Foaly was back on site. He brought up some data on his computer.
Root looked from behind.
"Holly…Holly….can you hear me?"
Holly heard the faint voice in her ear.
"We have a dwarf rebellion below here….I repeat….We have a dwarf rebellion here…."
BLAST! CRASH! BANG!
"D'Arvit," came Commander Root's voice from behind.
Holly was hearing intently. Then she connected the waves to the Operations Booth.
What she saw was not what she expected to see.
Mulch was running along the side of Spuds Spuds Emporium.
"Brother dwarfs! Let us learn to control our anger! Divert it into the most difficult task you can find! Aaaarrrggghh…….no, brothers, do not kill me!"
"You traitor? 500 years we have been in prison, each of us. Some of us did not even commit those sins. You dare to stand up for the LEP?"
"He can be treated the same as the LEP!"
"Kill him!"
"Kill him, the traitor!"
Mulch steeled himself for death. Then a blast rocketed the threatening dwarf sky-high.
Root was back.
"Holly….what's going on?"
"There is a dwarf rebellion belowground. I have to get there as soon as possible."
"Now?"
"Yes, now."
"Is it really necessary?"
"D'Arvit," shouted Holly. "Do you want to see how bad it is? 1500 dwarfs have escaped from all parts of Haven. They are rioting. Have a look, estupido."
Artemis had a look in the helmet cam. She was right. It was bad. Then she began to speak.
"The least you could do was-"
"come with you," finished Harry.
"S-s-sure? Are you sure, Harry? Have you seen what a dwarf can do to you?"
"How bad can things get? We had better help Holly. That way, Voldemort's not going to come after me. He does not know about the Fairy Creatures."
Artemis coughed, very scared.
"So let's go," said Holly.
Root took the other two dwarfs by surprise, using his tri-barreled water-cooled blaster.
Mulch was grateful.
"I knew you would save me, Julius. I knew you would."
Then Root pointed his gun at Mulch.
"Who will save you now?"
The dwarfs were really quick on the uptake. One of them pinned Root onto the wall.
The other opened its big mouth.
Oh, gods above, Julius is going to meet a sticky end, thought Mulch.
Then came the torpedo. Mulch realized that it would save Root.
He opened his bum-flap and let it out.
The dwarfs were completely taken by surprise. Some of them flew in various directions, colliding headfirst with Plexiglas. Mulch heard the grotesque sound of things cracking.
Root coughed, then said, "I knew you would save me, Diggums. I knew you would."
Mulch then pointed his bum at Julius's face.
"Who will save you now?"
"It could get dirty."
Artemis groaned. Harry did not know what dwarfs could do, so he stared with disbelief at Artemis.
"Why is it bad?"
"Have you ever seen a destructive dwarf?"
"No."
"Lucky for you. They are very very damaging to the air and the people. Architecture of Haven could easily be destroyed by these creatures."
"What do you mean, damaging to the air?"
"Alas, Harry, do not ask me that or you would be running for your life by the time you even reached Haven."
Artemis then turned to Holly. "Let's go," he said.
Artemis tried lifting Butler's Sig Sauer pistol. Too heavy.
"Hello, Alex Marinas? I need six revolvers, each one .38 caliber. Right now. I believe you are around the corner, right? Come now."
Alex was completely bewildered. How did Artemis Fowl turn up in Ireland's Uruguay Avenue?
Artemis rounded the corner. Holly had done a speed flight across to Ireland, as he needed the ammunition badly.
Then they sped back to Ottery St Catchpole.
"Nooooooo, Mulch, not the deadly bum," joked Root. What a lapse for him. He hardly ever joked.
"Dammit, another tornado…." Mulch muttered.
Mulch had always respected Commander Root for the Commander was the only one who had been able to catch him. They had a forged relationship, like brothers, although neither would admit it. Although they did not show it, if one of them was lost, the other would be miserable.
Root also liked Mulch for he was a very stylish and slippery character. For example, when Mulch muttered about the tornado, he had the sense to get out of the way before he was blown out into the Mud World.
