The Darius Rescue

Once upon a time in the land of Atheria, there was a princess Nea and a princess Lulu and they went on the most amazing adventures. They had just learned that Jo the botanist was sick and that Princess Blu of Allaymia was also a Keeper of the green Terrainian crystal. So Blu decided to finish what Jo had started with the dwarfs and travel around Atheria to heal the land and restore the rest of the temples. 

As they were getting ready to meet O’Lah, Paul and Wahl back at the beach town of Larakesh an old friend walked up. It was Darius’s father - the Shadow Man and he was with Scorch the dragon. 

“Son of Aylon and Scorch the Protector.” Nea said, respectfully addressing him and the dragon. 

“Princess Nea of Sparland.” He said back, “What luck to find you here outside Morrenvale. I need your help. Darius and Rose have been kidnapped by the elves.”  

“Kidnapped?”

“Yes, we must hurry. I do not think the elf chief has good intentions - he wants the white crystal. If both the white and black Devorian crystals fall into the wrong hands, this will not be good.” 

Nea and Lulu had run into a tricky elf named Hazel a few times and learned at one of the elven keeps that she was working with an ogre named T’Orlock who had the black crystal.

“So we’re going to rescue Darius?” asked Princess Ellery, blushing a little. 

“Are you sure you want to come with?” asked Lulu.

“I wouldn’t miss it!” she said, revealing a magic wand that her father had given her for protection. 

So the four adventurers mounted Scorch with the Shadow Man and started to fly towards the Forest of Forevermore, which as you might remember, is how you get to the Elf Grotto, where Darius had been kidnapped. 

As they were flying high above the clouds the wind started to pick up, a crazy wind that blew them around almost in circles. The wind blew so hard Scorch almost lost control and sent the riders flying. 

“Lulu, maybe you can use your crystal!” Nea shouted. 

“But I don’t know how!” she said. 

The Shadow Man, sensing that Lulu was Keeper herself, handed the reigns to Nea and moved back next to Lulu. 

“Let me show you!” he shouted. 

He began to explain that to use the crystals for good you needed to let the crystal’s power come out itself. To do that was a funny concept and hard to understand. And even harder to grasp when you’re hundreds of feet up in the air being blown about dangerously in the wind. He explained that you can’t make the crystal do what you want it to do. When you try to do that, the power consumes you and it starts to change you for the worse instead of healing Atheria for the best. Lulu had to let the crystal do what it knows to do naturally. 

“I’m scared!” she explained.

“You can do this.” He encouraged her. 

“Ok, I’ll try!” Lulu agreed.

And she pulled out the crystal, holding it as tight as she could so she wouldn’t drop it over the forest and lose it forever.

She closed her eyes and tried to remain calm. She tried to allow whatever power the crystal had to come out on it’s own. It was so hard to remain calm when she was being thrown about in the sky so high above the ground. 

She took a deep breath, but then Scorch hit an air current and jolted to the left. She took another breath and felt that she needed to let go. She needed to literally let go of the crystal, relax her heart and trust that even if she dropped the crystal, it would be okay. 

Slowly she released the crystal. She let go of it, fighting against all of her fears that it would fall to the ground and she would lose it forever. The crystal hovered steady, above her hand and floated. As it did, Scorch balanced himself and leveled out in the sky as the air started to calm. The winds around them still raged on, but they had a bubble of calm around them as they flew.

Soaring through the air, Lulu could feel another presence, Ryla, the hawk. She opened her eyes, now used to letting go and trusting the crystal. To her right, in the distance was Ryla soaring with them towards the forest. And she gave Lulu a wink with her one eye then turned away and flew off. 

A minute later the entire sky died down and calmed. The Shadow Man gave Lulu a pat on the back and Nea gave her a thumbs up. 

“Nice work!” Ellery shouted. “We almost lost it there for a minute!”

They landed but hadn’t thought about how they were going to rescue Darius and Rose. In fact, the last time they came to the elf grotto the chief of the elves was trying to steal the purple crystal

“Not all elves are bad yet.” Said the Shadow Man. “There are still friends of the lion and the hawk among them.” 

“Like Oleander?” asked Lulu.

The Shadow Man smiled, “Yes, like Oleander. And Nakisha.”

