to sleep, because their wasn’t any other lofts, and there were no rooms down here.

Kiwi nudged me. “Yours.”

I looked at the corner where she was pointing and my heart sank.

A dusty king-sized bed sat in the center of the chamber, with a filthy chest at it’s feet. A rickety old closet, that was creaking on the claw-feet it rested on, was wedged between the wall and the bed so that it could only open one of it’s doors. There was nothing on the bed except for a dusty blanket, which burst into a cloud of dust the second I touched it.

“Um. . . you don’t have anything else, do you? A suite, maybe?”

“No, missy, we don’t have suites here. You’ve gotta deal with this.” she grunted as she pried open the dirty chest.

I shrieked as a huge spider-with-a-pig’s-face climbed out of it and hissed at us.

I stared in horror and screamed, “What is that doing in the chest? I thought that this was a school, not a suicide house!”

Kiwi looked equally shocked as the spider-with-a-pig’s-face began to grow until it could hardly fit in the room anymore.

It lashed a long golden tongue out at me that would have been beautiful if it hadn’t grabbed me and threw me against the wall.

I fell onto the ground and gasped. The impact had shot a burst of major ows through my body and had seriously hurt.

Kiwi uttered some words that Mr. Means would have washed her mouth out with soap for and pulled out her bow.

I staggered up, drew my knife, and charged towards the monster which let out a horrible scream every time an arrow made contact with it’s horrible black body.

I drove my knife into a leg, then was forced to let go as the creature howled and shook it’s leg. My blade fell at the floor next to my feet in to pieces.

Great. I’ve only been here an hour and I’ve already ruined a room and broke an ancient relic.

I was still feeling sorry for myself when a streak of silver flew across the room. It scrambled up one of the spider’s legs and drove something into it’s neck.

The thing screamed in pain and it slowly began to shrink, until all that was left of it was a confused little piglet looking around with a freaked out expression on it’s face.

I couldn’t resist. I bent down and picked it up. It took a long look at me with big, black eyes, sighed, and went to sleep. Donna growled with betrayal, so I patted her head to make her feel better.

The streak of silver settled down and I could see clearly that it was a young woman about nineteen or twenty. She wore white robes, a silver circlet, runners, and had a stickman on her forehead.  She had a playful light in her eyes as she bent down and picked something up from the ground.

“Spider pelt.” she handed it to me. “They’re really comfortable, and it can be used as a blanket.” she extended a hand to me. “By the way, I’m E.”

Chapter Five: E’s diary

That night, I lay on the (lumpy) old bed, covered with the, amazingly scratchy, spider pelt.

I couldn’t believe what had happened. Suddenly I’m some supernatural being with powers over trees, water, and blah blah blah?

And I couldn’t believe what had happened after E had appeared.

While Kiwi was fussily putting the pelt on the bed and telling Lendra, who had just come in, to “Tuck the edges in and do it neatly”, I talked to E.

“Who are you?” I asked as E unlocked the door to her loft where we could ‘talk peacefully’.

“E Hagdin. Reincarnation of the goddess Chang-E. But everyone calls me E.” she plopped down on her bed and motioned to a wall covered in pictures. But the main attraction was a shelf that had a, can you believe it, crown on it. “Or rather, Queen E.”

I stared at her. “You’re joking.”

“Nope.” E leaned so close I could smell her orangy-scented shampoo. “I’m not.” she frowned as her eyes fell on my tattoo (not literally, but you know what I mean). “At least until you arrived.”

“What do you mean?” I asked self-consciously. “What did I do?”

“Either the most powerful or highest ranking reincarnation is the leader, either as Emperor or Queen. I’ve been both the highest ranking officer and most powerful and highest ranking reincarnation for almost five thousand years.” she narrowed her eyes as she looked me up and down, taking in my clothes. “But as you’re the Multi, you are immediately put before me.”

“Hold it,” I held up my hands.”Did you say five thousand years???”

“Almost.”

“But how? You would be a skeleton!”

“Desiphai are immortal. We can’t die naturally.”

Whoa. A moment ago, she looked like she wanted to offer me tea and cookies. Now she looked like she wanted to skewer me the same way she had done to the spider-turned-piglet.

“Hold on.” I held up my hands. “I don’t want to be Emperor or Queen, et cetera et cetera.”

“You don’t?” E looked relieved suddenly.

“I don’t. I promise.”

“Okay.” then her face hardened. “You’ll have to make a revoking speech tomorrow at our annual meeting. My brother is not going to like that.”

“Why?”

“He’s wanted to be the Emperor forever. But he can’t. He’s just a lowly monster’s reincarnation.” E’s lip curled at the thought of her brother. “But he get’s to be the prime minister, because he’s my brother.”

“Oh.” I started to ask another question, when Lendra banged on the door shouting, “Hey big shot! The Multi’s gotta go to bed now. Classes start at five in the morning!”

“The last member of our group will be here in the morning.” E assured me as she handed me a toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, and pj’s.

“‘Kay.”

Now, as I lay in bed I replayed the day over and over again, marvelling at the strangeness.

And why was the bed so lumpy?!?!?

I couldn’t stand it anymore. I got up and lifted the mattress, half-expecting another spider monster.

But instead of a monster, there was a little book with faded text on the cover. Jeez. Whoever put that there was not very considerate about the future people that would sleep in the bed.

I sat up and started flipping through the pages. The book must have been pretty old, because most of the letters were too faded to read, and some pages crumbled to dust the second I touched them.

I couldn’t read anything, except for the last page.

It said:

May Seventeenth, 0815

The Eve of my faults

I really don’t get it. What is UP with my brother? He is SUCH A snob, now that we know we’re reincarnations.

(Also explains why we look ZERO percent the same)

Anyways, Leefringe is the reincarnation of the White Skeleton Lady (I laughed at him for that until he summoned a wall of bones around me, which would’ve be cool around someone else but around me. . . ) and I am the reincarnation of. . . Chang-E! The Chinese goddess of the moon!

And I WOULD be queen (I am SO many stages higher than my brother. I mean, I’m a goddess. He’s a skeleton person.), if it weren’t for Alaina Silverstar. She’s the reincarnation of the Monkey King. The MONKEY KING!!! The greatest god/hero/legend in Chinese Mythology! And according to those rules, a Desiphent may only be an Emperor or Queen if they are a Multi or have a rank HIGHER than the presiding Multi.

And guess what?

Alaina’s a Multi too.

How am I EVER going to beat THAT?

There’s only one thing I can do.

I just hope no one ever discovers the crimes. . .

The diary ended there.

I wiped the dust of the cover, and saw the words clearly.

They were,

E’s Diary

I couldn’t sleep that night.

Because one thing was certain.

E had committed a horrible crime against the old Queen, someone named Alaina, and if I didn’t resign, then she would do it to me, too.

Oh, and also: Leefringe is E’s brother?????

Chapter Six:

A startling discussion

I dragged myself out of bed the next morning at 3:00  a.m., as Kiwi had insisted.

I pulled myself over to the closet, which, as Lendra had said it would. I expected them to be just like the other Desiphai’s.

I was right.

There were the tank tops, shorts, and boots, except this time, the boots were work boots and they were my favorite color, black. Good for you, closet.

I was just reaching in for a pair of socks, when my fingers brushed against something that felt. . . metallic.

I pushed the clothes aside, revealing socks and a silver box. Where the lock was supposed to be on the box, there was a book-shaped indentation, instead.

I touched the indentation, and a strange sense of deja vu ran through me, as if I had the answer. I took a closer look at the lock, and I realized why it looked so familiar.

The diary

E’s diary, to be exact. The diary would fit right into the indentation.

I carefully took the diary out of the bedside table where I had stashed it last night, and with shaking hands, pressed it into the indentation.

There was a silent but bright flash of golden light, and the box and diary began to change. The box started turning a soft shade of green, and the diary looked like it was peeling of it’s layers.

After a while, the diary was no longer a diary and the box was no longer silver. The bow was now a lovely jade and the diary was a key.

And on the box, there was a keyhole.

I put the key into the lock, and turned.

The lid of the box opened silently, I looked inside and saw the most beautiful gown ever.

It was a black silk Chinese gown with a grey sash around it’s waist. There were golden dragons imprinted around it.

I looked into the box and saw something else glint at the bottom. I stuck my hand in and pulled out a shiny silk bag. Excitedly, I opened it, but all that was inside was a bunch of golden dust.

I was tempted to dump the dust, but I didn’t. There was something powerful about the dust. Mysterious and magical.

I did the only thing that came to mind. I put it into my Multi belt.

Good timing, too. Kiwi had just poked her head out of her loft.

“Ah, you’re up.” Kiwi was wearing basically the same clothes as yesterday, except that today she had on Chinese armor and her hair was in a long braid, coiled neatly at the back of her head like a ginormous bun.

“Uh, yeah.” I stood up and tripped on my too-small work boots. “And, um, there’s a box in my closet’ I added dumbly.

“Indeed there is. All Desiphai have them.” Kiwi ran her fingers over the box. “Blessings from the gods.”

Kiwi lifted the gown and placed it on my bed. “You’re going to wear it at the meeting after classes.”

That caught my attention. “Hold on, I thought the school was just a cover for some giant magical war base thingamob!”

Kiwi smiled. “Technically, yes. It is a giant magical war base. But we also have classes. There are normal classes, like Math and Science, but there are also Desiphai classes, like Monster Fighting 101 and Water Control. For the first year, your schedule is the same as mine. But as you’re the Multi, you have special Saturday classes, just to work on your powers.”

“I’m already in love with this place. Do I have to wear armor to?”

“Yeah, you do. Today we have History of Desiphai, Monster Fighting 101, Blade Techniques, Geography, Potions, and Doge-Arrow. Most of those classes need armor. Oh, and here’s a copy of our schedule that’s in better shape.” she handed me a slightly-burnt piece of paper that smelled suspiciously like long niao. I looked it over.

Monday: History of Desiphai Monster Fighting 101, Blade Techniques, Geography, Potions, and Doge-Arrow, and/or meetings.

Tuesday: Science, Music, Arrow Shooting, Defense, Spells, and How-To-Send-You-Animal-to-Mt. Umai- Without-Blowing-Anything-Up, and/or meetings.

Wednesday: Invisibility 101, Excuses 101, Woodshop, Drama, Sword Fighting, and Horseback Riding, and/or meetings.

Thursday: Survival, Dodge-Arrow, Math, Library, Home Ec., and Blade Techniques, and/or meetings.

Friday: Pet Care, Art, Reading, Spelling, Desiphai-Hunter Fighting, and/or meetings

And at the bottom of the page:

Saturday: Multi Classes in hurried scrawling.

“Beautiful.” I grumbled, stuffing the schedule into an empty pocket in my belt. “What’s a Desiphai Hunter?”

Kiwi sighed and said quietly. “The name says it all. The’re Desphai, recruited by Lord Aqpigain to hunt other Desiphai.” A tear trickled out of her scarred eye. “My father was a Desiphai Hunter. My mother was a Desiphent. He killed my mom when Lendra and I were babies. We never knew her. He discovered we were Desiphai when I was six. He tried to kill us too. We escaped, grew up on the streets, learned to fend for ourselves, and, eventually, found our way to Kandy Kane Middle.”

She wiped the tear away. “The Hunters are vicious, bloodthirsty savages.” She looked me in the eye. “Your father was the first.”

“I’m so sorry, Kiwi.” I said. I was sad for Kiwi, disgusted with the Hunters.

And deep inside of me, there was a fiery ball of rage. I put all of my anger into that ball. Anger at Mr. Mean for getting me into this mess. Anger at E for whatever she did to Alaina. Anger at the Desiphai Hunters for abandoning their lives to kill us. And most importantly, anger at my father, whom I’d never known. For starting the Hunters. For the pigai. For the pain and misery he had brought to all the Desiphai.

Oh, and did I mention for abandoning me when I was a newborn and leaving me with  psycho mother who named me after a medical thing???

Yeah. Definitely that.

I gritted my teeth. I turned to Kiwi. I looked her in the eye.

“We are going to defeat my dad. I don’t care what I have to do. I am going to capture him and avenge your parents.”

She looked at me doubtfully, which I’m not going to blame her for, since it looked like i was wrestling with my boots (I was actually trying to get them on my feet).

Kiwi looked at her boots. “Heimlich, I appreciate what you want to do to avenge my parents. But, well, you aren’t going to be exactly capturing your father.”

“No? Then what am I going to do?”

Kiwi took a deep breath. “If we are going to win this war, you are going to have to kill him.”

I stopped trying to strangle my shoes. “Say what now?”

I knew from what the Desiphai had said that Lord Aqpigain a.k.a. my father was a bad dude, but, kill him? I couldn’t do that. I mean, all of my Desiphent DNA is his. Killing him would just be uncalled for.

“Don’t think about it like that.” Kiwi looked at me sympathetically. Think about all the Desiphai he’s killed.”

I did, and I felt much better.

I gave her a strained smile. “Well. Let’s get to classes, shall we?”

Chapter Seven:

The most Fabulous school day ever (not)!

After Kiwi had helped me get into my armor, we headed of to class.

I took another look at my schedule, and asked Kiwi,

“Why don’t we have the times on the schedule?”

“We have to improvise, a lot.” Kiwi explained, as she led me through the courtyard and into another building (the sign over the door said it was the “Literature Building” in English, Chinese, Greek, Latin, and hieroglyphics). “So we don’t really put the times down. We just do them in that order and as soon as we’re done the last class, boom. Our day is over.”

“This place is so organized.” I grumbled under my breath, as we entered the building.

Surprisingly, the building was only the size of a temple, and it only had one classroom. The classroom didn’t look like a classroom either. It looked like, well, a temple.

A classroom that someone had added some stuff too.

Where the statue wa supposed to be, there was one of those computerized SMART boards and a computer. Where theaintings were supposed to be, there were bookshelves. They had also added some happy slogan posters, like “Keep Calm and Kill Pigai”, and “When Life gives you Lemons, make Lemonade”.

Where the little bowing places were supposed to be, there were the little bowing places.

Except they all had pencils, papers, nametags, and books on them.

Kiwi sat down in one with this nametag:

KIWI AZLEM LEPITOOTI ANIBALL - HIST

So that was Kiwi’s real name.

K.A.L.A.H?

Really?

Of course, mine wasn’t much better.

There was a girl at the front of the room, rifling through the contents of a desk and muttering to herself.

When she lifted her head, I nearly fainted.

She had smooth, chocolate colored hair and silver-green eyes. (Come to think of it, everyone I’d saw here had silvery eyes. Including mine, except mine were pure silver. Maybe it was a Desiphent thing). But what shocked me the most was she was younger than me!!!

Kiwi leaned over and whispered “The more senior Desiphai teach here.”

“Got it.”  I said, straightening as the Desiphent started calling names off of  a list.

I braced myself as she reached the end of the list and called out:

“Heimlich Maneuver Litopa-Mikit-Sikit Minoit Hair Aqpigain.”

Everyone looked around worriedly when she said Aqpigain, and their eyes fell on me.

I grinned, and I must’ve looked pretty creepy, because everyone grimaced (Kiwi told me later that I looked like a dragon being stabbed in the gut).

“Hi, Heimlich. I’m Adriana. I’m here from the Egypt house, and just here for today’s meeting. After that I’m going back to Alaska.”

I blinked. “But Alaska’s nearly halfway across the world from Egypt!”

The other Desiphai snickered, but Adriana silenced them with a glare. “You know, this would be a really History of Desiphai lesson.

“Desiphai come from every corner of  the world where there’s magic. But we only have control over magic from our corner of the earth.

“The Houses used to be located in those corners.”

A dark look covered her face. “But a few thousand years ago, when there were still hundreds of Houses, the Houses began losing there magic. A very certain Queen of the House of China cast a spell on the Houses, so that when the Desiphai of that House came close to the place where his or her magic was from, the place would absorb their magic and, thus, drain the Desiphent.”

(Was it my imagination, or was she glowering at Kiwi?)

A blonde-haired Desiphent at the back of the room raised his hand. “ So, Adriana, would that mean that if a mission took someone from, say, the Roman House to Florence, would their magic still be drained?”

Adriana looked surprised. “That’s a very good question. Yes, their magic would still be drained. But very slowly.”

The blonde Desiphent nodded solemly.

Adriana opened her mouth again, but she was cut off by a bell.

“Gosh, is class over already?” Adriana glanced at her watch.

“Alright, class over!” Adriana pulled a cucumber out of her pocket and started crunching.

I approached“Um, excuse me, but why were you glaring at Kiwi?”

She glanced at me. “You can ask Miss Silverstar about that.” she pointed at Kiwi, who was lingering at the door.

I frowned.  Silverstar. . . Where had I had heard that before?

I shook my head. Nothing to worry about.

I ran after Kiwi. There was something I needed to ask her.

---------

“Why was she glowering?” Kiwi said. “Adriana‘s just a grumpy person. You don’t need to worry.”

I could tell she wasn’t convinced.

The rest of the day was a blur. In Monster Fighting 101, I was bonked on the head by a robot pigai. In Blade Techniques, Leefringe nearly cut my arm off. In Geography, I couldn’t remember how many cities were in Italy. In Potions, I almost blew up the garbage can.

The only thing I’m good at is Dodge-Arrow. We use these nubbed arrows that can’t kill but can really hurt. I dodged every arrow, hit E about sixty times, and was the first one to hit Lendra.

By the time we were supposed to have the meeting, I was so tired I could hardly keep my eyes open, much less get into my ‘formal attire’, as E stated.

When we were ready to leave, I glanced back at the empty sky-blue loft.

“Who’s there?” I asked Lendra as we walked to the meeting room.

“Azweln Hazweln Traszweln.” Lendra answered. “She’s the best spiritualist at school.” she sighed. “She doesn’t have any classes. She spends ninety-nine percent of the day in the spirit room, the room where you got Donna. She spends most of that time in a trance, and the rest of that time ‘conversing’ with the spirits, gods, and fish.”

“Fish???”

“Don’t laugh. They’re very spiritual creatures.

“Anyway, we’ll see Azweln at the meeting.”

“Okay.”

With a feeling of complete dread, I pushed open the door and entered the meeting room.

Chapter Eight:

A meeting with the Council

Even though the room was gargantuan, the twenty-five people (yes, I  counted) that occupied it could hardly fill up a seventh of the room.

I looked around. I recognized Adriana, E, and Leefringe, but no one else.

E sat on a gilded gold throne at the head of the room and Leefringe sat next to her on a smaller ,ebony chair, which I guess he get’s the right to, seeing as he’s the prime minister.

Kiwi sat down next to a girl that looked like a hippie. She had on a tye-dyed dress, peace sign headbands, leather bracelets, and a few beads braided into her hair, which was had rainbow streaks in it. She had a rock on her forehead. Her eyes were solid silver, like me, but hers seemed to. . . glow?

She smiled at me and motioned to a chair next to her, which I reluctantly sat on.

I looked around at the other people around me and almost had a heart attack.

All these Desiphai looked like, well, Desiphai. I don’t know how, but  I could sense a heavy layer of magic in this room, so sensitive that even a bee could set it off.

All the Desiphai looked powerful. Very powerful. Most of them were in the armor of their culture. The ones who weren’t wore robes. And almost everyone was doing something.

Some people were arguing. Others were using their cell phones or reading. Leefringe was doing something on a Macbook, and E was trying to peek over his shoulder. Lendra was sticking a pin in a football. The hippie girl was eating a peach.

A tall guy in Greek armor stood up. “All right, E. This isn’t my House, so I can’t call the meeting to order, but you can. Actually, you must.”

“Jeez, Marcus, I’m doing it! Picky, picky.” E stood up and Marcus immediately plopped down on his chair.

“So, yeah. Meeting on. Anyone want to start the Who’s-the-sky-god argument this time?”

A guy with a feather in his hair started to raise his hand, saw E was joking, and let it drop.

“The actual thing today, is that we have a new recruit.” E motioned to me. “This is Heimlich. . .” she looked a t me pleadingly. “Full name, please?”

“Heimlich Maneuver Litopa-Mikit-Sikit Minoit Hair Aqpigain.” I could feel my face redining.

“Um, okay. So, we have Heinlich Maneuver Litopa-Mikit-Sikit Minoit Hair Aqpigain as our new recruit, and everyone, please take a close look at her forehead.”

Everyone took a close look at my forehead.

The first Desiphent to talk was a girl who must’ve been the pharaoh from Egypt (read: Alaska) since she was wearing the robes and stuff. She jumped up shouting “Sweet Anubis! Oh, my god. A Multi. Multi!!! Multi!” she pulled a paper bag from her pocket and started breathing into it.

A girl with a purple cape and roman armor frowned. “Pharoah Kaiah, I must remind you that this is a meeting. You are not to be breathing into paper bags at a meeting.”

“And you, Praetor Maina, know perfectly well that Kaiah has asthma and cannot find her inhaler.” Leefringe reminded Maina. She huffed and crossed her arms.

“We’re all curious.” the guy-with-the-feather said. “My chief would be very interested in the other Multi.”

I remembered what Kiwi had told me about the other Multi. “Ana Mels, reincarnation of Birdie?”

The guy-with-the-feather looked surprised. “Raven. But how did you know?”

I shrugged. “Lucky geuss. Why isn’t she here?”

“She broke her leg and is weak enough. And then a certain Desiphent calls a meeting in Canada. She’d be drained until she was a skeleton.” he glanced at Leefringe. “Uh, no offense.”

“Uh-huh. Not interested. Now, E. You know perfectly well that a Multi is put before you as Queen.” Marcus gave E a look. “So it’s time for you to get off that fancy chair, and give the spot to Heimlich something.”

Other Desiphai started shouting. E held up her hands and calmly said, “Unless she resigns.” she grinned at me. And I could feel her working her way into my brain. That must’ve been what the stickfigure meant. Control over the human body. Well two could play at that game. I used my stickfigure power and blocked her.

I stood up, and calmly said. “I accept the job.”

E’s jaw fell until it was nearly on the ground. Leefringe, holding back a laugh, reached over and snapped it shut.