Holly burst in with Harry and Artemis. The dwarfs were rounding Mulch and Root.
"Get out, Short!" Root shouted.
Holly had the sense not to ignore her superior. Lucky, as Mulch's tornado blew back 32 dwarfs into the roof of Haven with a sickening crunch.
"Now you understand what I meant when I said they were destructive?" said Artemis.
Harry could see what he meant. Mulch was a potential danger to the Mud People. One more tornado like that could have wiped out an entire civilization. That was a bit exaggerated, thought Harry.
"Strike! To hell with the LEP!" The mad dwarfs were going crazy, and were destroying the statue of the LEP acorn statue outside Police Plaza.
"Captain Short, go to the Operations Booth and meet Foaly. I'll take care of these creatures. Hurry!"
The trio ran to the OB and saw that Foaly too was going crazy. The stupid dwarfs were blowing air into the glass panel, through which he could see what was going on outside.
"Foaly! What happened?"
"I really don't know, Holly, they just escaped from prison I think Mulch is behind this."
"Impossible. He is outside fighting them. He protected Root, for heaven's sake."
"Maybe, but that does not stop him from being a traitor."
"Whatever. What is the statistics now?"
"Wait a second, I'm getting something here."
Foaly's computer continued filtering suspects for the cause of the goblin rebellion. When Mulch was eradicated as a possible suspect, Holly pumped her hand in the air.
Finally, it stopped at one person. One very dangerous person.
"D'Arvit. D'Arvit. D'Arvit." Foaly muttered.
"Who is it?"
"You are not going to like this."
Harry and Artemis leaned in for a closer look.
"Turnball Root."
Artemis took out his revolvers and handed them to Holly and Harry.
"I have three more, in case yours gets destroyed by them. Harry, use any spell possible to subdue them."
Holly bore her eyes into Artemis's. "Who are you to tell him to use any spell to subdue them?"
"Come on now, Holly, the Fairy People's lives are at stake."
Holly looked at Harry again.
"Harry, use any spell possible to subdue them."
The trio walked out valiantly and then nearly fell onto the ground due to shock.
Police Plaza lay in shambles, and the dwarfs were now headed for Foaly's Operations Booth. Holly could see it was not going to be easy distracting them.
"Incendio!" cried Harry, and one of the dwarfs caught fire.
"Fire! Fire! Run!" shouted a dwarf right behind him.
Then they saw Harry with his wand.
"How dare you…….you shall meet a terrible end!"
They lifted poor Harry bodily off the ground. " Origchandio!" he cried again.
This time, their positions switched. The dwarfs were in the air, while Harry came back to the ground.
Artemis took his gun out and fired six shots from it. That shut the dwarfs up.
"Now tell me, how did you get out of prison?"
"None of your business, you impudent elf!"
"I'm counting up to 3, seeing as you boneheads cannot count to 5. Tell me who let you out."
"1…"
"Go home and protect yourself, you elf, because we are going to kill all of you!"
"2…"
"Do you really think we are so scared of you?"
"3"
"Alright, alright! I'll tell you!"
All the dwarfs stared at the volunteer. He walked down, looking very miniscule and scared. The dwarfs were now shaking their heads.
"What is your name?"
"Modus."
"Okay, tell me who let you out."
He took a deep breath and looked at all the other dwarfs, as if he expected some support from them. Instead, the other dwarfs were still shaking their heads.
"It was Turnball Root."
"How did he manage to get you out?"
"He stole the key from an LEP officer, who was in league with him."
"Do you, by any chance, know this guy's name?"
"No. I only know that Turnball let us out."
"Well done, you chose wisely. We will not punish you. However, we need your help to find Turnball."
"What's your point
in sending him back to prison when he just came out?"
"He
never learns," said Holly, saddened at how old Turnball looked
the last time she saw him.
Harry and Artemis were feeling as bit left out. Then Root and Mulch stood up.
