They walked all day and all day Alastor had to endure listening to Angel's non-stop jabbering. Going on about his life goals and view points, singing his favorite songs, even trying out his dance moves. To Alastor he was as chatty as a parrot and more annoying than a mime. He couldn't imagine how someone could run their mouth for so long and he was almost tempted to hurl that spider into a tree.
"You know most people except arachnids to be sedentary creatures but not me." Angel rambled. "I much prefer to be on the move. Travel around, go where the wind takes me, and I gotta tell ya the wind has taken me to some freaky places."
"Why me?" Alastor groaned. "Why me? Tell me God, what was my crime? What did I do to deserve this?"
Thankfully though, Angel became quiet at night fall when they stopped to rest. Alastor treasured the peace and quiet for as long as he could.
Come the next morning, they started walking again and that's when the scenery started to change in a bad way. Little by little, the greenery turned browner, the grass got sparser, until finally Alastor and Angel found themselves moving across a bleak, burnt land-scape marked only by charred skeletons of trees. It began to get darker. Black clouds scudded across the sky and the burned trees cast long shadows the covered the ground. And just ahead of them was a huge devil's peak.
They climbed themselves up that rocky peak and there it was. A dilapidated castle, burned and blackened. Perched on a rock pinnacle, surround by molten lava.
"Oh Lordy." Alastor said taking in the area. "And I thought my home was scary beyond all reason. I should have considered moving here sometime ago. I would definitely have a lot more un-disturbed, privacy."
"Al I don't think even you could be comfortable living in a place like this." Angel said, wondering if he had been smart to go along with this quest.
"Well we better press forward."
Angel was stunned by Alastor's reaction to the scenery. Here he was in a part of the world which was shrouded in brimstone and lava, yet he was completely unafraid and was just walking around like it was no different from the field which they had come from.
"Oh splendid! Just what we needed. A bridge." Alastor pointed over to the wooden bridge that hung over the lava and it was the only way to reach the castle. But it looked very weak and wobbly.
"We're gonna walk on that?" Angel asked with fearful skepticism. "It doesn't look very safe."
"There's no other way across."
"Then maybe you go on ahead and I'll wait here."
"Oh don't tell me you're afraid of heights. You're a spider for Heaven's sake. You build webs in high locations all the time."
"Yeah about that, funny thing. I've actually never had the opportunity to build a web and I'm not afraid...It's just..."
He peered tentatively over the edge.
"I'm just a little uncomfortable about being on a rickety bridge over a boiling lake of lava."
"Now Angel don't be difficult." Alastor said. "I'll be right beside you and I'll make sure that you don't fall."
"Really?"
"Really, really."
"Okay."
"Just keep moving and don't look down."
"You know that don't look down phrase doesn't exactly help. In fact it makes me want to do the opposite."
Angel looked down.
"Uh-uh! I'm not getting on that bridge. I'm too scared to do it. I'm too scared to do anything. No use trying to talk me into doing this."
"Really, is that so?" Alastor grinned mischievously as an idea popped into his head. He then advanced toward Angel. "Then I guess I'll have to simply drag you across."
"Not funny Alastor." Angel said backing away from him.
"Oh I'm very serious. If you won't walk across of your own volition then I'll take you over by force."
"You stay away from me." Angel backed up further.
"Over the fire and the peril and the lava."
"Stop it!"
"You've brought this on yourself Angel."
"Don't do this to me man! There's no way in Hell this bridge will hold both of us!"
"Angel."
"It'll send us falling down to burning death as soon as we put our combined weights on it!"
"Angel."
"I don't wanna be barbecue!"
"Angel!"
"What?!"
"Turn around."
Angel did as he was told and he discovered that in his intense fear and desperation, he had unknowingly backed up all the way across the bridge.
"Oh...Cool."
No longer afraid, he and Alastor went toward the enormous castle doors. Oddly though, they were completely unguarded. No sign of the infamous moth adze anywhere.
"So where is this giant pain in the neck anyway?" Angel asked.
"Inside, waiting for us to rescue her." Alastor joked.
"I was talking about the adze."
They slipped through the door and the two of them started making their way through the murky hallways of the dark and spooky keep. Not knowing what they would find inside, Alastor was wary. Angel was downright terrified and he wondered how Alastor was not? After all the entire estate was littered with bones of unknown origin, surely something that would frighten any regular Joe but not Alastor. He wasn't the least bit disturbed by remains of former knights. Hell, he even started to dress himself in the armor of one corpse.
"This will come in handy." He said adjusting the pauldron on to his shoulders and securing the gauntlets over his hands.
"Oh gross! That came off a dead body!" Angel gagged.
"So? The material is still durable. It's heat retardant against lava, will shield me against falling debris, and make it more difficult for the adze to drain my body of blood and plasma. In fact you should consider putting some armor on yourself."
He placed a helmet over his head.
"No thanks." Angel said. "I can't get past the fact that it literally came from a dead guy."
"You sound like a meek child." Alastor handed him a breast plate and some knee cops. "At least put these on. I found them on the floor, not on a skeleton."
"That'll work." Angel proceeded to put said pieces of armor on.
"Now see if you can find some stairs."
"Stairs? I thought we were looking for the princess."
"The princess will be up the stairs, in the highest room, in the tallest tower." He said recalling the story he had read from childhood.
"What makes you think she'll be there?"
"I read it in a book once."
Truthfully, Alastor found it very ironic that he was now apart of the very story he grew up hearing. That he was walking around in the very same dark castle, about to face the very same monster, and rescue the very same princess. He remembered how when he first heard the story, he complained about how it was always a prince who saved the princess and why not a wendigo. It made him wonder what his younger self would have thought if he knew that years in the future, he would ended up being the only wendigo to be a princess's savior. Better yet, what would his mother have thought if she saw him like this? For once, playing the role of the courageous hero instead of the mortifying beast?
"So I'm going to find the stairs and you're going to find the adze, right?" Angel said.
"That's the plan." Alastor confirmed. "You locate the princess and get her to safety while I dispose of the adze."
"Have you ever killed anything like adze?"
"Can't be more difficult than killing two full grown bears at the same time with no weapons."
"You actually did that? How?"
"You bash their heads together so hard that it breaks both of their skulls."
"That's sick!"
"Hey they broke into my home and ate all the meat I worked so hard to catch. So if they were going to steal my food, then it's only natural that they be the ones to replace my food. Point is I can handle any kind of predator if I have the will to do so."
Alastor headed off down the corridor. Angel watched him go, then moved off the other way.
"A moth adze." He muttered to himself. "What kind of a creature is that to use in place of a guard dog? You know most princesses are guarded by dragons or griffins or even a giant but an adze...I don't even know what to expect that thing to look like. Oh well, at least Al is the one taking care of it and not me."
But he would soon find that he had spoken much too soon in that moment because just right above his head, a large eye was looking down on him