“Something else.” I took the bag of dust out of my Belt and everyone gasped. Kaiah leaned forward with her mouth agape. “Do you know what this is?”

I nodded. “I think so. My dad made it, didn’t he?”

E, scowling at me, nodded. “The scroll of Aqpigain. He made it with his mentor.” he pointed at Kiwi. “Didn’t he?”

Kiwi nodded. “Yes. He made it with me. But I didn’t help much. I just helped.”

My eyes widened. “Is it magic?”

Kiwi nodded. “It normally tells the chosen Desiphent where to go, maps, important notes, people to find, and shopping lists.”

I looked at the powder and tossed it on the table. The dust formed a shimmering gold scroll.

I looked at the scroll, and slowly a message formed on the scroll, which I read aloud (with a little difficulty).

“A mission of nine

to Australia to find Aqpigain.

A year at the most,

is all you can risk.”

I frowned. “Australia?”

“That’s where he’s set up his base.” Lendra explained. “And about the mission of nine, well, that obviously means nine Desiphai. And, a year at the most. . .” she shook her head. “That’s impossible. You’ll have to travel all day.”

“Can’t we just take a plane?” I asked.

“NO!!!!!!!!!!!!” Everyone in the room cried, jumping up.

“Aqpigain has control over the air.” E explained (still scowling).

“Ah. A boat then?”

Marcus bit his lip. “You’ll have to travel by both land and water.”

“Okay.” I looked at Kiwi. “But, wait. If I’m the Queen now, then who will take care of Kandy Kane?” I looked at Lendra. “Um. . .”

“Glad to.” Lendra smiled.

“Um, who’s coming?”

Kiwi frowned, but said: “I’ll go.”

“Okay. Two down. Seven to go.”

Marcus volunteered. So did Kaiah, Maina, Adriana, and the guy-with-the-feather (his name turned out to be Lin).

I counted on my fingers. “That’s five. We need four more.”

The hippie girl smiled. “I will. I’m Azweln.”

So this was the famous spiritualist. A hippie.

“One more.” I said.

Leefringe stood up, surprising us all. “I’ll go.”

Everyone stared at him.

“You?” Kiwi looked aghast.

“He stared at her distastefully. “Yes, me.”

“What about lessons?” I asked. “I’ve only had a day of them.”

“We’ll teach you on the way.” Azweln replied.

Marcus nodded solemly. “Very well. We leave idmmediately.”

Chapter Nine:

The Mission

Before leaving for the mission, we had to pack.

I checked the scroll, which had a list of things we needed to bring.

Canned Food

Bug repellent

Water bottles

Maps

Collapsible Tents

Pots and Pans

Weapons

Three things happened while we were packing.

Thing one: E cornered me in a corner (duh).

“Why didn’t you resign?” she hissed. “I thought we had an agreement.”

“I know that you did something to Alaina.” I countered. “And that you shouldn’t be Queen.”

“Alaina? How did you know?”

“Your diary.”

“By Muo Ye, you read my diary?” E shook her head. Then she sighed. “All right. I did do it. But that doesn’t mean I feel sorry about it.” her hand reached for her sword. “And I’d be more than happy to do it again.”

Luckily, she didn’t have time to do. . . whatever she was going to do, because Kiwi called across the room, “Heinlich, do you happen to have a spare pillow? Lulu Pink Lemonade seems to have carried mines off.”

E hissed and melted into a shadow which, truth be told, wasn’t the strangest thing I’ve seen these few days.

Thing two: My reincarnation.

After we had packed up, Kiwi and I walked down to the foyer which is where the mission team would meet.

Something kept nagging at me. Finally, I asked Kiwi about it.

“Kiwi?”

“Hmm?”

“Who’s my reincarnation?”

“Erlang.”

I stopped. “Hold it. First, how do you know, and second, Erlang???”

“I knew ever since you picked up that blade in the armory. Reincarnations always pick up their gods’ weapon.”

“Oh.” I felt a little embarrassed. “And, uh, about that blade. . .”

“I know. You need another weapon.” she frowned. “But you can’t just grab a random weapon. I guess you’ll have to just use magic.”

“Yippee.”

Thing three: Mass unorganization.

Things got chaotic as soon as we met in the foyer.

Everyone had brought things that other people thought were unnecessary.  Marcus said that we wouldn’t need a map of Europe, since we couldn’t go there with quite a few Desiphai from Europe in the group, and I countered that we wouldn’t need a fire extinguisher, and Leefringe told Kaiah to drop the iPod.

Finally this is the inventory we drew up:

Leefringe: Canned beans, soup, and meat. Map of Africa and Canada. Spear. Water bottle. A collapsible tent.

Kiwi: Canned peas and corn. Map of New York. Ten daggers, bow, and arrows. Water bottle. Two sleeping bags.

Marcus: Canned soup and beef jerky. Two sleeping bags. Battle axe. Water bottle. Map of USA.

Kaiah: Map of South America. Two sleeping bags. Sword. Water bottle.

Maina: Canned mushrooms. Dagger. Water bottle. Three sleeping bags.

Lin: Spear. Water Bottle. Three pillows. Kaiah’s iPod. Meter-long chain.

Azweln: Staff. Slingshot and marbled. Three pillows. Mosquito repellent. Pet fish named Freshman.

Adriana: Chinese knife. S’more’s kit. Matches and lighter. Survival book. Slug killer.

Me: Three pillows. S’more’s kit. Marcus’s fire hydrant. Canned lunch meat.

“Let’s go!” I cried.

And we were off.

Chapter Ten:

TFTHTSWHTSCOTHE (The Failure Too Hail a Taxi, so we have to steal a car only to have it explode)

We walked and walked and walked until we reached a small town, and that was where Azweln flopped onto the ground.

“This is exhausting. How long have we been walking?”

I checked the Scroll. “Um, about three hours since leaving Kandy Kane.”

“You’re kidding me. We can’t walk all the way to Australia. In fact, we can’t even walk from Burnaby to Coquitlam!” Marcus groaned, flopping down next to Azweln.

I frowned. Something about that name was familiar. . . “This town is called Coquitlam?”

Leefringe nodded. “Shi de, hai zi. We are in Coquitlam.”

I grinned. “I know where we are. My mom took me here once.” I hopped up. “We can hail a taxi, and it can take us to Vancouver. It’s a city west of Coquitlam. We can get on a boat from there.”

Lin leaned forwards. “Vancouver, huh? Maybe we could head over. I heard there are a lot of Desiphai living there.” he winced. “At least my magic’s not that strong, or else I’dd be a shrivelled husk by now. I mean, we’re in Canada.”

Kaiah nodded. “We need to get to Vancouver fast. We can talk to some of the Desiphai living there, and then get on a boat that could take us to Africa.”

“One problem, though.” I looked around. “There aren’t exactly a lot of taxi’s, You need to call one to get one.”

So we stood on the side of the road and waited.

And waited.

And waited

After about an hour, Maina sighed. “We can’t get a taxi. It’s imposible.”

Kiwi nodded. “Looks like we’ll have to walk to Vancouver.”

I shook my head. “No, I just remembered. There are trains here called SkyTrains. The closest station is in Lougheed. We could just. . .” I looked around. “Any ideas?”

Maina shrugged. “A car?”

I turned to her. “But we don’t have a. . .” and I saw Kiwi climbing into a limo parked at the curb.

“Kiwi! We can’t just steal a car!” but everyone was already clambering inside.

What choice did I have?

I got in.

———————

Kiwi was at the wheel, driving like a maniac, swerving here and there, left and right, and in between other cars. The weird thing was, we couldn’t feel the motion in the limo, and the other cars didn’t seem to notice us.

“So, Lougheed, right? Adriana, can you come up here and help me with the map? I don’t think it likes me very much. And also, for the rest of you, there’s a fridge back there. Help yourselves.” Kiwi did a three-sixty around a yellow Toyota and went to the left of a Cadillac.

While Adriana was holding the Scroll open, the rest of us compared notes and pigged out on Lays, candy, PBJ sandwiches, and drinks.

“What I don’t understand is,” Leefringe took a swig of cider. “How are we going to get a boat all the way to Australia?”

Azweln was digging through a bag of Skittles. “We don’t. We take it to South America via Panama Canal and then figure something out over there.”

Kaiha shook her head. “To risky. That’s to close to Egypt. I’m an Egyptian pharaoh, for Anubis’s sake. I’d probably be a shattered teacup before we were even at Panama.”

I banged my head against the wall, and instantly regretted it. I rubbed my head as I said. “What we really need to worry about is supplies. We need enough for about a year, not to mention that I don’t even have a weapon.”

Maina sighed as she chewed her vine-cheese pizza. “We’ll have to go shopping, then, and hope that the clerks aren’t Desiphai hunters or pigai.”

As soon as she said that, the limo exploded.

Chapter Eleven:

An interesting Injury

I was unconscious for about ten minutes. Then Lin yanked me out from underneath and shouted:

“Holy Raven, are you okay?”

I stood up shakily. The limo was in pieces, and I heard police sirens in the distance.

“Come on! We’ve gotta go.” Adriana dragged me into some woods nearby.

Leerlinge was poking at a campfire, and Kiwi was trying (in vain) to set up her collapsable tent.

“No, Kiwi, you do not pull that string. You pull this one. No not that one, no, not that one either!” Adriana was shaking her head and groaning as Marcus strangled himself with his fire hydrant hose.

“Um, apologies people, but have you guys ever been camping before?” I sighed as I looked at the chaos around me.

Everyone looked at each other, blinked, looked at me, shrugged, and said “Nope,” simulaetously.

I grinned. “Well, I have. Let me help you guys out.”

I helped Kiwi set up the two collapsable tents we had brought, than doused Leefringe’s fire, telling him he was going to burn down the campsite if he set it up like that. I helped him dig a proper campfire pit, and put Marcus’s fire hydrant next to it.

Once we were done with the camping stuff, we sat around the fire to take inventory.

We hadn’t managed to get much stuff from the limo, but Maina still had two boxes of pizza (vine-cheese and pepperoni), Lin had twelve wrapped roast-beef sandwiches, Leefringe had a few bottles of cider, and Azweln had three bags of Skittles.

While Maiina handed around the pizza, I checked the Scroll, and told everyone: “The Scroll advises that we rest for now. And, um, it also said that there’s someone injured in our group.”

Kiwi shifted uncomfortably. “Heimlich. . . I think the Scroll meant you.”

I didn’t get her until I looked down at myself. “Oh, my god. . .”

There was a burn mark on my left calf, and it was slowly, but surely, creeping up my leg and onto my torso. My hair — normally so clean — was now matted and burnt and shrivelling up.

“What?” I couldn’t see my face, but I could feel a sharp pain in my nose, like someone had hooked it and was pulling it forwards.

“A pigai burn.” Marcus looked like he was about to faint. “The most deadly projectile ever known to man. . . and not man. It’s how pigai are made.”

“Hold on.” I held up my hands, and was shocked to see the left was turning into a hoof. “Ya’ mean I’m turning into a pigai?!? Is it healable?”

Leefringe nodded. “Shi de, but it’s very difficult, and will take up all of my energy.

“The White Skeleton Lady is a creature of death,” he continued, “and it is only suitable that I — as her reincarnation — shall fix this mess. For a pigai transformation is rather like killing the soul and replacing the body.”

“Great.” I gulped, aware just now of all the power Leefringe held.

He knelt in front of me, placed his hands on my burn (which hurt so much that I closed my hand into a fist and extinguished the fire with my fire Desiphent part) and began to chant.

As he chanted, I noticed changes overtaking his body. His dirty, grey clothes turned into flowing white robes, and he turned into a girl. . . well, he looked like he turned into a girl.

In reality, the girl was just a fuzzy image in Leefringe. It’s kind of like drawing a person on a pane of glass, and then having someone stand behind it. What I saw was like that.

The girl had long, flowing, black hair that floated around her face like silk. Her face was white as a bleached skull, and when she looked at me, her eyes seemed to bore into me, like she was calculating my entire life. I had a feeling this was the White Skeleton Lady.

After about twelve minutes of chants, Leefringe stood up, his face paler than before and his eyes bloodshot. “Okay. . . rest. . . sleep. . . should be better. . . tomorrow morning. . .” and with that, he collapsed in the dirt and began to snore.

While Marcus carried Leefringe into the tent, I turned to the others, and feeling much better, shouted, “But I’m supposed to learn! You’re supposed to teach me!”

Azweln rubbed her head and groaned. “Your lesson is this, stay away from pigai burns. Now get some rest. You heard Leefringe.” and she shooed me into the tent.

I lay down in my sleeping bag, across the tent from Leefringe (who was muttering about gummy bears and unicorns) and fell asleep before my head reached the pillow — or the ground, as my pillow was still in my bag.

Chapter Twelve:

Gan Jiang

In my dream, I was standing on a mountain, in heavy Chinese robes and heavier Chinese armour. My Multi Belt was still around my waist, but hanging on the side was an empty scabbard. I looked around and everything seemed. . . sharper. More in focus. I blinked, and was surprised to feel three eyelids close instead of two.

I was Erlang.

There was a snicker to my left. “This is all you could do, eh Erlang?”

I whirled around, and almost fell of the cliff. There, crouching and eating a peach was. . . a monkey.

“Who, what, when, where, why, how. . .”

The monkey chuckled. “Don’t remember me old friend?” he stood up, but he was still about a foot shorter than me (I’m pretty tall for my age).

He pounded his chest. “I’m the Monkey King! We’ve fought before! You nearly flattened this place before, remember?”

I opened my mouth to tell him, no, I did not, and never will remember whatever he was talking about, but instead, I said “Apologies, Monkey. But my new reincarnation is a little slow in mind. I even broke the Knife.” then I clapped my hands over my mouth and screamed, because my voice was deeper, gruffer, stronger, and more manly.

Monkey laughed and replied, “Aah, Erlang, you broke the Knife? You truly are slow. Now, what is your non-god name?”

I gulped. “Heimlich Hair.” I squeaked. “My name’s Heimlich Hair.”

Monkey shook his head. “That is a truly sorry name, Heimlich Hair, daughter of Aqpigain.”

“How did you know that the pig man is my dad?”

Monkey spread his hands. “It’s obvious. Just watch. . .”

He suddenly threw his arm out, and a wave of water rammed towards me. I hopped out of the way and rolled behind a boulder. I punched out at the water, and it splashed to the ground harmlessly, no bigger than a raindrop.

Monkey raised his eyebrows. “I must say, I’m impressed.”

“Enough, Monkey Head.” Erlang — that is, I— grumbled. “Where is the sword?”

Monkey laughed. “My, my, Erlang! You certainly are pushy today!”

“I was nearly turned into a pigai.” I snapped. “Now, where is it?”

His expression turned serious. “You must be warned, Heimlich Hair/Erlang. This sword is one of the most important in the world. Wield it well.”

I — that is, Erlang— thrust my hand out expectantly, but instead, a sword materialized in my scabbard.

I drew the blade, and I saw that it was thinner than paper, and sharper than a diamond cutter.

Erlang —that is, I— bent down and picked up a leaf, placed it on the edge of the sword, and blew. The leaf fell to the ground in two pieces.

I turned and swung at the boulder. My sword cut through it like butter.

I looked at the flat of the sword. Two words were carved into the shining blue blade.

干将

“Gan Jiang.” I (not Erlang) muttered as in a trance. “The most powerful sword in the magic world.”

Monkey nodded. “Yes. Now, shoo! You’re messing up my chakra.”

He waved his hand and everything faded into blackness.

Chapter Twelve:

We go shopping

I woke up, certain that the encounter with Monkey had been a dream — until I nearly impaled myself on my own blade.

“Yeek!”

Azweln, who was on my right hopped out of her sleeping bag and woke everyone else in the tent.

“Who? What? Where?” Marcus stumbled around blindly until Adriana blearily handed him his glasses. “Ah, thank you Adriana.”

“What time is it?” Maina rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, accidentally jostling Kaiah who was next to her in the process.

“It’s nine o’ clock.” Lin replied. He had poked his head through the tent flap and was holding a bowl of mashed potatoes and gravy. “You guys slept pretty late.”

As we clambered around and got out of the tent, I spotted Kaiah standing next to Lin, talking quietly.

“Are you sure you’re magic’s okay?” she asked with a worried expression.

“No.” Lin admitted.

“Well don’t you worry. We’ll go to Vancouver today, get supplies, and grab a boat to Brazil. Everything’ll be fine there.” she grinned. “And there’s also an inn were we can rest in Rio. It’s run by a Desiphent.”

“That would be nice.”

Outside, while we ate Lin’s mashed potatoes, Kaiah told everyone her plan — basically the same stuff I had heard her say in the tent.

“. . . the problem is,” she concluded, “how will we get to Vancouver? Lin is on the verge of collapse. He can’t even use magic anymore.”

“Animal.” I replied quickly. “We all have animals, right? We can ride them to Vancouver, buy supplies, grab a boat, go to Brazil, and visit the inn.”

“No.” Leefringe put down his mashed potatoes. “We ride Golato. He’s my skeletal Kirin. And he can teleport.”

I shrugged. “All right.”

———————

A half hour later, we were strolling through downtown Vancouver, looking in windows, and arguing about who took who’s money.

In other words, we were stocking up on supplies.

Soon, we had a reasonable ammonite of stuff that could fill several storage lockers. We had bought canned, sealed, and dried food, clothes (random from Value Village), and —for some reason— a tiny golden cruise ship that Azweln had snatched from a gold shop.

“What’s that for?” I asked as we walked towards the docks.

“You’ll see.” she gently placed it in the water, and after a few muttered words, the ship began to grow and grow until it was a regular sized cruise ship, except it was gold.

“Sweet,” Leefringe breathed as we got on.

———————

Once we got on the ship, Kiwi started bombarding me with questions about Gan Jiang.

“Where did you get it?” she asked.

“I already told you! A god gave it to me in a dream!”

“Which god?”

“The Monkey King!”

Kiwi stopped talking all of a sudden. “Did you say. . . the  Monkey King?”

Azweln gasped. “Sun Wu Kong!”

“Yeah, him.”

Maina hopped in between the three of us. “Sorry girls, but we need to get the ship moving, and you need to buckle up in case of possible turbulence.” she snorted at her own joke and skipped back to the helm.

Marcus sat own on a chair near the wheelhouse and started flipping through a book. “She’s weird.”

“Agreed.” Erlang muttered under our breath, just as Kaiah ran over to us, shouting, “Come on! We’ve got a ship to explore! “

Chapter Thirteen:

And also, pigai

On the floor below the deck, there was a long hallway with cabins on either side. We counted the doors and determined there were eleven cabins in all plus a supply closet, where we found some buckets, beef jerky, pillows and linens. We left our supplies there.

On the next floor we found a meeting room/cafeteria, about half the length of the meeting room at Kandy Kane. Not exactly exciting.

The next floor was an armory, with armour (duh), spare arrows, and random weapons from all over the world (e.g., doubled edged Greek sword, Chinese knife, Aboriginal spear).

The next and last floor was a recreation room with a pool, tennis court, sword fighting arena, basketball court, and archery range (Kiwi booked that imeddiately).

We trekked up two floors to the meeting room, where I spread the Scroll on the table.

“Okay,” Kaiah tapped the atlas that had appeared on the Scroll with her sword, a curvy thing designed to hook other weapons. “We’re here,” she tapped a little dot near the coast of B.C. “And Brazil is here.” she pointed at Brazil. “The inn is here.” she tapped a little glowing spot in Rio with the butt of her sword. “We’re going about fifteen knots an hour, add some teleportation magic, and we should be there tomorrow.” she sheated her sword. “In the meantime, we should train. We might encounter some sea monsters and pigai on the trip, so we should have a lookout —three Desiphai an hour, maybe— while the other train, and rest. Maybe one of the lookouts maps the route while the others fight the challenges and drive.” she looked up. “Agreed?”

“Agreed.” everyone else nodded. Hey, she’s a pharaoh. Can you blame her?

———————

Marcus, Lin, and Leefringe insisted on taking the first shift (Correction: they said the ‘ladies’ must take it easy. Sheesh, we’re not pregnant.), so the rest of us headed down to the rec room, where Kaiah insisted on fencing with me.

“After all,” she said “We am supposed to teach you. You need to learn how to hold a sword before you use it, after all.”

So Kaiah helped me with my stance and taught me how to hold my sword. After I had mastered the basics, she showed me some strikes, parries, and thrusts.

“Now,” she smiled at me. “We fence .”

I gulped. “Alright then.”

She faced me. “We won’t do anything serious, now. Just practicing your techniques.” I nodded. “I’ll go easy on you.” I nodded again.

She did go easy on me. She played me down on the ground and knocked Gan Jiang out of my hands only about a million times. “You need to work on your blocks.” she showed me how I would hold the sword in a tilted way, that made it easy to get knocked out of my hands.

“Thanks.”  the next time we fenced, I thrust Gan Jiang onto Kaiah’s sword hilt and flipped it out of her hands.

“Good job. Let’s do it again.”

“Thanks.”

After about another hour, Azweln, Kiwi, and Maina came down from the deck, telling me, Adriana, and Kaiah it was our shift.

Would you be surprised to learn that everything went wrong on our shift?

No, we didn’t think so.

As soon as we got on the deck, Adriana and Kaiah froze in their tracks.

“Guys?” I waved my hand in front of their faces, but they were frozen solid.

“Finally,” a voice said next to me. “Next time, get on the first shift.”

I whirled around, and standing next to me was a three-eyed warrior.

“Erlang.” I said. “But, aren’t you me? How are you there?”

Erlang/me rolled his eyes. “Heimlich, I am you, but this is just a hologram. We’ll be normal soon. I just wanted to say that our sword fighting sucks.”

“Of course.”

“Oh, and there’s a pigai attack on it’s way.”

With that comment ringing in my ears, Erlang melted into a wisp of smoke that went back into my body.

Adriana and Kaiah suddenly started moving again. I turned to them. “I’ve got bad news.”