"Listen up, you dwarfs. Turnball is my brother, and I care for him. However, he is a potential danger to all of us. Remember what he had tried to do the last time?"
Holly shivered. During her initiation into Recon, she had come face to face with Turnball, and he was a madman. He had been very clever, and his Tunnel Blue spider could have killed him if Root had not killed it by feeding it coffee powder.
The dwarfs nodded and understood slowly. They knew that Turnball was not a good person, but he had helped them get out of jail to get back at the LEP.
"What can you do to make us trust you, Commander?" asked a plucky dwarf.
"If you do not meet Turnball and bring him to me, the city will be in worse straits than Mulch Diggums letting out a 1000 torpedoes."
It was the dwarfs turn to shiver. That was a chilling thought.
"I thought you were going to tell me how to make us trust you," said the plucky dwarf again.
Root glared at the dwarf, who cowered under Root's deeper-than-rose complexion.
"You know something? I don't mind letting you animals rot for the rest of your lives in jail."
The plucky dwarf wished he could have disappeared.
"However, I am sacrificing my life to help you, so you damn well be happy for it, or you'd be zip into gaol before you could say "bloody Commander"."
No one could rebel that. He was famous for it.
"Are you with me?"
He had asked the unnecessary question, for they were already.
Peter looked at the door that led out of Godric's Hollow. Then he saw something inscribed on the nail that was on the ridge of the door.
"Godric Gryffindor."
"Yeah, sure," he muttered and Apparated immediately to Voldemort's side.
Voldemort was red with fury, but he had cooled down sufficiently after Peter had come. True, Peter was a bit useless, but he had helped, nonetheless.
"What news?" he whispered in his cold voice. It was as bad as a Dementor speaking, as Peter imagined.
"My Lord, what can you expect? We have to wait."
"Crucio," he muttered.
Peter shrieked with pain; his body went into spasms; his hands thrashed violently into his sides; he kicked at anything around him, not worrying about his leg being hurt as he could not experience more pain than he was experiencing then; he could hardly take in breath as he was screaming continuously; it was too much.
Then it all stopped.
"Get up, Wormtail. Wait. I have waited. I have waited for 16 long years! Why do you think I want to destroy Harry Potter? Not because of the prophecy, seeing as only Dumbledore can remember it. I want his blood. I want to drink it for as long as I want. Why? Because he destroyed me. What pain I had felt, 16 years ago, when the curse rebounded against me. Can you feel that pain? Never through the Crutatius curse, Wormtail. Do you want a taste of it? Do you want a taste of the Avada Kedavra curse?
Do you?"
Peter was too tired to answer. Voldemort had at least a bit of mercy to him. After all, he was the one who had found him 3 years ago.
"You may be wondering why I can perform the Crutatius cruse so effortlessly. It is because of that reason. That pain, I can still feel, now, which is why that, along with anger, I can make people feel pain like anything, but certainly not like the Avada Kedavra curse."
"My Lord, my Lord…the Muggle…"
Voldemort sat up." What about him?"
"It worked," said Wormtail triumphantly. "He is a Seer."
"Excellent. Now all we have to do now is wait."
Peter crumpled onto the ground again, but this time, not out of exhaustion. He thought, "This is what I told the bloody fool just now!", expecting another round of the Crutatius curse from Voldemort. However, the thing that came next was not exactly what he expected. Something extremely rare. Extremely rare.
Voldemort laughed coldly. Always the theatrics.
"Every prisoner has a tracker chip placed inside 12000 pores inside their body. Turnball has them too."
Root sat up. The dwarfs were watching the screen outside Spud's Spud's Emporium. Foaly had manipulated it to show what he was doing in the Operations Booth.
Slowly, the screen zoomed into a red dot moving across Haven. "This is Turnball."
"And how sure can you be of that? Turnball is no idiot," Root questioned, trying to polite, which was a major lapse again for him, for that was not his style, but he was also scared that Foaly might lose his temper like the last time.
" We all know that Turnball is no idiot. That's why the dot is flashing."
