Beetlejuice
Season 2: The Sleeper Saga
Episode 37: The Sword of a King
For a time, Claire kept her face buried in the dragon's cheek hairs. She found them surprisingly soft, more like clouds than long hair. As soon as Claire was finished crying, she wiped away her tears, smearing all that was left of her makeup. She sat back on her heels and looked back into the dragon's ruby colored eye, seeing that he had actually become bored and was about to drift off into sleep. "Thanks." She said softly to him. His eye flared back to alertness as he slowly lifted his head and yawned. "You've been in here for quite some time little one." The dragon finally noticed. With her own realization, Claire frantically looked around, noticing herself in the same black space from when she first received her powers from the dragon. Suddenly, her wrist ached with pain and as she brought it up to see why, she realized that her wrist was bleeding even inside this space in her mind, her hand now streaked with her own blood. As she gazed at her injury, she noticed a tiny crack in the dragon's ring from where she had violently wrenched it to attempt forceful removal.
Noticing it as well, the dragon asked in wonder, "How did you come to do this?" startling Claire and causing her to jerk her hand down as she quickly spun around to face him, the twinge of pan coursed through her arm as she accidently slapped her wrist against her leg. "I think I've really messed my wrist up." She cringed in pain. "Why don't you try healing yourself with an arrow?" The dragon suggested. "How do I do that? Launch it in the air and wait for it to come back down?" Claire asked sarcastically. "If the arrow flies only for a short distance, it will strike the target beneath it." The dragon answered seriously. Stunned by his words, Claire finally decided to give it a try just to show how silly of an idea it was. She concentrated on healing her wrist and began to draw back the bow, only when she drew it back, her wrist began feeling like it was about to burst into flames and noticed that instead of the energy coming strictly from the edges of the ring, it burst forth form her wound, carrying with it, drops of her blood as well. Claire released the bow and cried out in pain, dropping to her knees and gripping her wrist with her hand. "I didn't see that coming." The dragon stated in slight shock. "What? What's happening to me?" Claire asked in a panic, tears of pain flowing from her eyes. "I do not know little one." He stated, smashing her hopes into dust. "The only one who might know anything of this might be the creator of the ring, Arachnis Widow."
Outside, the gang had already sent everyone except José back to their homes with memories rewritten. José reluctantly let them send Michael back to his home and then joined his new comrades back at the glowing sphere. "So, what exactly is this thing, amigos?" he asked aloud to the group. It was Merlin who answered him, "Claire Brewster wears an ancient artifact from beyond the medieval ages known as the 'Dragon's Ring'. Its power is unfathomable and even created the first dragon from a man's rage." Shocked, José looked to Lydia with his next question. "So, what was the blonde girlie doing with this thing? She looked like she was firing arrows made of gold. And why did one of them ricochet and hit her?" Lydia barely heard him, she was simply staring at the dead cheerleader, her wounds in similar places as her deceased mother. Lydia suddenly felt her body grow stiff and the memories began flashing back to the forefront of her mind, causing her to grasp her temples and scream as loud as she could while crouching down so that her knees met her chin. Tears once again began to flow from her eyes uncontrollably, flowing down her face and dripping onto the grass below. The memories wouldn't go away like she had wanted, they only got more intense. So intense that once the memory replayed one more time and she literally felt the impact of the crash and fell unconscious, this time believing that she had died alongside her mother.
"Lydia!" Beetlejuice shouted as she collapsed to the ground. Everyone had then rushed to Lydia's aid only to find her eyes glazed over as if she had died. "She fell into a coma." Merlin observed. "How do you know?" José asked worriedly. "I'm more than a few thousand years old. Receiving a few doctorates, even as a wrinkled old crone, had eventually become a hobby." Was his response. Confused, Beetlejuice retorted, "But I thought you had never left the Neitherworld before." "Well, then I successfully had pulled the wool over your eyes, didn't I." He said back. As he did, he reached behind Beetlejuice's head and pulled over a wool pelt that had eventually covered his eyes. Beetlejuice responded by furiously pulling the wool obstruction back behind his head and growling, "Don't do that ever again." "That still doesn't change our situation." Bertha said to the two. Merlin and Beetlejuice looked back at the two mismatched friends as Prudence added, "As a matter of fact, it made it worse. Now we have two incapacitated friends and one dead cheerleader."
