"You're leading me in circles."
An accusation, not a statement. The human-faced goose shuddered as Lloyd pressured the blade of the knife against the feathers there.
"I swear, dis is da way!" it shrieked. Lloyd cringed once more, tightening his grip. The bird's shrill defense only made him want to kill it even more.
"Just shut up!" he snapped. The heathen palace of the Faerie Queen ground against his toughest nerves until they were ash. Nino, who quailed at the sight of blood, would be an absolute wreck at best.
The bird didn't even bother with a rebuttal. Lloyd estimated the bird had guided him for all of a quarter-hour, but it felt like hours. At least he could identify that feeling, as horrible as the current situation was. On a long mission, even the lowly second dragged on forever. But there, the similarities ended—after the kill, there'd always been some sort of bittersweet euphoria.
No such luck here. Lloyd gritted his teeth and tensed as they passed through another wall. The bird seemed unaffected by wall-passing, but to Lloyd, it felt like his skin was being peeled from his body and icy-cold water dumped over the bared muscle. All the willpower that had been instilled in him by torture-training almost didn't match up to the incredibly painful sensation of passing through solid stone while still being solid yourself.
". . . we're here," the bird said in a tiny voice.
It was yet another grey stone cavern, although somehow the stone extended a good few hundred feet up, where Lloyd could see a crude parody of a royal chandelier made from . . . tree branches, an eerie violet fire that snowed pale, milky blue sparks, and thick, silvery spider's webs. Lloyd's eyes widened as he spotted the mammoth spider that had spun those threads.
As a child, he'd been plagued by an inexplicable fear of spiders that had eventually been forced out of him by his father's unsympathetic tutelage. He felt all of those lessons sink to the floor, shrivel dry and go up in smoke as the spider scuttled across its fiery web and dive to the floor at a breakneck speed.
"Don't eat me!" squawked the bird wildly, before Lloyd could do anything. Not that he could break from his momentary paralysis long enough to do anything. "I brought you som'ing else!"
Nothing like a good betrayal to push one's phobias to the wayside. Lloyd's eyes locked on the creature in a feral sort of glare.
"What?" he asked in a low voice.
The spider could not talk, it seemed, but clicked its jaws in rapid succession. The sound made Lloyd weaken again. Just how many nightmares had he suffered like this? Possibly hundreds, probably more. The spiders typically grew bigger as he got older, although he'd stopped having those nightmares as a nine-year-old. At twenty-something, this was probably the right size.
"No no no, don't eat me!" the bird flailed and Lloyd almost released it.
"Shut up!" he hollered over the bird's violent racket, struggling to keep a hold of it. "You bloody goose, what the hell did you bring me into!"
The spider followed the conflict between the bird and the man with its eight disinterested eyes. Lloyd froze again as the creature took a few steps forward, as did the fairy goose. A golden egg skidded across the floor and bounced against the wall he'd just passed through, coming to rest at his feet.
"Dis is her Ladyship's guardian," the bird trembled as Lloyd's knife pressed even closer to its neck, right where he could feel a pounding vein. "Mothkiller. Da only way to get to her Ladyship wid out going through da pixies is to ride Mothkiller."
Lloyd could only stare in terror, without even attempting to mask it.
"How do you do that?"
If the bird was impressed by his resolve, the monstrosity didn't take the time to show it. It hesitated before replying, prompted again by the knife.
"You godda feed her," it confessed. He looked into its human-like face and into its animal eyes. It panicked again, wailing loudly. "Don't feed me to her! Don't!"
Another egg slid across the floor. Lloyd briefly wondered where they all came from. The goose was huge, but not that huge. His eyes widened. Lloyd extended his foot to kick an egg towards Mothkiller.
"My name is Lloyd Reed," he said, more confidently than he felt. "I need to see the Queen. Accept this egg as my payment."
"What?" the bird whimpered. "My eggs . . .!"
"You eggs or you," Lloyd said darkly. The bird nodded quickly, and fell silent.
Mothkiller lowered her wide, many-eyed head to examine the golden egg. Taking the shining object in its jaws, Mothkiller turned around and began climbing up the thread. Lloyd followed its path intently. Part of the training was to be able to face your fears, but deep inside, he knew that this was just frightened fascination.
