The Adventures of the Junior Phoenixes, Part 5: The Last Pendant

Chapter 3: Veracruz

Chapter 3

     The Hall of Mirrors was a place that didn’t exist in the realms of the everyday man’s sphere of experience. It was a place that served as a point of passing for those who died and began their journey from the realm of the living to the realms of the dead. Because she bore the Pendant of Death around her neck, Rain Fox Cloudstorm was custodian to the Hall of Mirrors. The Hall itself was colorless except for a pallid and dusty gray on the walls and floor. It was cold and unfeeling. The Hall of Mirrors was an intricate maze of hallways. Every hallway looked the same; the walls were covered with mirrors of all shapes and sizes. Some of the mirrors were gilded, some were framed, while others were frameless and free. All the mirrors hung from the walls magically; they were not nailed in, nor held by screws or intricate trappings. Although she could see her reflection in every mirror, the mirrors served as windows; the dead would pass by as they walked down the Hallway on the other side of the mirror’s reflection. She could not cross over into the mirror’s reflection. She once, with great strength and the help of her friends, broke through one of the mirrors to rescue one of her friends from the clutches of death. Her friend had been bitten by a vampire, but before the Vampire’s Curse could take hold, Rain Fox and her other friends managed to place the soul of their bitten friend, Star Saoirse, into a vessel called a Nebula Orb. In order to stop Star’s soul from crossing over and leaving the mortal realms, Rain Fox stabbed the mirror that Star stood behind and shattered it.

     As Rain Fox walked around the Hall of Mirrors, magically strolling down the pallid halls of the cold hallways, she came to the shattered mirror that Star had once occupied. She knelt down and picked up one of the glass shards and inspected it. She held it tenderly in the palm of her hand. It was the only glass mirror that had ever been broken. She had her brown hair tied back in a ponytail. Her blue eyes looked fondly at the piece of glass with the memory of saving Star’s life. Like her twin sister, Sky Heart, Rain Fox had British and Seneca dual parentage; her skin had a tinge of reddish-tan to it. She had the Pendant of Death hanging from around her neck on a silver chain. Of all the current Pendant Bearers, she had hers the longest. Her uncle James and a wizard named Datrean le Fay, both original members of the secret wizard group called the Shadow Confederacy, had placed the Pendant of Death on her when she was young. She didn’t learn of its special properties until years later, when her sister and her were sent from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry to the Salem Academy of Magic. A man named Shade le Fay, who was an Auror assigned to protect the exchange students, helped her find out that the seemingly strange jewelry that she bore was actually an ancient relic created as a talisman used to harness and watch over the magical elemental aspect of death. It imbued her with extraordinary magical properties, like the healing of harms and enhanced senses, but it also allowed her to walk among the Hall of Mirrors and converse with the dead.

     She held the glass shard in her hand and thought of her friends. She wished she was among them again. She regretted her decision to leave on her own and fight against the forces of Lazarus Easter. She felt as though she was the only one who could truly defeat the villainous Easter. Easter was of a race of ancient beings, the Atlanteans, who were both long-lived and magically potent. He had been the Bearer of the Pendant of Light for generations. It gave him incredible knowledge and foresight. He had been trying to gather the other Pendants (Life, Death, and Darkness) and the wands of the Four Wizards who bore them (Archelaus the Bronze, Leech de Bauch, Merlin the Great, and himself) to bring back from the Realm Beyond the legendary sorceress Morgan le Fay. He was thwarted by Rain Fox’s father and the Shadow Confederacy twenty years ago, then again when Shade, Rain Fox, Sky Heart, Echo, Star, and their friends had learned about the Pendants and put a stopper in Easter’s plans. Rain Fox had kept the Pendant of Death away from Leech, who was Easter’s right hand man, and from Easter himself. Shade took the Pendant of Life into the Realm Beyond, away from Easter’s grasp. Echo was bestowed with the Pendant of Darkness by its previous Bearer as a token of trust and friendship. Star had taken the Pendant of Light by force from around the neck of Easter. Easter, without a Pendant since heaven knew when, was desperate and readying an army to march upon North America but was again thwarted by Rain Fox and her friends. His army of Inferi was defeated and abolished. Rain Fox thought that, for certain, the tides of favor had turned her way. She felt like the victory they had long been waiting for had arrived. She felt, for a fleeting second, that she could rest again peacefully, something that had eluded her since the debacle of the Pendants had begun.