Root looked closely. The pony was right.
" He managed to short some of the tracker chips. I think he is still shorting some of them. Yes, he is. the dot is flashing even more weakly."
From outside, a roar went up. The allies looked outside.
The dwarfs were watching gnome wrestling, and Kinzo had just performed a move against his opponent called the snapfling. The dwarfs were roaring with laughter as the poor opponent flew headfirst into the ground with a snap and then flew out of the ring with the force of the hit on the ground.
"D'Arvit, I forgot that was one of the channels that worked nearly on the same wavelength as mine…" muttered Foaly as he expertly typed on his keyboard. The channel changed, and so did the mood of the dwarfs. Another roar went up and some of the dwarfs shook their hands at Foaly's booth.
"Here the future of our civilization is at stake, and there those lettuces are worrying more about the gnome wrestling," growled Root.
Personally, Holly thought that there was no need to worry about the future of the civilization, Turnball was only a fairy. However, Root wasn't to know that.
"D'ARVIT!" Foaly roared, so loudly, that even the dwarfs outside, who had been hearing the conversation, sat up.
"What?" asked Root, concern slipping accidentally into his tones.
"No more dot," Foaly muttered sadly.
"No problem. Where did we lose him?"
"Here," Foaly pointed, careful not to touch the screen.
Root looked closely at the area.
"That is Argneon Forest."
"Spot on. That is one hell of a big forest, Julius."
Root did not even bother about Foaly calling him by his first name. He reckoned that he had to get used to it.
"Get LEPRetrieval 1,2 and 3 outside Spud's now. Tell them that it is a briefing by Chairman Charatez."
"Sure, sir? The Chairman will not be happy if you use him as your cover."
Root took out his tri-barreled water-cooled blaster.
"Since when did I say I was using the Chairman as my cover? I'm going to be his."
Foaly could not make head or tail of what Root had said, but he was the Commander.
He whispered to Holly.
"He's got the look. You know the one."
Holly nodded furiously. She knew the one.
Turnball Root was jumping all around the trees, not caring about the surrounding thorns that were cutting into him. It would take a while for it to heal, for he had no magic.
Suddenly, Turnball Root came into a clearing. He thought he was trapped. They had found him. Now the dwarfs will be after his blood.
"Hello, creature," said a cold voice. It was a cold and unnaturally high-pitched voice.
Turnball shivered.
"Do you want me to help you?"
Turnball could not see the person; he could just hear him; somehow he felt that it would be bad to say that he was willing to trust him; it might make him look weak.
"Sure," he said, nonetheless.
The person who had the voice shimmered into view, and Turnball confessed to himself that it was worse than he could have seen. The person (was he a person?) or Mud Man, god knows who, had red slits for eyes, and green snakelike hands. He was smiling eerily.
"Help me look for Harry Potter."
"I-I-I do not know where"
"He is belowground, just as you are, and is a Mud Man. Bring him to me and you will be rewarded beyond your dreams."
"How?"
"I will return your magic to you."
Turnball did not care a bit whether the person knew that fairies had magic; all he knew was shaking the person's hand and listening to his instructions of lying in ambush in the forest for the three LEPRetrieval teams about to come in.
Turnball was surprised. This person knew so much.
Harry and Artemis were lagging behind the three LEPRetrieval teams, who were in their combat black-clad uniforms. They wanted time to talk privately.
"Personally, Artemis, I feel what we are doing is useless."
"Listen, Harry, the time will come where you will be very thankful that you did this for the fairies."
Harry shook his head. He didn't think so.
Without warning, suddenly, LEPRetrieval 1 disappeared.
Then it flickered in again.
Harry and Artemis could not believe their eyes.
"D'Arvit, I can't shield, I can't shield!" several fairies complained. It was unsurprising that Grub Kelp, Captain Trouble Kelp's younger brother, notorious for complaints, was one of them.
Then Trouble Kelp buzzed up to six meters.