Mothkiller disappeared from sight momentarily, and then reappeared almost five minutes later. Lloyd's arm loosened on the bird and he let it stand freely. As he slid the knife back into its hiding place, Lloyd bent over to pick up the remaining egg. It felt oddly light. Mothkiller lowered her head to the ground and raised it again. Lloyd took that as an agreement to the terms he'd set.
"Get out of here," he snapped at the bird. It quivered and then turned to flee.
Mothkiller circled around so that her hairy abdomen faced him. The thick, short hairs shone black in the shower of glowing blue snowflakes. Tentatively, Lloyd reached out and touched Mothkiller with just the brush of his fingers. When the massive spider did not whirl around and attack him, Lloyd swallowed his hesitation and gingerly grasped a section of hair, which was rigid and tough. He balanced the second egg in his the crook of his arm carefully, in case Mothkiller would require anything else. When she sensed that his body was stretched safely over her, hanging by a few hairs, Mothkiller began her ascent.
Mothkiller's movements, rapid and graceful to watch, nearly shook Lloyd from her back. He didn't hold as tightly as he would like out of fear; if he pulled out one of these deeply rooted hairs, she could easily drop him to his death. The ground disappeared behind him.
Mothkiller hauled herself up steadily crawling up the thread and then the mass of artistic threads. The violet fire burned from her prey, lumps of silk wrapped around mutant little bodies. Mothkiller ate fairies too, he realized. The still struggling victims sparked the showers of blue. He scanned the webs for any human child-sized bundles, but nothing exceeded the thin, short sizes of dwarven creatures. A deep sense of admiration for the spider who hunted fae things blossomed in him.
"It's beautiful up here," he commented, sincerely. Mothkiller's web was spaciously arranged and artfully decorated, just like the Sacaen dreamcatchers Nino sometimes bought at carnivals.
Mothkiller paused. A jolt of fright seized Lloyd as she did. Had his comment offended her? He glanced up at her head to see her preening her pedipalps proudly and click her jaw. When she began to move again, the jarring motions of climbing suddenly became much smoother. Lloyd heaved a breath he did not realize he'd been holding.
The transfer from vertical to horizontal was also made delicately, and almost leisurely. She was showing off the heart of her lair. Despite the urgency in him, Lloyd found himself respecting the hours of work which must have gone into the construction of such a masterful home. He noted, with some perverse satisfaction, that many of the fairies she'd caught still wiggled violently in their silk, violet-burning tombs.
Mothkiller crossed the gaps to a wide, low-ceiling cave, adjacent to the towering cavern here. Her webs crisscrossed the floor here inches above, although Lloyd would not have released his grip on her back for the entire world. Beneath the shimmering strands, the cavern ground was coated in a sickening, acidic-looking green moss between stalagmites.
She halted suddenly and tilted her head in on direction, where Lloyd beheld a white mass that he recognized from the bushes in the village he'd grown up in.
"Those must be your babies," he said breathlessly. Thousands of little Mothkillers. How did her Ladyship keep those spiders from eating all her subjects, if each spider Mothkiller's size needed so much?
Mothkiller looked at him with her eight eyes as mournfully as an emotionless spider could.
"Oh," he said. "She . . . the Queen . . . she's going to kill them all, isn't she?"
Mothkiller did not answer, but turned her head to the enormous egg sac and tipped her jaws to the poisonous green floor. Lloyd bit his lip, before speaking.
"Don't worry," he spoke hesitantly, growing stronger. "Me and my brother, we'll kill her before she even has a chance to touch your eggs. She took something of ours—our sister—and we're going to kill her for it."
The spider weighed this for a second and then restarted her scuttle past her sac and deeper into the cave. The jostling was so gentle this time that Lloyd felt nearly nothing. Within moments, Mothkiller arrived at a tall golden wall. Not solid gold, Lloyd saw, but a pile of stolen trinkets. Goblets, plates, toys, crowns, scepters, all heaped in the center of the path.
