A/N: So this story just got moved to Section M; I hope everyone can see the new chapters. Thank you so much for coming back. You guys are the best! :) Soon we shall have all our heroes reunited after all... ;)


CHAPTER 8

SANGUINARY MAGIC

The castle drummed with the rhythm of falling water. Overhead, muffled with distance, thunder throbbed.

Clemson hugged a leaf around his shoulders and stepped out through the back door into the darkness and rain. Behind the castle there was a very large rose garden; when he'd seen it first during the day he'd considered it very lovely, but now the lawn was all muddy from the rain, and the roses looked gray and dead. From the balcony above he heard Faraday sound the recall horn; the day Clemson had given his commoners to carry out his order was over, and it was midnight again when everyone was now returning to the castle.

On the other side of the garden Seven sploshed across the rainy paths; he watched as she guided the arriving animals in and made sure that a little later everyone was kneeling in the wet foliage of the garden shrubbery in front of Clemson. There were only three Harpies standing guard around the place – the rest of the demons were still scattered across the island, making sure no one was trying to escape. However, everyone seemed frightened enough by Clemson's mere appearance, so he didn't mind.

"I've come to collect my, uh… 'royal revenue'," he announced then as he stood before them, "I hope, for your own sake, that you are able to bring me what I demanded."

There was a dreadful silence among the assembled animals.

Then one of the crocodiles – the Ambassador's second chancellor – stepped forward, shivering. "Have mercy, Your Majesty! We searched up and down the island for hours, all the way to one end and back! But there were only five pearls to be found…!"

The chancellor held out a small wooden casket; keeping his head bowed, he placed it in Clemson's paws and then backed away silently.

Clemson opened the clasp, lifted the lid, and looked inside. Nestled on a bed of burgundy velvet, five pearls were gleaming up at him, the brightest and most valuable of all pearls Clemson had ever seen in his life. Each of them was illuminated by the same blue splendor and looked similar to the sixth one attached to his scepter.

They looked very promising to him, but the witch frowned darkly.

"We need all seven of them! – And I say that miserable crocodile is lying, just like the others; they want to hide from us where that least pearl is because they fear the power of the spell I'm going to perform! But don't worry, King Clemson – I know more ways than one to make them talk…!" – He nodded for her to go on, and she stepped ahead to face the chancellor. She looked ridiculously small and frail against the large reptile, yet he was the one who shivered in front of her.

"Are you sure you don't know where that pearl is, crocodile?" she hissed, her paws starting to glow gold, "Maybe you better think again!"

"Don't kill me!" he pleaded, "I swear I don't know where it is; I'd get it for you right away if I had the slightest idea! But I don't; I swear it on my life, Golden Lemur! Please don't kill me!"

Seven smirked. "Alright, since you won't talk, why don't we have a little dance instead?"

The chancellor was stammering more words, begging her to reconsider, when a cannonade of squealing wind burst over him, drowning out his voice. The sudden blast shoved him sideways and then swept him completely off his feet. Clemson grinned widely at the sight of the crocodile's flustered face.

"Come, come! For an animal shackled by gravity there can't be anything more exciting than having your feet stop sticking to the ground. – Come, dance in the vast, rainy sky! Don't you sometimes wish you could fly like a seagull and escape the narrow and boring island of Madagascar? Now, I'll make that dream come true for you! – Come, dance for us, Chancellor! Through the rain, through the wind! Fly around like you were dancing – let the moon shine on you and bless you!"

Raising both paws up in the air with her fingers spread and palms turned out, Seven made the crocodile's body flutter around in a whirlwind like a dead leaf high above the paths of the rainy garden. The rain pounded upon every part of the chancellor's body and the wind lashed into his face, stinging and scourging, large raindrops bursting over him like a breaker. He was holding onto his head, screaming over and over.

"Stop it! Stop it! Let me down!"

