Artemis Fowl: The Book of Ages
The Underground
"Who are you?" demanded Holly angrily, "What did you do to Artemis?"
She tried desperately to free her hands so she could at least pull off the blindfold and see the danger, but all she succeeded in doing was chafing her wrists and elbows against the hard plastic cuffs.
"I-" began Artemis, but he was quickly cut off by the female.
"No talking Mud Boy. Not a word till I say you can."
Holly heard someone walk lightly on the grass outside, then open the door on her side. She turned her face towards the cool night air and pressed her lips together into a tight line. A fairy would never be stupid enough to try to mesmerize another fairy- not that it was impossible, but because it was very hard to do and considered sacrilege by the Book. But if this fairy didn't care about religious mandates, Holly at least hoped she didn't know that her would-be victim had no magic to defend herself with.
Though she still couldn't see, she felt eyes probing her. Her stomach clenched up and she felt like her throat went dry in a second. It wasn't anything magical, but rather just pure and simple fear.
As a fairy and a police officer, Holly wielded the power of mesmer easily and confidently, using it whenever necessary. But only now, when she was about to be at the receiving end of it, did she realize what a terrifying power it really was.
To lose your blaster was one thing, but to lose your will… that was something else entirely. She'd think twice before using that particular power again- if she ever got the chance to.
Holly was about to make a noise- she wasn't sure what- but it got caught in her throat before she could make it.
Someone in front of her gasped.
"So it was true then…" said the fairy in Gnommish. Somehow, Holly got the distinct feeling that the voice was supposed to be giving a warning of some sort.
A hand tugged at the back of her blindfold, pulling at the large knot of cloth. Holly instinctively pulled away, but the hand persisted.
"Hold still Lieutenant, you aren't helping yourself," rebuked the female testily.
'Lieutenant?' thought Holly, her mind racing in confusion. But her momentary pause gave the other enough time to completely undo the knot and take off the cloth in front of her eyes.
Immediately, Holly saw a pale white light filter through her eyelids, and she was sure someone was pointing a flashlight at her. She opened her eyes slowly and squinted, wanting to hold up an arm to block the light, but not being able to.
"Oh, oops!" exclaimed the person behind the light. The beam quickly swiveled down to the ground and Holly's vision became a mess of dark and light spots- the kind you get right after stepping out from a bright room into the dark night.
"Ugh…" groaned the elf as she tried to clear her head and her vision at the same time. Gradually, she began to be able to make out shapes.
The creature standing in front of her was certainly a humanoid, maybe just a bit taller than Holly had been prior to entering this timeline. The clothes she wore were dark, but then again, they might have only seemed dark because everything else did too. A helmet covered most of her features, though its visor was up. The creature reached and hand up tugged the helmet off, causing the beam of light coming from its side to flail around the inside of the car wildly for a moment before stopping on the ground again.
Holly saw golden locks of hair falling down just past the fairy's shoulders, and realized that it was an elfin face. A face that looked childlike even by fairy standards- with a small rounded nose and a pale, almost pinkish complexion.
And she knew that face.
"Holy Frond!" she exclaimed a tad louder than was really necessary.
She immediately regretted it.
The elf laughed a high, clear laugh and broke out into a grin.
"I'm not sure about holy, but yeah, you got the other part right."
Standing in front of Holly Short, in a matte black LEPRetrival body suit, was the elf she knew as Lili Frond.
Now, Frond was by no means Holly's favorite person in the world. Or even in the LEP. Frankly, as the captain remembered, Lili wasn't much of an officer. She was royalty when royalty didn't really exist anymore, but still held some influence. As a descendent of the first elfin king, this elf tended to get just a bit of 'preference' in job selections within the force.
Instead of the usual traffic duty immediately after graduating from the academy, she was put in Logistics. Why? Well, she spent the next year or so recording updated information for Foaly's database- things like warnings against entering the airspace of any major human city, weather reports, Ritual sites, weaponry information- basically anything Foaly didn't have time or was too lazy read to the computer himself.
In fact, Holly had heard that while she was gone in Hybras the first time, the LEP had made a new recruitment commercial featuring Lili Frond herself. It was supposed to encourage more females to join the LEP, and break a centuries-old tradition of male-dominated units within the force.
It didn't exactly work out: the next set of recruits to join were, interestingly enough, all male.
Odd…
But as a field officer, it was a well-known fact in the LEP that Frond was maybe only slightly more competent than your average drunken gnome. Granted, she wasn't nearly as rude and certainly, her breath smelled much better, but when she had to scrap her first surface mission because her then-long hair (against regulations) was chopped off by her wings upon takeoff, her reputation didn't exactly get any better.
Yet here she was, in a Retrieval suit of all things. At least her hair was short enough now that wings wouldn't damage it.
"Uh… so…" said Holly after a long moment, "am I still under arrest?"
Lili tilted her head a little and seemed to think about it for a moment.
"Well, technically, yes, because I'm not supposed to let you go anywhere you like," she responded, then pointed a finger at Artemis, who still hadn't moved an inch or said a word, "especially him."