Mothkiller rotated smoothly so Lloyd could leap from her back onto the mound of gold objects. He offered her the last egg, which shone brighter than the dingy objects collected underneath his feet. Skillfully, Mothkiller balanced the egg between two fingerless legs, thick as Ursula's arm. She bowed to him gratefully. On a whim, Lloyd bowed back. In a way, the monstrous spider reminded him of his own mother, proud and protective and lovely.
Lloyd watched Mothkiller disappear behind the bend in the wall before turning himself to climb the mess of gold.
..0..
She sobbed harshly, curling into a tighter ball as fiery-hot, pitch-black little hands pricked at her skin, poking into every crevice of her face and body. Nino brushed them away wildly, but the wights only returned with renewed vigor.
"Lloyd!" she cried, tears streaking her face white and black. "Linus!"
When her brother did not respond, Nino began to weeper harder, until she heaved without tears at all. The wights pounded at her furiously. Her brothers liked her well enough, but they weren't really her brothers. What if they weren't even coming? She certainly didn't deserve to be their sister, not in this state.
What would they do?
The instant the thought struck her, she knew exactly what her brothers would do; Lloyd and Linus would be trying to escape and return to the safe house, wherever that was. The tome of Elfire was nestled in her cloak, thin from practice. At the base, she knew where the reserve of tomes was hidden, but this was her only weapon. She'd use it well.
But first things first. Resolve welling up inside her, Nino swept as many of the charcoal black creatures away and blasted then with the shortened incantation. To her delight, the beasts were torn apart by the magic flare, leaving less than half of the numbers they once possess.
"L-listen!" she choked, standing. Her back was against the padded wall. Some sort of blackened, velvet curtain was drawn around the circular room, hiding the solid walls. "Listen! If you don't stop this instant I'll kill each and every one of you!"
She waved Elfire at them madly. The wights shuddered and scurried backwards underneath the curtain. Nino paused before they all disappeared and then raced to where they'd fled. She ripped the curtain from the wall, only to find a decorative, pretty wooden wall. Nino bit her lip, bending at the knee to examine the crack between the wall and the ruined Caledonian rug. Nothing there at all.
Nino forced down her panic attack and seized the curtain again, ripping it from its place, magicked to the wall. It tore easily, revealing an unbroken, nearly seamless wall of wood. Nino brushed against the smooth wall three times without luck. The wights had disappeared perfectly into the woodwork. Nino screamed then, more out of rage than fright. She knew that would set in soon.
Would she starve here? Would the queen come to fetch her? Somehow, starving seemed the more favorable option.
"Be clever, Nino," she said, the sound of her own voice strangely comforting. "Think."
Nino scanned the room for any sort of bludgeoning tool. There was nothing but the thick black rug and the torn curtain. There had been no rod to suspend the material. Nino's eyes turned first up; nothing but continuous wood there. Stepping carefully, Nino glanced at the floor beneath her feet. She set Elfire down momentarily.
Picking a random point where the rug met the wall, Nino dug her nails into the crevice and lodged her fingers underneath the tough weave. She pulled up. The carpeting came up with some difficulty, like roots had set down. With a violent jerk, Nino fell backwards as the rug came suddenly free. Clambering to her feet, she peered where she'd ripped the rug free and squeaked. Directly beneath her was a hole.
A sheer, black hole. To her complete terror, Nino felt the rug collapse underneath her weight, and fall. Briefly, she was taken by a sense of weightlessness, as if she were simply floating. Her freefall cut off abruptly. Nino heard the sound of jangled metal and felt the sharp jabs of . . . of what? Nino tumbled forward and down a hill of some sort. She opened her eyes. She had not known she'd closed them.
Nino gasped in awe. She was surrounded by gold. What sort of madness was this? She turned her head upwards to see the gap in the ceiling, where five feet through she could see the unbroken wood of her prison. Magic! This really was a fairy place. Ursula had taught her something for this. Or had it been Father Kenneth or her mother? She couldn't remember either way.
Had that fairy woman collected all this gold over the years? Goblins lived forever, she supposed. Was this even real? She found her Elfire spell not far from where she herself had fallen and tucked it into its special tome-sized pocket in her cape.
