Chapter One

“This is so relaxing,” Claris remarked, laying on the picnic mat. Annice sighed and flipped the page of her open book as a cool breeze blew past them. Today, Acacia and her friends had decided to go to the Sandy Seafoam beach, to celebrate the start of the school holidays.

            It had been two weeks since the Guardians had defeated the Shadowness and Acacia had learned that her friend, Korii, was one of the eight crazy-powerful Guardians. Lifea and Bloome, her elven friends, were also in on the secret. Lifea had been sending updates on shadow business in Sunhilde every week, even during the holidays.

             The entire adventure had lasted for only a week, and that should have gotten the three girls in serious trouble for leaving school premises, but everyone—even Principal Ganeo—had sort of . . . forgotten the period that they were gone. He only assigned them a week of detention when he caught them coming out of a teleportal during class time.

            Acacia was pretty sure one of the Guardians were the cause of the memory loss.

            She curled her knees in, still paranoid. The last time she’d been on a beach, shadows—choco-coa fountain-like creatures—had attacked her and Claris. They’d managed to escape, but only barely.

            It didn’t help that the only way to get up the tall cliff face behind them—that surrounded the beach—was through a teleportal on the other side of the cliff. Annice flipped a page in her book again, and Acacia caught a glimpse of the title. “Guardians of the Galaxy?” she asked.

            Annice nodded. “It’s quite popular among the aliens in Cloudstorm. Korii lent this to me. Do you know that everything about guardians here is wrong? Not even one of them has infinite power. So far. And the aliens call themselves ‘humans’, and they don’t know about Gaia and Dyia and Skysun and Moonstar and basically magic. They think it’s fantasy.”

            “Huh,” Acacia didn’t know what to say to that. The aliens had to be pretty smart if they could run an entire solar system from one planet. “Uh, guys. There’s someone running towards us,” s pointed in the direction of a man wearing black pants, an office button-up shirt and a tie whipping around his face running towards them.

            As he got closer, Acacia recognised him as her history teacher, Mr Claus. When he finally reached their picnic mat, he was panting, sweaty and out of breath. “I have news for you,” he said, wiping his brow.

            “What news?” Acacia sat up straighter. 

            “About your parents.”

            Acacia stiffened. Three years ago, her parents had left her at DSM (Dyia’s School of Magic), and they sent her a letter every Sunday. But during her second year in DSM, the letters stopped coming, and the letters she sent to them came back through the mail.

            Principal Ganeo had told her they were ‘out of contact’ and ‘finding them is none of your business’. Acacia had grown with her friends for the next three years. “What is it?” she asked.

            Mr Claus wheezed. “We received news that your parents disappeared on a trip to Sirenade, the siren Merdom.” Siren were slightly see-through and could go through things. They also sang the most attractive songs.

            “Why did they disappear?” she queried, not caring that Mr Claus had chosen the most awkward time to tell her the news—and that he shouldn’t have told her anything unless they were within school grounds.

Not that it mattered. She’d given up on her parents a long time ago, convinced they’d abandoned her. But if they disappeared, on a trip to Sirenade no less, that was a different story. Which also meant she wanted to get to Sirenade ASAP.

            Annice interrupted the question forming on her tongue. “How did they disappear?” Mr Claus shook his head. “The authorities just told us that we should inform Acacia of their disappearance. All other information was kept classified.”

            Acacia probably should’ve asked why, but she was much too close to solving the reason of her parent’s disappearance. In fact, all she wanted to do was get to the nearest Whirl-Tunnel ticket centre to get a ticket to Sirenade. The sirens might be keeping them hostage or something. The sirens were bound to the treaty between the land Dyians, the Sky Dyians, mermaids and seaghosts, that stated they couldn’t arrest any passer-by, guest or Dyian species, even when they were within their borders.

             Which meant two adults with not much family relations to stir up trouble, could be easily put into captivity. “I need to get to Sirenade,” Acacia said, pulling out her iCom.

            “Nope! None of you are going anywhere near that dangerous race of underwater Dyians. I only told you what the authorities said because I thought you wouldn’t take immediate action until they have more information,” Mr Claus informed them.

             “But—then why did you—but—"Acacia stammered. Mr Claus huffed and marched back over the beach. Claris shrugged. “I’m guessing we’re going on a field day to Sirenade?”

             Acacia nodded. “We’re going to find my parents, and make sure the sirens are brought to justice for arresting them.” At least, she hoped things would go that way. Sirenade was one of the three siren cities, which meant there would be more than thousands of sirens, waiting to attack.

              And they would be underwater, rendering Acacia’s Elemenability useless. But Annice could use her scorpion tail, and Claris could try setting off soundwaves. Whatever they would face, they would have to brave together.

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