"Let Artemis go!" demanded Holly fiercely, more angry with herself than the other elf because she didn't even have enough magic to snap the boy out of his daze.
"Are you sure?" asked Frond seriously, "You… you trust him?"
"Yes, I trust him," said Holly quickly. 'And unless N°1 or Trouble shows up, he's really the only person I can trust at all in this world…' she added in her mind. It was a somewhat disturbing thought.
Lili looked at the still-unmoving boy for a moment more before sighing.
"He'd better not pull a gun on me…" she muttered, gripping her own weapon, but not drawing it.
'Strange,' thought Holly, 'since when was Lili this cautious?'
"Be freed Mud Boy, your will is your own" came the elf's magic-laced voice.
Artemis Fowl blinked once. And again. He tried turning his head to the right, and this time, it responded. A bit stiff, but at least he could move.
If his pride wasn't a concern, he might have let out a sigh of relief, but he didn't. Instead he rubbed his neck with his cuffed hands and sat up straighter against the back of the seat.
"Well, that was thoroughly unpleasant," he commented, shooting Lili a cool glance. Holly turned towards him and gave him an apologetic look. "I gather you two know each other then?" he continued, "Miss Frond?"
"Wait, you know who she is?" asked Holly in a surprised tone.
Artemis shrugged.
"She gave the narration on most of the LEP's surface database didn't she?"
"Yes, but how did you know?"
The boy smirked.
"If the LEP launches a failed invasion of my house and I capture all of Retrieval One's equipment…" he pointed out casually, leaving the rest out.
But it was enough to cost him.
It took Frond a second to react, but quickly enough, he had a blaster pointed at him through the plastic pane.
"Enemy!" cried the diminutive creature, noticeably tightening her grip on the weapon.
"Calm down!" yelled Holly, leaning forward, unable to use her hands to pull the gun away, "It was a long time ago and it was a… misunderstanding. He's a friend."
It was most certainly not a misunderstanding at the time though.
Lili glared at the boy, trying to figure out what to do. She only seemed to relax a little bit when Henri placed a giant hand on her shoulder.
"Mademoiselle Frond," he whispered, "I do believe we should get going."
She slowly lowered her weapon- much to Artemis' relief- and re-holstered it.
"Cut her loose," she ordered the man, motioning to Holly.
Artemis saw her walk around the car again and come up on his open door. He looked at her suspiciously as she pulled out a tool that looked similar to Holly's old Ominitool, only much older and somewhat bulkier. She stared right back defiantly, even as she jabbed the old device into his metal handcuffs and released them.
The boy slid his pale wrists out of the cuffs and left them on the seat as he flexed his hands and rolled his wrists around.
"May I step out and stretch a bit?" asked Artemis politely, "The car ride was a tad long."
Lili narrowed her eyes at him.
"How do you even know I'm helping you? You could still be my prisoner," she said.
Artemis raised an eyebrow.
"My first hint might have been the fact that I'm alive…" he replied sarcastically, "and if this is all a mesmer-induced hallucination, so be it. I still feel stiff."
The elf gave an irritated grunt, but stepped back. Artemis swung his legs out and stood lightly on the grass. Though he wasn't particularly tall, he still towered over Frond- as he did every elf. She didn't look too happy about that.
Holly was standing next to him after a few moments, with the Frenchman just a bit behind her, watching each of them carefully.
Artemis saw Lili's jaw drop open a bit when she saw Holly.
"Whoa… say… since when were you this… tall?" she asked slowly.
"It's a long story," responded Holly, "but aren't you supposed to tell me what's going on first?" asked Holly.
The other elf shook her head, her expression still one of bewilderment.
"Not here Lieutenant," she gestured into the darkness of the forest, "you two need to get to a safer spot."
"Lieutenant?" asked Holly finally, furrowing her brow.
Lili looked confused for a moment, but then her eyes widened in comprehension.
"Oh, right! I forgot. Captain is it? Well, your rank is lieutenant colonel now," she smiled and added, "and I'm captain."
How did it come to this that the clumsy, rather inept Captain Frond ended up saving Artemis and Holly from a rather inconvenient trip to prison? Neither elf nor human could have known. Artemis, because he didn't really know Lili Frond, and Holly, because she did.
The two of them, accompanied by Lili and Henri, walked at a brisk pace through the dark forest, their path illuminated only by the light on Frond's helmet. Lili was leading, followed by Holly and Artemis, with Henri bringing up the rear. Artemis sped up a little to walk next to Holly.
"I don't like this," he whispered from the corner of his mouth, "they were expecting us. And it doesn't matter whether we get human or fairy aid," he pointedly glanced at the two in frond and behind them, "one of them is bound to turn on us."
Holly nodded just enough for him to see it.
"But what can we do?" she asked, not really meaning it as a question.
Artemis let out a brief sigh.
"This is what happens when I can't make a plan…" he mumbled angrily, almost to himself.
Gradually, the forest gave way to a rockier setting, and loamy soil and grass soon became hard gravel. A rock outcrop loomed ahead of them, its color and form mostly swallowed by the night.
"Over there," Lili pointed towards the wall of rock, seemingly at a rather unremarkable bit of the cliff face.