Nino shivered, and tried to stand. She hated this place fervently. Balancing carefully, she managed to pick her way through the sea of gold trinkets and coins. Never before had she seen anything quite like this! There was enough gold here to for every man in Bern to live like a King for the rest of his life. And it certainly stretched on forever.
Walking across it proved difficult, and Nino stumbled more often than she'd like. It was one such stumble that allowed her to hear the stumble—and breathless oath—of another creature. Nestled in the dip in between two hills, Nino held very still, not even daring to breathe.
Her heart stopped as she heard the sound of boots trying to find footing in the mess. Nino slipped her hand into the folds of her blue cape to retrieve Elfire. She crept as quietly as she could to peer around the hill at her unseen companion.
A goblet, loosened by her foot, tumbled against the rest, making an awful racket. Nino froze as a man's voice called out, "Who's there? Show yourself!"
That's Lloyd's voice! Nino almost allowed herself to rejoice, but sobered as she remembered the last 'Lloyd' she'd encountered.
"Don't move!" she warned, trying to make her voice intimidating, like Sonia's. She circled the hill to face him. He certainly looked like Lloyd, sans the coat. Nino noticed that this one looked slightly bedraggled and exhausted.
"Nino! Nino, lass, I've been—"
"Shut up!" she cut him off. 'Lloyd' seemed shocked that gentle Nino would speak so harshly. She had the Elfire tome wide open, with sparks already in her hands.
"Lass, it's me, Lloyd—"
"How do I know you are who you say you are?"
'Lloyd' blinked. He bit his lip, thinking.
"We went to the lake yesterday, Nino, remember? Linus was the princess, and I was the monster—" he started. She shook her head. The strange fairy woman had in all likelihood seen that whole scene.
"No good! Anyone could know that," she warned. Nino dredged up a memory from before the lake. "What does 'psychotic' mean?"
'Lloyd' seemed dumbstruck. Elfire sparks huddled together to become a tiny sphere in her palm. 'Lloyd' began to laugh.
"It means . . ." he began, relieved. "That you're attractive and kind and very, very forgiving."
Nino snapped the book shut and nearly dropped it as she ran to her brother and embraced him. She felt tears prick her eyes, although she had thought none were left to cry.
"Lloyd, I was so scared, I didn't know what to do!" she wailed into his chest. He smoothed her hair comfortingly. "There was a woman and she had your face and she had hair like gold snakes and and and—"
"It's alright, I'm here," Lloyd murmured, squeezing her tight. "I was so worried. We found a lump of ice in your bed, Nino!"
"Ice?" she asked, looking up at him.
"Ice," Lloyd said, his eyes darkening. "Nino, that woman you saw—don't say anything, but she rules this place, Nino. This is a fairy place."
Nino nodded, as if she knew it already, instinctively. "L-like, Queen Hellene, right?"
"Yes, exactly," Lloyd explained, kneeling as best he could, to level with her. "Linus is here too, but I don't know where. We're going to have to find him, Nino, and get out as quick as possible. Ursula's waiting for us on the outside."
"Auntie Ursula came?" Nino asked, riddled with disbelief.
"Mmhm. We're going to have hurry and kill her Ladyship," Lloyd said seriously. "I don't think I can leave until I do. I . . . I promised someone."
"I get it," Nino replied, heartening. A smile returned to her face. "L-like a mission, right? Someone's commissioned you to kill a corrupt and evil ruler."
"That's exactly right, lass," Lloyd smiled. His face seemed tired and old. "So all you have to do is stay brave for a little bit longer. Got it?"
"Got it."
"Swear it upon the Fang?"
"I swear upon the Fang that I can stay brave long enough to kill the fairy queen, find Linus and get out of here."
"There's our lass."
Lloyd kissed her forehead and then stood up. Taking his hand, Nino followed her brother across the waves of treasure with renewed vigor. Lloyd always knew how to make her feel better.
..0..
Lilith would not stay rent in two for long.
Linus charged again, heedless of the dark magic Lilith conjured to set against him. His sword cleaved her brittle waist, digging into her belly, but the blade passed straight through bloodlessly. Roaring in aggravation, the younger Reed brother struck again, with similar results.
The Fairy Queen howled with laughter as Linus panted. "You can't kill me!"
