Trust Me - a Sophitz story

Part 25

Hello! I'm so sorry for the delay, but ladies and gents, I suggest you start from the beginning and read forward because *drumroll pleaseeeee* this story is FINISHED! That's right, as of today, I have completed Trust Me, and I'm uploading the last five chapters within the next twenty minutes or so. Huge thanks to absolutely everyone who's helped on this, and to everyone who's been reading since the beginning. I love you all. - Mae

Chapter 25:

That week was arguably the busiest of their lives. Mr. Forkle's cache had not been opened yet. Everyone agreed that it wasn't right without Sophie. The only thing they had heard from his plan was titled "In Event of the loss of the Moonlark", and was somewhat along the lines of, "If we lose Sophie, we lose hope. Miss Foster is the key to so much of our fight. If we lose her, and their is even the tiniest chance of her survival or recovery, do whatever it takes. We need her more than we know, and more than she can ever know. If she breaks, because of guilt, or pressure, or fear, we can try to save her. We can hope, because she is hope. If we really, honestly do lose her, all of you become so much more important. Young Mr and Miss Vacker are the best to try to take her place as leaders. Mr Diznee is the best shot at finding a way to trump the powers of our foes, Miss Vacker's skills exceed even her own reckoning, and Mr Vacker is our most powerful telepath. All five of you will be the next Collective, and all of you are our best shot at winning. If we lose our Moonlark, you have to do whatever it takes to restore her." His message continued, detailing other contingencies, including the induction of Amy, which was promised review on the chance that she regained her memory and the other two Fosters were located, but Biana and Fitz had taken his words to heart.

So had Dex.

He was devising and inventing 24/7, training with Linh, of all people. He believed her control of natural elements could balance his control of technology, and that a combination of their powers might bring about new weapons and tactics the Neverseen couldn't match. Together, they practiced and planned, her quiet demeanor drawn away by his contagious excitement, his loud and overwhelming personality toned down by her measured intelligence. Both of them possessed a kind of logic and reasoning, his taking the most complicated route possible, and her mind seeing the most profitable route. Together, their friends agreed, they would create some amazing things. Linh seemed to be able to retain control for longer around Dex, and Dex seemed to concentrate more around the other elf, their natural fears of their powers reassured.

Tam was working with Bronte, keeping both of them in the shadows of the Plan, as they had taken to calling it. They had made their own very interesting discovery in the last week and a half. Between the two of them, they had figured out the connection between Shadowvapor and bad memories. Negative emotions, which were tied with negative memories, tended to attract Shadowvapor. Their theory was that, as a mind breaks, the cracks collect Shadowvapor, which draws in negative emotions. These emotions feed off the shadows, causing the breaks the widen uncontrollably, and then the mind breaks. They could hardly test this, but there was one way to investigate. With some help from Terigan, they probed the mind, Shadowvapor, and negative emotion (some help from Oralie) of Alden, who had, of course broken. There were definite cracks in his sanity, mended now, but still lingering around these breaches was a significant amount of Shadowvapor.

Fitz's mind (they had decided that testing an unbroken mind that was similar to the 'broken' mind, being closely related would be more accurate), had no such breaches, but had darker spots, loaded with negative emotion and Shadowvapor. Those were the 'weak spots' that were more likely to break. When Tam tried to lift the Shadowvapor from those areas, he couldn't remove the heaviest veils, because of their link with those darker emotions. Inflicting a happier emotion on those areas, they reasoned, would relieve that darker mind energy, and allow the shadow vapor to be cleared.

A very useful theory to apply to the healing of a mind.

When Oralie wasn't assisting in those experiments, she was working with the Collective and Biana on the master plan. They had located Kenric's circlet. Unfortunately, it would be rather difficult to retrieve. It had been used by the gnomes in the statue of Kenric after his death. It was resting atop his jeweled head as his actual circlet. They had decided to have a second circlet forged, and switch them out. As long as they were subtle, they could get away with it. Dex had learned how to scramble the signals from a tracking pendant, which would cover their tracks, in case the Council was suspicious. Della and Biana, the vanishers, would leap to the jeweled city and switch the crowns, then return, in the dead of the night, as soon as they had the copy circlet. Then they would set the rest of the plan into motion. Currently that mission was set for about a week in the future, falling on 15 days after Sophie broke.

Alden was planning a gala at Everglen to officially announce the loss of Sophie on the 17th day after, to which the entire Council and much of the prominent Elvish society would be invited. He would extend a personal invitation to Alina, who would, hopefully, be too vain to turn down the invitation. Several Black Swan members would be undercover in the crowd, to make sure nothing got out of hand, and the goblin security had been secretly doubled as a precaution against any undercover Neverseen members.

Slowly but surely, their plan was coming together beautifully.