It was midnight by the time we'd reached the east side railyards, and the rain was coming down in freezing sheets. I pulled my arms out of the sleeves of my sodden jacket and instead clutched it tightly around myself like a blanket, though that did little to stop the cold from reaching me. The tail-end of a train was vanishing into the city on a track several feet above us.

I shook my head in a vain effort to clear the water from it, but even though I was sheltering in Mister Wink's shadow I remained completely drenched.

Nuada was looking at a billboard framed in weeds and marked with scrawls of graffiti. It depicted a human family, all smiling with unnaturally white teeth, and the bold letters declared ecstatically, Coming Next Summer! Three Point Shopping Mall! Shop shop shop!

He turned sharply and exchanged an angry, accusing look with Wink before leading the way toward a shabby, derelict building with large windows that, if not boarded up, were all broken and filled with a warm amber glow.

Wink followed, and I kept close by his side, a pathetic figured trying to make myself small enough to hide from the rain.

--

Inside the building, the cold seemed to be stopped in its tracks, and I took a deep breath to welcome the warm air into my shivering lungs. Despite how grateful I was to be out of the rain, I couldn't help but notice the heaps of garbage and scrap metal thrown about the place. A rusty spiral staircase led to a broken hole in the ceiling, and I stumbled on what appeared to be the bottom half of a ladder hidden beneath s thick layer of dead leaves and rubbish.

Nuada looked around at the filth-stained walls with a strange look on his face until a voice from another room brought him back from his thoughts.

"Your Royal Highness!" The obeisant male voice called.

The once-prince walked into a thin doorway I hadn't seen before, one that barely allowed Wink's broad body to pass through, and I followed behind the two of them, grabbing fistfuls of my hair and squeezing the water out of it, then doing the same with my jacket.

The room was larger even than Wink's chamber beneath the city, and the dirt floor was littered with crumpled golden leaves. Several steps led down into the room, whose walls were of dirty concrete and rusted pipes, and on the other side several steps led upward again to another doorway, before which stood a tall sphickal in long black robes. Four insectile guards stood on either side of him, lining the steps, seeming docile except for the massive cleaver swords they held in their hands.

I shivered at the sight of those guards and their aprons of black armor. They had no faces, only bird-shaped masses of bone sat atop their grey human-ish bodies, and their sandals held three-toed, clawed feet. They all stood as still as statues as we entered, Nuada moving forward into the middle of the chamber, Wink and I staying back by the entrance.

"Prince Nuada," the sphickal said in Elvish, his long hands moving continuously as if crooked willow branches caught in a breeze, "you honor us with your return."

He bowed his long, bald head low until all that could be seen of him were the pale triangles of his miniature ear-flaps. His entire neck was a single thick blob of fat, and his arms were like twigs as he gestured outward as he bowed. Looking up again, his tiny, black-rimmed eyes gazed on the once-prince with poorly-masked unease. The black tear lines stretching down his long face curled toward his small, down-turned lips.

Switching back into the human tongue again, he told Nuada, "Before entering the council chamber, you must…surrender your weapon," he gestured to the sword the once-prince had tucked tightly beneath his arm, and I noticed the way he shied his head away slightly as if afraid Nuada might lash out at him.

"I will not," Nuada said, and indeed he began to draw his blade.

At once, the guards raised their cleaver swords, each taking a simultaneous step forward. Wink gave a wordless roar of protest, and I forced myself to take a brave step forward, glamour falling from my raised hand so that I could show off my claws.

The sphickal shook his head frantically, his long fingers curling back against the red velvet stripe running down the chest of his robes. "It is protocol, Sire, for peasant and prince alike."

At that Nuada spun forward, moved nimbly to dodge the guards that rushed forward, and stopped with the silver blade of a sword nestled between two rolls of the subservient creature's neck fat, making him cry out in fear.

"It will be my pleasure to finish you off, Chamberlain," the once-prince hissed.

I was just about to jump in to help when from behind me a soft female voice said kindly, "Please, brother, surrender it."

I whirled around and found myself nearly face-to-face with who could only be Princess Nuala. Her face was as pale as her brother's, though her eyes and lips were dusted with gold rather than coal. Her hair, however, was darker than Nuada's—pale gold rather than near-white. She was dressed in flowing robes of red and black, her hands clasped in front of her waist, and I immediately recognized the second crownpiece she wore in a belt of find gold chains about her waist.

I moved out of her way more out of surprise than politeness, and Wink had the courtesy to mumble, "Princess…"

I heard the gentle sound of Nuada's blade abandoning the Chamberlain's throat, and then he was saying, "For you, sister, anything."

The princess dipped her head gracefully with a small smile.

I turned to look back to her brother, and saw that he was handing his sword and spear to a guard, his eyes bright and only for Nuala. The Chamberlain looked indescribably relieved.

"Princess Nuala," he said, bowing in the same manner he had upon Nuada's appearance. "Your timing is excellent, as always."

That led me to believe this had happened before in the past, but I didn't have much time to dwell on it before I found myself caught under the golden gaze of the princess herself.

It was not a scrutinizing, critical look she gave me, but one of polite interest. "I have never seen you before," she said in the human tongue. "Who are you, and how do you know my brother?"

I returned the princess's smile and stopped wringing the wetness out of my jacket. "Princess Nuala, I am the demon, Jinx—just Jinx—and I met your brother just tonight outside of the Troll Market. I am accompanying him and good Mister Wink…on a venture of sorts."

"I see," she said, her eyes coming away from me, her beautiful pale face becoming troubled. A few seconds passed before she turned to me, extended one of her hands, and told me, "Give me your hand, please."

"Uh…of course, princess." What else could I do but free one hand from my jacket and begin to offer my hand to her?

But we were interrupted as Nuada appeared beside me and firmly gripped my right arm, preventing me from showing it to the princess. "Sister," he said, his eyes boring into her own, "we must go to the council chamber. Come, demon." He gave my arm a jerk and I found myself being pulled along across the wide room, followed by Wink and Nuala.

The Chamberlain stopped himself just beyond his post, dropping his face nearly to his chest, twig-ish arms curling into his chest as he bowed us in. "Sire…please…"

Everyone ignored him and proceeded onward.

--

A/N

I've had this in my computer for a while, so I just figure I'll post it now, because chances are I'm actually not going to be finishing it any time soon at all. Apparently the internet thinks it's too good to have the chamber room scene anywhere on it, so I'm gonna have to figure something out here.

Remember also, this is a boredom project—I'm not doing this for you guys.

Plus, if you've taken a look at my archives or whatever, you'll see I have two other stories that remain unfinished mostly due to the fact that I lost interest in them. I'm like that, okay?

Review if you feel like it.