"Oh, no, no, no………it just can't be………no way…how did this happen………Parapit D'Aletta, Parapit D'Aletta!"
Root jumped back. What was so bad that even Trouble Kelp, who was one of the top LEP officers, and swear artists, had to say something that meant something worse than D'Arvit?
There was only one way to find out, and Root too went up to Trouble's position.
"Dammit. Get Foaly and his technophiles here. Oh, and get the top team of Enviro- Plingers."
Harry, Artemis, Ron (Author's note: I nearly forgot Ron in this part of the story and a thousand pardons for it.) and Holly stood back. Then Ron asked, "Can we see it?"
Trouble looked at them, nearly with tears in his eyes. He started to object, but Root stopped him. "This is what they must be used to, Trouble," he said, calling him softly and kindly with his first name, "So let them have a look."
Harry, Ron and Artemis looked at it, with the help of a platform that Foaly had just brought in. Even Artemis looked sickened at it.
When they were on the ground, the forest had looked like a forest with a lot of trees inside. The boys realized that this was an illusion.
When they looked at it from above, the mangled bodies of various forest inhabitants littered the forest from side to side in a circle, and trees had fallen on them. Lots of trees. There were so many trees on the animals that it had, as the three of them looked closer, formed a circle. It was horrible. All of them reckoned that Root could not have meant this the future to the aboveground forests.
Then Harry's scar seared with pain, and he fell writhing onto the ground, clutching it. His movements were so violent that the risen platform, 6 meters above the ground, began to shake. Slowly, with horror, they realized that Harry was nearing the edge of the platform.
"Get this contraption down! Harry is nearly falling!" yelled Ron, as Artemis fired a few shots in the air to get the fairies attention. Artemis had not really been used to the gun, and it still seemed a bit heavy to him, so the force of shooting caused him to sweat profusely.
Foaly obliged, expertly pressing a joystick hot button, but stopped. He moved the joystick from side to side. The platform did not move.
"No…no… no…" Foaly muttered as he opened up the innards and had a looked at the system.
Ron had been desperately holding on to Harry, but the boy was losing all his energy as Harry was thrashing about, and he felt that if Foaly did not hurry up, he would have no choice but to let go.
Then he saw Foaly meddling with the transmitter device, saw the innards, and noticed something that Foaly did not. A blob of orange gel.
" Foaly, Foaly, the gel, the gel," yelled Ron with the last of his energy. The platform was threatening to throw them off now due to Harry's movements.
Foaly could not hear them, but he turned to them and mouthed something that he could not hear. "Sonorus!" he shouted, pointing to Foaly's throat.
"I'M GOING TO CUT A WIRE AND GET READY FOR A SUDDEN DROP, ALRIGHT?"
Then Ron realized his idiocy. He had forgotten to perform Sonorus on himself!
"Sonorus!" he said, pointing to his throat, hurriedly, but Foaly's hand was far too gone.
In a split second, he cried, "THE BLOB OF GEL, FOALY, YOU MORON!"
Foaly finally heard it, but he had already cut the wire. Then, from the top, the platform fell flat on the ground. A whirlwind of dust rose up around it as the metal giant groaned and shuddered.
Then they saw Ron looking most forlorn and upset. Artemis lay at the side, looking at Ron and Harry. Trouble Kelp went up to them.
"What's wron-" he started to ask, but at that moment, there was no need to do so as it was easy to see what was wrong, as Ron pulled Harry into better view.
Harry's wand hand was completely bent back from the elbow. Bent to the back, rather.
Harry lay immobile in his bed the fairy hospital, L'Ayllewyn Medical Home. Fairy nurses scurried from place to place either going to see a doctor or doing whatever nurses did. These nurses were very unlike human nurses. For one thing, they never wore miniskirts.
One suddenly scurried to the worried gang there. Ron had remembered that in their second year, Harry had lost all the bones in his left arm, and that he had recovered from. Ron wondered if Harry could ever recover from this again.
