Secrets

Eighteen

Valin blinked. "A what?"

Sophie inwardly screamed in frustration. "A SWORD!"

Valin shook his greasy head, a hint of a smile resting on his drooly lips. "S-Sophie, I'm afraid your h-hallucinating." He blushed, face flushing an unpleasant sheen of pink flamingo. "You are devastated over the Keefe incident and you just climbed a fifty foot stalactite." 

Sophie blinked, her head whirling with a dozen different scenarios- all of which involve her hitting Valin on the head with a stalactite herself. 

"Valin?" 

"Yes?"

Sophie planted an energy seed in the crystal above the sword. Within her mind, she envisioned it growing, roots expanding and unfurling, freeing itself from the immeasurable burden of gravity.

The floor exploded in a rush of shattered gemstone, exposing the glittering sword. 

Valin jumped, eyes darting this way and that, his sweaty forehead creasing in alarm.

"Don't worry, I'm just testing something." Valin visibly relaxed. "What are you going to do now that I'm all the way up here?" Sophie groped with her mind, her conscious reaching for the sword under the crystal floor. When she had gripped the sword in a solid hold, she began the process of lifting it using telekinesis. 

Valin smiled mysteriously. "You'll see." 

Sophie pulled from deep within her gut, straining to pull the sword up towards her. Sweat beaded her upper lip as she struggled, battling the forces of nature.

Slowly, with her body still securely wrapped around the stalactite, she grasped it in her right hand. Waving it high in the air so that the light danced around it, casting rays of silver light on the floor, she triumphantly shouted, "Now do you see it?"

Valin raised an eyebrow in confusion. "Nope." 

Sophie rolled her eyes. "So... the plan?"

"Look up."

Valin mischievously closed his dark blue eyes, thick lashes fluttering with each breath he took. He raised his hands as multi-colored light started to swirl around him. Sophie looked up. The huge, mysterious blue light that Valin showed her earlier was a foot above her, shining like a beacon. As she watched, it twirled closer and closer, passing right through her, before coming to a sudden stop, hovering above Valin's head. 

Sophie unexpectedly felt a pull to the blue light's soft, pulsing glow. As she watched, Valin twisted his hands into a complicated gesture, causing the light whirling around them to flare and spin faster and faster until it was a blur. 

Strands of hair whipped themselves at Sophie's face, her cheeks stinging in pain. Her eyes stayed open just enough to see a dark hole appear above her. As she closed her suddenly tired eyes, she felt the light wind harshly whisk her away into it, and her world turned dark. 

--_--_--_--_--_--_---_--_--_---

Silence pulled at her consciousness, tugging and gripping, until she finally gave in. Slowly, she opened her dry, gritty eyes. 

Her world was a shock of sparkling electric blue tunnels. They weaved through the vast space, forming transportation from one place to another. 

And she was inside of one. 

Beyond the tunnels was space. The space, with the billions of stars, solar systems, and galaxies. The alien world that had no air in it. 

And yet, she was breathing. 

"Valin?" She asked timidly, theories drifting through her head as to what might have happened. 

"Yes?" He was a little ways behind her, grinning like a maniac. 

"How?" This was becoming quite common.

"Astrokinesis."

Sophie blinked. "Astro-what?" 

Valin impatiently sighed. "Astrokinesis. It's a rare ability that enables you to move stars- or anything in space really- and bend them to do your will. Like what I just did. I made the star transport us to somewhere." He shrugged. "As far as I know, I'm the only one who has this ability. And, it's one of the two that I wasn't going to tell you." 

Sophie stared at him, wide-eyed. "So your an astrokinetic." The Elvin world never ceased to fascinate her. 

"Yup. And no one- besides you of course, knows about this ability at all."

"But that still doesn't explain why you made me climb a fifty-foot crystal!" Her voice rose with each word she exclaimed. 

Valin casually placed his hands behind his greasy head. "You were the vessel."

Blinking, Sophie said, her tone a touch sarcastic, "So you expect me to believe that I was the vessel the enabled the star to reach down to you." 

Nodding, Valin smirked. "Yup. And if you hadn't been there, the star wouldn't have come down at all." 

"Then why did you make me climb the stalactite instead of levitating up to it?" 

The boy shrugged, a mischievous smile resting on his drooling lips. "Simply for the fun of it." 

"ARGHHHH!" Sophie wished that Valin would just crawl into a hole and stay there forever. "Do you know how much I suffered?" 

"You need to stay in shape." 

"ARGHHHH!" Sophie felt her ear and cheeks turning red with embarrassment and anger. "You will pay for this!" 

He closed his eyes. "I'd like to see you try. But, that's astrokinesis for you." 

Sophie shook her head, anger tamping down as she recalled the glowing, blue star that Valin had called down in astonishment. "I never thought-"

The glittering tunnel of blue light sharply took a sudden turn. Valin's glinting eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Thought what?" 

Sophie waved it off with a flick of her hand. "It's nothing." 

The mask slipped. Valin's dark eyes narrowed even more as a malicious smile slapped on his greasy face. His glistening ponytail fluttered behind him like a dark waterfall. A shadow darkened his angular features. "Oh, that's right. Poor, Valin- one of the Drooly Boys. The no-good-for-nothing group who are absolutely repulsive. The one that is over the moon for you, and-" He paused, the unfinished sentence looming in the air like a skyscraper, voice shifting into something sinister. "Oh, who can't do anything at all." 

Grimacing, Sophie shook her head furiously, her hair whipping in her face as she did so. "No! That's not what I meant!" But the truth leaked out from the hasty words. 

Valin's face darkened even more. "Sophie?"

Sophie looked at him, petrified, her heart beating like a hamsters'. Sweat poured down her face. 

"You forgot one thing." His smile tilted up even more as his fingers turned to shadows. "I never told you where we were going."

The shadow hands whirled, fingers expanding themselves to touch the light tunnels around them. 

The last thing Sophie saw was a whirl of blue intermingled with black and a glowing white eye, before she passed out.