She may have been right.
Her hair roiled and curled, like tendrils of a living plant. Linus could not conceive of a way to kill her. His blade had already severed her head, but suddenly it was there again, her mottled, sagging neck whole once more.
Lilith had no care for the rich decorations of the room, it seemed, as she blasted grooves into the carpets and marred the furniture. Wanton destruction seemed to be the true extent of her power. It took everything Linus had to even dodge Lilith's spells.
"You can't touch me!" Lilith cackled, dominating the center of the room. Her haggard form glowed with a halo of golden hair that snatched at Linus' feet and ankles. He tried slashing at the strands, but his blade bounced off of them like wires.
Her power went beyond anything Ursula, Rats, or even dead King Grendel had warned him of. Her spells of illusion surpassed the Sight. Even a brush with one of those dark beams would probably kill him. Linus rolled haphazardly to avoid contact with one such beam. The golden waves of hair coiled around her collar like a thick necklace.
No silver anywhere.
A cold shock ran through him. Although Linus kept running, he switched his sword into his shield hand (although his shield was probably leaning up against the wall in the training yard.) The nimble fingers on his right hand reached up to his ear and pulled the earring he wore high on the cartilage. It felt small and light in his hand, thin as it was. Lloyd wore the twin. Both had belonged to the long dead Maria Reed, her treasured silver earrings.
Linus chucked it at Lilith with all his strength.
It took her a second to even notice he'd thrown it. Lilith raised an eyebrow, shielding herself with a tendril of snaking hair. Linus' suspicions held true as the little silver trinket burned a hole in her defenses. Lilith's eyes widened in shock before she could shift out of the way, a fatal indecision as the earring buried itself in one brilliant, electric blue eye.
Her screech was deafening. Linus watched, his eyes locked on her in broad fascination, as Lilith clawed at her eye. A greenish, mucky brown substance oozed from her face. Strangely, Linus still wanted the earring back.
For now, though, he ran. Lilith was too much alone. He needed his brother to back him up. Later, he'd rob her corpse's eye socket, but until then . . .
Linus raced towards the door at the opposite end of the room. Lilith shot a withering glare with her good eye, and streams of undamaged blonde hair. Linus stepped lightly out of the way, and the strikes that had been meant to impale him blasted through the ornate door's golden hinges and detailed painting. Linus kicked it down and leapt from the room into a deep pit. A cavern, it seemed, with a higher ceiling than physics and common sense should allow. He shrugged the shock away. The fairy palace of Queen Lilith didn't abide by spatial rules anyway.
Lilith's mess of writhing hair poked out of the door he'd just exited. Linus ducked under the low point it seemed to be pasted onto and followed a trail of gold pieces behind a bend. The layer of coins became thicker as he ran onward, until the ground was coated in them. Linus paid no heed to the money or the occasional diadem or goblet thrown in amongst the heap. He glanced behind him to see if Lilith was in hot pursuit, crawling along by her hair.
He bowled over another creature, smaller than him, but by a lesser margin than most creatures he'd met down here.
"Linus!" his brother exclaimed, stretched across the gold. He held his head, dazed. "Is that you?"
"How do I know you're Lloyd?" Linus demanded sharply. Queen Lilith wouldn't fool him again, not after last time. Lloyd's expression darkened.
"Linus, I'm going to hit you," he threatened, reaching for his sword. Linus whooped.
"Brother, it is you!" he rejoiced. "Listen, there's a queen here—"
"I know! We gotta kill her—"
"Yeah, but I already tangled with her and she's damn near impossible—"
"Her hair—"
"It's insane, she's a gorgon or something—"
"Will you shut up—"
"She's right behind me, Lloyd!—"
"LINUS!"
This last cry was a young woman's, more like a girl. Nino raced around the corner and flung her arms around her other brother. Linus' breath was knocked from his lungs. Lloyd took this time to elaborate.
"It's her hair that gives her power, or so I'm told," Lloyd explained quickly. "We have to cut it if we're going to kill her."
"Swords don't do it," Linus supplied quickly, patting Nino on the head. "I tried."
"What about magic?" Nino asked, looking up at him.
