Desdemona, Ambrosia, and Victor suddenly appeared on the side of a large mountain. A huge blast of cold wind hit Desdemona. She discovered they had arrived on Mount Pyraxia in the middle of a blizzard. If they hadn't drunk the immortality potion, they would all freeze to death out in the cold.

Victor recognized the terrain as the place Willow had transported herself to when she was learning the transporter spell. When he didn't see Willow in the house after she recited the transporter spell, he decided to see if she had transported herself to the Pyraxia Library. He had read her mother's note and knew it was probably a place Willow wanted to go to. He decided to go there and look for her.

"This is the correct mountain, according to the professor's notes here, and according to the note Willow's mother had," Victor screamed above the wind. He was holding a notebook that he had stolen from a university archaeology professor named Edward Smith, who was the person who had recited the spell to bring magic back to Ethermoor. Victor had stolen many, many books from him to create his library in his castle on Enchantica.

In his notebook was written, "Open the door to the vault of Mount Pyraxia by sticking your hands in the snow and saying the words to the spell to open it, something which is only known by Knowledge Sorcerers. Only a person with fairy blood can open the doors to the Pyraxia Library and the Pyraxia Vault." Then he flipped to the back page of the notebook, where he had copied the directions to the library that Willow's mother had been given.

"The word to melt the snow off the doors to the vault and the library is Florida" was written there.

Victor had gathered a wad of hair from Willow's brush over the last couple of months, which he hoped would help him trick the magic into thinking he was a sorcerer. According to the professor's notes, the snow-covered vault door was about a mile from the stone towers that marked the entrance to the library.

"Now, according to the notes, the library entrance should be there, and the vault entrance should be somewhere over here," Victor said as he pointed at two very tall stone pillars, then pointed to the pile of snow right in front of them. He opened the bag he brought with him and pulled out a small pouch. He opened the pouch and pulled a big clump of Willow's hair out. "That's disgusting! What are you doing?" Ambrosia asked, sounding as if she was trying not to gag.

Victor laughed so hard at the comment that he doubled over. "This is Willow's hair. I got it out of her brush. If the spell senses Willow's magic, then it will work for us."

He put the clump of hair in the snow. "Florida!" Suddenly, the snow melted away, revealing a metal door. "Please?" Victor asked.

The door swung open, and they all walked inside. "Now, be careful. According to the notes, there is a trap door to a dragon's lair. Watch where you are going and don't step on any loose stones," Victor instructed. They were all immortal now, but he knew that being torn to bits by a dragon was still a very painful experience.

"Do you know where the trap door is?" Rosaria asked.

"There is no information in the professor's journal about where the door is," Victor replied.

"How does one man live by himself for so many centuries?" Desdemona asked.

"How did I live by myself for so many centuries? Did you ever think to ask me how I lived by myself on Valroth for five hundred years?" Victor spat. Desdemona closed her mouth and shrank backward. "To answer your question, I don't think he is here alone. There are probably lots of sorcerers in the library."

Tristan's vault held all the fairy objects of importance that were stored away before the banishment. On this particular trip, Desdemona and Ambrosia were searching for the rings of the fairy King Salovar and Queen Alysianna of the Azodar Forest. Desdemona and Ambrosia had spent many years researching magic, and according to legend, the rings were the most powerful fairy objects that existed. Victor planned to steal Tristan's powers and use them to rule over the kingdom of Ethermoor. The Wisdom Fairy powers would enable him to subjugate the people to his control.

A musty smell filled the air. Victor pulled out a gem he'd brought with him to light the way. "Lumina!" Victor said. The gem suddenly glowed brightly, illuminating the entire cavern. The three of them saw a long passageway covered in stalactites ahead of them.

Desdemona, Ambrosia, and Victor started walking. All of a sudden, the ground crumbled out from under their feet, and they fell through a hole. Ambrosia felt the wind get knocked out of her as she hit a large pile of metal. She looked around and saw that gold covered the cavern walls, and torches illuminated the interior of the cavern. She was sitting on the largest pile of gold, jewels, and other precious metals that she had ever seen.

"We have to get out of here! Quickly, try to climb up the wall!" Victor said nervously.

"Climb up the wall? Are you crazy? Let's use the transporter spell!" Ambrosia said.

"She's right. Let's hold hands," Desdemona agreed. She grabbed Ambrosia's hand.

"Well, we can try it. It probably won't work because this is all part of Tristan's vault," Victor said. He grabbed Ambrosia's hand and recited the spell. "We imagine we are standing in the room where the rings of Alysianna and Salovar, king and queen of the Azodar Forest, are sitting in the Vault of Tristan. Time and space shall make it so." Nothing happened.