When I told them about the pigai attack, Kaiah frowned. “An attack? Now? That sucks.”

“Indeed.” Adriana hefted her knife. “Be prepared.”

Naturally, that was when they attacked.

All I knew was that a shadow covered us and about two dozen pigai dropped onto the deck.

These pigai weren’t like the spider-pigai we had faced before. These pigai were. . . humanoid. They looked like normal people, except part pig. They all had pig heads, and all of them had one pig hoof for a hand and another hoof for a foot. Their flesh was burnt, matted, and inhumanly piglike. They all had a curly pig tail poking out of their rear end. And they all wore black jumpsuits and held a spear.

Next to me, Kaiah muttered, “Don’t let those touch you. They’re electric spears with pigai burns included.”

“Thanks for the warning.”

“Don’t mention it.”

We stood back-to-back, and as the pigai closed in, they formed a circle around us, cutting us off from all help.

“Well, well, well.” the pigai throng parted, and a hooded figure walked towards us holding a double bladed war axe. “What do we have here?” the figure threw off the hood revealing a face that was not pigai.

Horribly enough, I recognized the face.

“Mom?”

Chapter Fourteen:

Betrayed

In moments, Adriana and Kaiah and I were chained up and muzzled .

“Mom, how could you?” my mother —who I now knew really was a psycho— was stalking around the deck and ordering the pigai to go belowdeck and get our friends.

“How?” Marie Hair whirled around to face me. “I’ll tell you how, Erlang. I was cursed, born to a family of Desiphai, and forced to endure years of miserable ’training’. The only stroke of goodness in my life was meeting your father and having you! Then it turned out you were a Desiphent as well! And not just any Desiphent.” she curled her lip. “The Multi. The reincarnation of Erlang! Aqpigain tried to let him take you, but I kept you. Why? Because you could have helped me! You could have taken my Desiphent-ness. But no, Kandy Kane took you!” she grinned evily. “But your father offered. He told me he could end my pain and misery. You know how? He made me a Desiphai Hunter. Now, I have, the nine Chosen Desiphai and a ship! Your father will reward me greatly.”

We suddenly heard shouting from the stairwell, and our other friends, chained and gagged, were tossed next to us.

My mother turned around. “Take them away.”

———————

We were loaded into a truck and driven along a rocky bridge that my mother— who turned out to be a Earth Desiphent— had summoned.

As soon as the truck doors closed, Leefringe spat the gang out of his mouth and glared at me. “How did you not know your mother was a Desiphent?”

I hung my head “I couldn’t! She always had makeup on her forehead or hair over it.”

“Shush, both of you.” Kiwi had her ear pressed against the wall of the truck. “Their driving us to a fortress. In Rio.” she grinned. “You thinking what I’m  thinking?”

“Yeah.” Leefringe nodded. “We ditch them.”

After several tries, Leefringe finally burnt through a chain link with his fire and freed the rest of us.

The pigai had put our weapons and ship (which had shrank the moment we had gotten off) in a wooden chest, which Kiwi broke easily.

We waited until the truck stopped at a traffic light, and hopped out, running for our lives.

Chapter Fifteen:

The Bonsai Inn

We had hopped out at the outskirts of Rio, and after about an hour of walking, we finally reached our destination.

Leefringe and Kiwi looked doubtfully at the inn, but I couldn’t care less what they had to say. I was totally excited.

The inn was shaped like a giant bonsai and made of bonsai wood. It had to be fifteen stories tall and it’s roof was a canopy of leaves that only added to it’s treelike look.

The name was carved over the door.

The Bonsai Inn

“How very creative.” Marcus grumbled as we entered.

In the foyer, there was a young woman with long curly blonde hair that flowed halfway to her waist, a smooth complexion, and a familiar face.

“Aunt Rosemarie!” my favorite aunt stood behind the desk, her hair pulled back to show her earth Desiphent tattoo, clear as day.

“Heimlich.” she smiled. “I’ve waited a long time.”

I stood stunned. To find out both of my parents were Desiphai, and now my aunt? This was crazy.

She smiled, as if she could sense my mixed feelings. “It’s in our blood.” she explained. “All Hair’s are Desiphai.”

“Wow.” Marcus muttered behind me. “A Desiphai family. Rare.”

“Yes.” she replied. “Now for your rooms.”she held up nine keys. “I’ve booked you some on the eighth floor, which is where I house all my Desiphai guests. You can stay for as long as you need to.”

“Thanks.” We took our keys, and Aunt Rosemarie led us to the eighth floor.

“How did you know we were coming?” I asked as the elevator went up.

Azweln rolled her eyes. “She’s a spiritualist and fortune-teller. Duh.”

“Oh.”

“Yes.” Aunt Rosemarie dinged the elevator open..

“Breakfast is six-thirty to nine-thirty. Lunch is twelve to three. Dinner is seven-ten to ten-ten.

“And above all.” she looked each of us squarely in the eye. “Do NOT go to the fourth floor. You will understand in time.”

We nodded.

The rooms were really nice, and we each got one to ourselves (we took up, like, half a hall).

I walked into my room, dumped my luggage --- a huge backpack and sleeping bag --- and looked around.

It was pretty simple, but cozy-looking. There was a double bed against the wall, a tall window overlooking Brazil. A bookshelf and TV sat in front of the bed, but it looked like someone had smashed the TV with a hammer (more likely --- an Egyptian mallet) so I decided to ignore it.

I peeked inside the bathroom, and it was like every other hotel bathroom I’ve ever been too. . . except that I had never been to a hotel bathroom before. Let’s just say it was cleaner than the one from the cheap motel I went to when I was six.

I had just closed my room door, when Marcus’s battle-axe went through it, nearly cutting my nose of, and I’m sure the axe wouldn’t mind if it had taken my face off as well.

“Marcus!” I complained, pushing the door open. “My aunt’s going to kill me! You could have just knocked.”

“Sorry. But there aren’t any other Greeks in the group, the non-Greeks don’t like holding Greek weapons, this is really heavy, and I don’t have any other hands.”

“Non-Greeks?” I poked my head out, and was greeted by my friends standing in the doorway.

“May we come in?” Kaiah asked sweetly.

---------------

We gathered into my room, Leefringe locked and barrred the door, and we all sat down.

Kiwi plopped down on a chair, everyone else scattered around the room, and Leefringe and Marcus fought for a spot on the bed.

Leefringe sat down immediately fell off, pushed aside by Marcus.

They had a brief standoff (“Dude, it’s my spot.” “No, it’s mine.”) and then I pushed both of them off, and plopped down.

“Now,” Kiwi pulled an atlas of of my bookshelf. “We’re here.” she pointed at a vaguely tree-like blob in central Brazil. “Aqpigain’s headquarters are here.” (a pig-face-shaped blob in Australia) “This is our route.” (A squigly line in the middle of the Atlantic). “It leads pretty far from all our native Desiphai lands.”

“That looks good.” I bent over to get a better look. Then I noticed a problem. “But, Kiwi. We can’t use the golden cruise ship anymore. My mom -- Marie’s guards will be notified of what it looks like. If we stumble across one of them in it. . .”

“I know.” Kiwi looked pained. “But we can’t take a plane. And it’s a little difficult to swim across the Atlantic Ocean, if you know what I mean.”

I wrung my hands. “Animals? What about Lulu Pink Lemonade, can’t she fly?”

Adriana shook her head. “That’s too risky. A few months ago, Kiwi flew over to Alaska to pick me up for a project, and Lulu Pink Lemonade fell asleep on the way. We landed in the middle of Ontario so hard we created a new canyon.”

“Okay. No pegasi.” I tapped my chin. “I can’t think if anything else.”

“Let’s ask your aunt tomorrow at breakfast.” Leefring yawned. “I don’t know ‘bout you guys, but I’m getting sleepy. Wan an.” he stood up and exited the room via giant Marcus’-battle-axe-hole.

Kaiah glanced out the window. “Very well. It would be healthy for an early retirement to bed. But it’s a little late for the early part.”

I looked out the window to. It was getting dark, and all the lights in the windows of houses had gone out.

I yawned. “Yup. Meeting adjourned.”

Chapter Sixteen:

The Secret of Floor Number Four

I woke up the next morning to find new clothes folded at the foot of my bed, which was lucky because I hadn’t  brought spare clothing.

But those thoughts flew out of my mind the second I lifted the clothes.

There was a white jumpsuit and a rhinestone-studded leather jacket. There was a bandana (also rhinestone-studded), combat boots, and about a million peace-sign hippie leather bracelets (that made me wonder if Azweln had put them there). But after everything that had happened yesterday, my clothes were filthy, so I had no choice but to put on the nineties’ clothes.

I headed down to breakfast and found everyone else had on those ridiculous rock-and-roll outfits.

“You to?” Leefringe took in my outfit.

“You’re not much better.” I shot back. He was wearing a black tank top, leather pants, leather shoes, and a rhinestone-studded leather jacket that matched mines (and  everyone else’s, I noticed).

He winced. “You can’t blame me. At least we’ve got the bandanas to hide our tattoos.”

“Hide our tattoos?”

Maina nodded, twirling her dagger around. “Marie’s scouts aren’t the only ones that will be looking for us. She’ll surely have notified Aqpigain by now. The earth will be swarming with pigai.”

“Fine.” feeling silly, I tied the bandana around my head.

While we were talking, Aunt Rosemarie had crept up on us, so you can tell how surprised we were when she said, “Morning, my young Desiphai. What will you have for breakfast?”

In the end we all ordered bacon and eggs, and after eating, we trudged up to my room again.

“What do we do today?” Lin asked as he twirled his chain around his spear.

I looked at the atlas that Kiwi had left on my bedside table yesterday. There were now little pig faces going around the entire world. “It looks like their are pigai ships all over the Atlantic, and a whole bunch of them surrounding Australia. Aqpigain’s guard, I suppose?”

“Shi.” Leefringe nodded. “It’ll be impossible to sail past them. Unless. . .” he shook his head. “No. That won’t work.”

“What?” the rest of us leaned forwards. “What is it?”

He sighed. “I was thinking I could teleport us.”

“But that’s a great idea!” I didn’t know what Leefringe was so upset about.

Kiwi shot me a shut up look. “It would take incredible strength to teleport all of us to Australia. He would be helpless in a fight.”

“But you could try, right?”

Leefringe shrugged. “Maybe. But I’ll need help.”

Kiwi stood up. “I’ll help you. We teleport tomorrow, at the crack of dawn.”

I nodded. “But before that, there’s something else we should do.”

I leaned forwards and my friends did likewise. I lowered my voice and said in a hushed voice, “A few years ago, my aunt got involved with some bad guys in a gang or  something. And the leader of that gang’s name was,” I looked around to check there wasn’t anyone listening except us. “Aqpigain.”

Kiwi gasped. Lin dropped his spear. Kaiah fell off the bed. Leefringe fell backwards and Marcus let out a squeak that sounded like a strangled mouse. Everyone else just gaped at me and Adriana fainted.

Only Maina kept her cool. She reached over, slapped the people who were gaping at me, pinched Adriana’s nose, picked up Lin’s chain, pulled Leefringe up, moved Kaiah away from the bed and snapped Kiwi’s jaw shut.

She turned to me. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you don’t think she might be, ahem, cooperating with Mr. Piggy, do you?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. I seriously don’t know.”

Adriana, who had woke up, tapped her chin and said, “And if we’re thinking along the same lines,  you think it has to do with the forbidden fourth floor, yes?”

I nodded.

Azweln had taken off her ‘Hug the World’ headband and was nervously twisting it around her hand. “And you are suggesting what?”

I looked them in the eyes. “I say we go to the fourth floor. Tonight. At midnight.”

---------------

That night, we met at the elevator and called it up. I winced at the creaking it made.

We clambered in and I looked for the fourth floor button.

“Here it is,” I whispered. “But it won’t work.”

“Let me.” Kaiah pushed over to the button and pointed her curvish sword at it. “Sai-fha.”

A crack of lightning flew out of the tip of her sword and hit the button. It’s light flickered for a bit but finally turned on.

“Good one.” I hit the button and we were going down to the fourth floor.

Down. . .

and down. . .

and down. . .

The trip seemed to take forever, but we finally reached the fourth floor.

The door dinged open and we stepped out, but immediately regretted it. The door behind us vanished in a flash of light and pigai surrounded us.

Again.

“Well, well, well.” a man’s deep voice reached us and I winced. It sounded deep, booming. . . and oinkish.

A man stepped forwards and I gasped in revulsion.

The man looked just like a pigai, except he was grosser. He had a pigs head, glowing red eyes, and a silver pig/man body.

But then his face shifted. It changed to a blonde man’s sneering face. But it was very familiar. Then I realized why.

I saw that face everytime I looked in a mirror. Except that when I saw it, it was a girls face and didn’t have that sneer.

“Aqpigain.”

Chapter Seventeen:

Betrayed (This time with two people)

I stared at the man’s face, horrified. After all this time, we had finally found Aqpigain. How shocking.

Many times I had imagined meeting him and plunging my sword into his heart, but I couldn’t find the strenght to do it.

This ugly crackpot was my dad??? Well that’s depressing.

“How did you get here?” Kiwi asked, drawing two of her many daggers, one in each hand.

He chuckled. “The question is, how did you get here?”

“That’s none of your business.” Kaiah drew her sword, pointed it at Aqpigain, and shouted, “Ha-de-mah!”

A bolt of white energy shot out of the end and towards Aqpigain, but he just chuckled and sucked it into his hand.

“What?” Kaiah stumbled back. “But, but, that’s impossible! How. . . ?”

Aqpigain laughed. “You put up a good fight, little pharaoh. But I’m afraid I am the strongest one in Australia.”

“What? Australia? That’s impossible! We’re on the fourth floor of the Bonsai Inn!” I shouted, bewildered.

“No. The elevator is a portal. It transports the rider to Australia once he presses the four button.” a voice came from the back of the room.

Someone stood up, and I gasped. “Aunt Rosemarie. . . no.”

But it was Aunt Rosemarie indeed. And she was holding a huge knife.

She glared at me. “I thought you weren’t supposed to come here.”

“But. . .”

“You’re with Aqpigain?” Marcus shouted, enraged. “How could you?”

“How could I not?” Aunt Rosemarie shouted back. “He offered me revenge!”

“On who?” Maina had joined the argument.

“The gods! It’s their fault that the Desiphai are fightning!”

“You’re evil!” Lin waved his fist at Aunt Rosemarie.

“No, I’m not!”

Aqpigain laughed. “This is amusing, but I’m afraid I must intrude.

He turned to Adriana. “You. I brought you back from the brink. Now is the time to repay your debt.”

I didn’t get it until Adriana drew her knife, and I saw that there was something carved into it.

Å

That’s all I got to register before Adriana -- someone I thought had been my friend -- stabbed my left arm, and everything went dark.

Chapter Eighteen:

Maina leads a jailbreak

Groaning, I woke up on a cold surface, the ceiling way above me. To my left I heard Leefringe angrily shouting some stuff in Chinese that I am not allowed to repeat here, for the editors would probably burn this manuscript if I did.

To my right, Kiwi was grumbling, “If only we had taken the elevator earlier, we would have been spared the encounter.

I blinked, and realized there was something around my wrists, neck, and ankles. I tried to move, but found that I couldn’t. As my vision began to clear, I saw that there were metal shackles pinning my arms, legs, and head to a stone board.

I groaned, and my friends seemed to (finally) notice I was up.

“Heimlich! Finally!” Kiwi looked relieved, but also worried. “You should have stayed blacked out.”

“Gosh, thanks.” once again, I tried to move, and once again, I couldn’t.

“Don’t.”Kiwi rubbed her eyes, and I realized my friends all had circles under their eyes. “We’ve been pulling at them all night. No luck.”

“How did you guys all get out of them, then?” I asked, noticing that my friends weren’t on their boards.

“We weren’t attached. No idea why.” Kaiah was lying on her back, kicking at the walls (We were in an underground chamber of some sort. Aqpigain’s personal dungeon, perhaps.) “Just these anti-magic chains.” she indicated the iron shackles on everyone’s feet.

“How did we get in here?” I cast my eyes around. Well, as much as I could, anyway, since I was unable to move.

The door had to be ten feet above us, and the window -- also ten feet above us -- had bars over it.

I tried to move my left arm, but immediately felt a sharp pain. I glanced over and saw it was still caked with dried blood.

I wriggled around on my stone slab. “So. . . I can obviously feel everything so I’m going to risk it and say this isn’t a dream. But Adriana. . . why. . .?”

“That’s what we were trying to figure out.” Marcus rubbed his face. “I can’t imagine why she’d do this. I mean, she’s our friend, right?”

Maina shook her head. “No. I believe she was with Aqpigain this whole time and joined the mission to deliver us.”

“Well that’s harsh.” I stared at the ceiling. Then I remembered something. “Hey, you guys. When Adriana was stabbing me, I noticed something on her knife. It’s an A with a circle on top. Do you know what that is?”

“An A with a circle on top?” Leefringe leaned forwards. “I think I recognize that. . . yes! It’s Aqpigains symbol.”

“That proves it then.” Lin leaned back and stared at the little sliver of light the window was letting in. “Adriana is officially on Aqpigain’s side, we are locked in a dungeon, and our only exits are ten feet above us. Is anyone else feeling mortally depressed?”

I sighed. “Well, at least we didn’t have to bother finding a way to Australia. That’s something.”

That’s when an idea struck me. I don’t me, like, mentally struck me, but it actually, literally, physically struck me.

A dart flew through the door, and landed in my neck. “Ow!”

An oinking sound came through the door and an oinkish laugh.

Azweln sighed. “That’s the third one.” she leaned over and plucked it out of my neck. “They’ve been shooting them at us everytime they think we get loud.”

“Third?” I craned my neck as best as I could and saw a tiny pile of darts strewn around the dungeon floor. My eyes slowly strayed to the keyhole on the side of the stone, then back to the darts. I glanced at the keyholes on my friends’ shackles. An idea began to form in my mind.

“Kiwi.” I asked. “Do my shackles have anti-magic?”

“I don’t think so.”

“What’s the spell for come?”

“Lai.” Leefringe replied.

Azweln looked at me, concerned. “Heimlich, are you okay? You’re looking. . . strange.”

“Uh-huh. Not listening.” I concentrated on the biggest, sharpest dart, and slowly, calmly said “Lai.”

It quivered slightly. I narrowed my eyes and -- once again -- in a level tone, said “Lai.”

This time, it flew off the ground to hover in front of me.

“Pick the lock.” I commanded it.

It flew down to the keyhole, stuck it’s sharp point in it and, after about a minute, we heard the faithful click of the lock unlocking. The shackles opened and I slid out.

Maina’s jaw dropped and Kaiah gaped at me. “That. Was. Amazing.”

“I know.” I gestured to my little dart friend and hissed “Dart. Lai.”

It flew around excitedly a few times and came over.

“Pick the locks. All of them.”

Dart buzzed around, unlocking the shackles on my friends’ shackles until we were all free.

“Great.” Leefringe rubbed his ankle. “You have one cool dart friend, Heimlich.”

I wasn’t listening. I was looking up at the door, ten feet above us. “How do we get up?”

Maina smiled. “Now that we’re out of those anti-magic shackles, I can get us up there simply.”

She pointed at the door way up high. “Volant.”

We (the eight of us and Dart who seemed to like me) flew up to the door and Azweln pointed at it. “Kai.”

The door flew open and we rushed out of the dungeon.

Chapter Nineteen:

Our plan fails

There were no guards (Seriously?), our weapons were strewn about (You’re kidding me.), and we found Aqpigain’s throne room rather easily (Do people lose their common sense when they become pigai?).

We peeked around the corner, and I saw Aqpigain lounging on a huge, red beryl throne. Next to him, on smaller, ruby thrones sat Adriana and my aunt (traitors).

There were pigai everywhere, all of them wearing red and black clothing. And there were Desiphai. Dozens of them, all chained to the walls.

Next to me, Kiwi took a huge intake of breath. “Those are my soldiers! They’re old hands at Kandy Kane. What are they doing here?”

“Aqpigain must have captured them.” I muttered under my breath.

“Of course.”

“What do we do?” Lin asked from behind us.

I turned around. “I think I know. Kiwi, why don’t you write to your sister?”

---------------

After Kiwi had sent the ‘help!’ letter to Lendra via magic spell, we gathered around the main enterance.

“Okay, here’s the plan.” I squatted and started pointing. “Leefringe, you take that guy in the corner then move on to the guy over there. Maina, you take down that dude next to the Desiphent hanging from the rafters and free him. Give him the fallen pigai’s weapon. Same thing with you, Kaiah, but you do it on the other side of the room. Lin, skewer the three pigai over there and untie the girl tied to the pillar. Azweln, you do the same thing with those guys hanging around the bathroom. Kiwi, come with me. When everyone’s done with that, meet behind my dad’s throne.”

Everyone nodded and crept off to their stations.

Kiwi and Dart (who had taken up following me) followed me as I took a detour around some pigai arguing over the price of beer.

“Okay.” we had got to the back of Aqpigain’s throne and we knelt there. “Dart, fly around, poking the people on the thrones. Distract them from me and Kiwi.”

Dart bobbed a ‘yes’ and flew off happily. I turned to Kiwi.

“Your job’s a little harder. Can you take out those guards in front of the thrones?”

Kiwi nodded and slinked away.

As for me, I thought, unsheathing Gan Jiang. I’ll deal with Mr. Piggy.

I looked around for something to cover me with and found a nice, dirty, threadbare rug, piled up in a corner. I grabbed it and pulled it over me.

I crouched on the ground and shuffled over to the throne. No one took any notice of me. I guess they’ve seen weirder things, being pigai.

As soon as I got to the foot of the huge throne where my dad resided, I hopped up, startling a bunch of pigai who were talking to Aqpigain.

I turned and ran towards him, my sword drawn. Unluckily, Aqpigain had quick reflexes and a mace had met my sword in a moment.

I tried one of the parries Kaiah had shown me and a thrust. It worked rather well, if I do say so myself.