Blackness surrounded her. That was all Lydia could see. She knew that her eyes were open, she could tell from blinking them, but still, all she could see was inky blackness in all directions. Under her knees, she felt the rough carvings of a hollow tree. She slid her hand around until she felt a wall. The chamber was as she thought, a large hollow of a giant tree, no bigger than she was now. Soft clicking noises came from above her head, similar to the noise Ginger made when moving with her legs close together while on a web. But, "who was Ginger?" she couldn't remember. "Jacques might know." "Who was Jacques again?" She tried hard to remember any of the names she thought of eventually asking herself "Who is Beetlejuice?" Meanwhile the clicking noise above her head crept closer until a thin set of two claws gently touched her shoulder. Lydia almost jumped out of her skin and grabbed at her heart, finally noticing that it wasn't beating. "Huh", she gasped. "What's going on? Why can't I feel my heart beat?" Suddenly, a cracked elderly female voice softly spoke, "You poor girl. Your journey has taken much from you hasn't it." Again, Lydia was startled. "Who are you?" she asked the voice, turning her head to what she believed to be the direction of the voice. "My name is as lost as yours is. But, you've had a recent tragedy, and I must ask you a favor, wearer of the spider silk."
"What kind of favor?" Lydia asked the voice. Three more clawed arms gently gripped her shoulders and biceps before the voice answered, "There is another object that is needed to end your struggle and bring back someone lost in time. A sword known to slay the undead, forged in dragon's fire." Through a crack in the wall, Lydia now began to see the light of what she thought was dawn peeking into the hollow. "Now return to your body and look for the blade of pearl. Only that can lead you to The Sleeper." The light then intensified and shone directly into Lydia's eyes, blinding her and causing her to raise her arms up to protect her sight. She suddenly heard a nasally voice of a girl standing next to her. "Lydia. Lydia, wake up." She shot her eyes open and found herself lying down on her back with four other people staring down at her from a short distance, as if they were leaning in while on their knees to try and get a closer look at her.
Her memory was still hazy and her head was splitting. She used her right arm and hand to push her body up to a sitting position while she placed her left palm on her forehead, as if to physically attempt to hold her head together before it bursts open. As she once again opened her eyes, she began to notice that the other four not only were familiar to her but were staring at her in what looked like shock. "What?" she asked, only to fail to hear her voice exit her mouth. She instinctively took her left hand from her forehead and placed it on her throat, realizing that she wasn't able to speak. 'But I was able to talk to the figure in the shadows. Why can't I talk now?' She wondered. Her mind began racing with many more questions as the man in the black and white striped business suit placed his hands on her cheeks and then placed his forehead against hers. This lasted only for a second before he relaxed and embraced her in a silent hug with his chin resting on her right shoulder. It felt silly since she couldn't remember his name, 'who is he?' she thought to herself as she began to blush lightly from his embrace. As he released his embrace, she noticed tears flowing down his face. 'Has he been crying… for me?'
Her gaze turned to notice the large golden sphere in the middle of the football field and the dead girl lying nearby. For some reason unknown to her, the sight of the corpse appalled her more than it should have and she began to dry heave. Flashes of a blurry image flew in front of her vision, blocking out her reality. Even though all she could make out were blurry shapes, she was certain that one of the shapes she almost recognized. The pale complexion and black drapes along the back of what could be the head. The shape was surrounded by other blurry shapes, making some kind of surrounding objects. The image felt cluttered to her but her focus never left the figure with the black hair. She was harshly pulled back with the man in the striped suit shaking her by her shoulders and shouting, "Snap out of it, Lyds." 'Lyds. Is that my name?' She asked herself with still a silent voice. Her thoughts never truly turning away from the image she had just seen, but still putting it far enough away in the back of her mind so that she could focus on more important questions. 'Who are you people?' she tried to ask with nothing but deafening silence escaping her lips. "Huh?" The man in the striped suit asked with a confused look to his face. The man in the black clothes seemed to have the look of shock on him as he explained, "She must have lost her voice from the trauma. But I think she just asked us who we were… amnesia?" "I've read about this." The pint-sized girl with the tulip looking haircut said. "Some people retreat back into their own minds to escape a traumatic event, taking their memories with them. At least that's what I understood from the passage anyway."
