The four of us left the room. Short, immediately gave us directions to somewhere: "If you go up those stairs, you'll find the main foyer. There you take the stairs up and..."
"Hang on, why are you giving us directions?" Merlin asked her.
"I'm telling you where you can find Artemis." Short answered.
"And why would we want to find him?" Saya asked her.
"Because I'll be too busy taking care of my people." Short explained, "Someone needs to watch over him."
Merlin snickered: "Have you seen that troll? Surely he should be enough."
"I wish I could know for sure." Short replied, "At least when he killed a troll, we knew what he was up against. Here, I still don't..."
She heard something in her ear, to which she replied instead: "What's going on over there?"
The look she had on her face just then described exactly what I was feeling. Those wide eyes, her open mouth and raised brows, like she was just as scared and unsure about everything as we were.
"What happened?" Saya asked her.
"Something happened to the East Wing guards." Short explained, just before she spread her wings and flew away.
"Hey wait for us!" Merlin called after her.
We ran after Short, following her all the way to the East Wing. Only seconds after we entered that Wing, we found what was causing all the problems. In the hallway, stood a group of five men. Each of them were dressed in black suits, each of which seemed to be made up of all sort of weird machines, like they were machines themselves. Their heads were plain white, but were also covered with machines, like one electronic eye instead of a real eye, and an antenna instead of an ear. Even their hands, while one looked normal, the other wasn't holding a gun, it actually was a gun. These five men, were each carrying what looked like more of Short's people.
"Put them down!" Short shouted at them as she raised her guns.
The five men walked on, as if they didn't even notice her shouting at them.
"Put them down or I'll shoot!" she shouted, but they paid no attention to her.
Short fired her guns at them, and she took two down, with one shot each.
"Nice shot!" Merlin congratulated her.
With two of these men down, the other three turned around. Short fired at them. This time, a sort of energy-screen appeared before them, stopping her bullets from hitting them.
"Darvit!" Short cursed, "They have protective shields!"
Saya took a few steps closer, while her hands went to her left side, grasping at... nothing!
Saya groaned: "Why does everyone always have to take my sword away?"
"Let me try." Merlin said.
Short brought her hand to her ear, which told me she heard something being said there. She raised her hand at Merlin, but he already cried "BURN INSIDE!"
With that, the remaining three men appeared to shake, like there was something inside them trying to get out. But instead of "it" bursting out, they fell down, completely motionless.
"There. That should do it." Merlin smiled.
"You really shouldn't have done that." Short snarled at him.
"Why not?" he asked.
Before she could answer, one of the people that these men were carrying started moaning.
"Go see Artemis." Short ordered us, "I have my people to take care of."
The three of us looked at each other. We all had the same thoughts. Not just did we wonder what those things were, but we all wanted to know why Short was so angry all of a sudden, and why Fowl would have any sort of explanation.