"You're right; it's more fitting for crocodiles to crawl on the ground." – The witch lowered her paws; the whirlwind that had been making the crocodile chancellor fly grew weaker, then stopped. He was once again bound by the restrictions of gravity, like any animal without the influence of magic – so he began to drop towards the ground, head upside-down. After plummeting about a hundred feet he hit the stony ground with a sickening crunch. The screams stopped instantly. He lay there facedown, his legs at odd angles and his short arms splayed. His body was spread out like a carpet of fresh blood, bones broken and crushed, flesh torn and smashed.

The crowd screamed and pulled back in shock.

Seven's cackling laughter echoed through the darkness and rain. "Hahahahahihihaha! How easy it is to break things in the Light World, and how difficult it is to fix them!" – For a moment the witch seemed to be intoxicated by her own powers, by the thought of how much she had yet to gain. – "Anyone can take a life. But no animal can revive a lost life! Only by surpassing the irreversible one can prove that one has surpassed animalhood once and for all. And you, all of you, will help me prove this by bestowing that last pearl upon me!"

She turned to the next animal kneeling beside her, a rat woman, who flinched when Seven's gaze fell upon her.

"It's not here! I swear!" she cried with a whimper, "Please, Seven, please let me live!"

Seven raised her glowing paws upon her but then hesitated and looked at Clemson again for reassurance. He nodded encouragingly to her.

"Go on. Make sure at all costs that we get what we need!"

"It will be my pleasure, King Clemson." Laughing, the witch pointed her glowing finger at the rat woman, who kept begging for mercy. Her body began glittering and then rapidly shrinking; golden wings sprouted from her back when she had shrunken down to the size of a butterfly. Just like she had done with the crocodile chancellor, Seven whirled her through the air at first – but then, when her dance began wearing her out, the enchanted rat was suddenly caught by a gentle bed… a soft, knit web of silky threads spun right there in the shadows among the roses. The owner of that web lumbered into view, welcoming its rare guest who had dropped by for a visit in this dark and stormy night… That owner, a simple spider which should have been small enough to be crushed between the palms of a rat's paws, now looked as big as a canopy bed to the enchanted rat woman.

"No… Nooooooo!" The rat woman gave a high-pitched, tearing, convulsive cry when the spider tossed a sticky, gooey thread around her. Frantically she struggled to release herself from the crisscross of silk encasing her golden wings, writhing and begging for her life, but her pleas were ignored.

"Kyahahahihihahakyaaa… this time it's a dance with a spider!" the witch rejoiced, "I've heard that spiders don't chew their prey but inject their venom, and when the insides melt into a sticky soup, they suck it out. Make sure you watch closely and tell us if that's true, okay? Very closely. Hahahahaha!"

"Gyaaaaaaaahh!" A single, agonizing shriek tore through the night, chilling them to their bones as the spider plunged its deadly fangs into the butterfly's throat and began gnawing. The poison seared through the rat's enchanted body; for a moment her original form became visible again. Blood spurted from her jugular, drenching her face and fur while her screaming turned into gurgles. Seven grabbed her and held her until her body stopped trembling and no more gurgles came from her slit throat. Then she stood, letting the body fall to the floor, and looked at the blood coating her legs and arms with a smile of contentment on her lips.

"I can make her go on like this forever," Clemson said to the rest of the terrified animals, "And I will, if you don't tell me where that pearl is. I know that it must be here on Madagascar somewhere, and that crocodile guy just confirmed himself that you've been searching all over the island – so if you don't want to end up like those other two, you better talk now." There was nothing particularly aggressive about his tone, but they huddled closer together at the mere sound of his voice. Clemson saw fear in every eye. He felt great.

Seven pranced up and down in front of them before she randomly chose another victim... a lemur from Julien's pack.

"No! Have mercy, Seven! Have mercy!" Ted screamed.

"Ah, you…!" she purred at Ted like a gorged fossa. Blood ran down her thighs and calves and dripped from her black fur; daintily she licked it from her fingers.

– "You resent me; I know. I made your wife suffer and killed her. But don't worry – you shall be reunited with her again soon!"

The witch softly, gently lifted her finger, as though touching the empty air in front of Ted's nose. When she did, a light breeze arose, lifting Ted off his feet. His body kept floating, rebounding in the air like a feather… approaching the wrought iron fence which stood sentinel around the garden, rusted with age, protecting the castle's inhabitants with spear-shaped prongs that rose into the air. And the witch made Ted fly, fly, fly – soon his body would be hovering right over the pointed spearheads...

