February 21, 2002 – 20:43Just before she reached the ground, she stabilized herself and circled the field, barely a meter above the ground. Frank didn’t realize he was holding his breath until he released it.“Did you really think she was going to hit the ground?” said Victoria.“Yeah, I really thought that,” he said, in a shaky voice.“Blue is too good for that. Oleandro, the Spanish captain, is a very strong and aggressive player. He is often butting with Blue, but she is just as ferocious as he is and knows how to fool him and his team. She drops low enough so that the defenders won’t pay attention to her, and will pop back up where no one is expecting her. Blue and Lydia are pros at these tricks,” said Hector.“I see what you mean,” said Frank, as he watched her rise back up at high speed like an arrow, and catch the ball thrown by Lydia above everyone’s head, just to send it straight through their opponent’s net.The Northerners won the game 15 to 13. After the game, they wanted
February 21, 2002 – 21:35“Oh, that’s a good question!”“I mean, perhaps you don’t really have that kind of story, but from what I gathered so far, you do have a reputation, and you just confirmed having a lot of enemies, so someone out there is bound to have a story to tell out of spite.”“I do have that kind of story, and I can see some of my enemies coming to you that way.”“I’m listening. I’m only asking for one.”“I was 15, in my 6th year of elemental school. That year, I qualified for the World Elemental Tournament, with Vic and some other students. It was hosted by an American elemental school. There was a combat competition. Two competitors would fight each other to submission, using magic and hand combat skills. The other competitors would form a circle around them.”She paused and watched patrons driving in and out of the parking lot, remembering the incident.“During the quarterfinals, Victoria fought Reggi Nezo, a fire mage. He won, but after the battle was over, he didn’t
February 21, 2002 – 22:10She looked at him, nodded and jumped on her stick to leave. The entire way to her meeting place, she kept replaying her conversation with him in her mind. She would need to find a different way to keep him safe. She knew that if she moved with him, it would be harder to keep her enemies from finding out about him.She activated her invisible glamour a few seconds after taking off, which made him think of something else he wanted to ask her. He walked toward the bar to meet up with his friends.“Here you are, finally!” said Sebastian as soon as he saw him. “Where’s Blue?”“She got called to a meeting in Winnipeg while we were talking outside,” said Frank as he sat across from Sebastian.Victoria sat to his right, Stephanie across from her. The rest of the group sat on the other side of Stephanie and Victoria. They weren’t paying attention to them.“CMMA? Did she say who called her? I know she normally wouldn’t, but now that you know, maybe she did… hopefully?”
March 25, 2002 – 16:15The Northerners’ practice was nearly over. Coralis stood on the ground, her chin resting on the tip of her stick as she listened to her coach. Her pager went off. It was Stephanie. She figured she’d call her back when practice was over, as there were only 15 minutes left to it.A few minutes later, Sebastian’s phone vibrated. He looked at her, and her pager went off again.“I’ll go call her back, sounds like an emergency,” whispered Sebastian in her ears.She nodded. He came back 2 minutes later and raised his hand to signal the coach’s attention.“I’m sorry, coach, but I need to leave now, and so does Blue,” said Sebastian.She looked at him, suddenly worried, thinking something must have happened to Frank.“Very well, we’re almost done here anyway. Everything okay?”“Yeah, if only bad guys only did their things when we’re off work.”Sebastian turned around to walk toward the locker room, Coralis following closely behind me.“What happened? Is Frank okay?”“Tro
March 25, 2002 – 17:15He found the audio settings and turned the sound on.“The room reeks of turmeric,” said Eva after she shifted back.Coralis kneeled next to the patient, placed her left hand on her chest and stared down into her eyes. She searched for her wolf.“The spell is stronger than last year. Her wolf is completely feral and unhinged, the connection between human and wolf is all destroyed, but I should be able to reverse it once the summoning spell is out of her system.”“We caught the fay who did this last year.”“We’re dealing with a different one, a stronger one.”A yellow glow could be seen coming out of Coralis, and A fell asleep. Jessica approached the patient with a second syringe filled with a sedative and injected it.“For good measure.”“Won’t hurt. I managed to override the spell, but I don’t know how long it will take for the fay to regain control.”Emma passed the chains around A’s wrists and ankles. They stepped away from the bed and walked out of the room.