The rest of the group tried their best to fill in the gaps in Lydia's memory, retelling their story as friends from when they met to the recent events. In the meantime, Claire was now riding on the back of the dragon, roaming through the space in her mind. So far it was nothing but blackness, outstretched for miles. "We're lost aren't we?" Claire stated with a deep sigh. Defeated, she leaned forward and let her face rest in between the dragon's horns and allowed her arms to drape along the sides of his head, behind his ears. She sighed once again and asked allowed, "I wonder what the others are up to." In that instance, like a window in the darkness, she could see her friends sitting around telling Lydia how they met as friends. At first she was confused until she saw the blank stare Lydia was giving them. "What's going on with Lydia?" She asked again when suddenly the image before her flew in reverse time like rewinding a movie. It moved in reverse so fast she barely had time to recognize any of it until it stopped at the moment when Claire was surrounded in the golden sphere of energy. She watched as Lydia stared at the cheerleader's corpse and collapsed to her knees. She then fell over as Claire was shown a different image. Witnessing the strange events through feeling and sound rather than by sight. She felt the clawed hand rest on her shoulder, heard the dried up voice speak and felt her own mouth move as she heard Lydia's words escape.
The image then flashed back to her reality and the window closed in front of her eyes. "I think Lydia forgot everything." Claire stated. Before the dragon could respond they both heard the voice that had spoken to Lydia in the darkness. "A quest only for one with the powers of the dragon. As Lydia seeks out that which I had spoken to her, you must locate all that she had lost. But be warned, once you enter another's consciousness, you must be careful not to lose yourself." The voice echoed. After a moment of silence to shake off the confusion, Claire responded, "But what can I do? I broke the dragon's ring and can't use it anymore." Laughter could be heard echoing though the shadows for around five seconds. It then abruptly stopped and spoke once again, "The dragon's ring will heal along-side your wrist and your arrows will return. Just concentrate on achieving what I asked before Lydia loses what's most precious forever."
"What do you mean you need to find a sword?" Bertha shouted after watching Lydia draw the word "find" with an arrow pointing to a sword, a dragon breathing fire with a blacksmith's hammer, and an oyster revealing a pearl. The pearl was circled with yet another arrow leading back to the sword with a question mark next to the oyster. "A sword forged by dragons?" José asked. Lydia shook her head to indicate the negative response. "It could be a sword forged in dragon's fire?" Beetlejuice corrected. Lydia nodded her head quickly to signal that he was correct when Prudence guessed, "Excalibur, King Arthur's sword?" "But in the stories, King Arthur was a human. The Sleeper is a dragon in human form." Bertha responded. Prudence simply shrugged while José stood confused.
"What does she mean, 'enter another's consciousness'?" Claire asked her dragon companion. "She means 'literally enter the consciousness of another.' Once in, one can begin to manipulate one's mind into anything they see fit. By 'don't lose yourself', she means not to take your abilities to corrupted levels and damage your friend's fragile mind onto becoming what you would like her to become and not what she already is." Claire was slightly confused at his statement and lifted her right eyebrow as she always did to signal her confusion. "Just command the nexus to open a pathway to Lydia's mind." The dragon said rather annoyed. "What? You want me to just say 'Open a door to the mind of Lydia Deetz' too…" As she was finishing her sentence, the darkness in front of her opened up in the shape of a rectangular doorway with another set of scenery behind it. "…thin…air?" She was flabbergasted at the sight. Behind the doorway, she could see a dark, dimly lit hallway in shambles, pictures knocked around and broken, dark drapes torn and discarded as if someone tore them down and tossed them aside in a fit of rage. There was memorabilia scattered and broken glass everywhere. At the end of the hall, Claire could see a wooden door painted royal blue with black running like the top of the door was covered in black blood. In the middle of the upper portion of the door was a silver shield shaped knocker. The door itself hand no handle, only a plate where the handle should be. Gingerly Claire slid off of the dragon's back and slowly entered through the open doorway and gazed around at the mess and destruction. "What happened here?" she quietly asked. The dragon peeked in through realizing that he was too large to fit through. Also seeing the carnage left in the wake of a mysterious disaster he responded, "I have not a guess young gossip girl."
