The Council Chamber was similar to the rest of the building: dirty and unfit for its new purpose—its old purpose being a boiler room. Golden leaves like those in the entrance hall were eternally drifting down from above before settling on the dirt floor. I glanced around us uneasily at the Great King's council, made up mostly of pale elves and a few masked Nameless—those who conduct nature itself.

Whispering broke out among the council at the sight of Nuada stalking into his father's chamber after so many years of exile. More than a few pair of golden eyes flickered to Mister Wink and I, and I had to resist the urge to hide behind the massive troll again. I was flustered, to say the least.

Nuada continued forward into the center of the chamber while Wink and I hung back, beside the pair of insectile guards in the doorway.

The once-prince kneeled before the Great King's guard, made up of lines of four or five guards on either side of his gilded throne, and said simply, "Father."

"Why?" King Balor implored in an ancient voice, and his son raised his head. "Why have you done this? Why!?"

Nuada rose and replied in the human tongue, "To set us free. All of us, Father." His voice was gentle as I hadn't heard it yet, as if he'd had this conversation many times before and wished the Great King would give in to his cause.

But this was not the case. King Balor shook his great horned head and told his son, "You have broken an ancient truce between our people and mankind."

"A truce based on shame!" the once-prince cried. "The humans! The humans have forgotten the gods, destroyed the earth—and for what?"

He turned to the Council, his eyes boring into each and every one of them as he told them, "Parking lots! Shopping malls! Greed has burned a hole in their hearts that will never be filled!" Nuada whirled around and yelled to his father, "They will never have enough!"

King Balor stroked his long white beard for a moment, as if considering Nuada's argument, and then he nodded. My heart leapt at the thought of having the Great King on our side, but my hopes fell flat on the ground when he explained, "What humans do is in their nature; to honor the truce is in ours."

"Honor," Nuada scoffed disbelievingly. "Look at this place! Where is the honor in it!?" His voice echoed off the sooty stone walls and rusted pipes. Shaking his head, Nuada went on in a disappointed tone, "Father, you were once a proud warrior…when did you become their pet?"

And the Great King finally looked away, apparently ashamed.

Nuada turned to the Council once again and declared in a proud, strong voice, "I have returned from exile to wage war and reclaim our land—our birthright! And for that I will call upon the help of all of my people and they will answer! The good…! The bad…!"

He turned to his father and said more quietly, holding aloft the crownpiece we'd taken from the humans. "And the worst."

King Balor clutched the crownpiece he wore as a belt, much like Nuala had, and exclaimed with disbelief, "The Golden Army! You cannot be that mad!"

"Perhaps I am…" Nuada replied quietly. "Perhaps they made me so…"

I jumped as a third voice joined the debate from right beside me. Nuala had appeared so silently that not even I had heard her approach. Wink snorted in surprise.

"Awaken the army…but our green fields cannot grow out of all that blood." She touched the crownpiece on her waist as if it were the heart Nuada was breaking. "Let the army sleep," she begged. "If our days have ended, let us all fade."

The once-prince turned to his sister, glaring at her not in anger but in determination. His voice held the weight of his suffering as he insisted, "We will not fade."

Nuala bowed her head and stepped back beside me, sadness glittering in her beautiful eyes. She attempted to silently beseech Wink and I to talk some sense into her brother, but Wink had turned his gaze back to the once-prince and I only responded with an apologetic look.

"For the last time, my son, I ask you: is this the path you wish to take?" King Balor inquired, sounding like he would gladly trade anything for his son to say no.

But he was disappointed. "It is," Nuada answered at once. "I am sorry, Father."

King Balor shook his head and nearly moaned, "Then you leave me no choice…Death!"

I gasped at this order. Would the Great King truly have his own beloved son killed for the sake of a peace that barely existed at all!? All of the guards in the room drew their cleaver swords in a symphony of blades slipping from sheaths, and stood battle-ready. I looked at Wink for a clue as to what to do, but he remained a silent boulder of flesh.

Nuada turned his head, not daring to look directly at her, and asked his sister quietly, "And you, sister…are you at peace with your king's verdict?"

Nuala folded her hands and replied mournfully but resigned, "I am, my brother…I am."

Nuada cast his gaze to the floor, his last hope lost. After a moment of silence he looked to his father and stated, "Then very well. Death it is."

I grabbed Wink's giant arm as nearly a reflex, shaking with a mixture of excitement and indescribable terror. "What do we do!?" I hissed.

"You wait," he growled, clenching his metal fist.

Suddenly, the insectile guard nearest Nuada swung his sword in an attempt to decapitate the once-prince, but Nuada was too swift and he ducked beneath the blade easily. He twirled, struck another charging guard in the stomach with his open palm, and I could hear the breath screech out of the creature. Nuada used his opponent's arm as a means of flipping himself up over its back, and he proceeded to wrench the guard's right arm out of its socket and then steal the extra cleaver sword in the sheath on its back.

He turned with teeth bared and parried the blow of a guard's sword before quickly jabbing his own stolen blade into its gut. It screamed and fell to the floor, twitching.

I looked on in a sort of horrified awe as the two guards beside Wink and I in the doorway ran forward with their weapons held high, but Wink stopped one of them by jabbing a spike on his mechanical hand into its gut. Blue-black blood spurted across the front of my suit jacket, which I'd held up to shield me at the last second.