Clemson and the three Harpies cheered for her to go on – and then it was over.

Seven's paws stopped glowing; the golden gleam all around her body disappeared. A sudden stunning silence fell over the entire garden. Ted dropped to the ground with a thump; he yelped in surprise but otherwise remained completely unharmed.

Seven gasped, staring with wide eyes at her open, empty palms, as if she'd just lost something very precious.

"What now?!" Clemson asked, frowning. Suddenly the two of them seemed strangely outnumbered against the rest of the assembled animals.

"Impossible!" she wailed, "No, no, no…! This shouldn't be happening!" She clenched her paws into fists. "I can't do it, Your Majesty –!"

"Yes, you can. It's my island; I own it. I can do with it as I please – and so I can do with the people living here."

"No, Your Majesty, I mean –."

"Listen, now isn't the time to get cold feet!" he hissed at her, "Get a grip on yourself and stay focused – and get that spell working again!"

The witch sighed, flustered. "I would do all you ask, if only I could – but I can't!"

"Why the hell not?!"

"I don't know… my powers… they're gone! My body is still there, but I can't use my magic anymore; I don't know why!"

When they heard this, the animals kneeling before them began exchanging gazes and whispered words. Unfortunately they understood things more quickly than Clemson had hoped they would –

"Run, everybody!" someone shouted, "It's now or never if you want to save your lives!" - Seconds later everyone jumped to their feet and began scrambling in all directions, putting as much distance between themselves and Clemson as possible. As fast as they could they fled across the rainy paths and disappeared in the sheltering darkness before he or the witch and the three remaining demons could do anything.

"Stop them!" Clemson yelled at Seven, "Summon some more of your demons and stop them!"

"I can't," she cried, "I can't!"

It wasn't long until all of their intended victims were gone.

Clemson swelled with anger. "What kind of a lousy witch are you?!" he yelled at Seven so loudly, so forcefully, that she recoiled from the power of his voice. "Whatever I tell you to do, you keep on messing up half of it! I free you, and you can't even grant me your alliance without demanding an enormous sacrifice from me; I ask you for a spell, and you can't even get the things together you need; and now you can't even tell me what this is about! – Seriously, I'm starting to think you're not half as powerful as you claim to be!"

"It's not my fault! Really, I'm sure I did everything right!" she cried back in frustration; if breaking down and throwing a temper tantrum at this point had accomplished anything, she probably would've done so. But there was nothing she could do; there was obviously no way for her to use her magic now, no matter how much she tried.

"Well, you have to admit he's right, don't you?" – All of a sudden, a voice cut through the rain. – "You failed… again."

They both turned to see a shadowy shape standing at the end of the rain-swept path behind them. Thunderclouds had rolled over the defiant moon, and the figure was washed in darkness – then the stranger began approaching them slowly, almost casually. He was an animal Clemson hadn't seen on this island before.

Seven seemed to know him well enough, though; she stared at him, a myriad of emotions flickering across her face, too quickly for Clemson to track.

"Karl…!"

He stood with arms outstretched as if he wanted to embrace the rain that drenched his fur, rivers of it running down his body.

"Welcome back, Seven. This world does not belong to you anymore!"

Clemson looked at the other animal. He had finely chiseled features and tender whiskers, well-groomed fur with an extravagant pattern, and a bushy tail with dark horizontal stripes. Black eyelids were covering eyes in all shades of fire. A light scent of coffee surrounded him like exotic perfume, blending with the sweet rainy air.

"Who are you?"

His black lips twisted into a smile. "My name is Karl the Fanaloka, and you have no business being here, foreigner. There can be only one legendary genius in Madagascar… and right now you're face to face with him." He ran his perfectly filed and polished claws along the stem of a rose growing next to the path and broke it.

– "Oh, and quit messing around with those poor saps, will you. They don't have what you're looking for." With a slight wave of his paw he caused the rose to open its petals – nestled in the flower chalice lay the last of the Moon Pearls.

