As she listened to Le’Nara explain what little she knew about Michael, Crystal, and Ghost, the Lady Eveningstar wove her magics to learn as much as she could on her own. By the time Le’Nara had finished talking, she was certain that she knew what had occurred.

“My son’s dead,” she told Le’Nara, smiling lightly. If what she was saying bothered her at all, she didn’t show any sign of it. In fact, it looked almost as if she wanted to laugh!

Bowing her head slightly, Le’Nara respectfully asked, “Can you help him? Is he beyond saving?”

“The little jackass is surely and unmistakably dead,” Lady Morningstar laughed. “A brilliant job he did of it as well! I can’t sense even the tiniest fragment of his body left on this plane of existence! It takes something special to do that. I’m afraid he’s well beyond my ability to help, as is the girl here. Their souls are too closely bound and interwoven for even a wizard of my ability to unwind.

“Not to mention that it’s forbidden by the gods, rules of magic, and laws of our universe,” she added, almost as an afterthought.

A few light tears trickled down Le’Nara’s eyes, but she refused to acknowledge them. “So he’s gone for good?”

“This other one,” Lady Morningstar said, ignoring her completely as she pointed to Ghost, “is quite an interesting case. Her soul has been peeled like an onion and is quite thin and weak at the moment. It’s cracked – in more places than I’d care to count – but it hasn’t been fully broken. I can help her, but she’ll have to wait a few moments so I can not do something.”

Confused, Le’Nara blinked several times trying to sort out exactly what she’d just heard. She knew she was upset, but something didn’t seem right with the lady’s last statement.

Laughing, Lady Morningstar walked over and gently tussled Le’Nara’s hair. “Don’t watch,” she told her with a wink, “what I’m not going to do.” Laughing gaily as the frown on Le’Nara’s face grew even more pronounced, she waved her hand and fired several firework bursts of magic into the air.

Startled, Le’Nara’s first instinct was to turn and run as quickly to her room as possible and lock the doors – the Lady’s warning had been launched over the isle. Having to reminded herself that she wasn’t a student any longer, Le’Nara forced herself to go against years of schooling and stand witness.

Trusting that the rest of the students on the isle would see and obey her command, Lady Morningstar winked lightly at Le’Nara and then pulled in massive amounts of mana from all around. Le’Nara’s jaw fell open slightly – she’d dared to challenge the lady when she had this much power at her command?! Even when Mik’hail had unleashed a volcano upon the island, the flows of power hadn’t been so thick or flowed as fast.

“Step forth!” Lady Morningstar commanded, opening a sudden rift in the sky around her. “Step forth! I summon thee!” The rip in the sky grew incredibly large, blocking out the view of the sun and several clouds. “Step forth! By the power of three, you cannot resist! By the power of me, you shall not resist!”

The rip in the sky expanded, covering most of the isle, seeming as if it was threatening to tear the small island off the surface of the planet. Darkness loomed and ripped as wave after wave of power flowed into the rift, trying to make an opening somewhere, to pull something back through from wherever it was, into to this plane of existence.

“Don’t you need the beast's name?” La’Nara cried out fearing that the lady may have doomed them all in some sort of surprised grief.

Saying nothing, Lady Morningstar didn’t answer as more and more power rippled into the gigantic tear in time and space. Lightning crackled. The air smelled of ozone. The rift suddenly collapsed upon itself, imploding downward, until it was only about the size of a person’s fist.

A tiny hole – leading elsewhere – stabilized, and a head no larger than a person’s thumb stuck itself through the opening. “Sorry! I’m busy. I can’t come…”

“Not you,” Lady Morningstar said, waving her hand dismissively. “You’re not allowed here. It’s forbidden.” Closing her fist, the portal disappeared in the blink of an eye.

Le’Nara blinked, staring wide eyed as a tiny woman’s head fell and bounced across the ground. “My… My lady!” She barely had time to gasp out her surprise before another small portal appeared out of nowhere and hovered before them.

A small, butterfly-winged woman’s body – missing the head, and completely naked – fluttered out and put its tiny hands on its hips. Twisting its torso left and right, it fluttered in the air for a few moments and then flew down to pick up the tiny head and place it firmly back on its shoulders.

Backwards.