I tried a stab at his chest, but Aqpigain blocked it with a quick swing.

“Can you hold still so I can stab you?” I grunted as he blocked my slash with a parry.

“Temtping, daughter.” he swung the mace at my face and I ducked. “But no.”

“Don’t call me that!” my anger threw me of course, and Aqpigain’s next swing caught me in the ribs and I fell to the ground.

Wheezing and trying to recover my breath, I tried to get up but immediately fell back again. I wouldn’t be surprised if that blow had broke my ribs, they hurt so badly.

“You fought well, for a newbie.” Aqpigain twirled the mace above his head, getting ready for the killing swing. “But not well enough.”

I closed my eyes, waiting for impact. Instead, I heard Aqpigain let loose a loud howl. I opened one eye and saw that an arrow had pierced his ear the hard way, and standing behind him we’re Kiwi and my friends.

Grinning, I managed to strugle up. “Nice job with his ear piercing, Kiwi.”

“Don’t mention it.” she eyed Aqpigain, who was on the ground, clutching his ruined ear. “Do you want to finish him off, or should I?”

Before I could answer, something whistled by me, and I had enough reflexes in me to duck. The boomerang flew over my head and back into Aunt Rosemarie’s hand.

“No one will be finishing anyone off.” she declared. “Except, maybe our pigai finishing you lot off.”

She raised her arm as to throw the boomerang again, but instead, was knocked out by a pegasus.

Chapter Twenty:

Erlang answers the Call

If you think a mythical creature knocking someone out is odd, then imagine dozens of mythical creatures knocking out dozens of pigai.

Yes, it was a beautiful sight indeed.

Few people know it, but having a hot-pink pegasus fly over you can really make you think Hey, there’s a war raging around me and a pegasus just flew over my head. I should probably enter the fray and get fighting.

So I tossed Aqpigain in a corner and picked up Gan Jiang from where I had dropped it.

There were Desiphai everywhere and each and every one of them was on some kind of animal. I even saw a guy with a monocle riding a giant fish that was flopping around and randomly squashing pigai.

You can imagine how surprised I was when Donna ran up to me and kicked (yes, I said kicked) me onto her back.

“Great job, girl.” Donna reared back and we ran in.

I slashed, stabbed, and struck at every pigai I could find. A few hit me, but I mainly managed to dodge them.

I looked around. Leefringe was on his Kirin, Marcus was riding a chimera, and Azweln rode around on a huge serpent, that I guessed was a transformed Freshman the Fish. I expected Kiwi to be riding Lulu Pink Lemonade but, instead, she was riding a huge golden dragon and Lendra (Who, I guess, had answered our cry for help with and army and some teleportation spells) was riding Lulu. I didn’t have time to question it, because a pigai slashed at my arm with a scimitar, and I had to turn my attention back to staying alive.

After a while, there weren’t any enemies left except a bunch of confused piglets, some passed-out pigai, Aqpigain (who had found his mace and was holding it), Adriana, and Aunt Rosemarie.

Adriana stepped forwards. “Well. There are a couple hundred of you, and three of us. The only fair way to do this is a Desiphent duel. Who will be facing us?”

I stepped forwards immediately. “Who do I face?”

Adriana tutted disapprovingly. “Why, your father, of course! It’s the only fair way! But first, Me and Leefringe. Then Azweln and your aunt.”

“Right. Element versus element.” Leefringe stepped forward. “Let’s do this.”

---------------

Adriana made the first move.

She did a kung-fu and sent a blast of fire to Leefringe’s face. He just grabbed -- grabbed! -- it out of the air and sent it spinning back towards her.

With a snarl, Adriana punched the air and sent a few hundred fireballs that Leefringe dodged easily (the rest of us had a little more trouble).

After about ten minutes of back-and-forth shooting, Leefringe finally blasted her over.

The Desiphai (who had crowded around to watch the duel) cheered and hooted. “That was a bust.” Adriana snarled. “But let’s see you beat Rosemarie.”

She was right.

Aunt Rosemarie fought like nobody’s buisness. She tossed rocks, boulder, stalagmites, and some river pebbles at Azweln. I thought Azweln was fine, until a huge rock caught her squarely in the head. She crumpled.

Kiwi snarled and lunged at Rosemarie, but Leefringe held her back. “Not now.” he muttered under his breath. “Later.”

Azweln let out a groan, which at least meant she was alive, but there was a long, gruesome-looking cut down the side of her face that was bleeding like crazy. A girl I recognized from the meeting rushed over and gently pulled her away.

“Now.” Aqpigain looked at me smugly. “We duel, daughter.”

----------------

The Desiphai and enemies (pigai-turned-piglets do not count) formed a loose ring around us.

I can’t do this, I thought to myself. He’s a seasoned pigai-Desiphent and I’m just a newbie, with barely a month of training.

No we are not. A stronger, steadier voice spoke in my mind. We are strong. We can defeat him. Connect with me.

I took Erlang’s advice. I don’t know how I did it. But I reached into my inner spirit. I looked into my minds core. I felt something deep inside. A small, powerful ball of magic, controlling, guiding me. Erlang.

I let that ball take over, but not completely. Just a little extra power to take out Apigain.

My eyes flew open and I summoned a ball of fire in my hands. Aqpigain looked shocked that I could manage that, and even more shocked when I sent it hurtling at him. He ducked, and barely managed to escape with some singed hair.

He stood up. “You’re stronger than I thought.” he looked at me and shrieked like a little girl.

I looked down at my body and felt like shrieking myself.

I seemed to have duplicated in size, both physically and in appearance. I was taller, more muscular, and I was wearing Chinese armor. I didn’t need a mirror to know I had sprouted a third eye.

I got into a battle stance. When I spoke, two voices came out of my mouth. “Your turn.”

He recovered quickly, and sneered. “You think a little god stuff can help you?” but I could tell he was frightened.

I expected him to fire a rock or something but ,instead, he pulled a bow out of nowhere and shot an arrow straight at my chest.

I doubled in pain, and my flickered and died. I fell to the ground, and my vision went blurry.

I could hear the people around me shouting in fear and anger, but  I didn’t really register that. All I knew was that death was closing it’s disgusting hands around me, pulling me down, down, down. . .

Then I gasped. Warmth was spreading through my body, washing away the pain. And it spread all the good thing in life threw me. Warmth. And love. And life.

“Enough.” a voice boomed around the chamber.

Someone stepped in front of me, but she wasn’t exactly familiar. She looked like Monkey. . . but she looked like Kiwi too.

Suddenly the truth hit me. I didn’t know wether or not I was right, but I whispered “Kiwi? Are you?. . . “

She nodded grimly, and Aqpigain laughed. “That’s right! Your precious friend is Alaina Silverstar, Queen of China!”

Chapter Twenty-One:

Secrets Revealed

I gawked at Alaina (Kiwi, whatever), but she leaned over and mumbled, “I cannot finish the duel. You and Aqpigain started it. Thus, you two must finish it.” I nodded and she helped me up. I wasn’t suprised to find my wound had healed.

“We can help you by holding off the pigai, but you must finish Aqpigain.”

I nodded, and Kiwi (Alaina, whatever) raised her bow -- which had turned into a golden staff -- and all the Desiphai in the crowd cheered.

While my friends started fighting pigai, I turned to Aqpigain and was nearly disemboweled by an extremely sharp stick.

“Oh, is that how you’re going to play?” I jumped up and found I was flying, suspended in some sort of mist. I didn’t have time to marvel, though, because Aqpigain hopped into the air in the same kind of mist, and thus became the weirdest air battle ever.

Aqpigain didn’t have much advantage with me being the newbie, since he seemed a little shaky flying as well, but he still seemed more experienced than me, and shot quite a few fireballs my way.

I rolled around in the air, lobbing rocks, grapes, and miniatuare tornadoes at him while he expressed his feeling by showering me with dagger-sharp icicles.

The icicles threw me out of my mist and I landed on the ground, peppered with new cuts and slashes. Aqpigain landed across from me, looking slightly green.

He looked at me, and got ready to charge when something charged across his path. Donna!

She charged him down, slicing her long claws across his piggy face, biting at his limbs, and tossing him around. I ran up to her and pushed her away, remembering what Alaina had said. She left reluctantly, snarling at him.

Sadly, there was no permanent damage. Some slashes didn’t seem to bother Aqpigain.

He gave me a I hate you look and raised his hand. “We’re not finished. Until next time.”

With that, he sank into the ground. The pigai, seeing their leader had retreated, all scattered.

---------------

“We won! We won!” cheers of glee filled the air, and my friends and I gathered together.

“Come on.” Kaiah murmured as E started to organize a search of Aqpigains lair.

We walked out and sat down on a ledge outside the cave, which was on a cliff.

We just sat in silence for a while, until Leefringe said softly. “Why didn’t you tell us you were Alaina?”

Alaina just looked at her feet for a moment.  “I couldn’t do it. I felt you guys would shut me out if I told you the truth of what I had done.” a tear traced it’s way down her cheek. “I faked my own death and then came back to Kandy Kane as a new person -- Kiwi Azlem Lepitooti Aniball - Hist.

“And, Heimlich, you heard what Aqpigain said. We can’t go back. He’ll be looking for you.” I nodded sadly.

Maina looked over at Kiwi. “I agree we can’t go back to the schools .But I wanted to ask you something. Why did you exile us away from our homelands? The native lands never were losing magic, where they?”

Alaina shook her head. “No. I sealed them off because,” she took a deep breath. “The Desiphai on land aren’t the only Desiphai. It was them who was losing magic.”

We (everyone minus Alaina) glanced around nervously, and Lin asked quietly, “Who’s ‘them’?”

She turned to face us. “The Desiphai of the sea. The Sirens.”

EPILOGUE

The little group slept quietly under a bridge, unaware that the Scroll was shining brightly in the shadows. On it was a message that would not be interpereted for many months.

The journey to Australia may have ended

but Alaina’s faults have not been yet mended

And the farther you go the farther you’ll find

the rest of the Desiphai are not of your kind

For to the sea you must make an alliance

therefore, Multi, beware the of Sirens.

Desiphent

Foes Down Under

By:  Daphne Liang

To my parents, for teaching me all the Chinese legends, which did a lot of good in this novel.

PROLOGUE

Listen carefully, because this is important.

 

If someone comes to you in the middle of the school year to transfer you to Kandy Kane Middle, even if you’re in kindergarten or university, et cetera, it means you’re different, like me.

 

When they say “You’re being transferred,” my advice is this: run for the nearest exit.

 

If they succeed in transferring you, you have to follow the rules, be in your dorm by lights-out (which is 12:00 am), and never ever use your powers on normal people (with Desiphai Hunters in Training as an exception).

 

One more thing.

The planet is being attacked by evil cyborg pig aliens (otherwise known as pigai) and you are one of the hundreds that have to stop them with crazy powers over nature stuff like trees or fruit..

 

In other words, be prepared for your life to suck.

Chapter One: My Day Ends With a Bang

Hello people of the big, fat universe. My name is Heimlich Hair.

   

Okay, okay, don’t go “What???” It’s true! My mom, Marie Hair, literally named me after the book she was reading.

(This just  make me think my mother is a psycho.)

But my mom was wrong to name me after a medical thingamabob, because the only thing I’m good at is the Heimlich maneuver, which I think is fitting, but my mom and teachers do not.

I’m so bad at school stuff that, even though I’m in ninth grade and go to a special education private school, my teachers have to tutor me in multiplication, spelling, and reading.

On Thursday, it was math class, and Mrs. Lear was quizzing me on multiplication.

“No, Heimlich,” she said, giving me an extremely strained smile. “5x8 is not 58. Think. 5 plus 5 plus 5 pl----”

“Okay, okay,” I grumbled, trying to do the math in my head. “Uh, 5 plus 5 is . . .  10. And then it’s, uh.”

It took me a while, but I finally got the answer. “It’s 80! I got it right this time, didn’t I!”

“No!” roared Mrs. Lear.”You---”

She took several deep breaths, and looked at me with a very forced, strained smile. “Heimlich,” she said in an even tone. “You know you’ve been having a lot of trouble in school lately.”

“Yeah.” I said, looking at my feet.

“May you please go to Mr. Means’ office and speak to him?”

“No!” I was aghast. I had never been to the principal’s office before! Not in middle school, elementary, or preschool! I’ve never been that bad!

“Yes.” Mrs. Lear’s voice was low and even. “He has details about your transfer.”

“No . . .” I had been listening to the teachers talk about my transfer to another school for a long time, but I’d never expected it to happen.

“Go.” Mrs. Lear said, opening the door.

And, as it turned out, I should have run away instead of go to the office.

---------------

I entered the office shakily, because Mr. Mean truly lives up to his name. I had always been sort of scared when I think about his office because when I envision it, I see whirring gears, electric chairs, torture machines, and spears to skewer bad kids.

Surprisingly, the only thing right about was the spear, and that was because it was decoration on the wall. Everything else was pretty much civil.

“Have a seat,” Mr. Mean said with his near-constant sneer. “We have much to discuss about your, ah, problems.”

“I don’t have problems.” I said, hoping I sounded definant.

“I just don’t learn thanks to the way your school teaches.”

Uh-Oh, bad idea. Mr. Mean fixed me with a cold stare. “You are being transferred, Heimlich, to Kandy Kane Middle School in Canada.”

He tossed a pamphlet onto the desk, in front of me. It read:

Kandy Kane Middle

School For . . .

I couldn’t tell what the rest said, because it was smudged in the most horrible way. That school must have terrible printers. But to me the words looked like Chicken Didees.

I looked up at Mr. Mean, who was sneering that way where he smiles and frowns at once. “Chicken Didee. You’re transferring me to a school for chicken didees?! What the heck is a chicken didee?”

He shrugged, half apologetically, half meanly. “The school principal personally contacted me telling me her ‘research’, led her to believe that you were supposedly ‘meant’ to go to her school, as if you were special enough to even go to a private school run by me. Personally, I think you fit the chicken didee (whatever that is) part just fine. I mean, you can’t even write!”

(He still didn’t answer my question.)

That did it. I stood up so fast my chair toppled over. “Just because you are the principal.” I said, as my vision started going red, “It doesn’t mean you get to push me around.”

I’ll admit, I don’t look very intimidating. A five-foot-six blonde fifteen-year old with shoulder-length hair isn’t exactly scary.

Mr. Mean looked still shocked. “You, you, you miserable little---”

Before he could finish, my vision went completely red and I roared. A glass of water that had been sitting on the desk flew up and smacked him in the head.

You probably wouldn’t expect that to be to bad, except that the empty glass hit a button on the wall labeled EMERGENCY EXPLOSION (to this day I still don’t know why that was there). There was a rumbling sound and the office blew up, making a huge crater in the side of the school and blasting me and Mr. Mean to opposite sides of it.

Mr. Mean, dripping wet and furious, stood up and yelled, “Mrs. Lear! Mr. Poriay! Catch that miserable, delinquent girl and make sure she is arrested! I want her mother to pay for this damage!”

(Obviously, he thought I had hit the button.)

The two teachers appeared from different classrooms and started running towards me. Mr. Mean had taken out his cell phone and was yelling into it, no doubt calling the police. There was only one thing I could do.

Run.

I ran, dodging cars and pedestrians, and evading the people and police cruisers after me. I ran all the way home (which, by the way, is an apartment located over a pizza shop), ran up the stairs, threw open the apartment door, and slammed into my mom.

“Heimlich!” she gasped, shocked. “What are you doing home so early?”

“Mom,” I had a feeling she would kill me when I told her what had happened. “Police, explosion, chickens---”

The look on her face told me she understood everything.

“Heimlich! Are you insane?!?! They’ll sue us! We’re poor enough as it is!”

(True . . . )

Suddenly, there was a megaphone screech and a booming voice reached my ears: “This is the police. We have the perimeter surrounded. Come out.” Jeez, what short speech is that?

My mom turned to me, with an expression of betrayal. “I am so disappointed with you.”

She grabbed a spatula and headed out to whack the police upside their heads.

Chapter Two: A new school (of weirdos)

I stood on the front steps of Kandy Kane Middle, stared at the massive stone walls in front of me, and gulped.

Awhile after Mom had gone out to kill (I’m sorry, negotiate with) the police, she had come in with two police behind her and she had a tired look on her face.

“Honey,” she said in a strained voice, “I will have to pay the fine, and you are to be deported.”

“What?” I had asked, my throat was practically closing up. “Deported???”

“I’m sorry, but yes. They are sending you to Canada, since you truly need special, special help. You will be going to Kandy Kane.”

“That’s not a deport, that’s a transfer, and I don’t want to go to Canada!” I protested. “And plus, Kandy Kane is a stupid name.”

One of the officers gave me a steely look. “Young lady, it is not for you to approve of. You are going to Kandy Kane, and that is that. You are truly a chicken didee (whatever that is).”

So after a bunch of packing, being yelled at, and constant whatnot, I finally got packed onto a plane and transported to B.C., Canada.

I climbed up the steps nervously. Supposedly, and older student in grade twelve (grade twelve!!) would meet me in the foyer and show me around. I hoped she wasn’t crazy.

The huge doors opened in front of me, and stopped dead in my tracks.

The courtyard was Chinese. That was for sure. There were fountains, steps and statues, all of them Chinese. It was actually pretty nice. But it was the girl in the courtyard that was startling. She had long, brown hair, but that didn’t stop me. Not the war clothes, which were a grey tank top, grey camouflage jacket, black jeans, military badge, and silver-tipped grey combat boots,  and bow and quiver on her back (though that was pretty creepy). Not the tin belt around her waist with at least ten daggers hanging from it. Not even the scar on her left eye. No, it was the massive pink (pink!!!) pegasus that she was riding. I’m pretty sure pegasi counted as pets and the sign on the wall clearly said no pets allowed.

The girl acted as if it was the most common thing in the world to ride up on a pink pegasus and say “Hey, my name’s Kiwi, your new dorm-mate.” in smooth Southern accent.

She had friendly blue eyes, specked with gold, sort of like lapis lazuli.

I ignored her outstretched hand. “Kiwi? Your name is Kiwi? Ain’t the publicly of being a chicken didee enough for you?”

Kiwi shrugged. “Not nearly as public as Heimlich, is it?”

I was quiet. She had hit home.

Kiwi laughed. “Oh, come on. All of us have crazy names here. Our other dorm-mate’s --- she’s really nice, by the way --- name is Lendra of Lions.”

“Lions?” I wa shocked. “Does she have a lion, then?”

“Yup! Don’t look so scared. We have our own rooms, even though I have to share mines with Lulu Pink Lemonade.” Kiwi patted her pegasus’s mane affectionately. “Same dorm, different rooms. Awfully straightforward. Everything here is straightforward!” She swung Lulu Pink Lemonade (ugh, do I really have to say that?) around and galloped through a door that led into a Chinese building while I struggled to keep up.

----------------

“This here is Homeroom Hall, the hall for all homerooms!” Kiwi sounded like an announcer and her voice boomed as if she was speaking through a megaphone. “It houses homerooms, lockers, and a gym!” Kiwi gestured to a pair of huge ivory (yes, I said ivory. Nothing is normal anymore.) doors at the end of the hall. “You will find a gym on each level, except for the cafeteria, which is on the second floor.”

Kiwi rode Lulu Pink Lemonade onto an elevator which was, oddly, placed in the middle of the hall. I followed her to the next floor and nearly gagged from the awful smell. We were in the cafeteria, which was painted pink, and had a row of lockers along one wall. There were tables spread all over the place, and along the other wall, there was a serving area, where some people were mixing stew and tossing pizza dough. I decided to eat as little as I could here.

“On Monday, we serve monkey stew, and all other days we have a choice of stick fries, mud salad, or swamperonni or vine cheese pizza.” Kiwi told me. Or at least she tried to, but she sounded weird because of a clothespin on her nose. Her speech sounded more like this: “Ohn Mah-dai, we shurv muhcky stoo, adh aul ather dais we av a twoice ov thick fwies, mahd salahd, or thwamp-a-woni or vime theese pita.”

She plucked the clothespin off and took short breaths through her mouth. “Sorry, this place smells horrid.” she smiled at me. “But you knew what I said, didn’t you?”

I nodded, “Yeah. But how?”

Kiwi shrugged. “Don’t know. Most Desiphai have abilities to understand any language as well as control their Element of Nature. And the cooks don’t like our food either, but we have to eat. It encourages our magic. ” she rode out of the cafeteria and onto a set of stairs.

“Wait,” I chased after her. “What’s a Desiphai, and what’s an Element of Nature? And what’s that about magic? You haven’t told me anything about why I’m a chicken didee (whatever that is) and why do I have to go this school!?”

She stopped, dismounted, and whispered something into Lulu Pink Lemonade’s ear. It sounded like “Hui jia”. Lulu Pink Lemonade cantered away, and Kiwi looked me in the eye. “I suppose we must speak.”

---------------

Kiwi scared me.

I mean, her look, her hair, her delicate but strong frame, but the weapons were a bit overkill.

(Do I get a weapon to?)

“Here’s the armory, grab a weapon.” Kiwi said suddenly, as if she had read my mind. “You’ll need one, if you’re going to fight pigai.”

“Pig pie? Why would I fight pig pie? What is pig pie?” I looked around the room in awe.

The room had a domed ceiling and the walls were lined with weapons, all of them Chinese. I selected a huge knife with separated points. I remembered seeing some Chinese god statue carrying one from a trip to the museum, but I forgot who.

Kiwi told me, “We are Desiphai, which you’ll learn about later. I can’t tell you everything now, but I’ll put it in  a very depressing nutshell. There are a bunch of monsters and Desiphai Hunters out to get us, there are five Houses of Desiphai (Greek, Chinese, Roman, First Nation, and Egyptian), and we are the only surviving five. The other ones were destroyed by the pigai and their leader. This House is the Chinese House”

“Right,” I grumbled. “So again, why do I have to fight pig pie?”

Kiwi walked on. “Not pig pie. Pigai. Magical creatures with evil thoughts. They are minions of evil, with no ambition but to kill.”