Nino was back.
Linus squeezed her in a bear hug. His little sister was safe, or would be soon. All they had left to do was kill the Queen, pick up Ursula and go home. This was the family Reed. They could do anything, united.
"No, I don't believe we've tried magic yet, lass," Linus said, turning to look over his shoulder. "And it's worth a shot. She's on my heels as we speak."
"Here's the plan then," Lloyd said, leaning forward.
Further down the twisting corridor, Lilith could barely walk. A creature as she was unused to pain, especially the excruciating pain of holy silver. The earring was lodged deep in the forefront of her brain, but since she could not die, all it managed to do was impair her and enrage her. Queen Lilith was a mere shadow of herself, much like King Grendel. Dead, but unable to die. As was the fate of the dark magic users.
Once, long ago, she remembered being a girl. A human girl, much like Nino of the Fang, bright and lively. She remembered the cold, beautiful snow of her homeland, and the Goblin King that had whisked her away. A time when she had been Lilah, not Lilith. There had once been a time where she had been a promising mage-knight in the service of the General Barigan, and not a shriveled old Queen of wretched-faced, hard-hearted pixies.
That time was very far away, and she could no longer remember it.
Lilith used her enchanted hair as a crutch, her body swinging limply from her locks. The snarling threads crept into crevices in the walls, the gold she'd collected over the years as testament to her hidden humane urge for real wealth. It had long since lost its luster to her, and it now became worth even less than dirt. Her blood spattered across the precious metal and dissolved it.
All she wanted now was violence, to sate her bloodlust. The Fairy Queen was little more than a mindless monster.
Two figures—human, like she had been. Male, tall, garbed in dark colors. She cared not for those details. Linus and Lloyd were their names. Lilith glared at them balefully with her good eye, and then lashed out with a powerful expulsion of black energy.
Lloyd split off from his brother in a lightning-fast strike. Lilith could not seem to follow the smaller, quicker of the two, no matter how she tried. The continuous burn of the silver seeped into her ancient body and the nimble swordmaster wove in and out of her hair, slashing futilely at the regenerating limbs and torso. Lilith roared in pain. Her mind could not find the spells that deflected the sensation of parting and rejoining flesh.
A creature such as she was not used to pain. Lilith's hair released its hold on the wall and she collapsed on the gold paved floor into the acid of her own blood. She remained unharmed. Her own magic would not touch her; such was the nature of magic, Lilith had once supposed.
Linus, the taller, broader-shouldered of the two charged her fallen corpse-like body, his silver blade raised high. She knocked him away mid-jump with a coil of hair. Foolish and rash, Lilith would have thought. But Lilith was not alive enough to think.
"YOU CANNOT KILL ME," her voice bellowed, a mere echo of her previous taunts and boasts.
"Yes, I can!" a green-haired twig of a girl said, standing only a pace behind her. Lilith turned just in time to see twin orbs of magefire careen toward her, setting her golden hair aflame.
Lilith wailed helplessly as her golden locks singed and turned coal black. The smell of burning hair made all three humans cringe. Lilith took the opportunity to strike again, flailing her dark magic in a crazed, furious tantrum. This time, a bolt of actual lightning snapped off Lloyd's sword, knocking the gust of oily violet energy to the wall. The spell exploded and left a small crater, but the girl was unharmed.
Nino cried out the incantation again, whipping Lilith with another barrage of fire. Lilith lay in her vomit-colored blood in a pit of eaten-away gold. Her hair filled the cavern with smoke as it burned. Lilith turned her face so that her good eye could catch a glimpse of Nino, to send her away with a curse of hate, but all she could see was Linus, purposefully striding toward her. Lilith groaned, not quite powerless.
She reached for his boot, the closest part of him to her. Mercilessly, he plunged the edge of his blade into her neck. More of her tainted blood spurted out, but he was pleased to see that her head stayed severed. Lloyd turned Nino's face away as Lilith died.
Linus wiped the blade on the clean bits of her dress, grimacing. Nino stepped forward, breaking free of Lloyd's grip.
"Look!" she shouted, pointing.