"I should have known it…!" The witch clenched her paws into fists. "You skygoddamn smug bastard." She reached out for the pearl, but before she could grab it he snatched it away from her and closed his fist around the glowing ball.

He grinned at her sour expression. "Why so touchy, Yasu? Are things not going your way?"

"Don't call me by that name!" she screamed, her face distorting with sudden anger and rejection, "Don't allude to the old days, in Frank's name, or I shall go mad!"

"And what would you call what you're doing right now?" – She growled deep in her throat, looking like she wanted to eat him alive. – "Relax. It's not my fault that you've overestimated yourself once again. Though I've got to admit that this ritual you carried out in order to bind your soul to mortal flesh is quite elaborate indeed... difficult and very individual. If you don't know what you're doing, things can go wrong easily."

"What's the point you're trying to make?!" she hissed, "I knew exactly what I was doing when I merged my soul into that lemur's body!"

One of his black eyebrows arched upward. "Oh, really? Then why can't you use your witchcraft here and now, anytime and anyhow you like?"

She snorted. "I have no idea. It doesn't make any sense!"

"Oh, but it does," Karl chuckled, "You don't think you're the first ghost who tried to take over someone else's body, do you. I've seen this with other ghosts before, and it looks like everything that happened to them is also happening to you in the same way."

She frowned darkly. "What do you mean by that?!"

"Well, you may indeed have managed to possess the body of another – yet it seems there must be something you haven't performed correctly during the course of the spell since you can use your new body in this world only temporarily. To be more exact, it appears you can use it to its full potential only during the time when ghosts are at their most powerful – and you both know when that is, right?"

Clemson exchanged a brief look with the witch. "Midnight...?"

"Exactly. The time when the beginning and the end melt together," Karl confirmed, accompanying his words with a sweeping theatrical gesture. "It is said that midnight is the witching hour, the time when ghosts are strongest because the night is darkest. It is also said to be the time when every sorcerer's magic is at its most effective. But since you have a body again now you should be able to have permanent power here in this world; in fact you shouldn't have to worry at all about whether it's midnight or not... but obviously that's still the case. That shows you've very clearly overestimated yourself." He smirked when he watched her frown turn into a very puzzled expression.

– "If you had performed the ritual successfully, you could've used magic here in the Light World anytime you wanted, just as you planned it, and at midnight you would've even been twice as strong. But since you didn't, the spell only partially works: only at midnight can you gain enough power for it to take effect at all."

He raised one paw skyward, forefinger extended, pointing at the dark clouds over their heads.

"If you think about it a little bit, you can easily see that I'm right – you've been back in this world for two days now. Yesterday night you conquered the island, and I admit you did that fairly quickly, so you were done with it in less than one hour. Tonight you messed with those animals – and look at the moon now; it's about an hour after midnight, and here you are, powerless again."

They followed his finger with their gazes, looking up to the sky; meanwhile it had partially cleared, enough so that the three-quarter moon peeked through the threads of murky clouds. They carefully observed it for a while, and Clemson had to see that the fanaloka wasn't lying.

"Wait, this doesn't mean you can only serve me one hour a night, does it?!" he said, turning to Seven; she had folded her arms, chin set in a stubborn line, brows bunched together with anger. For a moment she looked like she wanted to say something, but then she averted her gaze and glared moodily into the dark.

"A lot can be done in one hour. I managed to conquer Madagascar for you in one hour!"

Karl chuckled again. "Yes, but now those animals have witnessed how you suddenly lost your powers, and it won't take long until the entire island knows it. Because what would keep me from just walking away and telling them that they've actually got twenty-three more hours to take necessary preparations in order to defend themselves against your next attack?"

Seven stared at him as if she couldn't believe his impudence, as if this was all just some hideous prank he was playing on her.

"You're despicable! Despicable!" she spat at him then, the words made all the more vicious by the contemptuous glare she gave him. "I hate you, Karl, from the bottom of my heart!"

– He just laughed off that declaration as if it didn't matter to him at all.