So Nea, Lulu, Ellery and the Shadow Man put together this amazing plan to rescue Darius and Rose. The Shadow Man knew of a special entrance into the grotto that an old elf friend of his, Nakisha, had shown him ... and Wahl had given Nea some of his extra moonshade pollen after they rescued Scorch ... and the princesses still had their magic ogre cloaks ... and, oh yeah, Ellery had her magic wand this time. So they devised the perfect plan to bust Darius out.

Now all their planning didn’t quite work out the way they had hoped. They DID use the secret entrance Nakisha had shown them into the Elf Grotto but that’s about all that went according to plan. 

They made it to Nakisha, an elf warrior friend of Simon’s, who immediately showed our adventurers her weapons collection on the wall. She had so many weapons, but by far but her favorite was a bow made of magic Orgrown Wood and thus had magic powers. 

She also confirmed that Darius had been kidnapped but he wasn’t kept in the dungeons. The elf chief took his bear, Rose, to the dungeons but kept Darius in the royal chambers. Since Darius didn’t have any legs, the elf chief didn’t think he’d be a threat and wanted to keep him close. 

They started to put the next part of their plan in place but were interrupted by yelling outside. When they opened the door elves were running around all over the elf grotto away from the palace and towards the entry gates. Even the elf guards by the palace were running around screaming for their lives. 

“The chief, the chief has been turned to stone!” they shouted. 

“Well there goes that plan.” Said Nea.

“C’mon, we can use the chaos to get Darius and Rose. Ellery, have your wand ready.” Lulu said. 

“I’m not going to miss this,” said Nakisha. And she grabbed her magic longbow and some arrows.

But as they ran for the palace out walked the troll they’d met outside the elven keep. The same troll with the gray crystal. When the troll saw them coming, he started using the gray crystal again to create a very big tornado. 

“You two again.” He said. “Didn’t you get enough at the the Elven Keep?”

As the wind picked up it pulled everyone up off the ground and into the air. In the process, Ellery pulled out her magic wand and tried to send a bolt of lightning at the troll. Unfortunately, it was hard to aim with all the wind blowing. Her bolts of lightening kept missing and hitting the palace.

“Lulu!” Nea yelled. “Use your crystal!”

Lulu nodded, feeling more confident. She didn’t even reach for her crystal in her pocket. She just closed her eyes and tried to keep calm. She thought about the little baby griffins at Oleander’s hut and these small baby chicks that she had seen in the castle stable once. She thought about whatever gave her peace and happiness. She knew that doing that would allow the crystal to handle the situation.

And it did. She concentrated on staying calm in the middle of the wind while another tornado started to grow under the troll. As it did, the troll got nervous and afraid that maybe he wasn’t strong enough anymore. He had never been in a fight like this before - with another crystal keeper. 

“Stop it!” he yelled and made an angry face. 

He then shook his gray crystal hard to try and squeeze more power out of it. 

Lulu just floated there, in the wind. Her crystal floated out before her and it’s power swirled troll within another tornado. Within a minute, the troll was so dizzy he couldn’t concentrate anymore and started to fall. 

Once that happened the adventurers fell to the ground. Ellery landed on her feet and used her magic wand to zap the troll. This time she didn’t miss and zapped his hand that held the crystal, sending the gray crystal flying.

The Shadow Man quickly ran over to the crystal and picked it up, while the elf guards grabbed the troll. 

The guards, not knowing who to trust, then looked towards the Lulu and Ellery.

“We can help the chief!” Nakisha interrupted. “But we’ll need the boy and the white crystal!”

The guards nodded and allowed the Shadow Man, Nea, Lulu, Ellery and Nakisha into the palace. 

When they got to the throne room, they found Darius next to the chief who had been turned into stone. 

“Dad!” he yelled.

“Darius!” and the Shadow Man gave Darius a big hug. 

“I could feel the elf’s heart growing darker and darker. He took it and I couldn’t stop it.”

The Shadow Man took a deep breath. “Well, you’re safe now. And we have the gray crystal.” 

“But we don’t have the white one anymore.” Darius explained. 

Everyone looked at the elf chief, turned to stone on his throne. 

What the elves didn’t realize was that when a power crystal is used selfishly, things get ugly and it leads to destruction. Just like when the fairy Queen Ignea and then Fiamma started to use the black crystal for themselves, everyone in fairy village lost their memory.

And what the Shadow Man told the elves that night was that if they ever wanted to restore their chief, they were going to need the white crystal and a white crystal keeper with a pure heart.

The end.