“Am I really forbidden to be here?” The little woman asked, her head twisted backwards and looking behind her. Fluttering excitedly, she crashed into the ground and bounced several times.

Striding over, Lady Morningstar suddenly stomped down, stabbing the heel of her boot through the creature’s little chest. The sound of bones breaking and flesh ripping was audible in the air. “Begone fairy! The secret is going to be mine!” She half sneered and spat on the ground, completely unladylike.

A bright, rainbow colored spirit flew up, made several laps around her leg and laughed lightly. “A secret! It’s a secret! I want a secret!” Bouncing wildly and flying zigzag in all directions, the little soul hardly seemed to even notice that it was surely dead.

“My secret!” Lady Morningstar screamed, blasting a hole through the center of the soul, with a burst of pure magic.

“That hurt!” Sticking its hand through the hole in its chest, the little soul flapped around and giggled wildly for several moments, before flying in front of Le’Nara and laughing boisterously. “I’m telling! I’m telling!” Flying in circles around her head, it was cackling ceaselessly.

“Wha… What are you telling?” Le’Nara asked hesitantly.

“I gots my hand stuck!” Stopping its erratic flight pattern around her head, the little soul waved its hand at her from the center of its own back. “See! See! I healed and my hand got stuck! Ain’t it funny!”

“Good!” Lady Morningstar laughed. “Now you can’t interfere! I can get the secret and it’ll be all mine.”

“You’re right,” the little spirit pouted sullenly, flopping to the ground in a sudden depression. “I can’t do nuffin stuck like this.”

“Muhahahaha! Kakakakakaka! Heeheehee! And Wohohohoho too!” Exaggerating several fake laughs outrageously, Lady Morningstar taunted the pitiful little spirit. “You can’t do nothing! The boy can’t be revived without a body, and you don’t have one of those for him! Even if you did, it wouldn’t be his body. Nanner! Nanner! Neener! Neener!

“Even if you had his body,” Lady Morningstar taunted mercilessly as the little spirit groveled and seemed to shrink in on itself, “you couldn’t separate his spirit from the woman’s there and restore it. He’s already on the path of merging and becoming a spiritual existence! You’ll never restore him and get his secret. When he awakes as an angel or demon, he’ll have forgotten it and you’ll never know it.”

“I’m going to make certain the greatest secret of all time is lost! You’ll never, ever, never never have it! Snorkle! Snort! Snuff and Puff!” Sounding almost as if she’d lost her mind, Lady Morningstar turned around and wiggled her ass at the dejected little spirit.

“Well if that’s all!” Suddenly bursting with laughter and energy, the little soul flew straight up in the air and then exploded in a rainbow detonation that blew both Lady Morningstar and Le’Nara across the field. Rainbow colors painted everything as plants grew, twisted, and mutated in thousands of variations in the blink of an eye.

“I’m on it! I want it! I want it!” Laughing wildly, the now fully restored fairy zipped over to where Crystal and Ghost laid and zigzagged around them both several times, scattering glitter everywhere. Cheering wildly, the little one half sang the first requirement, “I need a body!”

“You can’t! It’s forbidden!” Lady Morning star yelled warningly as she struggled to get to her feet.

“Phhhhhttttbbbb!” Sticking its tongue out at her, the little fairly suddenly grew until it was as large as a human. Flopping to the ground, it grabbed a strand of grass and hardened it with a burst of magic. Suddenly thrusting the blade of grass into the center of its own chest, the fairy fell over and kicked a few times before dying.

The spirit that flapped up excitedly from the still twitching corpse was once again that of a small winged woman, not much larger than a person’s hand. Giggling, it twitched its hand and the grass stalk flew wildly from the corpse’s chest – where Lady Morningstar used a sudden burst of magic to grab it out from the air and tuck it into one of the folds of her dress, before winking at Le’Nara. Too wrapped up in doing its own thing, the little fairy spirit flew back and forth over the body and few times and then changed it to look like Michael’s.

“It won’t work if the bloods are different,” Lady Morningstar taunted. “That might look like his body, but it still has your blood.”

“Nuh-Uh!” Sticking it’s tongue out at her, the little spirit rippled a wave of chaos magic throughout the corpse that made it jerk and flop like a fish several times.