March 25, 2002 – 19:50“Not yet, I don’t think so. I don’t know if the guy they fought against was the one trying to summon the wolves. They still need to drain the summoning spell out of the patients and fix their connection to their wolves. They’ll fetch us when it’s safe enough for us. As for the mighty monster juice, it’s something we usually give to werewolves who were grievously injured to force a shift and stimulate healing, but she’s not a werewolf, I’m not sure how it works on elementals.”“You know, we may not have been closed in recent years, not until you began dating Sebastian, but if you would have been under some kind of controlling spell, I would have been able to tell, I’m sure. I don’t like being locked up in here, especially not when my girlfriend doesn’t seem okay, but with what I saw tonight here, it kind of proves to me that neither Coralis nor Sebastian is dangerous to us and that we can trust them.”“Agreed. Same for me. If you would have acted any different or
April 16, 2002 – 14:30Molly Hudson sat next to her sister. Lizzy insisted she comes, as there was something she wanted to show her. She stared at a blank sheet of paper and flipped it from one side to the other.“There is absolutely nothing on it,” said Molly.“That’s the thing. Now look,” said Lizzy.She handed the blank paper to Audrey, who sat on a single seater next to her mother. Blank ink appeared. Audrey got up and sat on the armrest next to her aunt so that she could read the letter.Dear Audrey Hudson,It is with great pride that we are confirming your admission to the prestigious Winisk Elemental School. In exactly three months, you shall receive the list of books and supplies that you will need. If you have questions, you may send us a fire bird and we will promptly respond to you.“What’s this place? And words only appear when you touch the letter?” said Molly, looking at her niece.“Yes. If I stop touching it,” said Audrey while depositing it on the coffee table in fro
April 16, 2002 – 16:00“It is what it is. We have about an hour before we have to leave again for the game. Honestly, I’m starting to truly understand how you felt when you decided to tell Frank the truth about us. Stephanie already knew about me when we met, so I never had to do that.”“If you’re full-blooded, but grew up in group homes and orphanages… how did you find out? Did you receive a letter like that?” said Frank looking at Coralis when she stood by the invisible door, about to take it down.She stopped her movement, but kept staring at the door.“Two agents came to visit me and my cousin.”“You have a cousin?”“Had.”Coralis took down the invisible door and returned to the living room, followed by the men. She stopped in the middle of the living room and looked at Frank’s family. Frank stayed by the doorway, leaning on it. Sebastian stood close to Coralis. She took a deep breath.“I do not have much time, so I’ll try to quickly rip the bandage off, so we can answer as many q
July 20, 2003Despite going to bed in the middle of the night following the celebrations of winning the Silver Cup, once again, Coralis woke up early. She hoped she wouldn’t get called by the EBEE to go on a case. She knew Frank would be working all day, so she agreed to meet with Panjik and Sonylla for training.Frank woke up while she was still busy making breakfast.“Morning luv!” he said while standing behind her kissing her neck with his hands on her waist.“Morning!” she said, turning her head to kiss him back on the mouth. “Breakfast is almost ready.”“Still wanna go train today? With the workload you’ve had for the past few months, I’d think you deserve a break,” said Frank as he filled his mug with coffee.Frank sat on a stool by the kitchen island.“Yes, I need to. Panjik wants to help me train my spirit magic and give additional fire magic training to Sonylla, and I won’t pass on that. I was supposed to go to London for hand combat and weapon training with the EBEE… but I’l
June 8, 2003 – 16:45They chuckled as they got deeper into the forest. The scent trail led them to a clearing and a hunter’s cabin at the back of it.They saw five goblins playing cards outside of the cabin. Coralis, Veronica and Eva stood behind the tree line and watched the goblins for a minute.“If the vampires involved don’t have a daylight bracelet, they won’t stick their nose outside. We each kill one goblin, tie up the other two and we then go into the cabin,” said Veronica.They bumped each other’s fists and walked toward the goblins. As soon as they saw the trio approaching, the goblins stood up, accidentally reversing the card table.Without stopping nor saying a word, Coralis and Veronica unsheathed their swords and Eva pulled out her knife. The goblins walked toward them.“What are you doing here? You aren’t supposed to be here,” said one of them.The women quickly beheaded three of his companions and Veronica got behind him, grabbed his wrists and pushed him down. Coralis
June 8, 2003 – 14:00“Lucas! That smells like him,” said Trisha.“Nah, that has an EBEE stench,” said Eva, sniffing the air. “Only Blue has officially been sent here. The smell purge probably was just in case I’d be here, but I agree with her, this looks like a setup. In the middle of a human town like that, either they want to force her to expose herself to humans to solve the case… or they hope to be able to take her out alone when she searches for the missing people.”“Last year, some elders at the EBEE worked with Lucas to take down my family, but they failed. I think the setup isn’t just against Blue, it’s also to expose us. Why else would they leave corpses drained of blood for humans to find?” said Veronica.“All right, so we will solve this case the old-fashioned way and talk in code between us when town folks are around,” said Coralis, her hand on the door handle. “Here is what we will do. We will go next door to confirm our theory, and then we check on the corpses. We will d
