Chapter 85
The Horned King paced inside his chambers in a blinding rage he had not felt in months.
'How dare he?' He fumed, his eyes blazing blood red as he swept back and forth across the room, the torch flickering every time.
'How. Dare. He.'
His fear of the Cauldron had been turned to fury for the moment.
The wretched thing haunting him was to be expected. He had sought for it for many years, only to have it turn on him and destroy him instead of the country he longed to turn it against.
He expected it to haunt him, to sit there at the very edges of his consciousness, waiting for its chance to strike him in a weak moment, (Which it did, always) but going after Avalina. . .he snarled out loud, sounding like a feral animal.
That was inexcusable.
She was so young, so fragile. . .she did not deserve the Cauldron's horrors tugging at her mind as well.
Two attacks had already happened, that he was aware of.
'I was a fool to let my guard down,' he thought furiously.
'How could I let this happen? I knew my master for centuries, I know how his mind works. I should have anticipated this. That he would strike not only at me, but at any hope I may possess to free myself from the Cauldron as well. I should have taken precautions already. How could I have done this to her? She is too young to be faced with so much Death. And now, after this last episode, she may very well be scarred for life.'
He faintly shivered himself as a whisper from the Cauldron tugged at him.
'The Invisibles have detected him now, and if their powers are as strong as they claim, they should be able to keep him from her. They are many, he is only one.'
He glared hard at the floor without seeing it.
'Not that that's ever hindered him before.'
The lich resumed his pacing, the Cauldron continuing to whisper to him.
'It doesn't matter what you do, Arawn will prevail. You cannot win against him. He is your master for a reason.'
'He is not my master,' the Horned King growled to himself.
'Not anymore. He is dead.'
'And yet his spirit lives on, undefeatable. He will never stop until he has your soul, you know. It doesn't matter what he has to do to make sure he achieves his goal. He is as heartless as you.'
'That much is true,' the Horned King thought to himself.
'Everything I learned, everything I am today, is because of him.'
'Not all,' the Cauldron told him mockingly.
'He had to have a seed of darkness there to work with first. And you grew into evil so easily, it was like you were born for it.'
The Horned King snarled out loud, fisting his hands tightly.
'Silence.'
He fancied it gave a soft chuckle.
'As you wish.'
Angrily he resumed his pacing.
'Arawn may be heartless, but he does not believe in attacking something for no reason. It wastes time, energy and resources. He was a warlord like myself, the perfect strategist. He knew how to spot threats and eliminate them before they even became a problem, without ever having to expend more energy than necessary, something he taught me as well. Which I failed to put into use here. I should have known he would go for the only chance I have to free my soul from the Cauldron's grasp. And for all I know, he may well have already destroyed it.'
Avalina's screams and sobs came back to him, and he gritted his fangs tightly. He was all too aware of what his master could do, not just physically, but inside the mind as well. He had watched him do it, and even helped him when he had been learning how to do them as well. They were unspeakable things, things grown men could not withstand. There had been one occasion when his master, in a fit of rage, had turned it on the Horned King as well.
Fighting down a shudder, the lich continued his silent thinking.
'Therefore, the only way he would have bothered with her was if he considered her a threat to his own goals. Does that mean. . .'
The Horned King stopped pacing, an epiphany hitting him.
'Does that mean I may have some hope, after all?'
If that was true, then. . .this feeling in his chest Avalina had explained to him that flared every time he was around her was not a false emotion. It was not a simple delusion of his mind. It may very well be real.
He had pondered on this for some time, and now he finally decided that it was quite real.
'So, I am indeed hoping,' he thought to himself, wondering how to take this news.
'This is. . .unexpected, to say the least. But I cannot deny it makes perfect sense, in a way. Everything that has happened concerning him. . .the measures he seems to be going to to prevent it. . .'
His mind took another tack.
'But this should be impossible. It is, by all means. I am heartless. I have been told that so many times, and even if I had not, I would know it to be true. I no longer possess one. I lost it long ago in my quest for ultimate power. To have hope, you must have a heart first.'
