"Once Upon a Wing"
Chapter 35
"Day of Redemption"
"Milliardo! Speak to me! Milliardo! I'm coming!" Princess Relena stumbles along, just managing to always hold on as she slowly descends the stony ledges of the Mythica Cotillion's exterior. Never Never before did this pampered royal princess ever have to exert such physical exercise as scaling walls or climbing down 50 foot high towers— without a net – but never before was the world in such turmoil, either.
Her heart, her mind, her soul all determine themselves to believe in her Heero, despite it all. She still was puzzling over what he had said to her earlie.
Something about 'not belonging' to my world… Relena's mind wanders for a brief moment's pondering. And so does her untrained climbing foothold, as she slips.
Princess Relena Peacecraft was about to join the same fate as her brother. And if the last two Tsificaps of this world perish before they continue the blessed royal line, it would mean the end of it all…
"I've got you!" That's when a low female voice comes to her rescue. Relena feels a sudden wave of warm water wash over to combine with the breath of fire that signaled Fire Nymph Lucrezia's entrance.
Warm sisterly arms hold Relena tight as Lucrezia brings her safely down to the ground below as both ride the Water Nymph's helpful boosted waves.
"Lucrezia?" Relena blinks at the dark-haired woman who never failed to surprise. She sees something in the Fire Nymph's no longer clouded by evil blue eyes that told her that this one only hot blooded warrior could surely feel something more beautiful than revenge and hatred.
Things like loyalty and love. Relena watches as Lucrezia sets her down softly to the earth and then rushes to return to Milliardo's side. The dark haired woman even sheds a tear or two of worry and anxiety over his wounded form as Sallie looks up to pronounce the fallen man's medical diagnosis.
"Northern men must have metal helmets in place of heads. He'll live." After a long faced tease, Sallie smiles up into her sister Nymph's genuine eyes of love for this man she once swore to kill.
"Just no more falling from fifty foot heights. And no roughhousing for a spell – got it?" The Mistress of the Water always did have those little adult barbs to throw.
An awakening Milliardo and Lucrezia both smile first at their comical medic and then to each other somewhat shyly.
"Milliardo! I was so worried!" Relena pitters over to where her older sibling lay, a bit battered, but by no means beaten. He had a sturdy shoulder to prop him up now though, it seemed. Relena acknowledges that love had the power to truly change even the most lost soul – if the right person showed them the peace to know how to accept it.
Milliardo starts to rise, only to find himself surrounded by a pair of slobbering embracing women who loved him as they group hug squeeze him tight.
Ouch.
"Fire Nymph, keep an eye out for these two all-important endangered Tsificap children, for the time being, okay?" Sallie too finds Lucrezia's obvious feelings for this Northern King and his noble belief, not to mention his little sister, touching as she securely leaves them in the reformed villain's care.
"Ready to go and see justice done, Mister?" Sallie turns to the up 'til now otherwise silently skulking man just ahead of her whose black dragon eyes were seemingly trying to penetrate the stone wall to glare at the evil awaiting him within the structure.
"Anytime you are, Mistress." Comes Dragonmaster Wufei's crudely mocking reply. The smile on his face told the Water Nymph that he was more than ready – that he was willing.
And may the Spirit Above protect any who stand in his sense of Justice's way.
"Ooh, I like the sound of that." The daughter of the water smirks, glad to have the Naisa man at her side when the, no doubt, thrilling fireworks start to fly.
For, as multiple Pegasus from the West enter the sky and a winged golden falcon from the east close in towards the fortress where the evil one has made his lair within, Sallie was certain –
Today would be their Day of Redemption. And no evil wizard would be allowed to take over their world. Sallie sees all the hope she needed for that in one final glance into Sanc Princess Relena's crystalline blue eyes, so filled with utter and total peace and belief in the eternal triumph for the side of goodness and right.
"You are not yet ready to leave this world, brother." A feathery version of Treize's familiar voice overtakes his senses and Prince Trowa suddenly feels his plummeting body within the strong familiar arms of another around him, protecting him, slowing his deadly descent–
"Treize?" Trowa can't help but smile at the ghostly translucent spirit that slipped through the confines of this wicked magical forcefield. Floating upon otherworldly invisible wings, the Aissur King's spirit was called back by legendary magic before it left this world in order to save the little brother he loved so dearly in life.