June 8, 2003 – 11:00Coralis hovered above the rooftop of Eva’s apartment building. Because of her line of work, Eva didn’t want to live on any pack lands, to prevent endangering innocent pack members if one of her enemies decided to seek out revenge against her.Given their long list of enemies, Coralis had her building warded recently, to prevent any elementals from entering Eva’s building, except for her very short list of trusted ones. She also warded it to allow Eva to go in and out of her apartment using portals to and from her rooftop, without any human seeing anyone mysteriously appearing and disappearing from it.“I hate portals, but I think I’m going to start using that method when coming home covered in blood,” said Coralis as Eva sat behind her.“Are we still meeting with Princess Veronica in a small town near Chicago called Clear Valley?”“Yes, Alfredino sent me there. I called Veronica right after I ended my call with him. No one in her family called the EBEE and she sai
April 26, 2003After her flyball game in France, she stopped at her London flat. She hadn’t been there for a month and Henry told her she had a pile of mail waiting for her.“Hey sis, it feels like forever since we haven’t seen each other, yet you still live here, technically,” said Erik.“True, last time I stopped here for the night, you weren’t there.”“Ah yes, we were playing in Asia. Are you still working in Scotland?”“Not at the moment. This past month I’ve been working more in the United States, but I’m being sent to just about everywhere for consulting works lately.”“That explains why you’ve been getting a lot of mail from EBEE,” said Henry.“While I’m here, I should also collect my stash of uncashed checks.”“Speaking of the United States, we got a tip regarding Fart in the Sea, somewhere in Florida. You in?” said Gus.“If I don’t have to be across the planet when you’re going there, count me in.”Coralis had a drink with them and took off toward Montreal. She arrived at her
March 10, 2003Coralis got back home in the middle of the night. They considered installing a pet door on their kitchen window. Their back door didn’t have a screen door. The window did have a screened layer, but it wasn’t the time of the year to leave the windows open and they didn’t want squirrels to come in during summertime. It would look suspicious if only Cheetah could pass through a pet door, so they decided against it.Once again, she had a lot of blood on herself, but her winter coat was clean. She was hoping that no one would notice the blood on her face as she crossed the street and was thankful that Frank chose an apartment located across the street from the park.She took a shower to get the blood off her skin and crawled into bed next to Frank. He turned to bring her closer to him.“Hey luv!” he said in a sleepy voice, as she passed her left arm around his chest. “How was your night?”“Long and weird. Elf against pixies, goblins and djinns in the mix. We were 6 agents an
December 24, 2002 – 21:35“There is a lot of truth to that, I think,” said Coralis.“What about your bloodlines? You two are pure-blooded, right?” said Lizzy.“Yes, we are. Mine originates from the Roman goddess Salacia, we’re water mages. We’re close to our god and although most of my family lives in an elemental realm… somewhere underground… we never agreed to the radical ideology that wants us to rule over humans. We believe we should guide and protect, not rule and enslave.”Sebastian removed his vest and rolled up the short sleeve of his shirt to reveal what looked like a small tattoo behind his left shoulder, a pattern symbolizing his family goddess.“When we reach maturity, usually a few years after graduation, but depends on bloodline and, well, life events,” continued Sebastian while putting his vest back on, “we get the mark of our family god. It appears on our skin overnight or gradually, depending on the bloodline.”“Oh, so we could potentially be in danger from your kind?
December 24, 2002 – 21:00“Uh, right, sure. I admit I’m not fully knowledgeable about human marriage rituals, I mean, ceremonies, except from what I saw in the movies I watched with Stephanie. I’ve had classes on human society at school so we can blend in better, but the teacher didn’t elaborate on the marriage part. Coralis might have to teach me about it,”“Nah, my past among humans taught me about divorce, I’m not a reference there.”“Right, so. Yes, we view mates as soulmates and unlike humans, we don’t do divorce. For us, when we decide to take a mate, it’s a forever thing and the ritual ensures that. However, I will also point out that when it comes to mixed couples, I mean, when an elemental takes a non-elemental mate, or spouse, we may or may not do the full ritual, it depends on the couple and uh, the non-elemental partner,” said Sebastian.“Why does it differ, is it because it involved a certain amount of magic?” said Frank, his arm still around Coralis’s shoulder.“Partiall
December 24, 2002 – 19:10“BRO!” said Stephanie and Frank at the same time.They all stopped eating.“Why would we?” said Coralis.“Humans aren’t our enemies, I don’t see why we would kill you all just because we could,” said Sebastian.“I’m not trying to offend anyone, but I can’t help myself from wondering if you’re all into a fake bubble, feeling safe when you aren’t, although I can hear myself thinking clearly, so I don’t know. I’m confused about all of this. Coralis, if you grew up in orphanages, shouldn’t you hate us all? Unless you didn’t.”“BRO! That’s enough!” said Frank, then looked at Coralis, “Luv, you don’t have to answer him.”“It’s fine,” she said while massaging his thigh to reassure him. “It’s a legit concern, especially considering the current heated climate among elemental clans and other supernatural. There are a lot of clans and factions out there that want me to hate humans enough to turn against them.”“But you would never, I know you would never, right? Neither