The Horned King shook his head slowly.
'That part does not add up. Unless what I am feeling is a twisted version of the real thing.'
It must have been several hours later, not far from dawn, when an Invisible tapped on his door.
"Sire, Avalina has finally gone to sleep. She was determined to stay awake for the rest of the night, and considering the amount of encouragement she had to do so, she may have succeeded, despite her exhaustion. We had no choice but to slip her a sedative."
The Horned King nodded faintly, still angry at himself for being so blind to his old master's wiles.
'I would not wish to sleep either, after that.'
"She is not to be left alone at night," he ordered them, "Under any circumstances. Or anywhere else you think she may accidently fall asleep, for that matter. She is to be kept under constant vigilance."
"Yes, Sire."
"Let her rest as long as she will. There will be no music today. Anything she needs, make sure she gets."
'No doubt if Arawn was sending her nightmares, they contained me in some way or another in a less than pleasant light. It is understandable she will not want to come near me for a few days. Not that I blame her.'
"As you command," The Invisible answered.
"Good," he said, his voice hard.
"Sire?"
"What?"
"I regret to inform you that you have twelve moons remaining."
The Horned King was silent for a long moment before nodding faintly.
"You are dismissed."
Avalina slowly opened her eyes, staring fuzzily at the wall.
Sunlight covered it.
Yawning, she wondered blearily what time it was. The sun never covered the wall that much in the mornings when she usually woke. She must have slept in.
'The nightmare.'
Instantly Avalina jerked up into a sitting position, her heart racing.
Her body protested mightily, feeling stiff all over.
Her sharp movement brought on a cry of surprised pain from her as she gripped her stomach, remembering what had happened the night before.
'He killed me,' she remembered, all traces of sleepiness gone.
'Again. And not just me this time. It was my family too. . .and Mitternacht.'
Tears immediately slid down her cheeks to fall on the blankets.
'I lost them all.'
Avalina wasn't certain what she had seen, exactly. In her last nightmare like that, she had witnessed what had happened previously, before the Horned King's supposed demise. Was this a dark sign of things to come? Avalina trembled violently at the notion.
'But the Cauldron is gone, isn't it?' She thought to herself.
'I heard that the Witches of Morva took it, whoever they are. The Horned King can't use it anymore, it was permanently deactivated.'
She frowned slightly, wiping her eyes.
'At least, that's what I heard. But I also heard that the Horned King was dead, and that turned out to be less than true.'
Shivering faintly, she sat down in the chair in front of the fire, staring at her breakfast without seeing it.
'What if I was seeing something that hasn't happened yet? What if I was seeing what he would do to my family, with or without the Cauldron-Born?'
She shuddered, trying to block out the horrifying images.
'He gave his word they would not be harmed if I stayed here, which I have done. But what if he was lying to me? He's the Horned King, he must have lied to hundreds of people. . .'
Raising her gaze, she saw a roll of parchment on the table, and with her stomach twisting in knots, read it.
After a moment, she lay it back down with a sigh of relief.
"No music today."
She wasn't hungry in the slightest, but she forced herself to eat some, knowing she needed it, and the Invisibles would be hurt if she didn't eat anything.
After forcing down a few bites, she immediately went to the stable to care for Mitternacht, wondering how his foot had fared during the night.
Pushing open the door, her heart leapt joyfully when Mitternacht's head poked cheerfully over the stall door, whinnying to her in greeting.
Already she felt better.
After he ate, she pulled him into the hall (He was walking much better, she noticed) and carefully peeled off the bandage.
The stench made her cough.
"Gracious."
Curling her lip, she looked at all the pus that had came out of his foot and had accumulated on the bandage. The black salve wasn't so black anymore either.
"You had more in there than I thought, boy," she told him as used another rag to wipe his foot clean.
"But we'll draw it all out. I hope."
After letting his foot air out while she brushed him, she dipped his hoof in a water bucket to wash away the remnants of the black glop and other filth, before carefully patting it dry and redressing it.
