The Storm Twins Conquer Monster High

Chapter 18: Preparing for the Midnight Portal Ritual.

Chapter 18: Preparing for the Midnight Portal Ritual.

    Demi was a bit nervous as she poured through the pages of Astronova's dimensional travel journal. After hours of reading, she finally found the part where it described the Midnight Portal Ritual required to fully activate the old Ever After High, and now the current Monster High Gen 1 Mirror Portal. HER Draculaura's voice had been getting louder in her mind lately as well.
    For the ritual, she needed to draw a Skullette in the center of a circle, the Gen 1 Skullette symbol specifically, light 6 candles in each of HER Draculaura and her friends' signature colors, and then recite a special chant in Ancient Monster language perfectly 3 times. The most specific part of the ritual was the timing though. For the ritual to work properly, she had to be completely alone in the room that the portal was in, it had to be done on a night with a full moon, and the chant had to be spoken right before Midnight, so that the portal could activate at exactly 12:00 AM. If her timing failed by even a minute, the ritual would fail, and she would have to wait until the next full moon to attempt it again.
    Luckily, that Friday, according to Draculaura, there was going to be a full moon in the Monster High dimension. Fortunately, the Twins had a very long modeling session that Friday and Heather and Natasha had a date that night, and knowing Heather, she would probably take forever doing their makeup, and after that, they would be gone from Shadow High while she went through the portal as well.
    On their next lunch outing to the Twins' favorite expensive seafood restaurant that Wednesday, while in the Twins' Jeep, Demi asked, "Can we stop by the candle store? I have to pick something up from there.".
    "Okay, but make it quick!", Naomi said.
    They then stopped at the candle store, the Twins and Heather opting to stay in the car and talk about Heather's plans for her date with Natasha, while Demi entered the store, knowing that this would be her last outing in the Shadow High dimension. She then went in the store and carefully picked out the 6 candles she needed before paying for them.
    Once she left the store with her box of candles, she went back to the Twins' Jeep. Before she let the others know that she was back, she overheard Heather excitedly talking about how she couldn't wait for Natasha to see her in the goth, little black dress that the Twins had lent to her for her date. Demi couldn't help but smile at how innocent their interaction was. The Twins may be cruel to everyone else, but when it came to Heather, they genuinely cared about her and would protect her no matter what. Heather was very lucky to have friends like that, and it reminded Demi of her inseparable friendship with HER Draculaura back before the 2016 Reboot.
    Demi then went into the Jeep, and they were soon on their way back to Shadow High.
That night and the night after that, she made sure to memorize the chant exactly as it was written, reciting it to herself in front of the mirror in her dorm room for hours at night, as with her excitement for the ritual, she was forgetting to pretend to sleep at night and put on her Demi Batista Human act.
    With Demi's odd, vampire-like behavior, Eliza and Lola just assumed that she was practicing for a big role in her film class though, so they didn't think to ask her about it.
    Demi couldn't help but think about the life that she was leaving behind though, and all the good times that her, Lola, and Eliza had together, working on special effects and film projects for their classes late into the night. She also recalled how excited they all were when it was announced that thanks to their incredible costumes, Shadow High had won the Costume Ball contest against Rainbow High. She also remembered the Storm Twins high-fiving and smiling proudly at them when the results were announced, acting not like controlling Upperclassmen, but like normal teenage girls genuinely happy about their school winning a big competition for once.
    She even thought about reboot Draculaura and her friends and how kind they were to her.
    She also thought about Heather, how she had believed her story about being a vampire, how she had bravely kept her secret plan to return to her original dimension from the Twins. What stuck out the most to her though was how during that night in the Monster High Catacombs, Heather had comforted her and given her a shoulder to cry on despite being unable to fully understand her situation. She still recalled how touching it was when Heather told her "I'm sorry for your loss.", words which nobody had spoken to her with such sincerity and genuine kindness in decades.
    And yet, behind everyone's backs, she was leaving all of that behind without saying proper goodbyes. And there was a high chance that her memory would be reset and she would forget all about Shadow High and her friends there, losing decades of memories.
    Yet, if that was what she had to sacrifice in order to return to her original dimension, she was willing to do it.