I lowered my jacket just in time to see Wink, with a roar of rage, launch his fist into the head of the second guard, pulling it back by its birdlike skull so he could pummel it into the dirt at a closer range. I took this as my cue to finally join the battle.

Nuada ran into the heart of the fray while I picked off guards at its edges. I jumped up onto the railing that kept the stoic Council separated from things and rebounded onto the shoulders of a guard; I grabbed its beak and wrenched its head back so hard that its neck snapped and it crumpled to the floor. I rolled on the ground, tried and failed to kick a guard's legs out from underneath it, and just as it raised its weapon against me Nuada stabbed its clawed foot.

The guard tossed its head and made a sound like a hoard of banshees having their fingernails pulled out before blindly swinging his weapon in Nuada's direction. Nuada bent backward at the waist and managed to duck beneath the blow before raising his cleaver sword and swiftly beheading the guard. Its head soared across the room, trailing blood and tendrils of black flesh.

He ran across the chamber and across a wall, and in the meantime I snatched a guard from behind and this time succeeded in kicking a leg out from under it. When it hit the ground I threw away my glamour just long enough to slash out its exposed throat with my claws, and after a brief screech it lay dying in a pool of its own blood.

Nuada had beheaded another guard, but I turned and saw him punched in the face by yet another. He whirled and shoved his cleaver into the stomach of his attacker's remaining comrade before looking up at Nuala.

I could see a stream of watery gold flowing from his nose, and I realized the guard's punch must've made him bleed. Nuala looked at her brother in horror as her own nose began to bleed, and I knew that the stories of the bond of the twins were all true. Whatever he suffered, she would always suffer the same, and vice versa.

The once-prince turned away from his sister and grabbed another sword from the ground, spinning the two of them as if to test the balance of their blades. I wiped the inky blood from my hand and leapt onto the wall, crouching there horizontally should I be needed, for there were only two guards left between Nuada and the crownpiece his father wore.

King Balor stood from his throne, probably the first time he'd done such a thing in many years, and raised his one arm as if welcoming his son. On the Great King's chest, above the crownpiece, was the Silverlance crest crafted in gold—a symbol of peace and unity. On the waist of the once-prince was the Silverlance seal of war crafted in silver—an image to be hated and feared.

Nuada sprinted forward, and the two remaining guards ran to meet him. They swung their cleaver swords simultaneously, but Nuada leaned backwards and his momentum allowed him to skid nearly parallel to the ground beneath their blades as he raised his own and slit both of their stomachs. He twirled in order to balance himself, used the steps leading to his father's throne as a brake and—

I choked in a mixture of disgust, surprise and grief. Nuada had plunged his blade through his father's ancient armor and into his even more ancient body.

"The King!" I whispered, raising my hands to my face. "The King is dead! The King, the King, the King is dead!"

Nuada looked on, the beastly anger seeping out of his expression to leave only heartbroken grief. He watched his father's body turn to stone around his blade, and he brought his right hand to his face as if to see if murder had changed its appearance. He took this hand, crying softly but without tears, and touched King Balor's face as flesh turned to marble.

"I always loved you, Father," he promised before reaching down to the only part of his father that remained unchanged—the crownpiece. This he grasped with his murdering hand and wrenched from King Balor's stone belt, defiling his corpse as a great chunk of what was once flesh and armor came with it. At this atrocity the Council finally gasped, and I too drew a disbelieving breath.

Nuada paid none of us any mind and brought out the humans' crownpiece, then placed the two of them together. The metal drew itself into one piece on its own, clicking softly as the pieces realigned to accommodate each other. In the end, they formed a headband with a place at the front for the third and final of their number.

"Now…" Nuada called out, burying his grief for the moment, "…now, for the final piece, my sister."

Everyone, even the Council, turned to look into the doorway where Nuala had been standing. She was no longer there. Wink, who'd been closest to the doorway, grunted in confusion. He obviously hadn't noticed her absence.

Nuada left his father's broken body and stalked across the chamber, ignoring the disgusted looks he was receiving from the Council, and demanded, "Where is she, Wink?"

I dropped down to the floor and forced myself to look away from Balor, the only king my world had ever known. Nuada whirled around, his eyes glowing embers filled with rage, and yelled at me, "Where is she!?"

I shrugged cluelessly and cringed under his gaze. Nuada folded the crownpiece and shoved it into the pouch that the gulpher had previously occupied. "Go find her!" he ordered us. "NOW! Find her!!"

"NUALAAA!!" Wink roared and stomped out of the chamber. I had no choice but to follow him and use my superior sense of smell to help track Princess Nuala, though the continuing rain made it very difficult—for this I was secretly thankful. I wasn't so sure I wanted to find Nuada's sister, after seeing what he'd done to his father.

The Princess was missing, the Prince was a murderer, I was beginning to question our quest, and the Great King Balor was dead.

--

A/N

Long time no see, eh? Please review. I'm too tired to proof-read this, so I need other people to do it for me.

Next scene is the Troll Market. Yaaay…baby tumors!

By the way: when I finally found the Council Chamber scene (still don't own the DVD) I realized there weren't only elves in the council. In the front are tall things with wooden masks that have various expressions carved into them. They are the ones in red robes with horns. I wasn't really sure what they were—my first instinct was tree spirits—so I just decided to make them Nameless, controllers of nature in general. Those are important to the King of Nature, right?

Review, please. I might actually be continuing with this again. YAY!

By the way 2: Is Jinx's fighting okay?