"Remind me to watch all around that area in your hoof, boy," she told him as she put away her materials.
"The last thing we need is to have you lame over a cracked hoof on top of an infected one. Although I don't think that will happen, Mueric told me you have hooves like steel. He's right too."
She grinned a bit painfully as she stretched, remembering her hard work from yesterday, before groaning in relief as she felt her back pop.
"Alright, Mitternacht," Avalina told him, pulling out the lunge line, "Let's go for a walk. You need exercise and I want to see how the little garden's coming."
The horse happily followed her out of the stable, limping but nonetheless in good spirits.
Walking together like the best friends they were, they went over the drawbridge, a small cloud of dust stirred up by their feet creating a soft curtain behind them, leaving only their silhouettes visible as they walked away from the castle, side by side.
The Horned King watched them walk out together, able to see even without his spyglass from this distance that the horse was walking much better now than he had only yesterday morning.
They headed in the direction of the garden, taking their time. Avalina stopped once to speak to the horse, possibly to encourage him on, before the thin dust screen covered them.
The horse seemed to shift excitedly on his feet, moving much better than he had previously.
'You did well, Avalina,' The Horned King thought, feeling a small seed of pride inside him.
'You did well.'
"I cannot be the only one that saw that."
"Nope! I saw it too! Ain't it beautiful?"
"It sure is! I mean, the circumstances weren't, but I'm telling you what I'm seein'. . ."
"Aw naw, now, I'll tell you what *I'M* seein'. . ."
"I think what you think I'm seein' is the same thing you seem so sure that you're seein'."
"No, I think what you think *I'M* seein' is the same thing you seem to think you're seein'."
"I think I *know* what I'm seein' is what you think I'm seein'."
"What if we *are* seein' the same things we think each other's seein'?"
"And what if we're not just seein' things that aren't there?"
"Well, we'd both have to be seein' things together, then."
"What if I told you I was seein'. . ."
"ENOUGH!" The first Invisible bellowed.
"I think we *all* know what we're *all* seeing, so you can shut up now and continue that blasted conversation somewhere out of my earshot."
"Jeez, somebody lost a trolley this morning," the second grumbled.
"With the whole flipping cargo," the third muttered.
"What are we seeing?" The fourth asked as it came into the room.
"No, don't ask. . .!"
"PROGREEEEEESS!"
"PROGREEEEEESS!"
A groan could be heard, followed by mad cackling.
"Sorry," the fourth said apologetically, but it couldn't keep the amusement out of it's voice.
"I'm sure you are," the first one replied in an unconvinced voice.
"Avalina's out at the garden with the horse," the fourth Invisible said.
"I thought I'd leave her alone for a little while. She can sense us very easily, now that she knows what we 'Feel,' like, I guess."
"That's one of the reasons Arawn was able to get to her so easy, I'll bet," the third Invisible said.
"She's so sensitive to her surroundings it's nearly impossible to be in the same room with her without her knowing."
"But he wasn't in the same room. He's bound to the Cauldron, bound *inside* it rather, remember?" The second reminded them.
"Of course," the fourth replied, "But his power is so great, and her own aura is so strong, he wouldn't have had a whole lot of trouble getting to her. But Fates willing, that will change from here on out."
"Oh yeah," the third Invisible answered, a streak of vicious glee emerging in its voice, "Just let him try again! We'll send him running back to that hunk of iron like a hog on ice! Pow-pow-pow!"
"He won't even know what hit him," the second swore, a sound following that suggested it was cracking its knuckles.
"We'll see who's being tormented when we get through with him!"
"Yes," the first Invisible spoke up.
"You all heard what the master said. From now on, one of us has to stay with her at all times."
"Almost all times," the second corrected. "Give her a little privacy."
"Fine, but gather round. We're all going to have to take shifts, and here's the places I think she needs to be watched the most. . ."
Thank you for reading my fanfiction so far! :D Reviews much appreciated!