Opal felt weightless. It was like being on one of Foaly—that blasted centaur—'s MoonBelts. Except it wasn't because all of the sudden Opal felt crushed. Everything was heavy.
What was she doing again?
No, she was Opal Koboi. She would not be felled by something as simple as amnesia. She focused on the highest end of her intellect and meditated. The pixie simulated countless scenarios, eliminating them one by one until she came upon the most likely explanation for her current predicament. Dark magic. The Berserker Gate. But what had happened with the second lock…?
Suddenly it clicked into place. All the memories of the past twenty-four hours flooded into the forefront of her mind. She thought about all the pain and death caused. Particularly, all of the inconvenience that other people's deaths inflicted upon her.
The pixie took a deep breath to begin a mantra. But of course, there was no breath to take. Her torso and the lungs were mere projections, magical shorthands which helped to ease her consciousness into the afterlife. She was dead, after all.
Opal Koboi raged. She gnashed her teeth, tore her immaculate hair, smashed the fabric of the plane with her manicured fingers until they were worn bloody. The damage was fixed immediately afterward as if it was never there. Which it wasn't. Waves of rage rippled out into the inky-black void around her and she felt the place shudder. She spat a word out into the endless space, dripping with hatred.
"Fowl."
Suddenly, her purpose returned to her in a flood. Opal felt her focus sharpen into a razor's edge directed at thoughts of revenge against a very certain mud-boy. Black magic thrummed at her fingertips. All that remained of what she used to restructure herself back in Atlantis. Enough for a bolt or two. Maybe. She could make it work.
Then a tug. Opal looked up in annoyance at whatever was interrupting her concentration. She flexed her digits. There seemed to be a certain command that she held over her surroundings—of course there was.
I am the mistress of the world. Why should the fetters of the spirit realm be any different?
Perhaps a punishment of whoever was distracting her would be in order. It would help her feel slightly better at any rate.
She oriented her spirit towards a tunnel of blinding white. It seemed similar to a time travel wormhole, but subtly different. Relaxing almost. There was the scent of… air. Clean air. Farming. Fairies planting acorns in the bends of rivers, magical sparks bringing joy and levity. Freedom.
Opal started. Violently. Blades of folded space exploded out from her, shredding the green mist that the tunnel was absorbing. The pixie did not need relaxation. She wanted revenge.
Opal saw a slow-moving sprite approach from the corner of her vision. Or, at least, the spirit of one lazily floating towards the tunnel, a leaf carried by a gentle stream. She recognized it as one of the worthless Berserker warriors who couldn't even manage to guard her against a deranged mud-man.
The space around the soul seemed to compress as invisible fingers clenched around the sprite. So close to the afterlife promised after thousands of years, the sprite's expression went through a rapid series of changes. First contentedness to shock, then shock to pain, and pain to the grief of release denied so close.
"Nevermind your discomfort, you worthless sprite," Opal boomed, her voice coming from every corner of the space. "Answer my questions and you may yet serve me."
"Anything!" the struggling spirit cried. Its features began to contort, its essence being drawn towards the light, yet Opal's grip was absolute.
"Where does the light lead?"
"The after," the sprite gasped.
"The after, Queen Koboi," the pixie ordered. Her grip tightened, threatening to destroy the berserker's soul altogether.
"Queen Koboi!" the sprite desperately squeaked.
The afterlife. Of course, Opal already figured out that part. Tunnel of light in an endless void of space? How absurdly cliché. When she was done with it, it would be much less pedestrian. Perhaps her face would be the first thing that greeted those who had died. It would be much easier to convince them that she was God were that the case.
Now for the sprite. Opal could see the poor creature splitting like an amoeba, threatening to tear asunder. What would happen then? Perhaps she could use whatever spilled out to bolster her own essence. It never hurt to advantage herself further. A plan was forming in her head. The queen of the world? No, the afterlife and then the world. Maybe—
Opal suddenly felt her body wracked by pain. Blinding, burning pain. Can't breathe. Was the air plasma?
Wait, there was no body, no air. Only her mind. She sharpened her thoughts, reconstituting herself while considering what she had been attacked by. It must have been magic. But somebody with a stronger will than herself? Impossible.