Clemson swallowed nervously. "Tell me he's lying!" he interfered, taking the witch harshly by her frail shoulders. "What he says can't be true! – How am I supposed to defend my sovereignty in the future if you can fight for me only one hour a night?!"

"Maybe you should've thought again before entering into an alliance like that, stranger," sneered Karl.

"Don't listen to him!" Seven reached up, grasped the red lemur's wrists, and took his paws off her shoulders. "I promise you, King Clemson, that one hour a night will be enough to fulfill everything you ask for!"

He looked grimly down at her. "Well, I'm going to hold you to that promise," he muttered.

"Don't worry, Your Majesty." She strode ahead to stand menacingly in front of Karl, her whole demeanor one of tightly controlled fury. "Listen, Karl – I hereby challenge you to a duel next midnight in the water park in the center of the lemur village!"

"Oh?" The fanaloka raised his black eyebrows enquiringly.

"If it's true what you say, then I've got at least one hour to beat you – so tomorrow at midnight you and I shall fight for the possession of that last Moon Pearl. If you have a man's heart rather than a coward's, I insist you turn up to this duel! And if you fail to do so I'll let every citizen of Madagascar know about it, and you'll be a coward in the eyes of all animals! Do you have the guts to accept that challenge?"

Karl was silent for a moment as if in deep thought, keeping his unreadable gaze locked on her. Then, before turning to leave, he playfully tucked the rose he'd picked onto the one-winged butterfly on the scepter she was holding.

"I'll be there."


Mort looked upward, lost to everything but his model and the canvas before him. The dark shadow of the baobab tree was checkered at its edges with dazzling light that danced and quivered like magic liquid ripples as the outer branches swayed to and fro, yielding gracefully to the gentle morning breeze that stirred them.

He smiled. His home tree was always most beautiful at that time of year.

He also loved the fact that it was growing so deep in the jungle; there was hardly any other lemur around here. It was such a peaceful place; there were no neighbors within sight or sound, no one who wanted anything from him.

He finished arranging his tools and was just about to put the first stroke on the canvas when he noticed that within the depths of the baobab's shadow there stood a lemur.

"Hi, Mort." Seven stepped toward him, smiling. She'd brought the brush along which Mort had given her earlier, as well as a slender stick of black ebony adorned with a pommel stone of smoky quartz at one end… Mort's eyes grew wide with fascination when he realized that it had to be a magic wand.

"Hi, Seven!" He waved to her excitedly, green paint dripping from his brush. "I… I wasn't sure if you'd feel like joining me after all. – But I still brought along a second canvas for you."

"Thank you!" She put it up next to his and then looked at it as if all the blank white space scared her. "Oh dear, now you have to help me out a bit. I've never done that before…"

Mort giggled, pointing at the wand in her paw. "I bet you could just use your magic to create the painting for you." – She rolled her eyes, smiling.

"Yes, I could… Magic really is helpful sometimes. It alleviates a lot of things."

"May I hold your wand for a moment?"

She gave it to him. Mort took it and observed it with great care, reverently running his fingers over the golden ribbons adorning its shaft. "Some day you really have to teach me how to use that!"

She smiled. "Point it at the canvas and say 'paint'."

He did as she said. "Paint." – Nothing happened.

Mort pouted. "It doesn't work!"

"Of course it doesn't," she laughed, "There's much more behind using magic than waving your wand around and saying strange things. – Here, let me show you."

She didn't even need to voice the spell aloud; with a mere wave of her wand she portrayed a perfect painting of Mort's tree on her canvas. Mort stared at the brushwork that was so precise, so perfect in its execution that he couldn't tell if he was looking at a photograph or a painting. Then he clasped his little paws together and hopped up and down with excitement.

"That's incredible! Totally incredible!"

"Ah, it's nothing, really. And I've come to learn from you how to paint; that way I'm not going to learn anything. So let's paint with our own paws now and not use any magic."

With another wave of her wand she undid the spell just as easily, making the colors of the painted tree fade away and turning the canvas back to a snowy white. Then she threw the wand aside, smiling down at Mort. "Besides, it'll be much more fun that way!"


