***All copyrights belong to their respective owners. Warning: This story contains witchcraft, violence (some), deaths (many!), moves from the heights of bliss to the depths of despair and generally covers all shades of weirdness. Feel free to read if you're ready.***
PROLOGUE
DOWNFALL
For a moment Julien thought that he was going to make it.
But he hadn't run fast enough. He hadn't jumped as high as Maurice. He couldn't reach the plane's wing, like the aye-aye had done. Instead he crashed into the hull, cracking his ribs against it. He almost bounced off, but he slapped his arms in all directions, desperately trying to grab hold of something. He couldn't breathe properly; his ribs were on fire. His right paw hit the landing gear that was still extracted but slipped off again when he tried to grab hold of it. His feet scrambled on the plane's left front wheel with frantic kicks as he tried to climb onto it, but he couldn't get hold of anything. Fear froze him; he was too scared to even cry. He felt himself slipping backwards, feet paddling in thin air.
"Julien!"
Maurice threw his upper body over the edge of the cockpit, flinging his paws out in front of him, reaching down for Julien. Their fingers locked, and for a moment Julien stopped falling, but then he realized that Maurice was sliding down towards him; the aye-aye was twisting his feet back and forth as he tried to stop himself from doing so. Julien dropped a bit further, still clinging onto the older lemur's paws – they dangled in mid-air together, time standing still.
From the cockpit Skipper yelled something back to them, but his voice was torn away by the whine of the wind. The plane lurched to the side, now making an angle of forty-five degrees with the horizon – Skipper was trying to give some counterweight to the gravity that pulled Maurice down mercilessly.
Julien wanted to beg Maurice not to let go, to plead with him to pull him up, but his voice was lost somewhere deep inside him, smothered by a blanket of terror.
With the horizon line slanted uphill in front of him and a fifty-miles-an-hour wind blowing in his face Julien glanced back down at the castle.
Out of the corner of his eye, a movement caught his attention –
Terror froze him when he saw who had appeared.
Down below, standing on the platform of the tower in almost the very spot where Julien and Maurice had been standing only moments before, someone peered up at the plane passing overhead...
Even from up here Julien could clearly see the malicious intent emblazoned across the red lemur's face. Clemson's bloodshot eyes bulged in their sockets as he pulled his lips back in a snarling grimace.
Now he would see to it that they died for sure –!
Maurice saw him, too; he gripped his king's paw so tight that his fingers were digging into Julien's skin, his face contorted by the effort, but Julien could see in his eyes that he couldn't hold on much longer. He was pulling and struggling, twisting around with his legs as he kept on trying to pull him up, but it wasn't working. Tears welled in the older lemur's eyes. They stared at each other, neither having the strength or breath to utter a word. Julien slipped further down, inch by inch. He gazed at Maurice with pleading eyes. Maurice gazed straight back with silent tears running down his cheeks.
Grinning with anticipation Clemson pointed his gun upwards to the sky, tracking their plane.
Then he pulled the trigger.
He had taken a pretty good shot: the landing gear was ripped right off. With a loud bang it fell out of its well – taking Julien right with it. He didn't even have a chance to react.
Their united cry echoed through the air when their paws slipped apart, and the force of the separation sent Julien spinning. He felt himself falling down, down, down. The air rushed past his ears like a hurricane. Desperately he looked about, trying to control his fall, but Maurice had disappeared from his view. As he tumbled through the air, trying to catch sight of the plane, his eyes fixed on the ground rushing up towards him. He had barely seconds before he hit.
All other thoughts left his mind, and he closed his eyes –
Something crashed into his chest with such force, two of his ribs snapped like dry twigs. He wanted to cry out with the pain, but no sound could escape his throat. He lay still for a moment, breathless and shaking with terror, not immediately realizing what had happened.
I'm alive, was the first thing that flashed into his mind when his thoughts came clear. He furiously blinked his eyes open and scrambled to his feet; his fur was scraped off in many places, his skin littered with scratches and bruises, and there was not a spot on his body that didn't ache – but he had survived the fall.
He found he had landed right in the castle's moat. About seventy feet wide and thirty feet deep as it was, there was no way of getting out easily. Also some parts of the castle walls had crumbled down after the penguins' attack, blocking it completely in one direction: there was no way to ever get through that pile of rocks in front of him. Sweat was pouring from his ashen face as he concentrated hard to keep his body from shaking while he gazed around in search of another way of escape.
Suddenly a shadow fell over him from behind – when he turned around, he saw a lemur's familiar silhouette framed by the steep walls of the moat rising around them.
Julien's heart began to hammer. Place and time faded when he realized he was cornered in a dead end – with a pile of rocks in his back and Clemson coming up directly in front of him.
'Oh, Frank'. The thought was half exclamation, half prayer.
Clemson was approaching him, slowly, almost casually. With the sun off to the side, he cast a long shadow which divided with every step he took towards his arch enemy.
Julien stood shock-still, dazed. He was out of options; he could only brace himself for what was to come. Frantically he darted his eyes around again in one last attempt to find another way out, but there was none. He tried to step backward but soon found himself pressed against the rocks behind him. The stone felt clammy against his fur.
There was no escape.
Gravely, step by step, Clemson came nearer – with his gun in his paw, waist-high and leveled on Julien.
A/N: I was aiming to publish this in winter and now it's almost spring. I'm so sorry! Thank you so much for coming back and reading again. I'm convinced that without your lovely support I wouldn't have had the stamina to prepare another story of this size. I certainly hope you'll enjoy this final part. :)
