The Blood Bound Souls

Chapter 3 - I Can't Move On

Star paced inside her room, grumbling to herself in both grief and anger. It was very early morning, so the stars and Mewni's three moons were still outside. She was unable to sleep, and the best course of action now was just to vent herself to sleep, or use some sort of spell to knock herself unconscious. She would try her best to avoid the latter.

"What did he mean I had a chance? He's never and never would give me a chance! All he ever wanted was Jackie!" Star shouted, turning towards her bed, sick of pacing, and tossed herself onto it. She buried herself under her covers, wishing she could hide from the world, or simply run away from her problem, "Why did I have to fall so hard for that cute dork? As soon as he got the girl he wanted his whole life, I just had to tell him," Star curled up and squeezed a pillow against her face hard enough to make her nose hurt, "I wish I never loved him." Star grumbled.

Star glanced past her pillow and outside her window. The sun was beginning to rise up over the horizon. Great, it was almost officially morning. She wanted to go asleep and forget about everything, but something forced her to stay awake. Her head was still bouncing around with the harsh words from her best friend, "I have a girlfriend now, Star," "...you just have to move on..."

"I can't move on, Marco! I just can't! I-I love you too much!" Star said, as if she were responding to Marco earlier, "Glob, I wish I could just force myself to move on and be done with it!"

Then it clicked.

Star saw her wand on her nightstand, "I have a wand, and every spell ever made at my fingertips... I can use magic to move on!" Star realized as she jumped up to go look into her spellbook.

"Man, where is it?" Star whined as she dug around her room for her spellbook. After a fruitless search for the better part of twenty minutes, she remembered what had become of the book, "Oh, right. Ludo destroyed the book, which means..." Star fell onto her knees, gripping her hair tightly in frustration. That dumb book was her last hope to end the pain of her love for that boy, "I guess I will never move on..."

"Perhaps I could be of assistance," An eerie, ancient feminine voice whispered from from the shadows.

Star jumped out of shock. "W-who's there?" Star called as she scampered towards her wand.

"Don't be alarmed, young one. I come not to harm you," The voice spoke again.

"Show yourself immediately, or I'll, uh, blast away this entire room, yeah!" Star commanded, feigning confidence. However, this voice... this presence, drew every ounce of courage out from her body. She was filled to the brim with freezing, pure fear.

There was absolute silence.

"I said, show yourself!" Star commanded again, scanning the room once more.

A deep laughter that chilled her to her very core followed before the voice finally responded, "Very well." The voice decided.

Star jumped as the shadows of the room seemed to coagulate right in front of her, forming the shape of a humanoid figure. Right before her eyes, a familiar dark figure emerged from the shadows. Its silhouette was of a woman with puffy hair and a big round hat.

Star gasps. "A-Are you..."

"Yes, I am," The figure responded as it stepped forward into the moon's light. A pale white feminine face revealed herself with pink spade markings on her two cheeks. Her green puffy hair undulated as an unnaturally cold breeze swept through the room, chilling Star's skin, making her shiver. On top of the figure's hair was a signature big black hat. Her body was covered head-to-toe in black garb, except for her chest, where the collar and lapel was a bleached white, and a purple crescent shape was sewed in the middle.

"E-Eclipsa...?! S-stay away from me! What do you want from me?" Star stammered, her legs shaking from fear. All the stories, all of the legends... they all seemed to hold some truth. Heck, she had come to believe Eclipsa didn't really exist and was used instead as a way to scare her to become a good little princess. But, here she was, standing in all her notorious glory.

"Calm yourself, Princess Butterfly. I am not here to harm you," Eclipsa said, rising from the ground and crossing her legs nonchalantly, opening her parasol. To a normal observer, it would look like she she decided to sit on an invisible chair high off the ground, "I am here to help you. I have what you seek." she explained, a smile crawling across her lips. Her arms folded across her stomach, her slender arms pressing into the fabric, "That is, if you wish to accept it."

"Wait, you can... you can make me stop loving Marco?" Star asked, her voice barely a whisper, her curiosity overriding her caution.

Eclipsa gave her a serious look, "Indeed, for I, too, have suffered the cruel forces of love as you have, and it pains me to see one of my own grandchildren go through the same," she explained, then stared down at Star menacingly, "I have come to teach you my Black Heart spell. "

Star knew of the many twisted deeds of her great grandmother, and wasn't to be fooled easily, "What's the catch? Why should I trust you? From what I've heard, you're evil, the Queen of Darkness!" Star yelled back Eclipsa.

Eclipsa showed no loss of paitence nor took offense. In fact, she outright ignored Star's jibe and got right to the point, "The catch is my freedom. I know that that sounds a bit dangerous, even treasonous, but I can assure you that I am not evil," she said, almost as if she was being judged for it. She caught herself, though, and quickly regained composure, settling back into her invisible chair, "I can't and won't force you to trust me, but I will tell you that before I was imprisoned, my intentions were... misunderstood. I was a rebel, much like you. I just wanted to have fun and fight monsters with the ones I trusted most and eat sweets like snookers bars!" she explained, growing visibly nostalgic, a small, memorable grin growing on her face for just a moment, "But... when the time came for my coronation, I realized I didn't want to face the duty of being queen. Now everyone who thought they knew me calls me evil for evading their dumb rules and even dumber politics." Eclipsa spat.

Through Eclipsa's honeyed words, Star began to realize that she and the Dark Queen weren't too different, "Oh. I guess you're kinda like me... in a way...," she agreed, if only halfheartedly, but she immediately saw a problem in Eclipsa's story, "Wait. Aren't you already free? You're in my room right now!"

Eclipsa chuckled, "Not quite yet, princess. This is simply a sort-of... ethereal form of mine--one of the first spells I ever learned, in fact," she explained. Seeing that Star didn't believe her, she simply waved off the young princess's concern, "It's far too complicated for you to understand right now," she said, shaking her head. She was getting off track.

Eclipsa "stood" from the chair and sunk back to the floor, taking a step towards Star, "So, Star Butterfly, do we have a deal?"

Star looked down and thought deeply about her great grandmother's words. If she learned the spell, Star would be forever free from the tormentuous pain of love, Marco would get to be with Jackie without her ever interjecting again, and... Eclipsa would be free. What would that mean for Mewni? What would that mean for her?

"You just have to move on..."

Star grit her teeth, forgetting her concern, then accepted the Dark Queen's hand. She expected it to pass right through, but somehow it connected, and Eclipsa squeezed it with a strange amount of affection she hadn't been expecting from the woman.

"Deal."

Eclipsa smiled, "Good girl."

Eclipsa closed her eyes, coursing magic from her to Star, and, together, they began to hover above the ground. A dark ribbon of pure magic wrapped around their joined hands as their cheeks glowed a bright pink. Moments later, the deal is sealed and they landed back on the ground.

Eclipsa, without hesitation, whispered the spell into Star's ear, speaking up near the end. "...and then aim it directly at your heart. As soon as you discover you no longer love him, I will be set free, and we'll go our separate ways."

Star swallowed nervously, unsure of what she had just done, "Okay...," she said as Eclipsa began to fade away. Eclipsa simply gave her a motherly smile, and Star was suddenly compelled to speak up, "T-thank you, Eclipsa!" Star nervously called as the last traces of her great grandmother faded away.

She glanced down at her wand as light from the sun flooded into her room, and felt a new emotion: uncertainty.