A/N I'm not sure how well this will go, I am writing at midnight and I have college tomorrow so I have no idea what this will turn out like.
Me no owney the book!
Or Artemis
Or anyone else.
Or the Italian job.
Artemis and Holly were having a bad day. Firstly Artemis had caught an incurable disease, then they had fought through jungles and caves to find the saviour the Great Dwarf... and here he was... Disappointing really.
"You're not a dwarf." Artemis pointed out.
"Well done it take most people longer to guess. It's my height, isn't it?" The Great Dwarf said, sarcastically.
"But you're human." Holly pointed out.
"My word! Your powers of deduction are amazing! Why do you need my help?" again with the sarcasm.
"I'm dying, remember?"
"Rhetorical question mud-man."
"Your human, you can't call me that."
"Want a bet mud-man?"
"SHUT UP BOTH OF YOU!!!" Holly shouted at them, "You are better than this Artemis and you... How did a human get in here, what happened to the great dwarf?"
"I am the great dwarf. Born, thrown away and raised by dwarfs. Not taught science, taught magic. Humans have the most powerful magic of all, better than demon magic! But we seldom use it. After a while the dwarfs realised I wasn't a dwarf, humans realised I wasn't one of them, so I retreated from public." The Great Dwarf said.
"Brilliant plan. Now about my incurable disease..."
"I can't help you." The Dwarf said, before conjuring a cup of tea from thin air.
Artemis stood there saying nothing. Holly was just a shocked.
"But... we came all this way and you can't do anything after all! Artemis is going to die!"
"What? No! I can't heal him; he has to do it himself. But not on his own..."
"I'll help him, anything just ask." Holly interrupted.
"You can't, if I can finish a sentence around here I was going to say we need gold. Lots of gold."
Butler and Mulch were let down from their proverbial prison, just in time to see the glowing orb round the corner.
"Great Dwarf?" Butler murmured, nudging mulch with his elbow, sending the Dwarf flying into a wall.
"Thanks Mud-man and no. That's a glimmer orb, a common trick used by more power dwarf miners to get into cave-ins. The caster can hear and see where the orb is, but not touch anything. It casts a faint light on everything as well." Mulch explained, not taking his eyes off the now stationary orb.
"Neat trick, I could do with one of them." Butler said, discreetly drawing one of the neutrinos.
"No, trust me the way you make it is a bit... Odd." Mulch grimaced.
"Do I want to know?"
"Well you start off with some rocks, and then you have to get a troll to uri..."
"Enough!" the orb shouted at the bickering pair, "Follow me." And it started to float down a side tunnel.
"I think it wants us to follow it!" Mulch whispered.
"Genius mulch, Genius."
The orb led them down several side tunnels, each branching off a hundred times until even Mulch and his infallible direction were confused.
Eventually they arrived in a cavern, twenty meters high, at least forty across and filled with light from hundreds of little blue sparks. The light gave the cavern a cold and harsh feel, but every detail was thrown into sharp relief because of it.
Mulch whistled, "Nice set up! Bet there is something to knick here."
Mulch caught Butlers look.
"Not that we would take anything. Happy now?" He asked.
"No, now shush." Butler looked around carefully, taking in every detail. Even with his particular skill at seeing the useable he missed the raised circle in the centre of the room. With a hiss and a thud the tunnel behind them sealed, locking them in.
No way in, no way out. Again.
"Gold? The Amazon? Are we talking about the same rare metal?" Holly asked, hysteria threatening to break her.
"No, I meant the cheese! Of course the rear metal, why else would I want gold? We need a magic enhancer and this is the best one." The Dwarf said, growing impatient.
"Magic enhancer?" Holly asked.
"YES! Have your race forgotten everything?!? I figured that after a couple of thousand years you would need your memories checked but forgetting gold is a magic enhancer? Why do you think the people like gold so much?"
"Good point; the people could have forgotten the use and just remembered that they should collect gold no matter what." Artemis summarized.
"Bloody smart arses." Holly muttered.
"We need some gold so Artemis can heal himself; the gold will amplify his power and make up for his lack of skill." The Dwarf explained.
"Can't you just teach me enough skill to do the job?" Artemis asked.
"You got a couple of hundred years?"
"Not last time I checked..."
"Then gold it is." The Dwarf proclaimed triumphantly.
"Back to my original point... AMAZON...GOLD...THE TWO ARE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE!!! We aren't going to find gold anywhere here!" Holly shouted.
"Then your friend dies." The Dwarf said simply, "Death is a great incentive."
Holly though for only a moment.
"I'll get Foaly on the ship, he'll... Not wait... Mulch had the starter chip."
"Mulch? The little kelpto dwarf?" The Great Dwarf said, growing interested.
"Yep, that would be him."
"Interesting... They are facing their own test at the moment so you will have to wait until they finish. It shouldn't be too long." The Great Dwarf said, looking into thin air like there was a gigantic T.V. there. And for all Holly and Artemis could tell their might be.
"Give it five or so minutes, and then they should get here." He said mysteriously.
Butler and Mulch were looking around, they had found the raised dial and they had found the 360 marks around the edge, and the four pegs. That was all.
"So, again, a 360 degree protractor, and a lift of some kind. We need four numbers that add to 360. What are they?" Butler was muttering to himself.
"I have it! 90, 90, 90 and 90! It's so simple its genius!" and Mulch grabbed all four pegs from Butler and wacked them into the compass point holes. Nothing happened.
Butler stood silently; he took out a compass and found north, then put one peg in each of the compass points. The dial turned and clicked down, revealing a button in the middle.
"Come on hairy." Said Butler, grabbing Mulch's collar and dragging him onto the circle, hitting the button with his foot.
The dial rose up and up, shooting towards the ceiling and bringing a rush of blue sparks with it. The sparks hit the ceiling first, melting through it and creating a hole for the lift to go through. Almost.
The lift brushed the edge of the hole at several hundred miles per hour, stopped suddenly and sent Mulch and Butler shooting through the hole in the end of the tunnel, and landing at the Great Dwarfs feet.
"You're a human!" Said Mulch.
"Been there, done that." Said Artemis, rummaging around in Mulch's pockets, not a pleasant experience.
"Got the chip, off you go Holly." She nodded and flew up through an air vent in the wall. "Artemis. You have some explaining to do." Said Butler, gravely.
Whilst Artemis was filling the two latecomers in on the events, Holly was flying over the jungle to the ship. All of a suddenly the trees cleared briefly revealing a river and a glint! Holly stopped and flew back, looking again and saw it... there!
It was a narrow boat loaded full of gold bars, perched on a rock ledge in the middle of a waterfall. There were people on one side, and gold on the other. It was a finite balance and no way of getting out of it. Holly shrugged and flew down just in time to hear:
"Hang on lads; I've got an ide... What the bloody hell is that?!?" The man yelled, looking at the elf.
Holly flew down, plucked four bars off the pile and flew away.
After she had gone, the boat slowly tipped towards the river and was washed firmly into a creviced, letting the men go free and start carrying the gold up the underside of the waterfall.
Holly grinned, "One good deed for the day!" She thought.
A/N Sorry, lied at the top, got bored last night so stopped writing just after the title and watched House! (The man is a genius!) This was actually written during my chemistry lesson... It was THAT boring! (As Artemis Fowl Junior I know everything they are teaching me already, and correcting teachers gets boring after a while).
Enjoy!
~Artemis Fowl II~