“Nice guys.” I muttered. “Cheerful and kind.”

“Agreed.” Kiwi unlocked a door and ushered me through. “Very cheerful.”

The room was the strangest room I’ve ever seen, and that was saying something. The walls were solid stone, with moss creeping up them. There were fifteen statues of animals (also moss-covered) in the back of the room. There was a tiny pond full of yellow-tinted liquid in the center of the room with  tin cup beside it. In front of the pond was a small silk cushion. Sitting next to the pond was a girl, younger than Kiwi, but older than me. She had long blonde hair, green eyes, and the same getup as Kiwi, except her tank top, jacket, and jeans were a different colour: blue. She had a playful smile that lit up when she saw us.

“Finally. Been waiting a long time Kiwi. Thought you were taking the detour.” she had a slight Middle Eastern accent and even though her words were accusing, her eyes told us she was joking. She had a gentle, sad smile a lot like Kiwi’s and her eyes had the same dangerous but beautiful look as Kiwi’s. I wondered if they were sisters.

“Sorry, sis.” (I was right! They were sisters!) “We had to pick up weapons and then the tour, blah blah blah. But  yeah, we’re here.” she sat down next to the other girl.

The other girl picked up the cup and scooped it full of that weird liquid. She offered me the cup. “Drink. It will open your muo he.”

I stepped back. “Who are you, and why do I have to open a moo head?”

The other girl laughed. “All right, I’ll tell you. I’m Lendra of Lions, Lendra or Led for short, Kiwi’s sister. And this liquid is long niao, a powerful, ah, bladder liquid that opens your muo he, which is kind of like an eternal box full of power, strength and magic.”

Somehow, I understood what those words meant. “You want me to drink dragon pee???” No way. And I don’t have any magic!”

Lendra looked at me. “Ah, you still do not know?” she beckoned me over to the silk cushion and told me about everything.

“I am a Desiphent. So is Kiwi. Desiphent - Desiphai, for plural - are people/sorcerer/animal/natural element hybrids. Every single Desiphent controls something in nature. For example,” Lendra and Kiwi, almost simultaneously, pushed back their hair to reveal a tattoo on their forehead, “Kiwi controls plants” Kiwi had a leaf imprint on her head, “And I control animals.” Lendra had a griffin on her forehead.

“Lovely. So how many people are Desiphents in the world? Last time I checked, there  were only four natural elements. Fire, earth, water, and air. But now you tell me theirs plants and animals to? So are there like, a million elements? Cheese and Snapchat? Sad movies and Leonardo da Vinci paintings?”

“Actually, more than one Desiphent can control and element. In this school, there are twenty-seven Desiphai that can control animals, and thirty-one that control plants.” she stood up and placed the tin in my hand. “And no, Snapchat is not an element.”

“Then cheers.” I slurped down the pee and, to my surprise, it tasted more like ginger ale than dragon pee.

When I finished, I felt a burning sensation inside. I gasped. And then everything started to glow purple. There was a noise that sounded like glass breaking (Kiwi told me later it was my muo he opening and letting the power into my body), a searing pain in my forehead, and everything went black.

When I woke up, Lendra and Kiwi were staring at me like I had turned into a horrible monster (I had no doubt I did) and a bear was snoring at my feet.

Chapter Three: I receive a Belt of eternal messes

It took me a while to figure out what happened, and when I did,  I still didn’t believe it.

“So let me get this straight.” I was pacing the room, holding my forehead, which, judging from the heat, was smoking from the fireball that had (supposedly) hit my forehead and caused the pain (and smoke). “My eyes turned blue and started to glow purple, I rose of the ground in a bubble of red power, turned into a griffin with green eyes and golden yellow feathers and then exploded back into human and fell to the floor.” I wasn’t sure I had heard them right the first twenty-eight times. “And now,” I turned to face them. “I have a Desiphent tattoo???”

“And you got a Dona.” Lendra nudged the bear (which had gold wings). “Big honour.”

“I’ll name her Donna.” I said, scratching her under the chin. “But what about me turning into a griffin?”

Kiwi shrugged, a little scared, I think. “ The animal happens to all of us. Lendra turned into a brown lion with pink wings. But the tattoo. . . “ she handed me a mirror, which I reluctantly looked into.

“Oh, jeez. . .” on my forehead, there was the strangest mark ever. It looked like a stick man curling around a line of rocks, which curled around a griffin, which curled around a ring of fire, which curled around some leaves, which curled around a thin circle of purple which had a water droplet in the center.

(Too lengthy for you? Well, I’m sorry, but it’s the truth.)

“You’re a Multi.” KIwi shook her head solemnly. “And the center of your tattoo is a water droplet, which means your dad was. . .”

“Noooo. . .” Lendra stared at me, aghast. “Not Lord Aqpigain. Anyone but him.”

“It’s Aqpigain.” Kiwi looked at me sadly. Then she brightened. “Hey! You’re a Multi! A Multi!”

“A Multi! A Multi!” Lendra grabbed my arm  and pulled me back into Homeroom Hall. Donna padded after us. All the students were in the hall  now, many with animals.

“Listen up!” Kiwi’s voice boomed around the Hall. “Today we brought in a new recruit! Heimlich Hair, daughter of Marie Hair and Lord Aqpigain.” (that caused nervous mutterings and resentful glances at me)  “The good news is, that she is the first Water Desiphent since her father, which was a five-thousand-and-twelve-point-six-seven years ago, and she will (hopefully) use her strength for good.” The resentful looks and mutterings stopped. “And the better news is,” Kiwi was practically shouting with joy now, “She is a Multi! And we all know that the last Multi was her father - Lord Aqpigain himself!” Kiwi turned to me and said “As the Multi of the Ages of War, you are to lead your fellow Desiphai into battle.” she turned back to the crowd. “Let’s hope she doesn’t turn into a pig-human hybrid.”

Lendra looked me up and down. “We need to change your clothes, get the human taint of you. We also need to get you a Belt.”

“Belt? Okay, look here. I don’t even know what a Multi is and why do I need a belt? Plus, what on planet Mars is wrong with my clothes?” I was wearing a pair of yoga pants (with cheese stains from lunch on the plane) and a I <3 SEATTLE shirt from the time my mom drove me to Seattle for Spring Break (it was covered in orange juice stains, also from lunch on the plane).

“Honestly, Heimlich. I <3 SEATTLE? Really, and your clothes are covered in human food stains.” Kiwi shook her head. “They’ll have to go.”

“Fine by me,” I grumbled crossly. “But I don’t have other clothes.”

“Don’t worry,” Lendra was trying to make her way through the crowd. Everyone seemed to want to touch my tattoo. “They’ll be in your closet tomorrow morning.”

“Right,” I turned to Kiwi. “Now what is a Multi?”

“Ah, hai zi, the da jian has yet to tell you?” a voice that sounded unused to English rang through the Hall and all went quiet. A dude about eighteen pushed his way through.

The guy was obviously Chinese. He had slicked-back black hair and dark brown, almost black, eyes. He wore camo pants and a dirty white workout shirt. He had skin so pale, you could see his veins and bones underneath. His smile was friendly but their was a cruel look in his eyes.

“The da jian” he sneered at Kiwi, who looked like she wanted to fly towards him and rip his head of, “Is supposed to be yuan shuai while the Multi is gone, and to explain everything to her when she returns. But, alas! She has not fulfilled her oh-so-important duty. So, as Commander, I shall tell you.” (I did not like this guy).

“The Multi is a grand Desiphent with power over all the elements. You are the Multi. Thus, the da jian has lost her post as posing-yuan shuai. Thus, I suggest you send her back to her old jobs (which I have been taking care of for a while). Thus ---”

“Enough with the thuses.” Kiwi snapped, “Go away, Leefringe. And I suggest you actually start to study your english.” (The dude’s name was Leefringe? Okay. . . not the weirdest thing that I’ve learned today.)

Kiwi pulled me up a flight of spiral stairs muttering angrily. For the first time, I noticed that her military badge was World War || style but had chinese engravings all over it.

“Whoa,” I grabbed onto a railing to stop Kiwi from pulling me all the way to the sun. “Who was that dude? And what’s a yang shai, or whatever he said? And where, in the name of pears, are you taking me?!?!?”

Kiwi stopped trying to yank my arm out of it’s socket. “That was Leefringe Hagdin. Don’t trust anything he says. He’s the reincarnation of the  White Skeleton Lady, a Chinese monster. You can never trust monsters.”

“Excuse me if I’m deaf,” I said, “But did you just say the White Skeleton Lady? He. Is. A. Boy! Not a girl.”

Kiwi sighed. “Really, you have got to learn this if you’re the Multi. Gods and monsters can reincarnate into anything and anyone.” she looked me up and down. “Seeing as you are the only other Multi in all the Houses, you’re probably a reincarnation to. Our only other Multi, Ana Mels from the First Nations House, is the reincarnation of Raven.”

“Yup,” I muttered as Kiwi led me into a room. It was huge, and must’ve been over twelve feet long and ten feet wide. The walls were lined with jade and there was a long golden table down the middle carved with Chinese pictures of gods and monsters. At the end of the table, there was a jade box built perfectly into the gold of the table.

Kiwi unlocked the box with a key from her infinite ring of keys.

“Here,” she carefully picked up a belt carved out of jade  with an glowing purple amethyst set in the middle. “The Belt of the Multi.”

---------------

I gingerly took the Belt. It was lighter than I expected, and much more complicated.

The jade had been carved to make pockets in the belt and to make it look like a Chinese dragon curling around my waist.

“Ooh,” I said in awe. “This thing must be worth a hundred dollars!”

“More.” corrected Kiwi, “Much ,much more.”

She ran her fingers along the belt and took a thin leather cord out of a pocket. “Here,” she strapped it to my back. “You can use that to hold your blade.” she looked uncomfortably at the spear that I still held in my hand. “No one would choose that weapon, normally. It’s the san jian lian ren Blade of Er Lang. Er Lang is one of our most important and powerful gods, but he’s not exactly the nicest.” she said. “He was extremely unkind to the Monkey King, who is also a god. And by ‘unkind’, I mean fight-until-your-opponent-get’s-knocked-out-by-another- god-and-claim-the-glory-for-yourself.” she let out a long, deep growl that sounded uncannily like a gorilla’s.

“Right.” I strapped the blade to my back. “Er Lang: Mean guy.”

“Uh-huh.” Kiwi watched as I took a tiny glass jar full of blue liquid from another pocket. Her eyes widened as I started to take out the cork. “Uh, Heimlich, I wouldn’t ---”

Too late. The cork fell on the ground and the contents sprayed out onto the walls, the table, and the silver floor.

Kiwi looked at me with wide eyes.

“Sorry,” I stuffed the cork back into the bottle (containing the last few teaspoons of liquid) and stuffed it back in my Belt. “Maybe I can clean it up, I think I have a broom somewhere. . .”

“Nah,” Kiwi stepped over a puddle of stuff. “It’s Eternal Mess, supposed to be used for melting pigai. Never cleans up.”

“Oh.” I guiltily followed Kiwi out of the Eternal-Messified room.

Chapter Four: The Loft

I followed Kiwi through the courtyard, into another Chinese building (“Dorms,” Kiwi informed me), up the stairs, and stopped at a door.

I looked at the door. It was ebony carved with Chinese dragons and phoenixes. There was a battered sign on the door that read:

E’s The Loft

“Why are we going to a loft?” I asked Kiwi as she pushed open the door. “Aren’t we going to our dorm?”

“This is our dorm.”  Kiwi entered and I followed her in and I saw that it truly was a (I’m sorry, The) loft.

Well, rather four huge lofts around one big center room.

The first loft, I guessed was Kiwi’s. It was the same grey as her clothes, and had a queen-size pine-bed with green sheets on it. There were shelves in the back of the loft and a desk with a laptop on it it one corner. A closet sat in the other corner.

The other lofts were the same except for different colors. I recognized Lendra’s, but the other two were completely alien.

The first was done up sky-style, with sky-blue walls and fluffy cloud pillows. The carpet was soft and plush as mist.

The second one was mysterious. It had silver walls, and that’s all I could tell because there were huge silver doors leading to it, and no windows.

As far as I could tell there was nowhere for me to sleep, because their wasn’t any other lofts, and there were no rooms down here.

Kiwi nudged me. “Yours.”

I looked at the corner where she was pointing and my heart sank.

A dusty king-sized bed sat in the center of the chamber, with a filthy chest at it’s feet. A rickety old closet, that was creaking on the claw-feet it rested on, was wedged between the wall and the bed so that it could only open one of it’s doors. There was nothing on the bed except for a dusty blanket, which burst into a cloud of dust the second I touched it.

“Um. . . you don’t have anything else, do you? A suite, maybe?”

“No, missy, we don’t have suites here. You’ve gotta deal with this.” she grunted as she pried open the dirty chest.

I shrieked as a huge spider-with-a-pig’s-face climbed out of it and hissed at us.

I stared in horror and screamed, “What is that doing in the chest? I thought that this was a school, not a suicide house!”

Kiwi looked equally shocked as the spider-with-a-pig’s-face began to grow until it could hardly fit in the room anymore.

It lashed a long golden tongue out at me that would have been beautiful if it hadn’t grabbed me and threw me against the wall.

I fell onto the ground and gasped. The impact had shot a burst of major ows through my body and had seriously hurt.

Kiwi uttered some words that Mr. Means would have washed her mouth out with soap for and pulled out her bow.

I staggered up, drew my knife, and charged towards the monster which let out a horrible scream every time an arrow made contact with it’s horrible black body.

I drove my knife into a leg, then was forced to let go as the creature howled and shook it’s leg. My blade fell at the floor next to my feet in to pieces.

Great. I’ve only been here an hour and I’ve already ruined a room and broke an ancient relic.

I was still feeling sorry for myself when a streak of silver flew across the room. It scrambled up one of the spider’s legs and drove something into it’s neck.

The thing screamed in pain and it slowly began to shrink, until all that was left of it was a confused little piglet looking around with a freaked out expression on it’s face.

I couldn’t resist. I bent down and picked it up. It took a long look at me with big, black eyes, sighed, and went to sleep. Donna growled with betrayal, so I patted her head to make her feel better.

The streak of silver settled down and I could see clearly that it was a young woman about nineteen or twenty. She wore white robes, a silver circlet, runners, and had a stickman on her forehead.  She had a playful light in her eyes as she bent down and picked something up from the ground.

“Spider pelt.” she handed it to me. “They’re really comfortable, and it can be used as a blanket.” she extended a hand to me. “By the way, I’m E.”

Chapter Five: E’s diary

That night, I lay on the (lumpy) old bed, covered with the, amazingly scratchy, spider pelt.

I couldn’t believe what had happened. Suddenly I’m some supernatural being with powers over trees, water, and blah blah blah?

And I couldn’t believe what had happened after E had appeared.

While Kiwi was fussily putting the pelt on the bed and telling Lendra, who had just come in, to “Tuck the edges in and do it neatly”, I talked to E.

“Who are you?” I asked as E unlocked the door to her loft where we could ‘talk peacefully’.

“E Hagdin. Reincarnation of the goddess Chang-E. But everyone calls me E.” she plopped down on her bed and motioned to a wall covered in pictures. But the main attraction was a shelf that had a, can you believe it, crown on it. “Or rather, Queen E.”

I stared at her. “You’re joking.”

“Nope.” E leaned so close I could smell her orangy-scented shampoo. “I’m not.” she frowned as her eyes fell on my tattoo (not literally, but you know what I mean). “At least until you arrived.”

“What do you mean?” I asked self-consciously. “What did I do?”

“Either the most powerful or highest ranking reincarnation is the leader, either as Emperor or Queen. I’ve been both the highest ranking officer and most powerful and highest ranking reincarnation for almost five thousand years.” she narrowed her eyes as she looked me up and down, taking in my clothes. “But as you’re the Multi, you are immediately put before me.”

“Hold it,” I held up my hands.”Did you say five thousand years???”

“Almost.”

“But how? You would be a skeleton!”

“Desiphai are immortal. We can’t die naturally.”

Whoa. A moment ago, she looked like she wanted to offer me tea and cookies. Now she looked like she wanted to skewer me the same way she had done to the spider-turned-piglet.

“Hold on.” I held up my hands. “I don’t want to be Emperor or Queen, et cetera et cetera.”

“You don’t?” E looked relieved suddenly.

“I don’t. I promise.”

“Okay.” then her face hardened. “You’ll have to make a revoking speech tomorrow at our annual meeting. My brother is not going to like that.”

“Why?”

“He’s wanted to be the Emperor forever. But he can’t. He’s just a lowly monster’s reincarnation.” E’s lip curled at the thought of her brother. “But he get’s to be the prime minister, because he’s my brother.”

“Oh.” I started to ask another question, when Lendra banged on the door shouting, “Hey big shot! The Multi’s gotta go to bed now. Classes start at five in the morning!”

“The last member of our group will be here in the morning.” E assured me as she handed me a toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, and pj’s.

“‘Kay.”

Now, as I lay in bed I replayed the day over and over again, marvelling at the strangeness.

And why was the bed so lumpy?!?!?

I couldn’t stand it anymore. I got up and lifted the mattress, half-expecting another spider monster.

But instead of a monster, there was a little book with faded text on the cover. Jeez. Whoever put that there was not very considerate about the future people that would sleep in the bed.

I sat up and started flipping through the pages. The book must have been pretty old, because most of the letters were too faded to read, and some pages crumbled to dust the second I touched them.

I couldn’t read anything, except for the last page.

It said:

May Seventeenth, 0815

The Eve of my faults

I really don’t get it. What is UP with my brother? He is SUCH A snob, now that we know we’re reincarnations.

(Also explains why we look ZERO percent the same)

Anyways, Leefringe is the reincarnation of the White Skeleton Lady (I laughed at him for that until he summoned a wall of bones around me, which would’ve be cool around someone else but around me. . . ) and I am the reincarnation of. . . Chang-E! The Chinese goddess of the moon!

And I WOULD be queen (I am SO many stages higher than my brother. I mean, I’m a goddess. He’s a skeleton person.), if it weren’t for Alaina Silverstar. She’s the reincarnation of the Monkey King. The MONKEY KING!!! The greatest god/hero/legend in Chinese Mythology! And according to those rules, a Desiphent may only be an Emperor or Queen if they are a Multi or have a rank HIGHER than the presiding Multi.

And guess what?

Alaina’s a Multi too.

How am I EVER going to beat THAT?

There’s only one thing I can do.

I just hope no one ever discovers the crimes. . .

The diary ended there.

I wiped the dust of the cover, and saw the words clearly.

They were,

E’s Diary

I couldn’t sleep that night.

Because one thing was certain.

E had committed a horrible crime against the old Queen, someone named Alaina, and if I didn’t resign, then she would do it to me, too.

Oh, and also: Leefringe is E’s brother?????

Chapter Six:

A startling discussion

I dragged myself out of bed the next morning at 3:00  a.m., as Kiwi had insisted.

I pulled myself over to the closet, which, as Lendra had said it would. I expected them to be just like the other Desiphai’s.

I was right.

There were the tank tops, shorts, and boots, except this time, the boots were work boots and they were my favorite color, black. Good for you, closet.

I was just reaching in for a pair of socks, when my fingers brushed against something that felt. . . metallic.

I pushed the clothes aside, revealing socks and a silver box. Where the lock was supposed to be on the box, there was a book-shaped indentation, instead.

I touched the indentation, and a strange sense of deja vu ran through me, as if I had the answer. I took a closer look at the lock, and I realized why it looked so familiar.

The diary

E’s diary, to be exact. The diary would fit right into the indentation.

I carefully took the diary out of the bedside table where I had stashed it last night, and with shaking hands, pressed it into the indentation.

There was a silent but bright flash of golden light, and the box and diary began to change. The box started turning a soft shade of green, and the diary looked like it was peeling of it’s layers.

After a while, the diary was no longer a diary and the box was no longer silver. The bow was now a lovely jade and the diary was a key.

And on the box, there was a keyhole.

I put the key into the lock, and turned.

The lid of the box opened silently, I looked inside and saw the most beautiful gown ever.

It was a black silk Chinese gown with a grey sash around it’s waist. There were golden dragons imprinted around it.

I looked into the box and saw something else glint at the bottom. I stuck my hand in and pulled out a shiny silk bag. Excitedly, I opened it, but all that was inside was a bunch of golden dust.

I was tempted to dump the dust, but I didn’t. There was something powerful about the dust. Mysterious and magical.

I did the only thing that came to mind. I put it into my Multi belt.

Good timing, too. Kiwi had just poked her head out of her loft.

“Ah, you’re up.” Kiwi was wearing basically the same clothes as yesterday, except that today she had on Chinese armor and her hair was in a long braid, coiled neatly at the back of her head like a ginormous bun.

“Uh, yeah.” I stood up and tripped on my too-small work boots. “And, um, there’s a box in my closet’ I added dumbly.

“Indeed there is. All Desiphai have them.” Kiwi ran her fingers over the box. “Blessings from the gods.”

Kiwi lifted the gown and placed it on my bed. “You’re going to wear it at the meeting after classes.”

That caught my attention. “Hold on, I thought the school was just a cover for some giant magical war base thingamob!”

Kiwi smiled. “Technically, yes. It is a giant magical war base. But we also have classes. There are normal classes, like Math and Science, but there are also Desiphai classes, like Monster Fighting 101 and Water Control. For the first year, your schedule is the same as mine. But as you’re the Multi, you have special Saturday classes, just to work on your powers.”

“I’m already in love with this place. Do I have to wear armor to?”

“Yeah, you do. Today we have History of Desiphai, Monster Fighting 101, Blade Techniques, Geography, Potions, and Doge-Arrow. Most of those classes need armor. Oh, and here’s a copy of our schedule that’s in better shape.” she handed me a slightly-burnt piece of paper that smelled suspiciously like long niao. I looked it over.

Monday: History of Desiphai Monster Fighting 101, Blade Techniques, Geography, Potions, and Doge-Arrow, and/or meetings.