"Are you gonna always call me that?" Clair aske just as the door violently swung and slammed shut behind her. The sound of the slamming door was so lout the echo made Claire jump slightly. In a mild panic, Claire instinctively reached for where she thought was the door handle to try and twist it to unlatch the door to see if her companion was on the other side to maintain a small piece of mind. However when her hand reached the location, there was nothing but a plate and a keyhole. She decided to peek through the keyhole only to see more blackness and mist. Claire turned around attempting to swallow her fear and gazed at the dimly lit hallway in front of her. She continued on slowly and took about five steps before she placed her foot on broken glass that crackled and snapped under her weight. Her gaze shot to the noise, startling her and letting her catch a glimpse of an old photo. She gently lifted her foot to get a better look at the photo and noticed that in it there was an eight year old girl standing happily next to her mother and father. Charles she could recognize, wearing his dusty tan business suit, and the girl looked eerily like a young Lydia. The woman in the photo had many of the features that Lydia had, even the jet black hair. She wore a lavender dress with a waist coat of a slightly darker shade. Her hair was tied together with a royal blue ribbon and draped over her right shoulder. She then turned back to the young Lydia who was wearing a similar purple dress and over coat with a violet headband. Her smile so bright that the lighting in the photo seemed to come right off of her alone.
"Is that Lydia's mother?" Claire asked herself aloud. Suddenly a loud shriek startled her out of her curiosity. The shriek was of pain, sadness, anger and frustration all at once and chilled Claire all the way down her spine. After the shriek ended she waited and found only eerie, cold silence greeting her. She once again gazed at the photo and then around the hallway, noticing that along the walls stood empty pedestals with stain glass windows in between each one. She couldn't make out the stain glass due to the fact that all of them had been smashed beyond recognition and the drapes torn down. As she gazed once again, she noticed statues smashed, other paintings and photos torn and destroyed. The one thing that caught her attention in the mess and destruction was a tombstone, untouched in all of the wreckage.
The tombstone was made of a silvery granite and sparkled even in the dim light. A torn drape covered the stone's carvings and Claire could only make out an etching of an angel near the bottom. The angel stood a mere seven inches tall to the tombstone's twenty three inches and was carve in approximately a half of an inch deep. It was ornate and lovingly detailed with large wings and a flowing gown with its hands clasped together as if it was praying. Claire slowly and cautiously made her way over to the tombstone hoping that she wasn't about to be attacked by an undead creature when she heard the shriek again. It lasted approximately three seconds, just like the last one, and then faded into the cold eerie silence. Moments after Claire's heart rate slowed down, she continued to approach the stone and gently pulled the drape off to read the name. "Elizabeth Mariah Deetz" Claire read aloud. "From loving wife and mother to guardian angel." She then looked at the death date. "November twenty second, nine years ago." Claire muttered to herself as she read the engraving. The shriek once again sounded off, startling Claire yet again, causing her to thrust her gaze to the door with the black liquid dripping down. She silently crept toward the door, after the shriek died down, noticing a keyhole in the plate. Half expecting to see the pitch blackness, she continued to creep toward the door, focusing her gaze on the keyhole. The closer she had gotten, the more she realized that there was a faint light coming from it.
