Storm Call

Departure

The blue snow, along with the ice it creates, had spread from the mouth of the cave to near the campfire while everyone had slept. Stella, covered in a layer of ice, was trying her best to keep herself calm when the fire went out on its own. The pit that used to hold the flames had begun to fill with ice, freezing the firewood that was burning seconds ago, before being struck by a bolt of electricity. "Doing something like that when someone's panicking really isn't the best idea, Frosty!" she yelled after turning around. She expected to see a hole in Ender's tent or Liliana standing in front of it, but there wasn't anything out of the ordinary, excluding the smell of burned fur and ozone.

"Sorry about that, Stella!" Liliona called from the largest tent, her own and Stella's, shortly before rolling out. She was still in her pajamas and her hair was a mess, but she didn't care at that point with a much bigger threat nearby. "I had to at least make sure that lightning would be an effective method. It'd be too risky with most flames, and I can't cast the ones you use for cooking," she explained. Stella dropped her icy glare before going to Ender's tent, where the odor was coming from.

Before the flap was opened, Frosty announced, "I'm fully discharged, so it would've knocked me out to use something that powerful." Stella hesitated a second before deciding to open the tent. Inside, she saw Ender in his cat form and Liliana. Ender seemed to be asleep, but had a strange glow around him. "I was going to try to find one of you but my legs were acting strange," she told her. When Stella looked at them, she noticed that they were covered in scales. She sighed in disappointment when she realized that this Luna never had this happen before.

"Look, all you need to do for that is use some of your magic," she explained before noticing some of her scales were covering her own arm. Guess this is a perfect example, she thought. Stella began freezing the scales, and as they began to recede, Ender opened his eyes and watched in confusion. Frosty noticed and quickly cast one of her blue flames before swallowing it.

Luna was outside of the tent and felt the cold breeze Stella's magic gave off. She also noticed that her tail was on the stone outside of the flap. Starmourn went inside of the tent, only to run back out in fear. What's going on in there? Starmourn never acts like that, she wondered. Just as she began to crouch in order to get a better view, a blue bolt of lightning flew out and blew up a chunk of rock near her own tent. She turned around, annoyed, before noticing that the Luna lookalike had begun to stretch her arms.

Ender walked out of the tent, stretching his legs in the process, before he leapt on top of a small pile of rocks right outside of the perimeter of tents. "I was in the Plane last night," he said aloud, not directing it towards anyone specific. "Johann and I were talking about what's going on here, and the others say it's a good idea to find somewhere else soon," he continued while making his way to Johann's tent. He made sure his rings weren't glowing before walking in and finding his brother in his true cat form, still asleep. Luna had followed him and was surprised to see an arrow tip near the flap. A small note was attached to it.

I wonder what this is, Luna wondered while picking it up. There were strange symbols, one of which she recognized, along with the words "it'll only work once and Ender needs to help" scribbled on the bottom. Before she said anything, she noticed that Johann had perked his ears towards her direction. "What is this?" Luna inquired, genuinely curious. It only got her a dead stare from Ender before he began to walk towards the part of the cave where they met Liliana. Johann walked out of the tent, stretching his legs while doing so, and decided to try to perch himself on Luna's shoulder to look at the note as well.

"He wasn't lying. We do need to leave," he told her once he managed to sit in a way that wouldn't harm Luna. He glanced at a few of the symbols before noticing that most of them weren't in the original spell language. That's weird. She couldn't have learned this by herself, this is too advanced for even Stella!

"Ender, get over here, he can't use the spell alone!" Luna called. He swiftly ran over to them before lifting the note out of her hands with his levitation magic and bringing it down to his eye level. His expression was radically different from his brother, showing more concern than surprise.

"Sadie, when, where, and how did you learn these symbols?" he asked, his voice trembling. "These are cat spirit spell markings. None of us know how to write these, and there's no one that could've taught you that we know." His rings began glowing brightly, showing his confusion as to how she, a human, could've learned how to correctly write a language specifically made for those like him, his brother, and his sister. After a few seconds, he sighed and told her, "That's not important at the moment, don't answer that, we need to go. I'll go get everyone else." As he began to walk away, he said, "In the meantime, Johann, try to explain what we are to them," before he ran towards the tent that had the scent of white flames.

"Ender, I swear to my non-existent God if you told them I'm gonna burn you!" Taylor whisper-shouted when she heard the sounds of his paws coming closer to her tent. When he got to the opening, she grabbed him by the tails with her own and dragged him inside. "We weren't supposed to tell anybody these things! You know that!" she quietly yelled while shaking him around. When she noticed that he began to look as if he was about to puke, she stopped and set him down. An irritated sigh came out, turning into more of a growl by the end. "Do you promise to make sure that no one else finds out?" Taylor asked, more concerned about keeping the secrets of animal spirits than Ender's health at the moment. Her brother nodded, which she did in return before pushing him out.

Stella and Liliana heard the commotion from where Ender was and went to him to ask about it, but noticed that he was very dazed and unable to answer anything clearly besides pointing towards Johann, Luna, and Sadie with his tail. Assuming that he meant something important, Stella went back to grab Liliona so that she wouldn't miss whatever would potentially happen.

As they made their way to everyone else, more blue snow was blown in by the wind, freezing even more of the stone and managing to reach Luna's old tent. Some of it got close to them, but it landed several inches short. This didn't stop Liliona from reacting with a blast of green flames, which had no apparent effect on the snow. The heat that the fire gave off, however, pushed the snow in and around it towards the mouth of the cave, keeping it at a better distance so that they could run to everyone else. The fire went out after they left, but reignited a little while later before repeating itself three more times before it extinguished completely for the fifth and final time.

As they got closer to everyone else, Ender and Johann both began chanting a spell unknown to anyone. Their eyes began glowing brightly in the colors that they normally would, except there were beams of light protruding from them. When Stella and Liliona took their final step to get in with the group, Johann and his brother began to float while a ring of cat apparitions encircled everyone on the ground. Slowly, the ring began to spin, gaining speed with every second that the two remained in the air, eventually becoming so fast that it became a gray blur.

"...ta med oss ​​till familjen!"