Tuesday: Science, Music, Arrow Shooting, Defense, Spells, and How-To-Send-You-Animal-to-Mt. Umai- Without-Blowing-Anything-Up, and/or meetings.

Wednesday: Invisibility 101, Excuses 101, Woodshop, Drama, Sword Fighting, and Horseback Riding, and/or meetings.

Thursday: Survival, Dodge-Arrow, Math, Library, Home Ec., and Blade Techniques, and/or meetings.

Friday: Pet Care, Art, Reading, Spelling, Desiphai-Hunter Fighting, and/or meetings

And at the bottom of the page:

Saturday: Multi Classes in hurried scrawling.

“Beautiful.” I grumbled, stuffing the schedule into an empty pocket in my belt. “What’s a Desiphai Hunter?”

Kiwi sighed and said quietly. “The name says it all. The’re Desphai, recruited by Lord Aqpigain to hunt other Desiphai.” A tear trickled out of her scarred eye. “My father was a Desiphai Hunter. My mother was a Desiphent. He killed my mom when Lendra and I were babies. We never knew her. He discovered we were Desiphai when I was six. He tried to kill us too. We escaped, grew up on the streets, learned to fend for ourselves, and, eventually, found our way to Kandy Kane Middle.”

She wiped the tear away. “The Hunters are vicious, bloodthirsty savages.” She looked me in the eye. “Your father was the first.”

“I’m so sorry, Kiwi.” I said. I was sad for Kiwi, disgusted with the Hunters.

And deep inside of me, there was a fiery ball of rage. I put all of my anger into that ball. Anger at Mr. Mean for getting me into this mess. Anger at E for whatever she did to Alaina. Anger at the Desiphai Hunters for abandoning their lives to kill us. And most importantly, anger at my father, whom I’d never known. For starting the Hunters. For the pigai. For the pain and misery he had brought to all the Desiphai.

Oh, and did I mention for abandoning me when I was a newborn and leaving me with  psycho mother who named me after a medical thing???

Yeah. Definitely that.

I gritted my teeth. I turned to Kiwi. I looked her in the eye.

“We are going to defeat my dad. I don’t care what I have to do. I am going to capture him and avenge your parents.”

She looked at me doubtfully, which I’m not going to blame her for, since it looked like i was wrestling with my boots (I was actually trying to get them on my feet).

Kiwi looked at her boots. “Heimlich, I appreciate what you want to do to avenge my parents. But, well, you aren’t going to be exactly capturing your father.”

“No? Then what am I going to do?”

Kiwi took a deep breath. “If we are going to win this war, you are going to have to kill him.”

I stopped trying to strangle my shoes. “Say what now?”

I knew from what the Desiphai had said that Lord Aqpigain a.k.a. my father was a bad dude, but, kill him? I couldn’t do that. I mean, all of my Desiphent DNA is his. Killing him would just be uncalled for.

“Don’t think about it like that.” Kiwi looked at me sympathetically. Think about all the Desiphai he’s killed.”

I did, and I felt much better.

I gave her a strained smile. “Well. Let’s get to classes, shall we?”

Chapter Seven:

The most Fabulous school day ever (not)!

After Kiwi had helped me get into my armor, we headed of to class.

I took another look at my schedule, and asked Kiwi,

“Why don’t we have the times on the schedule?”

“We have to improvise, a lot.” Kiwi explained, as she led me through the courtyard and into another building (the sign over the door said it was the “Literature Building” in English, Chinese, Greek, Latin, and hieroglyphics). “So we don’t really put the times down. We just do them in that order and as soon as we’re done the last class, boom. Our day is over.”

“This place is so organized.” I grumbled under my breath, as we entered the building.

Surprisingly, the building was only the size of a temple, and it only had one classroom. The classroom didn’t look like a classroom either. It looked like, well, a temple.

A classroom that someone had added some stuff too.

Where the statue wa supposed to be, there was one of those computerized SMART boards and a computer. Where theaintings were supposed to be, there were bookshelves. They had also added some happy slogan posters, like “Keep Calm and Kill Pigai”, and “When Life gives you Lemons, make Lemonade”.

Where the little bowing places were supposed to be, there were the little bowing places.

Except they all had pencils, papers, nametags, and books on them.

Kiwi sat down in one with this nametag:

KIWI AZLEM LEPITOOTI ANIBALL - HIST

So that was Kiwi’s real name.

K.A.L.A.H?

Really?

Of course, mine wasn’t much better.

There was a girl at the front of the room, rifling through the contents of a desk and muttering to herself.

When she lifted her head, I nearly fainted.

She had smooth, chocolate colored hair and silver-green eyes. (Come to think of it, everyone I’d saw here had silvery eyes. Including mine, except mine were pure silver. Maybe it was a Desiphent thing). But what shocked me the most was she was younger than me!!!

Kiwi leaned over and whispered “The more senior Desiphai teach here.”

“Got it.”  I said, straightening as the Desiphent started calling names off of  a list.

I braced myself as she reached the end of the list and called out:

“Heimlich Maneuver Litopa-Mikit-Sikit Minoit Hair Aqpigain.”

Everyone looked around worriedly when she said Aqpigain, and their eyes fell on me.

I grinned, and I must’ve looked pretty creepy, because everyone grimaced (Kiwi told me later that I looked like a dragon being stabbed in the gut).

“Hi, Heimlich. I’m Adriana. I’m here from the Egypt house, and just here for today’s meeting. After that I’m going back to Alaska.”

I blinked. “But Alaska’s nearly halfway across the world from Egypt!”

The other Desiphai snickered, but Adriana silenced them with a glare. “You know, this would be a really History of Desiphai lesson.

“Desiphai come from every corner of  the world where there’s magic. But we only have control over magic from our corner of the earth.

“The Houses used to be located in those corners.”

A dark look covered her face. “But a few thousand years ago, when there were still hundreds of Houses, the Houses began losing there magic. A very certain Queen of the House of China cast a spell on the Houses, so that when the Desiphai of that House came close to the place where his or her magic was from, the place would absorb their magic and, thus, drain the Desiphent.”

(Was it my imagination, or was she glowering at Kiwi?)

A blonde-haired Desiphent at the back of the room raised his hand. “ So, Adriana, would that mean that if a mission took someone from, say, the Roman House to Florence, would their magic still be drained?”

Adriana looked surprised. “That’s a very good question. Yes, their magic would still be drained. But very slowly.”

The blonde Desiphent nodded solemly.

Adriana opened her mouth again, but she was cut off by a bell.

“Gosh, is class over already?” Adriana glanced at her watch.

“Alright, class over!” Adriana pulled a cucumber out of her pocket and started crunching.

I approached“Um, excuse me, but why were you glaring at Kiwi?”

She glanced at me. “You can ask Miss Silverstar about that.” she pointed at Kiwi, who was lingering at the door.

I frowned.  Silverstar. . . Where had I had heard that before?

I shook my head. Nothing to worry about.

I ran after Kiwi. There was something I needed to ask her.

---------

“Why was she glowering?” Kiwi said. “Adriana‘s just a grumpy person. You don’t need to worry.”

I could tell she wasn’t convinced.

The rest of the day was a blur. In Monster Fighting 101, I was bonked on the head by a robot pigai. In Blade Techniques, Leefringe nearly cut my arm off. In Geography, I couldn’t remember how many cities were in Italy. In Potions, I almost blew up the garbage can.

The only thing I’m good at is Dodge-Arrow. We use these nubbed arrows that can’t kill but can really hurt. I dodged every arrow, hit E about sixty times, and was the first one to hit Lendra.

By the time we were supposed to have the meeting, I was so tired I could hardly keep my eyes open, much less get into my ‘formal attire’, as E stated.

When we were ready to leave, I glanced back at the empty sky-blue loft.

“Who’s there?” I asked Lendra as we walked to the meeting room.

“Azweln Hazweln Traszweln.” Lendra answered. “She’s the best spiritualist at school.” she sighed. “She doesn’t have any classes. She spends ninety-nine percent of the day in the spirit room, the room where you got Donna. She spends most of that time in a trance, and the rest of that time ‘conversing’ with the spirits, gods, and fish.”

“Fish???”

“Don’t laugh. They’re very spiritual creatures.

“Anyway, we’ll see Azweln at the meeting.”

“Okay.”

With a feeling of complete dread, I pushed open the door and entered the meeting room.

Chapter Eight:

A meeting with the Council

Even though the room was gargantuan, the twenty-five people (yes, I  counted) that occupied it could hardly fill up a seventh of the room.

I looked around. I recognized Adriana, E, and Leefringe, but no one else.

E sat on a gilded gold throne at the head of the room and Leefringe sat next to her on a smaller ,ebony chair, which I guess he get’s the right to, seeing as he’s the prime minister.

Kiwi sat down next to a girl that looked like a hippie. She had on a tye-dyed dress, peace sign headbands, leather bracelets, and a few beads braided into her hair, which was had rainbow streaks in it. She had a rock on her forehead. Her eyes were solid silver, like me, but hers seemed to. . . glow?

She smiled at me and motioned to a chair next to her, which I reluctantly sat on.

I looked around at the other people around me and almost had a heart attack.

All these Desiphai looked like, well, Desiphai. I don’t know how, but  I could sense a heavy layer of magic in this room, so sensitive that even a bee could set it off.

All the Desiphai looked powerful. Very powerful. Most of them were in the armor of their culture. The ones who weren’t wore robes. And almost everyone was doing something.

Some people were arguing. Others were using their cell phones or reading. Leefringe was doing something on a Macbook, and E was trying to peek over his shoulder. Lendra was sticking a pin in a football. The hippie girl was eating a peach.

A tall guy in Greek armor stood up. “All right, E. This isn’t my House, so I can’t call the meeting to order, but you can. Actually, you must.”

“Jeez, Marcus, I’m doing it! Picky, picky.” E stood up and Marcus immediately plopped down on his chair.

“So, yeah. Meeting on. Anyone want to start the Who’s-the-sky-god argument this time?”

A guy with a feather in his hair started to raise his hand, saw E was joking, and let it drop.

“The actual thing today, is that we have a new recruit.” E motioned to me. “This is Heimlich. . .” she looked a t me pleadingly. “Full name, please?”

“Heimlich Maneuver Litopa-Mikit-Sikit Minoit Hair Aqpigain.” I could feel my face redining.

“Um, okay. So, we have Heinlich Maneuver Litopa-Mikit-Sikit Minoit Hair Aqpigain as our new recruit, and everyone, please take a close look at her forehead.”

Everyone took a close look at my forehead.

The first Desiphent to talk was a girl who must’ve been the pharaoh from Egypt (read: Alaska) since she was wearing the robes and stuff. She jumped up shouting “Sweet Anubis! Oh, my god. A Multi. Multi!!! Multi!” she pulled a paper bag from her pocket and started breathing into it.

A girl with a purple cape and roman armor frowned. “Pharoah Kaiah, I must remind you that this is a meeting. You are not to be breathing into paper bags at a meeting.”

“And you, Praetor Maina, know perfectly well that Kaiah has asthma and cannot find her inhaler.” Leefringe reminded Maina. She huffed and crossed her arms.

“We’re all curious.” the guy-with-the-feather said. “My chief would be very interested in the other Multi.”

I remembered what Kiwi had told me about the other Multi. “Ana Mels, reincarnation of Birdie?”

The guy-with-the-feather looked surprised. “Raven. But how did you know?”

I shrugged. “Lucky geuss. Why isn’t she here?”

“She broke her leg and is weak enough. And then a certain Desiphent calls a meeting in Canada. She’d be drained until she was a skeleton.” he glanced at Leefringe. “Uh, no offense.”

“Uh-huh. Not interested. Now, E. You know perfectly well that a Multi is put before you as Queen.” Marcus gave E a look. “So it’s time for you to get off that fancy chair, and give the spot to Heimlich something.”

Other Desiphai started shouting. E held up her hands and calmly said, “Unless she resigns.” she grinned at me. And I could feel her working her way into my brain. That must’ve been what the stickfigure meant. Control over the human body. Well two could play at that game. I used my stickfigure power and blocked her.

I stood up, and calmly said. “I accept the job.”

E’s jaw fell until it was nearly on the ground. Leefringe, holding back a laugh, reached over and snapped it shut.

“Something else.” I took the bag of dust out of my Belt and everyone gasped. Kaiah leaned forward with her mouth agape. “Do you know what this is?”

I nodded. “I think so. My dad made it, didn’t he?”

E, scowling at me, nodded. “The scroll of Aqpigain. He made it with his mentor.” he pointed at Kiwi. “Didn’t he?”

Kiwi nodded. “Yes. He made it with me. But I didn’t help much. I just helped.”

My eyes widened. “Is it magic?”

Kiwi nodded. “It normally tells the chosen Desiphent where to go, maps, important notes, people to find, and shopping lists.”

I looked at the powder and tossed it on the table. The dust formed a shimmering gold scroll.

I looked at the scroll, and slowly a message formed on the scroll, which I read aloud (with a little difficulty).

“A mission of nine

to Australia to find Aqpigain.

A year at the most,

is all you can risk.”

I frowned. “Australia?”

“That’s where he’s set up his base.” Lendra explained. “And about the mission of nine, well, that obviously means nine Desiphai. And, a year at the most. . .” she shook her head. “That’s impossible. You’ll have to travel all day.”

“Can’t we just take a plane?” I asked.

“NO!!!!!!!!!!!!” Everyone in the room cried, jumping up.

“Aqpigain has control over the air.” E explained (still scowling).

“Ah. A boat then?”

Marcus bit his lip. “You’ll have to travel by both land and water.”

“Okay.” I looked at Kiwi. “But, wait. If I’m the Queen now, then who will take care of Kandy Kane?” I looked at Lendra. “Um. . .”

“Glad to.” Lendra smiled.

“Um, who’s coming?”

Kiwi frowned, but said: “I’ll go.”

“Okay. Two down. Seven to go.”

Marcus volunteered. So did Kaiah, Maina, Adriana, and the guy-with-the-feather (his name turned out to be Lin).

I counted on my fingers. “That’s five. We need four more.”

The hippie girl smiled. “I will. I’m Azweln.”

So this was the famous spiritualist. A hippie.

“One more.” I said.

Leefringe stood up, surprising us all. “I’ll go.”

Everyone stared at him.

“You?” Kiwi looked aghast.

“He stared at her distastefully. “Yes, me.”

“What about lessons?” I asked. “I’ve only had a day of them.”

“We’ll teach you on the way.” Azweln replied.

Marcus nodded solemly. “Very well. We leave idmmediately.”

Chapter Nine:

The Mission

Before leaving for the mission, we had to pack.

I checked the scroll, which had a list of things we needed to bring.

Canned Food

Bug repellent

Water bottles

Maps

Collapsible Tents

Pots and Pans

Weapons

Three things happened while we were packing.

Thing one: E cornered me in a corner (duh).

“Why didn’t you resign?” she hissed. “I thought we had an agreement.”

“I know that you did something to Alaina.” I countered. “And that you shouldn’t be Queen.”

“Alaina? How did you know?”

“Your diary.”

“By Muo Ye, you read my diary?” E shook her head. Then she sighed. “All right. I did do it. But that doesn’t mean I feel sorry about it.” her hand reached for her sword. “And I’d be more than happy to do it again.”

Luckily, she didn’t have time to do. . . whatever she was going to do, because Kiwi called across the room, “Heinlich, do you happen to have a spare pillow? Lulu Pink Lemonade seems to have carried mines off.”

E hissed and melted into a shadow which, truth be told, wasn’t the strangest thing I’ve seen these few days.

Thing two: My reincarnation.

After we had packed up, Kiwi and I walked down to the foyer which is where the mission team would meet.

Something kept nagging at me. Finally, I asked Kiwi about it.

“Kiwi?”

“Hmm?”

“Who’s my reincarnation?”

“Erlang.”

I stopped. “Hold it. First, how do you know, and second, Erlang???”

“I knew ever since you picked up that blade in the armory. Reincarnations always pick up their gods’ weapon.”

“Oh.” I felt a little embarrassed. “And, uh, about that blade. . .”

“I know. You need another weapon.” she frowned. “But you can’t just grab a random weapon. I guess you’ll have to just use magic.”

“Yippee.”

Thing three: Mass unorganization.

Things got chaotic as soon as we met in the foyer.

Everyone had brought things that other people thought were unnecessary.  Marcus said that we wouldn’t need a map of Europe, since we couldn’t go there with quite a few Desiphai from Europe in the group, and I countered that we wouldn’t need a fire extinguisher, and Leefringe told Kaiah to drop the iPod.

Finally this is the inventory we drew up:

Leefringe: Canned beans, soup, and meat. Map of Africa and Canada. Spear. Water bottle. A collapsible tent.

Kiwi: Canned peas and corn. Map of New York. Ten daggers, bow, and arrows. Water bottle. Two sleeping bags.

Marcus: Canned soup and beef jerky. Two sleeping bags. Battle axe. Water bottle. Map of USA.

Kaiah: Map of South America. Two sleeping bags. Sword. Water bottle.

Maina: Canned mushrooms. Dagger. Water bottle. Three sleeping bags.

Lin: Spear. Water Bottle. Three pillows. Kaiah’s iPod. Meter-long chain.

Azweln: Staff. Slingshot and marbled. Three pillows. Mosquito repellent. Pet fish named Freshman.

Adriana: Chinese knife. S’more’s kit. Matches and lighter. Survival book. Slug killer.

Me: Three pillows. S’more’s kit. Marcus’s fire hydrant. Canned lunch meat.

“Let’s go!” I cried.

And we were off.

Chapter Ten:

TFTHTSWHTSCOTHE (The Failure Too Hail a Taxi, so we have to steal a car only to have it explode)

We walked and walked and walked until we reached a small town, and that was where Azweln flopped onto the ground.

“This is exhausting. How long have we been walking?”

I checked the Scroll. “Um, about three hours since leaving Kandy Kane.”

“You’re kidding me. We can’t walk all the way to Australia. In fact, we can’t even walk from Burnaby to Coquitlam!” Marcus groaned, flopping down next to Azweln.

I frowned. Something about that name was familiar. . . “This town is called Coquitlam?”

Leefringe nodded. “Shi de, hai zi. We are in Coquitlam.”

I grinned. “I know where we are. My mom took me here once.” I hopped up. “We can hail a taxi, and it can take us to Vancouver. It’s a city west of Coquitlam. We can get on a boat from there.”

Lin leaned forwards. “Vancouver, huh? Maybe we could head over. I heard there are a lot of Desiphai living there.” he winced. “At least my magic’s not that strong, or else I’dd be a shrivelled husk by now. I mean, we’re in Canada.”

Kaiah nodded. “We need to get to Vancouver fast. We can talk to some of the Desiphai living there, and then get on a boat that could take us to Africa.”

“One problem, though.” I looked around. “There aren’t exactly a lot of taxi’s, You need to call one to get one.”

So we stood on the side of the road and waited.

And waited.

And waited

After about an hour, Maina sighed. “We can’t get a taxi. It’s imposible.”

Kiwi nodded. “Looks like we’ll have to walk to Vancouver.”

I shook my head. “No, I just remembered. There are trains here called SkyTrains. The closest station is in Lougheed. We could just. . .” I looked around. “Any ideas?”

Maina shrugged. “A car?”

I turned to her. “But we don’t have a. . .” and I saw Kiwi climbing into a limo parked at the curb.

“Kiwi! We can’t just steal a car!” but everyone was already clambering inside.

What choice did I have?

I got in.

———————

Kiwi was at the wheel, driving like a maniac, swerving here and there, left and right, and in between other cars. The weird thing was, we couldn’t feel the motion in the limo, and the other cars didn’t seem to notice us.

“So, Lougheed, right? Adriana, can you come up here and help me with the map? I don’t think it likes me very much. And also, for the rest of you, there’s a fridge back there. Help yourselves.” Kiwi did a three-sixty around a yellow Toyota and went to the left of a Cadillac.

While Adriana was holding the Scroll open, the rest of us compared notes and pigged out on Lays, candy, PBJ sandwiches, and drinks.

“What I don’t understand is,” Leefringe took a swig of cider. “How are we going to get a boat all the way to Australia?”

Azweln was digging through a bag of Skittles. “We don’t. We take it to South America via Panama Canal and then figure something out over there.”

Kaiha shook her head. “To risky. That’s to close to Egypt. I’m an Egyptian pharaoh, for Anubis’s sake. I’d probably be a shattered teacup before we were even at Panama.”

I banged my head against the wall, and instantly regretted it. I rubbed my head as I said. “What we really need to worry about is supplies. We need enough for about a year, not to mention that I don’t even have a weapon.”

Maina sighed as she chewed her vine-cheese pizza. “We’ll have to go shopping, then, and hope that the clerks aren’t Desiphai hunters or pigai.”

As soon as she said that, the limo exploded.

Chapter Eleven:

An interesting Injury

I was unconscious for about ten minutes. Then Lin yanked me out from underneath and shouted:

“Holy Raven, are you okay?”

I stood up shakily. The limo was in pieces, and I heard police sirens in the distance.

“Come on! We’ve gotta go.” Adriana dragged me into some woods nearby.

Leerlinge was poking at a campfire, and Kiwi was trying (in vain) to set up her collapsable tent.

“No, Kiwi, you do not pull that string. You pull this one. No not that one, no, not that one either!” Adriana was shaking her head and groaning as Marcus strangled himself with his fire hydrant hose.

“Um, apologies people, but have you guys ever been camping before?” I sighed as I looked at the chaos around me.

Everyone looked at each other, blinked, looked at me, shrugged, and said “Nope,” simulaetously.

I grinned. “Well, I have. Let me help you guys out.”

I helped Kiwi set up the two collapsable tents we had brought, than doused Leefringe’s fire, telling him he was going to burn down the campsite if he set it up like that. I helped him dig a proper campfire pit, and put Marcus’s fire hydrant next to it.

Once we were done with the camping stuff, we sat around the fire to take inventory.