Desdemona heard the sound of wings beating in the wind. She turned around and saw a massive dragon flying through the cavern! She let out a piercing shriek. The creature inhaled deeply. Desdemona, Ambrosia, and Victor scrambled to get off the pile before it exhaled. They were immortal, but that did not make getting burned alive any less painful.

The dragon drew in another deep breath and blew out a massive plume of fire, engulfing all three of them. Ambrosia and Desdemona felt their skin singe off their bones. Then, they were aware that their skeletons were being carried high into the air.

Is this what being immortal feels like? Desdemona wondered. Her ligaments and muscles had been singed off, and her bones were all that was left of her.

Desdemona felt her skeleton break apart as the dragon smashed her bones against a pile of rocks. She saw Ambrosia's and Victor's skulls lying across the cavern.

The dragon, who was very pleased with its handiwork in destroying the intruders, turned around and flew back into its cave. The dragon's name was Safire, and she, like most of the dragons and magical creatures of Ethermoor, was an ally of the fairies and sorcerers. She had bright-blue scales that glistened pink when the light shone on them.

Guarding the vault was a job her family members had held for generations, and she was a fifth-generation vault guardian. It was a job she felt was a high honor, even though she had never performed it until today. It puzzled her how the intruders got into the cave without freezing to death, given that they were not wearing clothes suitable for walking around in the cold climate outside.

She left the cave and flew to the secret door to the Pyraxia Library. She knocked on the door with her tail. The door opened, and Melvil stood in the doorway. "Sir, there were intruders in my cave."

"And?" Melvil asked, eyes wide with curiosity.

"I burned them alive. I just thought you should know that someone broke into the vault," she replied.

A look of grave concern stretched across Melvil's face. "I will assemble a team of sorcerers, and they can go tell Tristan. Let's warn him about them just in case some didn't fall through the trap." Melvil disappeared back into the library, and he returned with three younger sorcerers. "Take Andrew, Frances, and Vincent with you. I would go with you, but I am too old to fight."

The four sorcerers climbed onto Safire's back. She took off flying through the cavern. When they passed the entrance to the trap Safire lived in, she noticed that all the bones were gone. She flew down and searched the area.

"What are you doing?" one of the young wizards asked her.

"I'm searching for the intruder's skeletons! I killed them and smashed their bones against the rocks here so I wouldn't have their bones cluttering up my cave!"

Safire whimpered. She flew close to the rocks and examined the terrain, searching for the bones, but none were there. "This is so strange! The skeletons were right here!" Safire said.

It was now even more imperative that they warn Tristanabout the intruders. They flew to the innermost vault and decided to stay there with him until they thought the danger had passed.

Desdemona hoped that she would not have to spend eternity as an upside-down skull in a cavern. Now what? she wondered. She saw one of her friend's skulls land upside down right in front of hers. Man, we'd sure be sick if we were still mortal. She knew that she would have laughed at that thought if she still had her stomach and vocal cords.

She felt a sort of odd magnetism drawing all her bones back to themselves. She watched as her bones reattached themselves and her internal organs grew back. Victor's and Ambrosia's bodies regenerated too. Victor decided to recite a spell to make clothes for them. "My wand and magic must act as a needle and thread to weave these women and I lovely clothes that we can wear again!" Victor said. He waved his wand around in the air.

A mist surrounded the three of them. When the mist disappeared, their clothes had been remade, good as new. I hope I never experience that again! Desdemona thought. She was thankful that Victor knew a spell to make clothes for them.

"I'm guessing that saying 'the room where the rings are sitting' was not specific as to which room in the vault they are in," Ambrosia said.

"Well, I didn't see any other name for it written in the book," Victor said.

He thought about looking through the notebook to check to see if there was another name for the room. He was suddenly aware that his bag had disappeared during their fall, and his heart went into his throat. "My bag is gone!" he said. He looked down into the hole, and a wave of relief washed over him when he saw a small brown shapeless mass lying in a valley between two of the massive mountains of gold.

"Come to me!" he whispered. He shook his wand, and a cloud of gold came out of the tip. It surrounded the bag, as well as another object that Victor couldn't see from the edge of the hole, lifted them out of the hole, and brought them right to Victor. The second object was the lumina gem he had also lost during the fall. He looked through the bag and was relieved to see the professor's notebook there. "Thank goodness!" he breathed. "Now, we can continue onward!"