“I think the wang’s supposed to be bigger than that,” Le’Nara said, a light smile twitching at the corner of her lips as she was beginning to understand what was going on. “You can’t make it work with a tiny little man thing like that!”

“I can make it work! I can too!” The excited little spirit did several flips and the penis on the corpse grew and elongated until it hung quite a way below the bottom of the corpse’s feet.

“OH MY GOD!” Eyes wide, Le’Nara suddenly burst out laughing so hard she sat on the ground.

“That’s too big dear,” Lady Morningstar said lightly, a small smile twitching at the corner of her own mouth. “That’s the size a man thinks it is, not the size which they really are. A human’s really shouldn’t be any longer than their hand, at least not while it’s limp and dangling.”

“Fine. Fine!” Snorting impatiently, the little spirit waved its hand and the elephant trunk-length penis shrunk until it dangled long and loose, but a more reasonable length. “That’ll do,” the fairy exclaimed! “If it’s not happy with it, I’ll fix it so it can grow it whatever size it wants later!”

“You do that,” Le’Nara jeered. “Just forget all about the secret and spend all your time altering that body. I bet he’s forgetting it even now!”

“Is not! It’s mine!” Screaming, the soul zapped back and forth several times and then crashed into Crystal’s body.

Bursting out the other side, the spirit had another odd soul in its hands. Looking like some strange amalgam of both Michael and Crystal – it resembled two distinct jello molds of their bodies, smashed together as if someone had attempted to force them into the same bowl.

“I’m warning you,” Lady Morningstar yelled, “separating souls so joined is against the very rules of the gods themselves! They’ll smite you!”

“It won’t be the first time!” Cackling with glee, the fairy spirit tore chunks off the soul and tossed them into first one body and then the other.

“This one here. That one there. Just a little more, the god'll get mad, and I don’t care!” Singing to itself, the fairy only needed a few brief moments to do the impossible. With another wave of its hand, enormous amounts of energy ripped from all around, and both Michael and Crystal began to cough, sit up and look around.

“What’s the secret! What’s the secret!" Flying over, the little fairy spirit hovered and flipped excitedly in front of Michael’s face.

“I don’t know any secret,” Michael answered, frowning and looking lost as he slowly stared down at himself.

The little fairy stopped, blinked a few times, and then screamed. “OH MY GOD!!” Another thunderous explosion rippled across the ground, tossing everything nearby across the field.

“IT’S THE BESTEST BEST SECRET EVER!!” Blinking several times, the fairy held both hands up to the side of its freshly formed face, laughing and giggling happily.

“I’m telling! I’m telling!” Suddenly it disappeared in the blink of an eye, and then immediately reappeared in front of Lady Morningstar. “Guess what! Guess what! Guess!” Rainbow glitter sprayed everywhere as the little fairy bounced wildly all about.

“Potatoe?” Lady Morningstar guessed.

“Nuh Uh! That’s not it! Guess! Guess!” Laughing, the little fairy stuck its tongue out at her and then turned and wiggled its bare ass in front of her face.

“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to guess,” Lady Morningstar said, sighing deeply as she pushed her lower lip out in an exaggerated pout and hung her head in mock shame.

“That’s right! You’ll never be able to guess that I know the greatest secret of all secrets that has ever been known! It’s so great, even the person who knew it didn’t know it! It’s mine and all mine! Nana ah nana!” Wiggling and shaking its ass, the little fairy turned, stuck its tongue out once more, and then disappeared in a fluff of rainbow dust.

The Lady Morningstar waited several moments in case the little creature was going to come back again before she finally walked over and held her hand out to Michael. “Welcome back to the land of the living.” Laughing merrily, she tugged him up and wrapped him in a tight embrace when he took her hand.

“We didn’t do that. In fact, we did everything we could to stop that,” Lady Morningstar reminded everyone. “We told her it was forbidden. Tried to stop her. Even killed her to prevent her from stopping the birth of a spiritual existence. That little one was just too much for us to handle.”

“Who? What?” Blinking stupidly, Michael looked around trying to get his bearings. “Mother?”

“That’s the proper answer,” she laughed lightly. “Just remember to repeat it exactly like that if any of the gods ever ask you about what happened here today.”