We hadn’t managed to get much stuff from the limo, but Maina still had two boxes of pizza (vine-cheese and pepperoni), Lin had twelve wrapped roast-beef sandwiches, Leefringe had a few bottles of cider, and Azweln had three bags of Skittles.

While Maiina handed around the pizza, I checked the Scroll, and told everyone: “The Scroll advises that we rest for now. And, um, it also said that there’s someone injured in our group.”

Kiwi shifted uncomfortably. “Heimlich. . . I think the Scroll meant you.”

I didn’t get her until I looked down at myself. “Oh, my god. . .”

There was a burn mark on my left calf, and it was slowly, but surely, creeping up my leg and onto my torso. My hair — normally so clean — was now matted and burnt and shrivelling up.

“What?” I couldn’t see my face, but I could feel a sharp pain in my nose, like someone had hooked it and was pulling it forwards.

“A pigai burn.” Marcus looked like he was about to faint. “The most deadly projectile ever known to man. . . and not man. It’s how pigai are made.”

“Hold on.” I held up my hands, and was shocked to see the left was turning into a hoof. “Ya’ mean I’m turning into a pigai?!? Is it healable?”

Leefringe nodded. “Shi de, but it’s very difficult, and will take up all of my energy.

“The White Skeleton Lady is a creature of death,” he continued, “and it is only suitable that I — as her reincarnation — shall fix this mess. For a pigai transformation is rather like killing the soul and replacing the body.”

“Great.” I gulped, aware just now of all the power Leefringe held.

He knelt in front of me, placed his hands on my burn (which hurt so much that I closed my hand into a fist and extinguished the fire with my fire Desiphent part) and began to chant.

As he chanted, I noticed changes overtaking his body. His dirty, grey clothes turned into flowing white robes, and he turned into a girl. . . well, he looked like he turned into a girl.

In reality, the girl was just a fuzzy image in Leefringe. It’s kind of like drawing a person on a pane of glass, and then having someone stand behind it. What I saw was like that.

The girl had long, flowing, black hair that floated around her face like silk. Her face was white as a bleached skull, and when she looked at me, her eyes seemed to bore into me, like she was calculating my entire life. I had a feeling this was the White Skeleton Lady.

After about twelve minutes of chants, Leefringe stood up, his face paler than before and his eyes bloodshot. “Okay. . . rest. . . sleep. . . should be better. . . tomorrow morning. . .” and with that, he collapsed in the dirt and began to snore.

While Marcus carried Leefringe into the tent, I turned to the others, and feeling much better, shouted, “But I’m supposed to learn! You’re supposed to teach me!”

Azweln rubbed her head and groaned. “Your lesson is this, stay away from pigai burns. Now get some rest. You heard Leefringe.” and she shooed me into the tent.

I lay down in my sleeping bag, across the tent from Leefringe (who was muttering about gummy bears and unicorns) and fell asleep before my head reached the pillow — or the ground, as my pillow was still in my bag.

Chapter Twelve:

Gan Jiang

In my dream, I was standing on a mountain, in heavy Chinese robes and heavier Chinese armour. My Multi Belt was still around my waist, but hanging on the side was an empty scabbard. I looked around and everything seemed. . . sharper. More in focus. I blinked, and was surprised to feel three eyelids close instead of two.

I was Erlang.

There was a snicker to my left. “This is all you could do, eh Erlang?”

I whirled around, and almost fell of the cliff. There, crouching and eating a peach was. . . a monkey.

“Who, what, when, where, why, how. . .”

The monkey chuckled. “Don’t remember me old friend?” he stood up, but he was still about a foot shorter than me (I’m pretty tall for my age).

He pounded his chest. “I’m the Monkey King! We’ve fought before! You nearly flattened this place before, remember?”

I opened my mouth to tell him, no, I did not, and never will remember whatever he was talking about, but instead, I said “Apologies, Monkey. But my new reincarnation is a little slow in mind. I even broke the Knife.” then I clapped my hands over my mouth and screamed, because my voice was deeper, gruffer, stronger, and more manly.

Monkey laughed and replied, “Aah, Erlang, you broke the Knife? You truly are slow. Now, what is your non-god name?”

I gulped. “Heimlich Hair.” I squeaked. “My name’s Heimlich Hair.”

Monkey shook his head. “That is a truly sorry name, Heimlich Hair, daughter of Aqpigain.”

“How did you know that the pig man is my dad?”

Monkey spread his hands. “It’s obvious. Just watch. . .”

He suddenly threw his arm out, and a wave of water rammed towards me. I hopped out of the way and rolled behind a boulder. I punched out at the water, and it splashed to the ground harmlessly, no bigger than a raindrop.

Monkey raised his eyebrows. “I must say, I’m impressed.”

“Enough, Monkey Head.” Erlang — that is, I— grumbled. “Where is the sword?”

Monkey laughed. “My, my, Erlang! You certainly are pushy today!”

“I was nearly turned into a pigai.” I snapped. “Now, where is it?”

His expression turned serious. “You must be warned, Heimlich Hair/Erlang. This sword is one of the most important in the world. Wield it well.”

I — that is, Erlang— thrust my hand out expectantly, but instead, a sword materialized in my scabbard.

I drew the blade, and I saw that it was thinner than paper, and sharper than a diamond cutter.

Erlang —that is, I— bent down and picked up a leaf, placed it on the edge of the sword, and blew. The leaf fell to the ground in two pieces.

I turned and swung at the boulder. My sword cut through it like butter.

I looked at the flat of the sword. Two words were carved into the shining blue blade.

干将

“Gan Jiang.” I (not Erlang) muttered as in a trance. “The most powerful sword in the magic world.”

Monkey nodded. “Yes. Now, shoo! You’re messing up my chakra.”

He waved his hand and everything faded into blackness.

Chapter Twelve:

We go shopping

I woke up, certain that the encounter with Monkey had been a dream — until I nearly impaled myself on my own blade.

“Yeek!”

Azweln, who was on my right hopped out of her sleeping bag and woke everyone else in the tent.

“Who? What? Where?” Marcus stumbled around blindly until Adriana blearily handed him his glasses. “Ah, thank you Adriana.”

“What time is it?” Maina rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, accidentally jostling Kaiah who was next to her in the process.

“It’s nine o’ clock.” Lin replied. He had poked his head through the tent flap and was holding a bowl of mashed potatoes and gravy. “You guys slept pretty late.”

As we clambered around and got out of the tent, I spotted Kaiah standing next to Lin, talking quietly.

“Are you sure you’re magic’s okay?” she asked with a worried expression.

“No.” Lin admitted.

“Well don’t you worry. We’ll go to Vancouver today, get supplies, and grab a boat to Brazil. Everything’ll be fine there.” she grinned. “And there’s also an inn were we can rest in Rio. It’s run by a Desiphent.”

“That would be nice.”

Outside, while we ate Lin’s mashed potatoes, Kaiah told everyone her plan — basically the same stuff I had heard her say in the tent.

“. . . the problem is,” she concluded, “how will we get to Vancouver? Lin is on the verge of collapse. He can’t even use magic anymore.”

“Animal.” I replied quickly. “We all have animals, right? We can ride them to Vancouver, buy supplies, grab a boat, go to Brazil, and visit the inn.”

“No.” Leefringe put down his mashed potatoes. “We ride Golato. He’s my skeletal Kirin. And he can teleport.”

I shrugged. “All right.”

———————

A half hour later, we were strolling through downtown Vancouver, looking in windows, and arguing about who took who’s money.

In other words, we were stocking up on supplies.

Soon, we had a reasonable ammonite of stuff that could fill several storage lockers. We had bought canned, sealed, and dried food, clothes (random from Value Village), and —for some reason— a tiny golden cruise ship that Azweln had snatched from a gold shop.

“What’s that for?” I asked as we walked towards the docks.

“You’ll see.” she gently placed it in the water, and after a few muttered words, the ship began to grow and grow until it was a regular sized cruise ship, except it was gold.

“Sweet,” Leefringe breathed as we got on.

———————

Once we got on the ship, Kiwi started bombarding me with questions about Gan Jiang.

“Where did you get it?” she asked.

“I already told you! A god gave it to me in a dream!”

“Which god?”

“The Monkey King!”

Kiwi stopped talking all of a sudden. “Did you say. . . the  Monkey King?”

Azweln gasped. “Sun Wu Kong!”

“Yeah, him.”

Maina hopped in between the three of us. “Sorry girls, but we need to get the ship moving, and you need to buckle up in case of possible turbulence.” she snorted at her own joke and skipped back to the helm.

Marcus sat own on a chair near the wheelhouse and started flipping through a book. “She’s weird.”

“Agreed.” Erlang muttered under our breath, just as Kaiah ran over to us, shouting, “Come on! We’ve got a ship to explore! “

Chapter Thirteen:

And also, pigai

On the floor below the deck, there was a long hallway with cabins on either side. We counted the doors and determined there were eleven cabins in all plus a supply closet, where we found some buckets, beef jerky, pillows and linens. We left our supplies there.

On the next floor we found a meeting room/cafeteria, about half the length of the meeting room at Kandy Kane. Not exactly exciting.

The next floor was an armory, with armour (duh), spare arrows, and random weapons from all over the world (e.g., doubled edged Greek sword, Chinese knife, Aboriginal spear).

The next and last floor was a recreation room with a pool, tennis court, sword fighting arena, basketball court, and archery range (Kiwi booked that imeddiately).

We trekked up two floors to the meeting room, where I spread the Scroll on the table.

“Okay,” Kaiah tapped the atlas that had appeared on the Scroll with her sword, a curvy thing designed to hook other weapons. “We’re here,” she tapped a little dot near the coast of B.C. “And Brazil is here.” she pointed at Brazil. “The inn is here.” she tapped a little glowing spot in Rio with the butt of her sword. “We’re going about fifteen knots an hour, add some teleportation magic, and we should be there tomorrow.” she sheated her sword. “In the meantime, we should train. We might encounter some sea monsters and pigai on the trip, so we should have a lookout —three Desiphai an hour, maybe— while the other train, and rest. Maybe one of the lookouts maps the route while the others fight the challenges and drive.” she looked up. “Agreed?”

“Agreed.” everyone else nodded. Hey, she’s a pharaoh. Can you blame her?

———————

Marcus, Lin, and Leefringe insisted on taking the first shift (Correction: they said the ‘ladies’ must take it easy. Sheesh, we’re not pregnant.), so the rest of us headed down to the rec room, where Kaiah insisted on fencing with me.

“After all,” she said “We am supposed to teach you. You need to learn how to hold a sword before you use it, after all.”

So Kaiah helped me with my stance and taught me how to hold my sword. After I had mastered the basics, she showed me some strikes, parries, and thrusts.

“Now,” she smiled at me. “We fence .”

I gulped. “Alright then.”

She faced me. “We won’t do anything serious, now. Just practicing your techniques.” I nodded. “I’ll go easy on you.” I nodded again.

She did go easy on me. She played me down on the ground and knocked Gan Jiang out of my hands only about a million times. “You need to work on your blocks.” she showed me how I would hold the sword in a tilted way, that made it easy to get knocked out of my hands.

“Thanks.”  the next time we fenced, I thrust Gan Jiang onto Kaiah’s sword hilt and flipped it out of her hands.

“Good job. Let’s do it again.”

“Thanks.”

After about another hour, Azweln, Kiwi, and Maina came down from the deck, telling me, Adriana, and Kaiah it was our shift.

Would you be surprised to learn that everything went wrong on our shift?

No, we didn’t think so.

As soon as we got on the deck, Adriana and Kaiah froze in their tracks.

“Guys?” I waved my hand in front of their faces, but they were frozen solid.

“Finally,” a voice said next to me. “Next time, get on the first shift.”

I whirled around, and standing next to me was a three-eyed warrior.

“Erlang.” I said. “But, aren’t you me? How are you there?”

Erlang/me rolled his eyes. “Heimlich, I am you, but this is just a hologram. We’ll be normal soon. I just wanted to say that our sword fighting sucks.”

“Of course.”

“Oh, and there’s a pigai attack on it’s way.”

With that comment ringing in my ears, Erlang melted into a wisp of smoke that went back into my body.

Adriana and Kaiah suddenly started moving again. I turned to them. “I’ve got bad news.”

When I told them about the pigai attack, Kaiah frowned. “An attack? Now? That sucks.”

“Indeed.” Adriana hefted her knife. “Be prepared.”

Naturally, that was when they attacked.

All I knew was that a shadow covered us and about two dozen pigai dropped onto the deck.

These pigai weren’t like the spider-pigai we had faced before. These pigai were. . . humanoid. They looked like normal people, except part pig. They all had pig heads, and all of them had one pig hoof for a hand and another hoof for a foot. Their flesh was burnt, matted, and inhumanly piglike. They all had a curly pig tail poking out of their rear end. And they all wore black jumpsuits and held a spear.

Next to me, Kaiah muttered, “Don’t let those touch you. They’re electric spears with pigai burns included.”

“Thanks for the warning.”

“Don’t mention it.”

We stood back-to-back, and as the pigai closed in, they formed a circle around us, cutting us off from all help.

“Well, well, well.” the pigai throng parted, and a hooded figure walked towards us holding a double bladed war axe. “What do we have here?” the figure threw off the hood revealing a face that was not pigai.

Horribly enough, I recognized the face.

“Mom?”

Chapter Fourteen:

Betrayed

In moments, Adriana and Kaiah and I were chained up and muzzled .

“Mom, how could you?” my mother —who I now knew really was a psycho— was stalking around the deck and ordering the pigai to go belowdeck and get our friends.

“How?” Marie Hair whirled around to face me. “I’ll tell you how, Erlang. I was cursed, born to a family of Desiphai, and forced to endure years of miserable ’training’. The only stroke of goodness in my life was meeting your father and having you! Then it turned out you were a Desiphent as well! And not just any Desiphent.” she curled her lip. “The Multi. The reincarnation of Erlang! Aqpigain tried to let him take you, but I kept you. Why? Because you could have helped me! You could have taken my Desiphent-ness. But no, Kandy Kane took you!” she grinned evily. “But your father offered. He told me he could end my pain and misery. You know how? He made me a Desiphai Hunter. Now, I have, the nine Chosen Desiphai and a ship! Your father will reward me greatly.”

We suddenly heard shouting from the stairwell, and our other friends, chained and gagged, were tossed next to us.

My mother turned around. “Take them away.”

———————

We were loaded into a truck and driven along a rocky bridge that my mother— who turned out to be a Earth Desiphent— had summoned.

As soon as the truck doors closed, Leefringe spat the gang out of his mouth and glared at me. “How did you not know your mother was a Desiphent?”

I hung my head “I couldn’t! She always had makeup on her forehead or hair over it.”

“Shush, both of you.” Kiwi had her ear pressed against the wall of the truck. “Their driving us to a fortress. In Rio.” she grinned. “You thinking what I’m  thinking?”

“Yeah.” Leefringe nodded. “We ditch them.”

After several tries, Leefringe finally burnt through a chain link with his fire and freed the rest of us.

The pigai had put our weapons and ship (which had shrank the moment we had gotten off) in a wooden chest, which Kiwi broke easily.

We waited until the truck stopped at a traffic light, and hopped out, running for our lives.

Chapter Fifteen:

The Bonsai Inn

We had hopped out at the outskirts of Rio, and after about an hour of walking, we finally reached our destination.

Leefringe and Kiwi looked doubtfully at the inn, but I couldn’t care less what they had to say. I was totally excited.

The inn was shaped like a giant bonsai and made of bonsai wood. It had to be fifteen stories tall and it’s roof was a canopy of leaves that only added to it’s treelike look.

The name was carved over the door.

The Bonsai Inn

“How very creative.” Marcus grumbled as we entered.

In the foyer, there was a young woman with long curly blonde hair that flowed halfway to her waist, a smooth complexion, and a familiar face.

“Aunt Rosemarie!” my favorite aunt stood behind the desk, her hair pulled back to show her earth Desiphent tattoo, clear as day.

“Heimlich.” she smiled. “I’ve waited a long time.”

I stood stunned. To find out both of my parents were Desiphai, and now my aunt? This was crazy.

She smiled, as if she could sense my mixed feelings. “It’s in our blood.” she explained. “All Hair’s are Desiphai.”

“Wow.” Marcus muttered behind me. “A Desiphai family. Rare.”

“Yes.” she replied. “Now for your rooms.”she held up nine keys. “I’ve booked you some on the eighth floor, which is where I house all my Desiphai guests. You can stay for as long as you need to.”

“Thanks.” We took our keys, and Aunt Rosemarie led us to the eighth floor.

“How did you know we were coming?” I asked as the elevator went up.

Azweln rolled her eyes. “She’s a spiritualist and fortune-teller. Duh.”

“Oh.”

“Yes.” Aunt Rosemarie dinged the elevator open..

“Breakfast is six-thirty to nine-thirty. Lunch is twelve to three. Dinner is seven-ten to ten-ten.

“And above all.” she looked each of us squarely in the eye. “Do NOT go to the fourth floor. You will understand in time.”

We nodded.

The rooms were really nice, and we each got one to ourselves (we took up, like, half a hall).

I walked into my room, dumped my luggage --- a huge backpack and sleeping bag --- and looked around.

It was pretty simple, but cozy-looking. There was a double bed against the wall, a tall window overlooking Brazil. A bookshelf and TV sat in front of the bed, but it looked like someone had smashed the TV with a hammer (more likely --- an Egyptian mallet) so I decided to ignore it.

I peeked inside the bathroom, and it was like every other hotel bathroom I’ve ever been too. . . except that I had never been to a hotel bathroom before. Let’s just say it was cleaner than the one from the cheap motel I went to when I was six.

I had just closed my room door, when Marcus’s battle-axe went through it, nearly cutting my nose of, and I’m sure the axe wouldn’t mind if it had taken my face off as well.

“Marcus!” I complained, pushing the door open. “My aunt’s going to kill me! You could have just knocked.”

“Sorry. But there aren’t any other Greeks in the group, the non-Greeks don’t like holding Greek weapons, this is really heavy, and I don’t have any other hands.”

“Non-Greeks?” I poked my head out, and was greeted by my friends standing in the doorway.

“May we come in?” Kaiah asked sweetly.

---------------

We gathered into my room, Leefringe locked and barrred the door, and we all sat down.

Kiwi plopped down on a chair, everyone else scattered around the room, and Leefringe and Marcus fought for a spot on the bed.

Leefringe sat down immediately fell off, pushed aside by Marcus.

They had a brief standoff (“Dude, it’s my spot.” “No, it’s mine.”) and then I pushed both of them off, and plopped down.

“Now,” Kiwi pulled an atlas of of my bookshelf. “We’re here.” she pointed at a vaguely tree-like blob in central Brazil. “Aqpigain’s headquarters are here.” (a pig-face-shaped blob in Australia) “This is our route.” (A squigly line in the middle of the Atlantic). “It leads pretty far from all our native Desiphai lands.”

“That looks good.” I bent over to get a better look. Then I noticed a problem. “But, Kiwi. We can’t use the golden cruise ship anymore. My mom -- Marie’s guards will be notified of what it looks like. If we stumble across one of them in it. . .”

“I know.” Kiwi looked pained. “But we can’t take a plane. And it’s a little difficult to swim across the Atlantic Ocean, if you know what I mean.”

I wrung my hands. “Animals? What about Lulu Pink Lemonade, can’t she fly?”

Adriana shook her head. “That’s too risky. A few months ago, Kiwi flew over to Alaska to pick me up for a project, and Lulu Pink Lemonade fell asleep on the way. We landed in the middle of Ontario so hard we created a new canyon.”

“Okay. No pegasi.” I tapped my chin. “I can’t think if anything else.”

“Let’s ask your aunt tomorrow at breakfast.” Leefring yawned. “I don’t know ‘bout you guys, but I’m getting sleepy. Wan an.” he stood up and exited the room via giant Marcus’-battle-axe-hole.

Kaiah glanced out the window. “Very well. It would be healthy for an early retirement to bed. But it’s a little late for the early part.”

I looked out the window to. It was getting dark, and all the lights in the windows of houses had gone out.

I yawned. “Yup. Meeting adjourned.”

Chapter Sixteen:

The Secret of Floor Number Four

I woke up the next morning to find new clothes folded at the foot of my bed, which was lucky because I hadn’t  brought spare clothing.

But those thoughts flew out of my mind the second I lifted the clothes.

There was a white jumpsuit and a rhinestone-studded leather jacket. There was a bandana (also rhinestone-studded), combat boots, and about a million peace-sign hippie leather bracelets (that made me wonder if Azweln had put them there). But after everything that had happened yesterday, my clothes were filthy, so I had no choice but to put on the nineties’ clothes.

I headed down to breakfast and found everyone else had on those ridiculous rock-and-roll outfits.

“You to?” Leefringe took in my outfit.

“You’re not much better.” I shot back. He was wearing a black tank top, leather pants, leather shoes, and a rhinestone-studded leather jacket that matched mines (and  everyone else’s, I noticed).

He winced. “You can’t blame me. At least we’ve got the bandanas to hide our tattoos.”

“Hide our tattoos?”

Maina nodded, twirling her dagger around. “Marie’s scouts aren’t the only ones that will be looking for us. She’ll surely have notified Aqpigain by now. The earth will be swarming with pigai.”

“Fine.” feeling silly, I tied the bandana around my head.

While we were talking, Aunt Rosemarie had crept up on us, so you can tell how surprised we were when she said, “Morning, my young Desiphai. What will you have for breakfast?”

In the end we all ordered bacon and eggs, and after eating, we trudged up to my room again.

“What do we do today?” Lin asked as he twirled his chain around his spear.

I looked at the atlas that Kiwi had left on my bedside table yesterday. There were now little pig faces going around the entire world. “It looks like their are pigai ships all over the Atlantic, and a whole bunch of them surrounding Australia. Aqpigain’s guard, I suppose?”

“Shi.” Leefringe nodded. “It’ll be impossible to sail past them. Unless. . .” he shook his head. “No. That won’t work.”

“What?” the rest of us leaned forwards. “What is it?”

He sighed. “I was thinking I could teleport us.”