They continued walking for the rest of the day and went to sleep that night. The next morning, they came to a large, ornately carved door with fairy runes on it. "Now, Ambrosia, this is a test for you! You're the one who's been studying fairy runes for years!" Victor said, smiling.

"And the Fae Will Rise!" Ambrosia said aloud. Suddenly, a blue light illuminated the runes, and there was a horrible grinding sound as the door slid open. The three of them walked inside.

Torches illuminated the walls of a large, cavernous room. Marble walls and columns lined the inside of the room, giving it the grandeur of a palace. Desdemona saw a small red beam shooting out of the wall. Not knowing what it was, she stepped over it. "Watch this thing here. I don't know what it is," she said. Victor stepped over it cautiously. Ambrosia did too, but the hem of her dress brushed the beam. She breathed a sigh of relief when nothing happened.

They walked a few more steps through the room. Desdemona heard the sound of a faint humming off in the distance. They continued walking, and the sound grew louder and louder. Ambrosia turned around and saw thousands of tiny lights flying right toward them. She shrieked, and all three of them started running in all directions! The swarm broke into three different swarms and headed for each of them.

As they flew closer, Ambrosia could see that they were tiny mechanical bees made of gold. She screamed as she felt their tiny stingers sear into her flesh, and she realized that the stingers were tiny sharp blades, which was far worse than getting stung by any natural bee. Ambrosia shrieked in pain as she felt her blood gushing out all over her body. She shielded her eyes in an attempt to block the bees from stinging them.

"Ambrosia, look!" Desdemona shouted.

Ambrosia struggled to open her eyes, and saw a fountain in the next room. She ran as fast as she could into the next room and dove into the fountain. The bees could not follow her in because they were programmed to behave like natural bees, who are afraid of water. Ambrosia held her breath and watched the water turn red with blood as the bees hovered above the water's surface. Eventually, they could no longer sense their target, and the swarms began to dissipate.

Ambrosia's whole body began to ache from lack of air, and she rose to the surface. She took a huge gulp of air. She saw Desdemona and Victor rise out of the water on either side of her. "I hope that never happens to me ever again for as long as I live!" Ambrosia breathed.

"Well, don't let your dress get caught in strange beams again!" Desdemona spat.

Ambrosia turned to Victor and asked, "Do you have any healing potions?"

Victor splashed his arms in the water. "You are immortal! Your skin will heal on its own if it hasn't already!" he spat.

"What . . . just happened to us?" Desdemona asked.

"It's obvious that was some kind of booby trap. We must be more careful when walking around here!" Victor growled.

Ambrosia was a total mess. Bloodstains covered her clothes, and her hair was soaked and matted after having been killed once that day and nearly killed a second time. They all climbed out of the fountain and walked toward a set of double doors. Victor opened the doors, and the three of them walked inside the room. There were cobwebs everywhere, and a thick layer of dust covered everything.

Either Tristan did not get very many visitors, or he was a terrible housekeeper. Desdemona heard the sound of footsteps.

"Who's there?" a man's voice asked. Desdemona saw a pale handsome young man step out of an adjoining hallway. It was evident that he did not go out in the sun very often. His face turned even paler at the sight of Victor. "Tareth!" he gasped.

"Yes, it's me! Tristan, old buddy, how are you?" Victor responded with fake excitement.

"H-how did you . . ." the young man stammered.

"A professor broke the magical barrier spell, freeing me! Aren't you excited to see me?"

"What are you doing here?" Tristan gasped.

"I have come to collect my prize!" Tareth growled.

Tristan didn't want to find out what this prize was. He stumbled backward and tried to run away. "Andrew!" he screamed, calling to his friends for help.

Tareth put his hand on his belt and shouted, "Agomoth! Valgoterh! Imajak! Veol!" It was a spell he had brought with him from his realm. All of a sudden, a bright light shone forth from Tristan, and his eyes rolled back into his skull. A cloud of smoke surrounded him and floated through the air. The smoke floated into Tareth's belt.

"You said that you were going to share the magical powers!" Desdemona protested.

Tareth snarled, "As in, you two will get the rings, and I will take his powers! I didn't say I was going away empty-handed!"

As Tristan's body fell to the floor, his soul detached itself. He let out a horrific shriek and darted around the room. In his fury, he threw Desdemona and Ambrosia's bodies up against the cave walls. Tareth put his hand on his belt. The Faeblood Wraith stopped and looked at him. "You're mine now! You're under my control!" Tareth spat. "Now, you will tell me where to find the rings of Salovar and Alyssianna!"

"He seems very hard for you to control," Ambrosia said.