The shriek yet again, this time louder than ever, startling poor Claire yet again. She leaned in and glanced through the keyhole. Inside she saw her friend Lydia, thrashing around trying to escape from the same black fluid that dripped from the door. She wasn't trapped in it, instead she was actually trying to run away from it with the fluid shaping itself into what she could only identify as the grim reaper. It stood approximately nine and a half feet tall with a warped skull as a face. It had no scythe but as it chased Lydia it reached with its bony hands. Immediately, Claire slammed her shoulder into the door repeatedly shouting Lydia's name and claiming that she's coming to help. When the door only shook slightly each time she had slammed into it, she gazed back at the dragon's ring, her wrist still bleeding and the tiny crack still present in the trinket. Remembering the intense pain she felt the last time she tried to use its powers, she hesitated, but only when did she hear Lydia shriek once again did she jump back and hesitantly draw her bow. The energy carried with it drops of her blood as her arm and wrist began to feel again like they would catch fire. Another shriek from Lydia caused Claire to push back the pain in her wrist and hold on to her focus drawing the bow back even further, nearly forming the bow entirely. As the arrow began to form, Claire could feel the intense pain spread from her arm and wrist, to the remainder of her body. Rather than relenting and dropping her bow and focus, she steeled her nerves and continued on. She finally had the bow fully drawn with the arrow just beginning to form the fletching, when she heard Lydia shriek once again. Her entire body felt like she was standing in the middle of a sun when the arrow had fully formed. She painfully whispered to the arrow, "Let me save my friend", before loosing the arrow and sending it flying.
The arrow flew with more intensity than ever before streaking now like a bolt of golden lightning straight at the door. The moment it impacted it burst through the door, disintegrating it and piercing right through zinging right by the large liquid mass, destroying its arm in the process. The creature howled in pain as it reared back, holding onto its severed arm. It then glanced down at its wound and then turned its gaze in the direction the attack came from. Standing there, just beyond the door was Claire, now covered in silver armor. The plates looked similar to that of dragon scales with a battle skirt made from golden chain and silver plates. Under the armor she wore golden chain mail that was form fitted to her exact figure. On her head the helmet was shaped that of a dragon's face with three pairs of horns jutted backward that began near the crown of her head and layered toward her cheek bones. Her gauntlets were solid silver covering her elbows and covering the back of her hand. Her grieves looked the same way, a solid piece of silver etched to fit her lower legs exactly from her knee to her ankle. The plated shoes that covered her feet gleamed in the dim light with the rest of her armor. A sky blue cloak covered her back and fluttered from the backlash created from her arrow.
Claire gazed intently at the dark creature, a determined focus to do anything she could to rescue her friend. She aimed yet another arrow at it, the dragon's ring no longer on her wrist, but now covering her entire body. The energy bow she now grasped in her hand like a normal bow, rather than the bow being attached to her wrist. The creature's blood-red eyes glowed with malice as it cried out once again. It shifted forms into a large lump of slime and then reshaped itself back into the grim reaper form. It swiftly snaked away, weaving around obstacles and under desks as it fled, the image of black smoke trailing behind it. Once the creature was out of sight, Claire released the breath she was secretly holding in her throat, her armor vanishing in a burst of silver mist off of her body. Sweat was lightly dewing from her brow as she panted with labored breathing. She leaned forward, placing her hands on her knees to regain her strength nerves shot and her body still in pain. She only looked up when she heard a young girl's voice ask, "Are you ok?" There, standing in front of her stood an eight-year-old Lydia. Her hair soft and black, her stature quite short for an eight-year-old. Her eyes were so innocent and full of wonder and curiosity, Claire couldn't help but ask herself in her own thoughts, 'Is this really Lydia?' "What's your name?" The sweet little girl asked. Claire straightened herself up wondering what happened to the Lydia she thought she rescued, the one that was being chased by the creature. "That's Claire Brewster, Innocence. One of our friends." She heard from beyond the little girl. Claire looked toward the voice. It sounded far more confident than Lydia did normally however the owner of the voice was definitely Lydia, eyes focused with a cocky strength. "I'm sorry Strength. I didn't know. I've never met her in person before." The little girl said before turning back to Claire and comment, "You're pretty." She then smiled brightly before introducing herself, "I'm Innocence." "Innocence?" Claire repeated. "A part of Lydia's personality and life." The cocky girl boasted. "I'm the best part, her strength of will." "You mean her 'courage'?" Claire tried to correct. "Something like that." She responded. "Just call me 'Strength', 'Courage' sounds too corny."
End of Season 2 Episode 17