Prologue: Moonlit Storm

"Darn it!" Artemis yelled loudly as she died, again, in the Flopside Pit of 100 Trials. The 16 year old continued to look at her TV, agitation clearly visible on her face. Her dark brown hair was messy and midnight blue t-shirt and jeans were slightly disheveled.

"Freaking Magikoopas..." She muttered as they were the source of her failure. It was late at night, around 11 o'clock, but Artemis was still awake. She has been frequently staying up later to play her new most favorite game, Super Paper Mario. Her mother felt that she spend way too much time playing the game but Artemis did it anyway.

Thought she loved her mother, they were never quite on the same level of understanding. Her mother was what she would call "Eco-crazy", very serious about the "powers of nature". Artemis was quite the opposite. She is very modern and caught up in today's technology. She had a MP3, a 3DS, and of course her Wii. She was frequently on the internet; reading fan fiction, looking at artwork, and participating in fan discussions and theories. Artemis had only one real piece of her ancestry that she really cared about and that is a necklace that has been a family heirloom for generations. It is a white stone, roughly cut in the shape of the crescent moon. It was said to be made of moonstone. Artemis loved this necklace because it was given to her by her grandmother, whom she loved very much, before she passed away.

Artemis yawned and decided to call it quits for the night. Too lazy to change into her pajamas, she simply fell onto her bed and fell asleep.

Artemis awoke with a start, nearly jumping right up in bed. She looked out her window to see it was severely storming. It was still dark, so she figured it must around 1 or 2 am. She then noticed that the light in the hallway, which was on when she fell asleep, was now off. Her mother couldn't have turned it off because she had left the previous day on one of her weekend nature retreats.

"Hmm… must be a power outage." She thought. She then left her room and headed down the stairs. She turned into the dining room and opened one of the cabinets near the wall. In it was dozens of small candles, of many different scents. Her mother always has a lot of candles in the house as she loved lighting all kinds of different scents. She found a box of matches nearby and lit several of the candles.

Suddenly she heard a loud sound coming from outside the house. She looked out the window to see something rather peculiar. A large black cat was sitting right outside her window staring right at her. The mysterious cat suddenly turned and ran off. Curious, Artemis quickly grabbed her jacket and shoes and put them on. She ran outside into the blistering storm to see the cat now at the edge of the porch, sitting calmly as if waiting for her. As she neared the cat it took off again, running out into the rain and across the street. Artemis dashed after the cat, the winds and rain slamming into her side. She managed to cross the street, but when she looked for the cat, it was nowhere to be seen. Then, seemingly out of nowhere the cat reappeared right at her feet.

"Ok, I am officially freaked out!" She thought after nearly jumping at the cat's sudden reappearance. It was then that the cat looked up to the sky as if it had seen a bird or something. Artemis followed its gaze just in time to see the bolt of lightning coming right down on her. There was a loud boom and then silence. All she could see was black…