"They're all hard to control at first. I will have him totally under my control after he sucks the magic out of his first victim," Tareth replied. Then, he realized that he did not need Tristan to access the rings; he already knew. Tristan was a Wisdom Fairy, and his magic had shared with Tareth knowledge of where the rings were.

The wraith shot angrily at Tareth, but Tareth kept his hand on his belt and, with his mind, commanded the wraith to stop attacking him. "Just wait until he gets hungry." The wraith suddenly screamed and shot out of the room.

"Where did he go?" Desdemona asked.

"Who knows. He will be able to drain sorcerers of their magic with or without us," Tareth said.

The belt shared with him knowledge of where the rings were located. It also shared with him information about what kinds of traps guarded them and how to disarm them. Suddenly, his face turned white, and Rosaria thought she saw an expression of pure terror come across his face.

"Follow me. The vault the rings are hidden in is this way. But first I must disarm the other booby traps! There is one room inside that vault that even an immortal shouldn't go into without disarming the trap inside," Tareth said.

The three of them walked through the vault until they came to a library. There was a chess set sitting on a marble table in the middle of it. Tareth walked up to it, put his hand on one of the black knight pieces, and pulled it toward him. There was a grinding sound that echoed throughout the palace.

"What's that sound?" Ambrosia asked.

"That is the sound of me disarming the trap!" Tareth replied. The grinding sound stopped, and a smile stretched across Tareth's face. "Disarmed!" He sighed. Ambrosia thought she heard the sound of fear in his voice. Tareth led the three of them through the vault. They came to the door that led to the room where the rings were.

Tareth took a deep breath and pressed down on the door handle. The door came open, and the three of them walked into the room.

"Are you afraid of something?" Desdemona asked. Ambrosia now knew that she was not the only one who sensed that Tareth was worried about something.

"I'm afraid of . . . spiders! That next trap is full of spiders! I had to disarm it!" Tareth whispered.

"Spiders? But you're immortal!" Ambrosia laughed.

Tareth's eyes shot daggers at her. He spat, "Some people live with strange, intense fears they don't understand, and they don't know why they are afraid of something!"

Desdemona and Ambrosia looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders. Tareth and the two women crept through the room. Desdemona saw yet another door and asked, "Another room?"

Tareth turned to her and said, "Yes, and this is the final trap. It is impossible to disarm, so I suggest that you don't look into the beam of light that you will see shining on the ground. Looking into the beam of light will set off the trap. This trap is, by far, the most painful trap of them all. It's poison darts. Face the wall and feel your way to the other wide if you don't want to set it off," Tareth said.

They opened the door. Desdemona and Ambrosia entered the room, faced the wall, and began feeling their way along the wall. Then, Desdemona's eye twitched, and she accidentally looked into the beam of light. There was a loud whoosh, and Desdemona felt herself getting stabbed with a needle. A burning liquid ran through her veins, and she felt as if she was burning from the inside out. She collapsed on the floor and was aware of Tareth screaming at her.

Ambrosia was also yelling, but Desdemona couldn't understand what she was saying. Desdemona drifted in and out of consciousness. Then, she slowly awoke. A few moments later, she felt as if she had regained enough of her strength to stand up. She hobbled to her feet and saw Ambrosia doing the same thing. Apparently, she, too, had been poisoned by the darts.

"Watch out next time! All three of us got hit with darts. That poison would have killed us if we were mortal!" Tareth spat. "Put your hands over your eyes like this so they won't wander over to that beam again!" He cupped his hands over his eyes. The two women did as he said, and they crept to the door at the end of the room. Desdemona recounted the number of times she would have died that day if she had still been mortal.

As Tareth opened the door to the third room, Desdemona saw two columns sitting in the middle of the room. "This is it, ladies!" Tareth said. One pillow with gold tassels sat on top of each of the columns. A ring sat on top of each pillow. Desdemona's heart pounded as she approached the column. She had been waiting for this moment for many years, ever since she began studying dark magic in secret, even before she met Tareth. Desdemona and Ambrosia picked the rings up off the pillow and slipped them on their fingers.

The magic in the rings would allow them to rule over the lands of Nimudor and Frohadon without opposition, and they also allowed them to rule anywhere the Azodar Forest touched in Frohadon, Kalnoreth, Nimudor, and Oloredian. After they disposed of the rulers of Oloredian and Kalnoreth, they would rule over those principalities as well.

"Shhh!" Tareth hissed. The three of them grew quiet, but Desdemona and Ambrosia did not hear anything. There was a long pause. Tareth's eyes grew wider and wider.

