Destined: 2 Be Continued

46. An Almost Unimportant Chapter

Jeremiah awoke underneath the rest of his team, excluding Alex, of course. "What is...what?" he asked, squirming under the unconscious bodies. Alex was sitting nearby. He must have been waiting for someone to wake up. "Here, why don't I give you a hand," he offered, giving Jeremiah a hand. Soon Jeremiah was standing and not being crushed by his teammates.

"Sorry I put you on the bottom," Alex apologized.

"No problem. Heather, Belle, and Penny aren't all that heavy. August was the one that put the most pressure on me," Jeremiah responded. He looked around. "Is Vilor dead? We never really established that." 

"That wasn't the real Vilor," Alex answered. "It was simply a trick to defeat us without having to put himself in danger, that or he was just buying time. For what, I don't know."

"Hmm, mysterious," Jeremiah mused as he heard someone moaning in near wakefulness. he turned to the pile of bodies and saw Heather trying to stretch, then opening her eyes when she found she couldn't. "What in...where are my glasses?" she complained, trying to push herself out from under Belle and August. Jeremiah helped her out and found her glasses on the floor nearby. Heather thanked him and turned to Alex.

"I must know, if it's not too big of a deal," she began. "Why are we all stacked in a messy pile?" 

"Well, Vilor tricked me into thinking you guys were all Vilors and Vilor was really...someone I cared about, so I attacked you guys, thinking that that person was in danger, but in reality, I just knocked all of you out with my lightning. You're lucky and I'm astonished that nothing worse happened to you," Alex explained. While he was talking, Belle sneaked her way out of the pile and walked up next to the other three.

Alex began to explain what happened to her, but she had already heard it, so he decided to wait until August and Penny woke up. They soon did, and Alex explained the situation to them. Jeremiah saw the look in Penny's eye when Alex said "someone I cared about" and suspected that he knew who Alex was talking about. 

"What time is it?" Jeremiah wondered aloud, looking at his wrist, which didn't have a watch on it. "Ah. 4:45."

Everyone dispersed into their rooms to do whatever they felt like doing at this time, such as Alex feeling guilty about knocking his teammates out, or Heather going to work with her plants.

Jeremiah felt like going to sleep, but now was not the time just yet. Maybe he would read a good book. He pulled the first one his eyes locked onto out of the shelf.

"Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban? I've already read that one, but maybe I could read it again." Jeremiah laid down on his bed and read until his eyes felt like they were going to roll out of his head. He immediately went to sleep as soon as he could, hoping to dream about a world filled with wizards and guarded by people who wore color-coded outfits and silly masks.

Instead, something else happened.

Jeremiah had been dreaming of something perfectly fine, though he couldn't remember what it was. He was woken up in the middle of the night by a scuffling in his room. It was strange that it now woke him up, as he was a very heavy sleeper and couldn't be bothered to wake up unless he really had to. He slowly stood up from his bed, wondering what the figure standing in the middle of his room was. He wished he had a spear, but only Belle could pull those kinds of things out of nowhere.

"Ah! Jeremiah!" the figure said, dashing straight for him. Jeremiah was currently defenseless and couldn't resist the strange, prickly claws that the creature had. The thing took him, flying through his window and soaring through the air with Jeremiah in its four claws. Jeremiah knew exactly what it was: that thing was a Grasshopper. Why there were still some alive was nothing that he knew, but the important part was that he was being kidnapped by a Grasshopper.

"Where are you taking me?" he asked, but the Grasshopper did not respond. Instead, it took a key from the folds of its exoskeleton and pointed it towards the empty air. The air opened up in a portal , and the two flew through it.

They ended up in a cavern with a giant caterpillar in it.

"GOOD EVENING," the caterpillar greeted, shifting itself around so it could point to Jeremiah. "I AM VILOR, IN CATERPILLAR FORM. I HAVE NOT YET BECOME THE GREAT MOTH THAT I SHALL BE. I HAVE TAKEN YOU, AND NOW THE DESTINED ARE POWERLESS." Jeremiah was surprised that Vilor was indeed a caterpillar, and not the moth that he had seen in his dreams. The other were fully grown; wasn't he the oldest? Also, it was admittedly a good plan to take Jeremiah, because now the Destined team was lowered several notched in power. Without the Light of Hope(or whatever they called it), they wouldn't be able to defeat such a menace.

"Well, what are you going to do?" Jeremiah taunted. 

"I have a simple plan," Vilor-pillar retorted, then shot a string of silk at the master of hope. He flung Jeremiah to the wall, spinning him with more and more silk. 

"Just as I have to go through a pupal stage, so shall you. You shall lose your weak, old self, just as TG so blessed my father, Locust. You will become my servant until I die, but I do not believe that will happen. I will give you the power of shadow again, but this time the shadows will overcome you."

"And what, exactly, is this all for?" Jeremiah asked as silk covered and encased his body.

"Why, to force you to destroy your friends without me having to do anything," Vilor-pillar answered simply. "You will be stronger yet, and I will call you something menacing. How about..." he pondered for a moment.

"...Halberd," he finished.