She swung around to face the light, her metaphysical conception of "eyes" regrowing in imaginary sockets. The tunnel was now a blazing orb, more brilliant than the sun. If it were real it would have seared her flesh to plasma, much less her eyes. But it wasn't and so Opal forced her eyes to focus on what was before her.
The released sprite rushed forward, a word of gratitude at his lips.
"Worry not, Vertunt, no one shall stand before the Berserkers and their well-deserved rest," a voice said, warm and assuring.
The soul touched the white corona and was gone. A wizened figure watched it fondly. The elven silhouette stood between the pixie and the after and turned to face the pixie. Opal recognized the rough-hewn features at once.
"Bruin Fadda," she hissed. "Step aside."
The warlock remained impassive, staring at her. There was contempt in his eyes. And pity. Pity? PITY?
HOW DARE HE?!
Uttering a guttural cry completely unsuited for Opal's delicate features, she fired a bolt of pure black magic at the warlock. It crackled all through her conceptual arm, blasting it to atoms, before shooting at the fairy like a blackened javelin.
Bruin backhanded the bolt without looking at it, sending it careening off into the abyss.
Opal suddenly felt very drained. Heavy, just like before. Her stump of an arm refused to reconstitute. She had to convince him, before the clouds overtook her vision.
"Warlock Bruin Fadda," she gasped, "wait. I must pass so that I may help rid Duma of the mud-men. Isn't that what you want?"
The warlock stared at the megalomaniacal pixie's form. It was slowly losing cohesion as her focus slipped, melting like mist in the noonday sun. He shook his head in disgust.
"You are no Shayden Fruid. He could at least wound me. You are right that I despise the mud-men, child, but the second lock has been closed forever. And even if it were not, Oro has shown me what he has seen. And now I lay my eyes on you myself."
He sighed. At her. HER. Opal Koboi. Some of the hatred she was reserving for Artemis Fowl was redirected towards the figure before her. The absolute melodramatic prick. I will have him flogged for the rest of—
"Enough," he spoke, his one word rippling through the pixie's mind like a mesmer. Opal paused. She couldn't even think. Only hear and see. The portal behind the warlock dimmed in intensity and began to smoothly contract. He sighed.
"Your thoughts of hatred and revenge are unsightly. You are unfit to be queen of all or any. No ruler are you, no Frond are you, and no God can you be."
Opal's eyes widened, the whites showing. It was all she could manage. But Bruin Fadda seemed to be able to read deeper into the gesture.
"You believe that I am denying your capabilities because you are a woman?" he asked, sounding curious. "Truly, have even the People lost their way?"
Opal flushed, denial rushing up to her uncooperative mouth. She wanted to take his pity and ram it down one of his eye sockets. Then suddenly the space around them shifted, as if they were standing on glass above the Berserker Gate. Back on Fowl Manor.
Opal's eyes narrowed. She saw a cluster of figures. Worse, they were alive. The two odious mud-men and the zoophilic elf police officer. Her vision filled with them and she wished she could vaporize them with her gaze itself. Yet she could not, and her attention was suddenly torn, no, compelled by the warlock, his voice thrumming with magic.
"Opal Koboi, false queen of the People and master of dust, I pronounce justice upon you in the olden ways," Bruin Fadda intoned. Opal fumed at his ridiculous grandstanding. "For what you have taken and the blasphemy you have created, I punish you. However, Opal Koboi, for your deed of closing the gate, an act of compassion and prudence, this too shall not go unrewarded."
At this point, if Opal was more than a seething wisp of hatred and narcissism held together by her prodigious intellect, she would have started to worry. Below her, the view shifted from Butler and Holly desperately resuscitating Artemis to a limp figure. A pixie, small and forgotten on the carnage of the battlefield.
"You shall find no rest in the after, for your heart is impure. Yet you shall live anew. I strip you of life and achievement, of enmity and memory. Serve the rest of your life once more, in the guise of discarded, dreamless flesh."
Completing the incantation, Opal was banished. Bruin Fadda watched as the spirit was sucked into the body below, twitching and healing with a sudden influx of black magic. Satisfied with his final grand working, and so very tired, the warlock turned. The light enveloped him.
His work was finally done.
—
Far below, in the perfectly manicured grass of the Fowl estate, a clone heaved its first unassisted breath. Nopal opened her eyes.