Clemson poured himself another drink. He stared blankly out the window of his royal sleeping chamber, his mind consumed with thought; he'd barely had a few hours of sleep. Even with the sun shining bright outside, Clemson felt cold, big circles under his eyes framing his vacant look.

It was still early in the day when Faraday came in with his breakfast. The old servant looked just the same as before, dressed up in his banana leaf tuxedo, his ash brown fur so excessively shiny it looked quite unreal; Clemson guessed he had colored it somehow, possibly because it was already turning gray underneath. Just like earlier, there was hardly any trace of emotion in his features that were so strangely stiff.

Obviously noticing the distant look in Clemson's tired, pain-swollen eyes, Faraday inquired about his well-being; Clemson reassured him with a withdrawn smile that he was alright and sent him away. He then spent the day in the castle's library, unable to read or even remember the books, just looking out the window, trapped in his mind. Pictures of the witch's atrocious deeds kept clouding his brain – when he closed his eyes he could still see the mangled bodies of Seven's victims.

The rat woman curled up in the spider's web, fresh blood dribbling from her throat.

The crocodile chancellor's body that splashed into a gory bloody mess when it hit the ground, his spine horrendously bent, his limbs broken off, his face horribly smashed as though the scaly skin had been neatly peeled off.

He told himself that this didn't mean anything – after all, their deaths had only served him well, just like the deaths of the many animals the previous day when Seven had sent out her demons to conquer the island for him. Yet a part of him kept wondering how she could go around slaying them so brutally, yet with such ease – during the time she'd been undead, she must've forgotten what death meant to an animal! She'd taken their lives just as easily as she'd taken Mea's, rejoicing in the cruel act, laughing all the way… He tried to brush the memory off, but it stayed, lingered, throbbed painfully in his mind. When he closed his eyes again, those weren't the screams of the tortured animals he was hearing now – those were Mea's screams…

Just then the door of the library flew open, freezing him.

"I'm back, Your Majesty!"

A look of terror flashed in his eye but only for the briefest instant. Then it vanished behind a constrained plastic smile. "Hello, Seven," he greeted the witch – and then blinked his eyes in surprise when he saw that she had smeared herself all over with paint. There, on her cheek, a stain of dark blue, another on her belly, joined by a trailing vine of white paint down her left flank. "Where have you been? – And what about that paint in your fur?"

"What?" She blinked her eyes as if realizing it for the first time and then wiped a dab off her nose. "Oh, I was just… I was painting, you know. Out in the forest."

He frowned. "Shouldn't you rather be practicing magic instead so you can beat that fanaloka tonight?"

"Oh, don't worry about that." She laughed. "He's no match for me; I'll bring him down easily. I'll squash him like a mosquito and feel as much remorse about it as I'd give the parasite when I do!"

Something about her careless attitude began to bother him. Her willfulness, her callous treatment of his affairs… slowly he got the feeling she couldn't really be trusted to do anything carefully. While at times she was acting very composed and majestic, she'd also proven to have a very joyful attitude and quite a childish side; she wouldn't take any instructions Faraday gave her seriously, yet it was obvious that she kept hopelessly overestimating her own abilities. Frankly, she was starting to get on Clemson's nerves with her antics. "I think you better stay here and practice now. I don't think that Karl is all talk, you know."

She thought about that for a moment but then shrugged. "No, I'd rather go play with the Harpies now." She turned to leave, but he caught her by the wrist in a harsh grip.

"Not so fast." – He pulled her back against him. – "Seven, I want you to win that duel – I want you to win it no matter what! Conviction alone is seldom enough to win a fight, so you better start taking some measures to ensure your victory!" He showed her a book he'd been reading before. "Look here, for example in this grimoire they describe how to prepare for a magic battle…"

She made an angry face at him, yanking her arm free. "I will win that duel! And I don't need any stupid books for that." – She wanted to run off again, but he wouldn't let her.

"You better make sure that you do." He grabbed her by the chest fur and drew her close, his eyes boring into hers. "Listen, Missy, don't take this too lightly. I don't ask you for this because I think a magic duel is funny to watch or something. I ask you to do that because it means something to me – a lot, in fact. I need you to come out the winner of that duel at all costs, do you understand? It's about time you give me back what I want, and I won't wait much longer for you to do so." – The last words he spoke in a voice cold as stone. – "So I'm warning you… do not fail me again tonight."