"I told you, we would always continue the adventure together." King Treize smiles kindly upon Trowa's stunned face.
"After all, love is a powerful force, no matter the weather." Treize whispers, as philosophical as ever, although in a strangely melodical singsong chant. Then Treize's eerily clear see-through eyes gaze up to the fairy Princess still held captive above by the evil wizard's magic.
"Brother dear." Treize's voice in his ear was as thin and wispy and hard to pin down as the summer breeze he so adored when they were youngsters growing up.
"Don't let your one chance at happiness slip away, before it's been sealed."
And Trowa soars, as his older sibling launches him upwards with fresh mystical abilities as that of an Elemental.
"Now, Lord Dermail, to do away with your humorous little force shield."
With a quirky smile singing the airy rhyme, Treize's celestial form floats down to alight before a pensive, perplexed Dermail.
"How is this possible?! I killed you myself!"
The old wizard yells at Treize, as if he were a phantom specter. Then, with physically angry hands, he swipes at him with his cane, only to find that King Treize of Aissur no longer existed in the physical world as a human – but now in the mystical realm –
As the newest Nymph, borne of the Air.
"Ooh, let me see! How, oh, how indeed?!…" Now, where Lucrezia was a tempestuous and feisty Fire Nymph, and Sallie the calm and strong Water Nymph, Treize, by the refractive glass of Sorceress Anne's flowing magic and sprightly little Mariemaia's playful fairy dust—had become a rather amusingly capricious and erratically flighty Air Nymph.
And it showed.
"Bing bong, ping pong, I can draw a square." He almost sings out in childlike jubilance as his invisible see-through fingers pluck strings of a wind wisp's lyre in the sky before they then busy themselves to trace a large four-sided shape upon the dark forcefield near the front entrance.
"Knock knock? The window's open! Is anyone out there?" As silly Air Nymph Treize hums to the dark opaque wall, a disgusted Dermail lowers his heightened defenses.
The sorcerer does not take seriously at all this once sedate and collected King, who had obviously lost his mind in some fantasized mystical conversion gone wrong, until –
"Guess Who, Lord Dermail!?" From out of nowhere, Wufei Chang's curly toed foot takes a kung-fu boxed kick in through the airy new 'doorway' porthole in the perforated opening of his force shield.
The sneered look on his Chinese features clearly showed the perfidious wizard that this son of the Dragon Clan was not one for playing around – and Dermail was going to pay for the treacherous past crime of leading Meiran and himself astray for his own wicked purposes for so long.
"Sorceress Anne! Can I trust you get rid of anyone?!" Dermail angrily cries out to his apprentice, prepare to berate her incompetence at do away with these fools, however –
"Forgive me, Uncle." Sorceress Anne slinks up from the ground. She, evil pointed veil and glasses–less, was no longer held under this evil sorcerer's sway. For a new ruler had taken over her heart and rediscovered soul.
Without a second look back, she then sends the final blast of wicked energy that still remained in her once corrupted body, through her red fingertips straight towards Dermail's shocked bearded-gray face
"Let me correct that error." She smirks the retribution as those last remnants of dark energy hit the wizard dead on, weakening him enough for Wufei to stride right up to him, gleaming green sword hissing like a an ekans to life, hungry for its final revenge. Dermail's pensive eyes look around to see this collection of his former lackey villains turned heroes who dared to thwart his dark plans for ultimate takeover of this world…
"This is not over yet!" Lord Dermail, just like a cornered animal, viciously spits out as he emits a flash of light so intense that they were all stunned and blinded for second. He utilizes that second to grasp hold of the legendary golden power source of Mythica, wrapping warped hands around to carry it under his arm like a greedy old miser.
Determined he would be able to crack its power from his own, in spite of all these ungrateful traitorous fools, he makes a run for it. Seeing the front entrance was blocked, his dark gray robes then swirl and fly in his wake as he magically thrusts himself up towards the domed ceiling straight through the air. With a deafening crash of stained glass exploding, the evil wizard breaks into the infinite escape of the sky…
But there was no escape from a woman wronged, who was waiting out there for him.
Princess Dorothy, high astride her awakened Valkyrie had been circling the building, just in case, this do or die situation called for hero.