But when they got closer, it became apparent that it wasn't just rock.
"Wow… that's pretty sad for a 'safe spot'," said Holly under her breath as Henri and Lili pulled a large grey tarp back from where it was hanging on the rock.
It wasn't Foaly's cham pod material, or even a piece of cam-foil. It wasn't even electronic. It was just an old sheet of plastic hastily painted with grey and brown patterns to match its surroundings.
"That's fairly crude… even by human standards," commented Artemis doubtfully.
"No one ever comes around to this area anymore though, so if it works, it works," responded Lili defensively, "though I think a nice sheet of cam-foil would have looked so much better. We're in Wicklow, by the way," she added proudly, "I recorded the mining history of this place into the database nearly two decades ago- my first big project in Europe."
"This is a mine then?" asked Artemis.
Lili nodded just a bit too eagerly- like she was so glad she had the chance to show that she knew something important.
"About a hundred years ago, it was a human gold mine, but almost eight hundred years ago, dwarves mined most of this place out already."
"So why an abandoned gold mine?" asked Holly, peering warily into the darkness.
The four stepped inside, and Henri let the tarp fall back into place. Lili's strobe light swept from side to side in the long tunnel, and neither Holly nor Artemis could see an end to it.
"I was ordered to take you, Holly, to Haven," said Lili. Then she turned to Artemis, her light hitting the spot just above his head, "and you, Mud Boy, have the honor of joining us."
Artemis suppressed a grin. Obviously she didn't know that he had been to Haven before. Still, it would be interesting to see the city proper- since each time he had been there, he had been either asleep or inside one building or another.
"Well I hope we're not walking there," commented Holly dryly.
They didn't walk to Haven City. Artemis Fowl would have likely collapsed less than halfway there, since a sloping tunnel route to the fairy city directly from the surface would been about fifty miles long. Unless, of course, they wanted to fall straight down or take a slide. That wouldn't have been a very good way to get there either though, because if they did slide, no one's pants would have made it the whole way with its bottom intact. And if they fell… well, more than a pair of pants would have been destroyed once they landed- things like body parts would be likely victims.
Instead, they walked in the darkness for quite some time, with Lili assuring them every few minutes that they weren't walking the whole way. Artemis tried asking both of their companions questions, but quickly gave up when neither responded.
The number of forks and turns in the cavern made it obvious soon enough that the LEP officer was following a map on her helmet screen.
When Holly asked about this, Lili shrugged and pointed at her visor.
"The computer marked the path with a line in my heads up display."
Holly remembered when she'd used that particular system to navigate the Spiro Tower and smiled.
"I believe," she whispered to Artemis, just low enough so the other elf couldn't hear her, "that Foaly's exact words about that were 'idiot proof.'"
The boy's amused expression was just barely visible by the light reflected off the walls.
They kept walking.
Several minutes and two annoyed questions of 'are we there yet?' later, an old mining cart on sloping tracks finally came into view. The tracks seemed to slope gently for a few feet, but then quickly dropped down at an absurdly steep angle.
"You have got to be kidding me…" muttered Artemis, staring at the rickety wooden cart.
Apparently, Lili didn't hear him though, because she got in without pausing. When she turned around, neither Holly nor Artemis had made a move to get any closer.
"Come on," she urged impatiently, "we don't have all night you know."
Artemis reluctantly got in after Holly, and sat stiffly sat against the side of the cart. It was not a particularly large vehicle, and with the brake lever between the three of them, Holly was actually pressed up between an elf on one side and a much larger human on the other. It was clear that there was no space left for a yet larger human.
Henri then, obviously did not try to fit in the cart. Instead, he reached and hand into a large front pocket on his pants and pulled out a flashlight and what looked like a cardboard box the size of a small book.
He handed the box to Lili, who looked at it with a wrinkled nose.
"Oh don't be like that, mademoiselle," he scolded in English with a small grin on his face, "just tell him it's a present from me. You know he'll be in a better mood once he gets them anyway."
"I guess…" muttered Lili, shoving the box into her own pocket.
"I should go back quickly," Henri said, flicking his flashlight on and pointing it back the way they came, "Mademoiselle Short, Monsieur Fowl," he nodded to each of them in turn and then snapped off a crisp military salute to Lili, "au revoir… et bonne chance."
Without another word, the man walked quickly back into the darkness, disappearing completely within seconds as he turned a corner.
"What was that all about?" asked Artemis.
"Fungus cigars," Lili answered with a grimace, "Don't worry, I'll explain when we get there." Then she pulled the brake lever.
Holly's brain made the connection just a second too late, and by the time she opened her mouth, the cart's rapid acceleration had already pressed her against Artemis and forced the words back down her throat.
As for Fowl, it took quite a bit of his willpower for him to stop himself from screaming like a little girl.
A/N: So... nobody guessed correctly (not that I expected anyone to), and, as Inazuma Kanji bet me a hundred dollars that it was Opal, he/she now owes me that much (US dollars will be fine, thanks).
Anyway, on a more serious note, I know I left a lot of things unexplained here, but rest assured, I will get to everything (or almost everything) eventually.