"What is it?" Ambrosia asked.

"We are not alone," Tareth hissed.

All three of them pulled their swords out of their belts. "Let's go!" Tareth yelled. The three of them took off running and were shocked to see three young men running toward them, each with his sword drawn. "There they are!" one man yelled. Ambrosia only took comfort in knowing they could get out of there no matter what because they were immortal.

They charged out into the room, swords drawn. One man swung his sword at Ambrosia. Ambrosia clashed her sword against his. Then, she recited a spell to throw him up against the wall of the vault. The man only stood where he was. She remembered what Tareth told her about witch magic not working on sorcerers. Then, he kicked her down on the cave floor and stabbed her in the chest.

Blood poured out of her wound, and the man pulled his sword out. Ambrosia felt her chest heal, and the man stumbled backward, dumbfounded by her quick recovery. Desdemona took advantage of the man's surprise and hit him over the head with her sword, knocking him to the ground. Ambrosia leaped off the ground and sliced open the abdomen of her attacker, spilling his intestines out onto the cave floor. Tareth slit one young man's throat, killing him. Desdemona stabbed the third man in the chest. Tareth looked down at the corpses of the three young men and saw their quill pendant necklaces soaking in their blood.

"Who were they?" Ambrosia asked.

"Knowledge Sorcerers. See the quill pendants on their necklaces?" Tareth asked, pointing at the necklaces. "What are they doing here? And how did they find us?"

"Didn't you hear him yell for a man named Andrew? These men were here with him!" Tareth said.

The three of them walked outside and, to their horror, heard the dragon roar from a nearby cave. Tareth whispered, "I am going to distract the dragon. They are allies of the sorcerers. When I say move, you move!" He placed his hand on the belt and commanded the dragon to go away until they had left the mountain.

Sometime later, they were able to make it back to the entrance of the mountain cave. Tareth noticed that the dragon trap had closed.

Desdemona and Ambrosia breathed a sigh of relief when they closed the door to the cave behind them. They all joined hands and recited the transporter spell together. In an instant, they were all standing in the throne room in Ethermoor Castle.

The belt, if it worked as Tareth thought it would, would allow him to exercise absolute power over the entire country of Ethermoor. Everyone who wasn't of fairy ancestry would submit to his rule without question, which was why destroying the sorcerers and sorceresses was so important to him. The morning prior, he had sent all of his troops to find Willow and bring her back to him. He wanted to steal her powers for himself just as he had Tristan's.

That night, Tareth went to his study to write in his journal as he always did every evening. He remembered what shelf he had placed his journals in when he unpacked. He looked at the shelves and noticed that his current journal was missing. He wrote in his journal every day and been ever since he was exiled to Valroth all those centuries ago.

Writing in diaries was the only thing that had kept him from losing his mind during all those years in isolation. If that had happened, he might have forgotten that he even had magic. Queen Zadelia sent him into exile without any of his magical materials. He created the paper from the barks of the trees on the island and bound the diaries with leather from the hides of animals he hunted.

He spent the evening looking around the room, cleaning up papers, stacking books, and dusting everything in the room in hopes of finding the journal. He couldn't find it anywhere. He looked in his bag, thinking that he might have put it there to take to the mountain. He did not remember taking it out of the room, which he never did because he was so incredibly secretive about his life. His journals contained information about him that he would never breathe to anyone, including his students.

He had never told any of his students that he kept journals. He walked into the visitor's bedroom that Desdemona was sleeping in and started searching through her things.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"I'm looking for . . . something," Tareth said. He sensed the Wisdom Fairy power telling him that he could get information out of her without specifically asking her about the journal. "Did you take anything out of the spell room before we went to the cave today?" he asked.

"No, I didn't take anything," Desdemona replied. In the light that drifted into her room from the hallway, she could see a worried expression on his face. "Are you all right?"

"I just . . . lost some notes, that's it." He searched the servants' quarters, but he didn't see the journal. He remembered that Willow was the only other person who knew anything about his collection of magical books and things. His face turned white when he realized there was another book that he did not see when he was looking for his journal.

He ran upstairs to his study and frantically searched for the journal and the book, but he did not find them. He wondered if he should kill all the servants, thinking maybe one of them stole his things behind his back. Then again, he did not know if the servants were sorcerers or sorceresses and immune to his magic. He remembered where he had put the book once he got to Ethermoor Castle. It was the book that the ingredients for the immortality potion were in. There was information in both that book and his journal that he wanted absolutely no one to discover. That information was on how a person could kill an immortal.