“But that’s a great idea!” I didn’t know what Leefringe was so upset about.

Kiwi shot me a shut up look. “It would take incredible strength to teleport all of us to Australia. He would be helpless in a fight.”

“But you could try, right?”

Leefringe shrugged. “Maybe. But I’ll need help.”

Kiwi stood up. “I’ll help you. We teleport tomorrow, at the crack of dawn.”

I nodded. “But before that, there’s something else we should do.”

I leaned forwards and my friends did likewise. I lowered my voice and said in a hushed voice, “A few years ago, my aunt got involved with some bad guys in a gang or  something. And the leader of that gang’s name was,” I looked around to check there wasn’t anyone listening except us. “Aqpigain.”

Kiwi gasped. Lin dropped his spear. Kaiah fell off the bed. Leefringe fell backwards and Marcus let out a squeak that sounded like a strangled mouse. Everyone else just gaped at me and Adriana fainted.

Only Maina kept her cool. She reached over, slapped the people who were gaping at me, pinched Adriana’s nose, picked up Lin’s chain, pulled Leefringe up, moved Kaiah away from the bed and snapped Kiwi’s jaw shut.

She turned to me. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you don’t think she might be, ahem, cooperating with Mr. Piggy, do you?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. I seriously don’t know.”

Adriana, who had woke up, tapped her chin and said, “And if we’re thinking along the same lines,  you think it has to do with the forbidden fourth floor, yes?”

I nodded.

Azweln had taken off her ‘Hug the World’ headband and was nervously twisting it around her hand. “And you are suggesting what?”

I looked them in the eyes. “I say we go to the fourth floor. Tonight. At midnight.”

---------------

That night, we met at the elevator and called it up. I winced at the creaking it made.

We clambered in and I looked for the fourth floor button.

“Here it is,” I whispered. “But it won’t work.”

“Let me.” Kaiah pushed over to the button and pointed her curvish sword at it. “Sai-fha.”

A crack of lightning flew out of the tip of her sword and hit the button. It’s light flickered for a bit but finally turned on.

“Good one.” I hit the button and we were going down to the fourth floor.

Down. . .

and down. . .

and down. . .

The trip seemed to take forever, but we finally reached the fourth floor.

The door dinged open and we stepped out, but immediately regretted it. The door behind us vanished in a flash of light and pigai surrounded us.

Again.

“Well, well, well.” a man’s deep voice reached us and I winced. It sounded deep, booming. . . and oinkish.

A man stepped forwards and I gasped in revulsion.

The man looked just like a pigai, except he was grosser. He had a pigs head, glowing red eyes, and a silver pig/man body.

But then his face shifted. It changed to a blonde man’s sneering face. But it was very familiar. Then I realized why.

I saw that face everytime I looked in a mirror. Except that when I saw it, it was a girls face and didn’t have that sneer.

“Aqpigain.”

Chapter Seventeen:

Betrayed (This time with two people)

I stared at the man’s face, horrified. After all this time, we had finally found Aqpigain. How shocking.

Many times I had imagined meeting him and plunging my sword into his heart, but I couldn’t find the strenght to do it.

This ugly crackpot was my dad??? Well that’s depressing.

“How did you get here?” Kiwi asked, drawing two of her many daggers, one in each hand.

He chuckled. “The question is, how did you get here?”

“That’s none of your business.” Kaiah drew her sword, pointed it at Aqpigain, and shouted, “Ha-de-mah!”

A bolt of white energy shot out of the end and towards Aqpigain, but he just chuckled and sucked it into his hand.

“What?” Kaiah stumbled back. “But, but, that’s impossible! How. . . ?”

Aqpigain laughed. “You put up a good fight, little pharaoh. But I’m afraid I am the strongest one in Australia.”

“What? Australia? That’s impossible! We’re on the fourth floor of the Bonsai Inn!” I shouted, bewildered.

“No. The elevator is a portal. It transports the rider to Australia once he presses the four button.” a voice came from the back of the room.

Someone stood up, and I gasped. “Aunt Rosemarie. . . no.”

But it was Aunt Rosemarie indeed. And she was holding a huge knife.

She glared at me. “I thought you weren’t supposed to come here.”

“But. . .”

“You’re with Aqpigain?” Marcus shouted, enraged. “How could you?”

“How could I not?” Aunt Rosemarie shouted back. “He offered me revenge!”

“On who?” Maina had joined the argument.

“The gods! It’s their fault that the Desiphai are fightning!”

“You’re evil!” Lin waved his fist at Aunt Rosemarie.

“No, I’m not!”

Aqpigain laughed. “This is amusing, but I’m afraid I must intrude.

He turned to Adriana. “You. I brought you back from the brink. Now is the time to repay your debt.”

I didn’t get it until Adriana drew her knife, and I saw that there was something carved into it.

Å

That’s all I got to register before Adriana -- someone I thought had been my friend -- stabbed my left arm, and everything went dark.

Chapter Eighteen:

Maina leads a jailbreak

Groaning, I woke up on a cold surface, the ceiling way above me. To my left I heard Leefringe angrily shouting some stuff in Chinese that I am not allowed to repeat here, for the editors would probably burn this manuscript if I did.

To my right, Kiwi was grumbling, “If only we had taken the elevator earlier, we would have been spared the encounter.

I blinked, and realized there was something around my wrists, neck, and ankles. I tried to move, but found that I couldn’t. As my vision began to clear, I saw that there were metal shackles pinning my arms, legs, and head to a stone board.

I groaned, and my friends seemed to (finally) notice I was up.

“Heimlich! Finally!” Kiwi looked relieved, but also worried. “You should have stayed blacked out.”

“Gosh, thanks.” once again, I tried to move, and once again, I couldn’t.

“Don’t.”Kiwi rubbed her eyes, and I realized my friends all had circles under their eyes. “We’ve been pulling at them all night. No luck.”

“How did you guys all get out of them, then?” I asked, noticing that my friends weren’t on their boards.

“We weren’t attached. No idea why.” Kaiah was lying on her back, kicking at the walls (We were in an underground chamber of some sort. Aqpigain’s personal dungeon, perhaps.) “Just these anti-magic chains.” she indicated the iron shackles on everyone’s feet.

“How did we get in here?” I cast my eyes around. Well, as much as I could, anyway, since I was unable to move.

The door had to be ten feet above us, and the window -- also ten feet above us -- had bars over it.

I tried to move my left arm, but immediately felt a sharp pain. I glanced over and saw it was still caked with dried blood.

I wriggled around on my stone slab. “So. . . I can obviously feel everything so I’m going to risk it and say this isn’t a dream. But Adriana. . . why. . .?”

“That’s what we were trying to figure out.” Marcus rubbed his face. “I can’t imagine why she’d do this. I mean, she’s our friend, right?”

Maina shook her head. “No. I believe she was with Aqpigain this whole time and joined the mission to deliver us.”

“Well that’s harsh.” I stared at the ceiling. Then I remembered something. “Hey, you guys. When Adriana was stabbing me, I noticed something on her knife. It’s an A with a circle on top. Do you know what that is?”

“An A with a circle on top?” Leefringe leaned forwards. “I think I recognize that. . . yes! It’s Aqpigains symbol.”

“That proves it then.” Lin leaned back and stared at the little sliver of light the window was letting in. “Adriana is officially on Aqpigain’s side, we are locked in a dungeon, and our only exits are ten feet above us. Is anyone else feeling mortally depressed?”

I sighed. “Well, at least we didn’t have to bother finding a way to Australia. That’s something.”

That’s when an idea struck me. I don’t me, like, mentally struck me, but it actually, literally, physically struck me.

A dart flew through the door, and landed in my neck. “Ow!”

An oinking sound came through the door and an oinkish laugh.

Azweln sighed. “That’s the third one.” she leaned over and plucked it out of my neck. “They’ve been shooting them at us everytime they think we get loud.”

“Third?” I craned my neck as best as I could and saw a tiny pile of darts strewn around the dungeon floor. My eyes slowly strayed to the keyhole on the side of the stone, then back to the darts. I glanced at the keyholes on my friends’ shackles. An idea began to form in my mind.

“Kiwi.” I asked. “Do my shackles have anti-magic?”

“I don’t think so.”

“What’s the spell for come?”

“Lai.” Leefringe replied.

Azweln looked at me, concerned. “Heimlich, are you okay? You’re looking. . . strange.”

“Uh-huh. Not listening.” I concentrated on the biggest, sharpest dart, and slowly, calmly said “Lai.”

It quivered slightly. I narrowed my eyes and -- once again -- in a level tone, said “Lai.”

This time, it flew off the ground to hover in front of me.

“Pick the lock.” I commanded it.

It flew down to the keyhole, stuck it’s sharp point in it and, after about a minute, we heard the faithful click of the lock unlocking. The shackles opened and I slid out.

Maina’s jaw dropped and Kaiah gaped at me. “That. Was. Amazing.”

“I know.” I gestured to my little dart friend and hissed “Dart. Lai.”

It flew around excitedly a few times and came over.

“Pick the locks. All of them.”

Dart buzzed around, unlocking the shackles on my friends’ shackles until we were all free.

“Great.” Leefringe rubbed his ankle. “You have one cool dart friend, Heimlich.”

I wasn’t listening. I was looking up at the door, ten feet above us. “How do we get up?”

Maina smiled. “Now that we’re out of those anti-magic shackles, I can get us up there simply.”

She pointed at the door way up high. “Volant.”

We (the eight of us and Dart who seemed to like me) flew up to the door and Azweln pointed at it. “Kai.”

The door flew open and we rushed out of the dungeon.

Chapter Nineteen:

Our plan fails

There were no guards (Seriously?), our weapons were strewn about (You’re kidding me.), and we found Aqpigain’s throne room rather easily (Do people lose their common sense when they become pigai?).

We peeked around the corner, and I saw Aqpigain lounging on a huge, red beryl throne. Next to him, on smaller, ruby thrones sat Adriana and my aunt (traitors).

There were pigai everywhere, all of them wearing red and black clothing. And there were Desiphai. Dozens of them, all chained to the walls.

Next to me, Kiwi took a huge intake of breath. “Those are my soldiers! They’re old hands at Kandy Kane. What are they doing here?”

“Aqpigain must have captured them.” I muttered under my breath.

“Of course.”

“What do we do?” Lin asked from behind us.

I turned around. “I think I know. Kiwi, why don’t you write to your sister?”

---------------

After Kiwi had sent the ‘help!’ letter to Lendra via magic spell, we gathered around the main enterance.

“Okay, here’s the plan.” I squatted and started pointing. “Leefringe, you take that guy in the corner then move on to the guy over there. Maina, you take down that dude next to the Desiphent hanging from the rafters and free him. Give him the fallen pigai’s weapon. Same thing with you, Kaiah, but you do it on the other side of the room. Lin, skewer the three pigai over there and untie the girl tied to the pillar. Azweln, you do the same thing with those guys hanging around the bathroom. Kiwi, come with me. When everyone’s done with that, meet behind my dad’s throne.”

Everyone nodded and crept off to their stations.

Kiwi and Dart (who had taken up following me) followed me as I took a detour around some pigai arguing over the price of beer.

“Okay.” we had got to the back of Aqpigain’s throne and we knelt there. “Dart, fly around, poking the people on the thrones. Distract them from me and Kiwi.”

Dart bobbed a ‘yes’ and flew off happily. I turned to Kiwi.

“Your job’s a little harder. Can you take out those guards in front of the thrones?”

Kiwi nodded and slinked away.

As for me, I thought, unsheathing Gan Jiang. I’ll deal with Mr. Piggy.

I looked around for something to cover me with and found a nice, dirty, threadbare rug, piled up in a corner. I grabbed it and pulled it over me.

I crouched on the ground and shuffled over to the throne. No one took any notice of me. I guess they’ve seen weirder things, being pigai.

As soon as I got to the foot of the huge throne where my dad resided, I hopped up, startling a bunch of pigai who were talking to Aqpigain.

I turned and ran towards him, my sword drawn. Unluckily, Aqpigain had quick reflexes and a mace had met my sword in a moment.

I tried one of the parries Kaiah had shown me and a thrust. It worked rather well, if I do say so myself.

I tried a stab at his chest, but Aqpigain blocked it with a quick swing.

“Can you hold still so I can stab you?” I grunted as he blocked my slash with a parry.

“Temtping, daughter.” he swung the mace at my face and I ducked. “But no.”

“Don’t call me that!” my anger threw me of course, and Aqpigain’s next swing caught me in the ribs and I fell to the ground.

Wheezing and trying to recover my breath, I tried to get up but immediately fell back again. I wouldn’t be surprised if that blow had broke my ribs, they hurt so badly.

“You fought well, for a newbie.” Aqpigain twirled the mace above his head, getting ready for the killing swing. “But not well enough.”

I closed my eyes, waiting for impact. Instead, I heard Aqpigain let loose a loud howl. I opened one eye and saw that an arrow had pierced his ear the hard way, and standing behind him we’re Kiwi and my friends.

Grinning, I managed to strugle up. “Nice job with his ear piercing, Kiwi.”

“Don’t mention it.” she eyed Aqpigain, who was on the ground, clutching his ruined ear. “Do you want to finish him off, or should I?”

Before I could answer, something whistled by me, and I had enough reflexes in me to duck. The boomerang flew over my head and back into Aunt Rosemarie’s hand.

“No one will be finishing anyone off.” she declared. “Except, maybe our pigai finishing you lot off.”

She raised her arm as to throw the boomerang again, but instead, was knocked out by a pegasus.

Chapter Twenty:

Erlang answers the Call

If you think a mythical creature knocking someone out is odd, then imagine dozens of mythical creatures knocking out dozens of pigai.

Yes, it was a beautiful sight indeed.

Few people know it, but having a hot-pink pegasus fly over you can really make you think Hey, there’s a war raging around me and a pegasus just flew over my head. I should probably enter the fray and get fighting.

So I tossed Aqpigain in a corner and picked up Gan Jiang from where I had dropped it.

There were Desiphai everywhere and each and every one of them was on some kind of animal. I even saw a guy with a monocle riding a giant fish that was flopping around and randomly squashing pigai.

You can imagine how surprised I was when Donna ran up to me and kicked (yes, I said kicked) me onto her back.

“Great job, girl.” Donna reared back and we ran in.

I slashed, stabbed, and struck at every pigai I could find. A few hit me, but I mainly managed to dodge them.

I looked around. Leefringe was on his Kirin, Marcus was riding a chimera, and Azweln rode around on a huge serpent, that I guessed was a transformed Freshman the Fish. I expected Kiwi to be riding Lulu Pink Lemonade but, instead, she was riding a huge golden dragon and Lendra (Who, I guess, had answered our cry for help with and army and some teleportation spells) was riding Lulu. I didn’t have time to question it, because a pigai slashed at my arm with a scimitar, and I had to turn my attention back to staying alive.

After a while, there weren’t any enemies left except a bunch of confused piglets, some passed-out pigai, Aqpigain (who had found his mace and was holding it), Adriana, and Aunt Rosemarie.

Adriana stepped forwards. “Well. There are a couple hundred of you, and three of us. The only fair way to do this is a Desiphent duel. Who will be facing us?”

I stepped forwards immediately. “Who do I face?”

Adriana tutted disapprovingly. “Why, your father, of course! It’s the only fair way! But first, Me and Leefringe. Then Azweln and your aunt.”

“Right. Element versus element.” Leefringe stepped forward. “Let’s do this.”

---------------

Adriana made the first move.

She did a kung-fu and sent a blast of fire to Leefringe’s face. He just grabbed -- grabbed! -- it out of the air and sent it spinning back towards her.

With a snarl, Adriana punched the air and sent a few hundred fireballs that Leefringe dodged easily (the rest of us had a little more trouble).

After about ten minutes of back-and-forth shooting, Leefringe finally blasted her over.

The Desiphai (who had crowded around to watch the duel) cheered and hooted. “That was a bust.” Adriana snarled. “But let’s see you beat Rosemarie.”

She was right.

Aunt Rosemarie fought like nobody’s buisness. She tossed rocks, boulder, stalagmites, and some river pebbles at Azweln. I thought Azweln was fine, until a huge rock caught her squarely in the head. She crumpled.

Kiwi snarled and lunged at Rosemarie, but Leefringe held her back. “Not now.” he muttered under his breath. “Later.”

Azweln let out a groan, which at least meant she was alive, but there was a long, gruesome-looking cut down the side of her face that was bleeding like crazy. A girl I recognized from the meeting rushed over and gently pulled her away.

“Now.” Aqpigain looked at me smugly. “We duel, daughter.”

----------------

The Desiphai and enemies (pigai-turned-piglets do not count) formed a loose ring around us.

I can’t do this, I thought to myself. He’s a seasoned pigai-Desiphent and I’m just a newbie, with barely a month of training.

No we are not. A stronger, steadier voice spoke in my mind. We are strong. We can defeat him. Connect with me.

I took Erlang’s advice. I don’t know how I did it. But I reached into my inner spirit. I looked into my minds core. I felt something deep inside. A small, powerful ball of magic, controlling, guiding me. Erlang.

I let that ball take over, but not completely. Just a little extra power to take out Apigain.

My eyes flew open and I summoned a ball of fire in my hands. Aqpigain looked shocked that I could manage that, and even more shocked when I sent it hurtling at him. He ducked, and barely managed to escape with some singed hair.

He stood up. “You’re stronger than I thought.” he looked at me and shrieked like a little girl.

I looked down at my body and felt like shrieking myself.

I seemed to have duplicated in size, both physically and in appearance. I was taller, more muscular, and I was wearing Chinese armor. I didn’t need a mirror to know I had sprouted a third eye.

I got into a battle stance. When I spoke, two voices came out of my mouth. “Your turn.”

He recovered quickly, and sneered. “You think a little god stuff can help you?” but I could tell he was frightened.

I expected him to fire a rock or something but ,instead, he pulled a bow out of nowhere and shot an arrow straight at my chest.

I doubled in pain, and my flickered and died. I fell to the ground, and my vision went blurry.

I could hear the people around me shouting in fear and anger, but  I didn’t really register that. All I knew was that death was closing it’s disgusting hands around me, pulling me down, down, down. . .

Then I gasped. Warmth was spreading through my body, washing away the pain. And it spread all the good thing in life threw me. Warmth. And love. And life.

“Enough.” a voice boomed around the chamber.

Someone stepped in front of me, but she wasn’t exactly familiar. She looked like Monkey. . . but she looked like Kiwi too.

Suddenly the truth hit me. I didn’t know wether or not I was right, but I whispered “Kiwi? Are you?. . . “

She nodded grimly, and Aqpigain laughed. “That’s right! Your precious friend is Alaina Silverstar, Queen of China!”

Chapter Twenty-One:

Secrets Revealed

I gawked at Alaina (Kiwi, whatever), but she leaned over and mumbled, “I cannot finish the duel. You and Aqpigain started it. Thus, you two must finish it.” I nodded and she helped me up. I wasn’t suprised to find my wound had healed.

“We can help you by holding off the pigai, but you must finish Aqpigain.”

I nodded, and Kiwi (Alaina, whatever) raised her bow -- which had turned into a golden staff -- and all the Desiphai in the crowd cheered.

While my friends started fighting pigai, I turned to Aqpigain and was nearly disemboweled by an extremely sharp stick.

“Oh, is that how you’re going to play?” I jumped up and found I was flying, suspended in some sort of mist. I didn’t have time to marvel, though, because Aqpigain hopped into the air in the same kind of mist, and thus became the weirdest air battle ever.

Aqpigain didn’t have much advantage with me being the newbie, since he seemed a little shaky flying as well, but he still seemed more experienced than me, and shot quite a few fireballs my way.

I rolled around in the air, lobbing rocks, grapes, and miniatuare tornadoes at him while he expressed his feeling by showering me with dagger-sharp icicles.

The icicles threw me out of my mist and I landed on the ground, peppered with new cuts and slashes. Aqpigain landed across from me, looking slightly green.

He looked at me, and got ready to charge when something charged across his path. Donna!

She charged him down, slicing her long claws across his piggy face, biting at his limbs, and tossing him around. I ran up to her and pushed her away, remembering what Alaina had said. She left reluctantly, snarling at him.

Sadly, there was no permanent damage. Some slashes didn’t seem to bother Aqpigain.

He gave me a I hate you look and raised his hand. “We’re not finished. Until next time.”

With that, he sank into the ground. The pigai, seeing their leader had retreated, all scattered.

---------------

“We won! We won!” cheers of glee filled the air, and my friends and I gathered together.

“Come on.” Kaiah murmured as E started to organize a search of Aqpigains lair.

We walked out and sat down on a ledge outside the cave, which was on a cliff.

We just sat in silence for a while, until Leefringe said softly. “Why didn’t you tell us you were Alaina?”

Alaina just looked at her feet for a moment.  “I couldn’t do it. I felt you guys would shut me out if I told you the truth of what I had done.” a tear traced it’s way down her cheek. “I faked my own death and then came back to Kandy Kane as a new person -- Kiwi Azlem Lepitooti Aniball - Hist.

“And, Heimlich, you heard what Aqpigain said. We can’t go back. He’ll be looking for you.” I nodded sadly.

Maina looked over at Kiwi. “I agree we can’t go back to the schools .But I wanted to ask you something. Why did you exile us away from our homelands? The native lands never were losing magic, where they?”

Alaina shook her head. “No. I sealed them off because,” she took a deep breath. “The Desiphai on land aren’t the only Desiphai. It was them who was losing magic.”

We (everyone minus Alaina) glanced around nervously, and Lin asked quietly, “Who’s ‘them’?”

She turned to face us. “The Desiphai of the sea. The Sirens.”

EPILOGUE

The little group slept quietly under a bridge, unaware that the Scroll was shining brightly in the shadows. On it was a message that would not be interpereted for many months.

The journey to Australia may have ended

but Alaina’s faults have not been yet mended

And the farther you go the farther you’ll find

the rest of the Desiphai are not of your kind

For to the sea you must make an alliance

therefore, Multi, beware the of Sirens.