Keeper of the Lost Cities: Unlocked: A Fan-fiction

Chapter One - Sophie

Hello, people! I hope you enjoyed the prologue! A few notes before we begin the rest of the story...

- Please vote and comment!

- I don't have a regular update schedule, but I'm homeschooled, and it's quarantine, so I'll be able to update pretty often, hopefully. Sometimes I might post two chapters on the same day, sometimes I might go three or four in between postings. But I can promise I won't go longer than four days in between updates.

- I'll try to keep the characters as close as possible to their original form, but this is only a fanfiction, so of course they won't be perfect.

- I am, of course, not nearly as good as our queen, Shannon Messenger, at keeping the facts of the story straight and making sense, so just ignore it if some detail is kind of out of line with the rest of the book.

- I'm not perfect! Please don't mind.

- What you're about to read picks up right where Legacy leaves off. Please go back and read the last paragraph of the book if what you read next doesn't make sense!

- Thank you for reading!

- Total_KOTLC_Fan

"So, how do we do this?" Sophie asked as she pulled her hand away from Oralie's fist.

The small ball in her closed fist was the most important thing in the world to Sophie right now. It was the solution to all her problems. She hoped. Okay, she wished. But the cache really was important. It held the answer to Stellarlune, the mysterious solution that they knew almost nothing about, but was a forgotten secret. Only the most powerful and dangerous pieces of knowledge were forgotten by the world and Councilors. Speaking of Councilors...

"Well, we know all caches have passwords," said Oralie, the pretty, ringleted councilor sitting across from Sophie on the grass. They were under the Panakes tree at Havenfield, Sophie's home. The blossoms of the gorgeous tree were truly magical, but their healing power had done nothing for Sophie's current, biggest concern. She'd tried. Many times.

"So maybe we should start there?" Oralie suggested.

Sophie's stomach roiled at the we in that sentence. "You mean you. You're the only one who can figure that out. Isn't it buried in your subconsciousness or something?"

"Oh. Yes." Oralie looked slightly uncomfortable. "The thing is, I... I don't know... I've never done this before," she said, blushing in... embarrassment?

"But, you do know how, don't you?" Sophie asked with a frown. "Isn't there a way to recover the secrets, if absolute need be?"

"Yes, but..." Oralie sighed and looked up. "I don't exactly know where to start." There was silence.

"You always know what to do, though!" Sophie blurted out. "I mean, you knew how to turn off my enhancing, and you gave me Kenric's cache, and you..." Sophie stopped. Oralie was blushing prettily.

"What I'm trying to say," Sophie said frustratedly, "is that there's got to be a way. You just need to find it." When had she become the one giving encouragement?

"You're right, of course," said Oralie, her blush fading.

When an entire minute passed without her moving, Sophie shifted. "So.. are you going to do anything?" she asked.

Oralie nodded, looking thoughtful. "I'm just trying to think of what the password would be. It would be something important to me, but not too obvious. Something I would know, but only with deep thought. Do you have any ideas of what that could be?"