And her husband-to-be was just that, as Dorothy proudly calls upon him and his mystic weapon of Sitnalta to do the job once again.
"Slingshot, my love!" The blonde vixen orders the bright young lad in yellows seated behind her on the flying golden falcon.
Prince Quatre's slingshot projectile hits Lord Dermail squarely in the forehead with enough precision pinpoint force for him to be stargazing.
The impact of the polished stone sends the evil wizard flipping back down some fifty feet into the structure, where he was soon surrounded.
"This land belongs to the unicorns of Mythica! The golden orb belongs to their magical world! And the peace belongs to us all! Not you, you evil Sorcerer!" Princess Relena, despite both Milliardo and Lucrezia's warning hands, she impetuously races from behind them in the entraceway to stick her two cents and nose high held in.
She feels the triumph of this team effort battle for the pure land of Mythica turning in the good guys' favor. So, of course, who was better to make a peace-loving speech as she dashes up to symbolically reclaim the precious golden orb back from him, and—
"If I can't have it, no one will!" Dermail knew he was in the final grasping stages of his wicked reign, even as he lies there broken boned and broken spirited. But, still filled with the evil that had seeped into his entire being long ago, that would not let go without one more violently wicked deed.
And his wrinkled old hand, with its last spurt of dark energy, was about to unleash its full destructive force upon the Golden Treasure of Mythica.
And, in doing so, destroy every last one of the sacred race of unicorns connected in spirit to one another and to it.
The resulting chaos to the world would indeed then kill Princess Relena, the chosen child of the Peacecraft line, whose delicate hands its fragile fate was held within…
"Trowa! Catch!" In the split second before this world ending fate occurs, Heero Yuy's voice calls out. He was much too far way himself from the center to vanquish the evil wizard and rescue this Princess Relena one more time before her story ended-
But someone Heero felt he could always rely on in a life-and-death situation could.
Prince Trowa's lost sword from earlier is thrown, with Heero's aim straight and true, high into the air as it flies towards its mark of the Archer's hand.
And as Heero catapults it to him, the burning prayer that the Trowa of this world was the same Trowa that Heero knew and trusted as a man who get things done.
Especially after he had learned to cry tears for the woman he loved.
And her life, too, was in danger.
GRASP!
The steel blade was gripped now firmly in the hands of Prince Trowa, who had already set a slumbering Cathrine the fairy upon her altar bed again, before he turns around with determination just as steely in his green eyes.
In the next half moment, swiftly, expertly, precisely he utilizes that sword to pierce the heart that had no soul.
Lord Dermail lets out a terrible screech as the thin blade slices his evil intentions asunder. The vicious evil energy building in the wizard's blue-white hand, about to be unleashed at the golden orb and Relena both, dissipates slowly with a sparking fizzle.
His glowing with bluish electricity palm weakly falls and shrivels, as the rest of his already wrinkled old physical form contorts and is wrenched hideously.
Black Sorcerer Dermail becomes older and older and older right before their eyes until he is revealed to have secretly been the disguise all these years of nothing more than an ancient Nilbog swamp creature as its gnarled twisted little skeleton begins to ooze back into his original slimy black-green form.
With a final shriek echoing throughout the hall, Lord Dermail, the evil Master Nilbog at the beginning of time, finally disintegrates into a dark shadowy pile of garish green and black dust that is soon whisked away by the scattering winds.
The wicked wizard had always been only the face of an evil incarnation of ultimate wrath from the depths of this world's darkest, foulest bogs.
And now it was gone, that menace of evil would leave the entire world in peace at last.
So the flask filled with fairy dust falls from his belt to gather on the marble floor in a magical dance to play music on the mystic winds that the magical Air Nymph was the new Symphony Orchestra Conductor thereof…
Good Evening, Once Upon a Wing fans! So what about that shocker? Lord Dermail has only been a Goblin-ehem- Nilbog- (don't you love that anagramish, backwards naming thing my dream envisioned) all this time?! I, myself forgot that interesting little plot-twist!
Please tell me what you think about the wicked wizard's final confrontation with our heroes - and heroines! ^_^
Reviews, please! :) ^0^
Two more wrap-up chapters to go before the night's out for the conclusion to our fairy tale! Let's get them typed up, Dragy! Go! Go! Go! *_*