He let go of her and stepped away; for a moment there was an expression of genuine fear in the witch's eyes. That satisfied him. But she quickly collected herself, regaining her majestic serenity; then she curtseyed to him with a hard glitter in her eyes.

"I won't, Your Majesty."


Around noon Julien, Maurice, and Clover were reunited with Karl in his airship. Together they were rummaging through a box room in the back of the zeppelin, trying to find something that would prepare them for what they were about to face the following night.

"Are you sure you want to do it, Karl?" Julien asked, staggering under the weight of a book the fanaloka handed him which was very heavy and awkward to carry.

"Well, I don't exactly have a choice, do I? Seven won't give in until she has that pearl, and that mad despotic red lemur doesn't make things any easier. On the contrary; he effectively seems to incite her to fight me about it."

Julien put the book aside, his face darkening with concern at the thought of Clemson.

"Do you think that he… that in the meantime he's learned about magic, too?"

"No, I don't think so. He rather looked like he had no idea of what Seven and I were talking about; that's why he wanted to make sure all the more that in the end he'd get what he wants."

Karl knelt next to a box in one corner, dusted off the top flaps, and then opened it to have a look. It was filled with loads of books, leaves inscribed with magic formulas and incantations, and black-and-white photographs of Madagascar in earlier times. He rummaged through the contents, locating and pulling out a slender golden wand tipped with a diamond point. – "Ha! I found it!" Memories were flickering through his eyes when he weighed it in his paws. "My old magic wand…!"

Maurice and Clover dropped the boxes they were holding and came over to them, and all three of them huddled around the fanaloka to look at it. "But that's all been so long ago… I just hope I haven't bitten off more than I can chew by agreeing to this duel." Karl shrugged. "When we had our little practice fights earlier, sometimes I would win and sometimes she would."

Maurice raised his eyebrows in surprise. "You've known Seven before?"

"Yes. We've been educated in magic together."

"So… you really went to, uh… magic school or something?" Julien asked.

"Well, yes," Karl replied pointedly, staring back at the young lemur with narrowed eyes. "But since you've never even noticed me in lemur school, why would you remember what became of me when we went separate ways after graduation?!" – Julien rubbed the back of his head with a sheepish smile. – "I started training as a witch doctor but then spent my time focusing more on, uh… my own creative career."

Maurice frowned. "You mean, scheming evil plans to take over Madagascar!"

"I guess you could put it that way," Karl admitted with a lopsided grin, "– Anyway, I fear I've already forgotten most of what I learned back then! – I hardly remember which way round to hold this," he murmured, waving his wand around. "Oh well, it's a big advantage that I don't actually have to win this fight. In fact, all I need to do is hang on until midnight hour has passed."

"Why is that?"

"Because then Seven is going to lose her powers." – Reading their questioning gazes, he tried to explain to them in simple terms what he'd learned from all his books so long ago.

"You see, Seven is a ghost. A ghost is… well, nothing substantial; that means she must have taken someone's body in order to use magic effectively in this world. A ghost has no body and therefore has to use one that's already there. That makes sense, doesn't it?" – All three of them nodded. – "Well, it looks like she messed something up when she performed the spell that would let her take over that body, so now she can only use it one hour each day… midnight hour, to be precise. That's of course the reason why our duel is scheduled right then. But I am the one who has the pearl, so it's her who has to win at all costs – me, I don't. To me there's no disadvantage if, after the hour has passed, this duel ends in a tie."

"I think I got this," Julien said, and Maurice nodded, too.

"Okay, so you don't have to win – just make sure you don't lose." Clover shaded her eyes with her paw as she gazed out the window, checking the position of the sun in the sky. "You've got the whole day to revise your lessons and prepare yourself, and you better do – because otherwise the witch will make you surrender to Clemson, too, and then he will conquer your territory as well and really become the king of all of Madagascar! And then Frank help us – then we're done for!"