Secrets Beyond - The Beginning (a Tangled the series original fan fiction)

Prologue

Alexander slid back, the force of the blow alone enough to send even the best warrior flying. He wiped the crimson red from his mouth as he shakily stood. "ELLIS!" He cried mightily, one hand clutched to his chest where an arrow had struck, the shaft still jutting out.

A tall woman strutted out from the shadow, her flowy dark cloak following behind her. She smiled a cold, malicious grin, her cold silver-lavender eyes looking down upon her former friend belittlingly. "Yes... that's my name, don't wear it out!" She snickered in a cold tone, the clicking of her metal staff ringing through the open castle.

The man moved to take a step forward before his knees buckled, fatigue taking over. He fell to his knees, hands on the floor that was now littered with the fallen bodies of the other three whom he called family. "Ellis.... why?" He asked shakily, tears and blood trickling down his face and into his thick, curly brown beard. "Why would you do this?" His voice trembled as he looked up at the cold hearted woman.

Her smile faltered as she knelt, roughly grabbing his chin to pull him up to look at her. "I don't know, Why did you, Mary, Gulliver, and Veritos do it?" She asked, turning his head roughly to face the fallen forms of the other three who lay amongst the rubble and debris of the crumbling building.

"After all, it was you four who belittled me, called me weak, antagonized me, and shoved me aside! All because of what?!" She practically spat, speaking with such hate that it filled Alexander's gut with a sickening feeling... that or maybe it was the dark magic that crept from the arrow lodged in his chest throughout his body, spreading like a black ink or water color, visible beneath his skin.

The woman called Ellis continued, "All because of what I was charged to protect?! After all we had been through." She snarled, tears forming at the edges of her eyes, hate and envy burning inside her. "Your were my family.... yet you betrayed me." She scoffed.

"No...." The giant coughed and choked, most of his body enveloped with the corruption. "We didn't mean to!... we were trying to protect you!" he wheezed. He was at least one and a half times her size, though she still managed to crush him beneath her heal. "Right... protect me... So apparently hiding me away and taking the glory is protecting me?! Because no matter what you did, people still saw me as a demon, a villain." The elf released her grip on him, standing once again. "It's not my fault I was charged with protection over death and fire!!! If i had been given any of your elements, like water and life, energetic and time, magic and knowledge, or even earth and animals than it would have been one of you guys who were treated like that!" Eli's continued to raise her voice as she spoke, "We were all given something to look after! We were all made Guardians!! All five of us!!!" She snarled. "So no... you did this to yourself." Her voice dropped, having a dangerous edge to it. "And if you were all so fixed on seeing me as the bad guy... then apparently that's what you wanted."

The giant collapsed, his last shuttering breath leaving his tired lungs. Alexander coughed, the pain of his wounds and the corruption unbearable. There was so much he wish he could explain, fix, say to her... but it was too late. Their strongholds had been destroyed, she had taken their key stones, stripping them of their power, and now, she had finished them off. With the five strongholds destroyed and they keys without a worthy master, the universe would tear itself apart... unless of course it could find five others worthy and capable of such a task as cleaning up after them. That is, if Eli's couldn't succeed in combining the five stones into one. Then she'd control everything... and all hope would be lost.

But of course... that was over a thousand years ago... After a hundred or so years of silence and not hearing from any of the guardians, it was assumed they all died... maybe Elis destroyed herself? No one knows for sure... but as time goes on... the silence can't last forever,