The nurse opened Harry's mouth, and poured a brownish liquid down it. Harry's ears steamed; Ron thought that it almost had the same effect as the Pepper-Up Potion; Harry thrashed about violently again on the bed and the bed springs groaned under the commotion.
Then he wondered; the same thing had happened in his fifth year; Harry had been thrashing about violently in his bed; but it turned out that Voldemort had been manipulating him by showing him some bad dreams. He had seen some very disturbing things in his life.
Then the vicious trashing ceased. Harry's eyes opened slowly, and he rose from the bed. Then he yanked at Ron's hand so hard the startled boy let out a strangled yell.
"Now, we're even," said Harry.
Artemis remembered the same type of incident that had happened to him, when he was 13. Holly had whacked him between the eyes.
He stole a glance at Holly, who grinned rather guiltily at him too.
Things were definitely looking better.
Harry walked out with a cast. The doctors had reasoned that it would be better to let the hand heal on its own. Harry had been a little unhappy with the turnout of his hand, but the trio next to him were trying their best to cheer him up.
They found Commander Root looking grave at the OB. Harry decided to wait for someone to ask what was wrong.
He did not have to wait
long. "What's the problem, Commander?" Holly enquired.
Then
Root looked up.
"Turnball is still in the forest. I found a message from him," he said hoarsely.
Holly looked at the message.
"I am being held captive in the forest by a creature that I believe has come from aboveground. Please save me quickly, or he has threatened to kill me."
"Turnball Root."
The Commander had never looked this bad before. Turnball was his brother, and he still cared for him, and he was also unhappy that Harry had to get hurt here itself.
"What do you say? Do we go get him?"
Julius Root looked gravely at Holly.
"Oh, we go get him. Sure we do."
It was depressing to see Root's state as the haggard troop walked into the dreaded forest again. He had been getting from bad to worse. Holly wondered if he was ever going to be the snappy person again.
Suddenly, a figure darted out from behind a tree. It fell flat on the ground. Then it raised its hand with a moan.
"Julius…."
The Commander ran forwards, hoping that the figure was not what he thought it was. Tears were running continuously down his cheeks now; although it was not proven that it was really Turnball Root.
Too late.
Turnball reeled over, spitting blood out. Root looked at his fallen brother. His face was smashed and bloody. His nose was twisted upside down, and the pain he was undergoing was impossible to decipher because the look on his face was impossible to recognize, as it was smashed.
His wrists were twisted back, of both them, and he lay helplessly in front of Root, who was in danger of breaking down anytime now. Turnball was in definite bad shape now.
"Get him to the nearest I'sletta now! (Author's Note: I'sletta means fairy hospital.)"
Turnball motioned for them to stop carrying him.
With his face constricted, he said his last words.
" Listen, brother. It is too late for me to go to an I'sletta now. I will die in a matter of seconds. I have advice for you."
Root decided he should listen. Turnball had more experience than him, he was older than him by a 100 years.
"Do not trust Lord Voldemort."
Then his face constricted further, then it relaxed, then it became almost peaceful, but still in its smashed condition. He lay face-up in the grass, his hands twisted.
Then Julius knew that Turnball was dead.
Fond memories of their childhood flashed through Julius's traumatized mind, the fun they had had, and Julius could not take it anymore.
He pounded the ground, his eyes filled and dripping wet with tears; he kept helplessly calling out his dead brother's name and his cries rang throughout the night; he wanted to die there and then too
Then Holly Short stepped over and put her hand over his shoulder. "Turnball did not die without dignity. He will be given a proper burial. Please, Commander, we feel the pain you feel, but we need you too."
Julius first felt like punching that impudent Captain Short smack in the face; then his pain, sadness and anger evaporated simultaneously; he saw the truth in what Holly said.
He stood up and turned to face her, not having recovered fully. However, he was still ok.
"Nice to see your feelings for me, Captain."
Holly's lips broke into a smile, something unseen for days since this Harry-Artemis affair.
Life, she promised herself, after this affair, was going to be much better from now.
For all of them.
