Next Mage
43.How?

~Marilla's

POV

I watched as Oliver's eyes widened in silent shock.

"You need to go," Elvira said darkly, grabbing our wrists and pulling us towards the door. "Go to Myragon, go warn the others, then go to Africa--take Mrs Waterson with you." Elvira pushed mom towards us. "We'll stay behind," Elvira gestured towards Adrian.

"Okay, so Africa," said Oliver hastily. "Any other last-minute things you have to say to us?"

Elvira sighed, frustrated. "Find the Tanzanite--no time to explain--it's not safe now that all this has happened. Now go quickly, before we--argh!"

Both Elvira and Adrian's bodies began to jerked violently, their limbs thrashing from side to side.

I pushed mom and the others out the door.

"Go go go!" I cried, dashing out the door and closing it behind me with a bang. I grabbed out my key and locked the door, then sighed with relief.

We watched in shock as a bright, searing flash illuminated the house for a moment, the golden light coming through the windows for a split second before disappearing. "Elvira opened a portal," Oliver explained, his expression a mix of worry and terror. "She and Adrian are going to Africa, to join the Ragnarok's army."

dashy line thingo

We ran, faster and faster, not caring if people's heads turned to look in surprise as a small crowd of teenagers and one fully grown woman stampeded down the street.

The crowd grew, and soon, all of the recruits except for Rika, Kuro, Laila, Amani and George were gathered. We dashed, twisting and turning around corners until we reached an empty paddock, its tall fronds of grass waving in the wind as if to welcome us.

Oliver opened the portal.

"Wow," mom said wonderingly. "How is this--"

"No time to explain, mom! We gotta get in!" I shouted as I pushed mom into the portal, hoping she would forgive me later.

We arrived in the mage realm to replace that all five of the remaining spirit mages had left for Africa, too. While mom was gazing around in a sort of solemn wonder at the scenery before her, Oliver and I interrogated the rest of the mages. "They simply just--left, with no explanation!" One mage told us fretfully, her eyes darting around anxiously as if a Ragnarok mage was going to leap out at her any moment.

"We woke up yesterday morning to replace their beds empty, with no trace of them left, not even a note," another said, looking a little unnerved.

After we had questioned all of the mages, who had seemed quite rattled, to our dismay, we discussed about the spirit mages.

"The thing that confuses me," I told Oliver, "is that there were so many spirit mages in the footage of that news report. Like, hundreds of them, maybe thousands even. How in the world that possible?"

"You see, there's a little element in everybody," Oliver explained. "Some are obvious, like the mages here, but for others, they have to look deep inside them to bring their power out. When mages with obvious power are born, they can usually use their powers straight away, mostly by accident as they don't know how to control them. The original set of mages had obvious powers, but that number has slowly been dropping." I nodded as I processed what Oliver had said. "So, basically, we could train every single person on Earth, right now, to become a mage, even if it takes a long time?" I asked. Oliver nodded.

"Except for the spirit mages, of course, they're already..." He struggled to replace the right word. "Activated. But we could..."

Oliver looked as if an idea had conked him in the head.

"LIGHT BULB!" Oliver shouted as he took my hands and began to spin me around. I let a laugh escape my lips. "That's brilliant! I didn't even think of it! Wow, all these years the whole of planet Earth was just a planet full of mages..." Everyone turned to stare at us in confusion and interest.

We immediately stopped spinning, flushing crimson instead.

"Never mind, never mind, nothing to see here, just get back to your business," Oliver muttered and waved them off, embarrassed. I caught Emma, Terra and Carissa giving us sly, impish looks. I rolled my eyes but blushed harder. "Anyway, now that we've come up with our positively brilliant plan," I said, a cheeky glint in my eye, "how we going to defeat the Ragnarok anyway?"

Oliver thought about this for a second, his eyebrows coming together in a frown.

"I think," he said, looking around as if to search for someone. "I think that is a question for my mother,"

~Oliver's POV

Mom was talking to Mrs Waterson, about what, I didn't want to know.

As we got closer, I heard some of the conversation. It was beginning to sound suspiciously like a sort of mother's meeting, with all that mother-y talk about children and how fast we were growing up and how long they thought it was before we started going out.

"Mom!" Marilla said exasperatedly as Mrs Waterson winked at her. Mom and Mrs Waterson laughed.

I didn't say anything; it was too embarrassing.

"Um...hey, mom."

"Oh, hello darling! Abigail here and I were just talking about--"

"The thing is, we need your help!" I interrupted her hastily. Mom gazed curiously at us.

"Go on," she said.

"We need to know," Marilla continued for me, "how, um, the Elders defeated--weakened, the Ragnarok. Did they use any special tools, or anything...?" Marilla's voice tailed off as mom's expression was suddenly filled with emotion and nostalgia.

"Oh," she exclaimed. "I'll tell you everything. Aureole, the Air Elder, explained to me the whole process years ago," mom said sadly. "We were close friends."

Marilla and I exchanged relieved glances glad that there was a solution, then turned our full attention back to my mother. Mrs Waterson was also looking interested.

"To defeat the Ragnarok, the Elders needed something very, very powerful indeed: it was called an 'Ultimate"."