Linus gasped as the remnants of blood on his sword turned a familiar, bright crimson. Lilith's singular shockingly blue eye turned black in the center, forming a pupil and a normal grayish blue iris. Her face distorted itself, her nose reshaping itself. Lilith's fingers disowned the extra joint and the green fingernails popped off to reveal normal, chewed-on nails.
Linus placed a hand on her face, brushing the dead woman's darkening hair from her eye and plunged a finger into her skull. When he removed his hand, he held a silver earring that matched the one in Lloyd's ear. Although Linus' hand had been stained red, the earring seemed as untouched as when he threw it.
"I guess this is what really killed her," he said thoughtfully, before slipping the jewelry into his pocket. He'd wash it first before replacing it on his ear.
"Huh," Lloyd sighed, gratefully looping an arm around Nino's shoulders.
"I wonder what happened that made her like that," Nino murmured aloud, leaning into him. "All evil and stuff."
"I don't really care to find out, lass," Lloyd confessed, rubbing the back of his neck. "Let's get out of this hell."
..0..
Ursula shivered as the bright moon sank through the treetops and dawn tinged the sky. She huddled against her pine tree, wrapping Lloyd's coat around her to ward off the chill. In all fairness, it was a good coat and good material, but it did not do anything for her feet, which poked out from underneath the hem no matter how close she tucked her knees to her chest.
She waited faithfully, through the day, for Lloyd and Linus to return with Nino, unsuitably clad and worried out of her mind. And bored out of her head. Ursula dozed off through the later part of the evening, but had awoken sharply when she heard a wolf's howl in the far distance.
What if they never returned? What if time played fairy-tricks and they didn't come back for five-and-fifty years?
"I'm giving you one more hour, Lloyd Reed," she muttered, before closing her eyes to take another short nap.
"Thank you, ma'am, but I don't think we'll need it," he replied.
Ursula's eyes snapped open suddenly. Lloyd hauled himself out of the gap in the ground, grinning like a madman. The Valkyrie found that her breath would not come.
"Y . . . you're . . ."
"Hi, Auntie Ursula!" Nino greeted, her worn-out face filled with her customary good cheer. Ursula raced forward and kissed the girl's cheeks. Nino wrapped her arms around Ursula in a hug.
"Oh, gods, you're alive! I can't believe it," she said, her smooth voice husky with relief, embracing Nino right back. "No one ever comes back."
"Slap me, Lloyd, I think I'm seeing things," Linus joked as Lloyd pulled him out of the pit. "The Blue Crow is smiling."
Ursula froze momentarily. She released Nino, who took a step back to observe.
"What does that mean?" she asked in a low tone, arms crossed. The selfsame smile still tugged at her lips, although she did her best to drown it in a sober expression.
"Nothing," Linus gulped, raising his hands in defeat. Ursula took a step forward to berate him and he took a defensive step back.
For an instant, Ursula was afraid he'd fall backward into the entrance to the fairy world and break his neck. Linus glanced down at the solid ground underneath his foot, a wide square of forest floor uncovered by needles.
"What?" he raised an eyebrow in confusion. He shook his head. "Damn pixies."
"Forget it. We're not going back, ever," Lloyd shook his head, speaking firmly. "It's almost morning, right? Let's go celebrate."
He looked at Ursula expectantly. "I'll want my coat back, too."
She sniffed, warning him with a cool, composed glare. "You can try," she offered.
"I know!" Lloyd slapped his knee. "I'll get you a new dress. You like violet, right? And what is it that you like, silk? From Etruria, right?"
"Where are you going to get the money?" she asked practically.
Lloyd grinned at his brother, who grinned right back. Reaching into their pockets, the brothers Reed revealed handfuls of gold coins. Nino giggled madly.
"We were fighting for our lives and you still had the time to loot the place?" she snorted behind her hands. Ursula rolled her eyes.
"I think I want a blue dress, this time," she said, smugly. "And a new Bolting tome."
"Me too!" Nino chirped, waving her hand. "I want one too!"
"When you're older, maybe," Lloyd said kindly. Nino pouted, but it didn't last long. She was back home, with her brothers and her auntie and her family. No matter what, she was Nino Reed of the Black Fang. The Black Fang protects their own, and she had proof.