A/N: Wow… it's been a while, more than just a while, really. But I got this. I'm refreshed and determined to finish this story.

At this point I'm not sure how many chapters are left. Maybe one, maybe two, and a sequel is possible.

Disclaimer: I don't own Neopets the Darkest Faerie.

Chapter 24

"Two against one?" Tor asked with a small smirk as he chanced a quick glance at Roberta. She never really had been one for quick banter in the midst of battle and her face was set, grim and tense with her eyes calculating, just waiting for the fight to begin. Tor himself lowered a little, his body ready to move in any direction or to move as needed. "Doesn't seem very fair, does it?"

"Not for you."

And then the Assassin sprang, his sword meeting Tor's while he sent a blast of Magic at Roberta. The sorceress deflected it easily and sent one of her own.

But the Assassin disappeared into his dark purple smoke. Tor and Roberta moved, back to back as they stood, waiting rather than Shadow Stepping to another location. A silent agreement between the two of them.

"Don't overdo it again, Tor," she muttered to him and Tor smirked as he responded, "Wouldn't dream of it."

"Look up!"

Tor rolled forward at Roberta's warning, thankful to her skills of being able to sense the Assassin. He rolled forward onto his feet and spun, seeing Roberta with her dagger locked with the Assassin's rapier. She was forced to yield as a fiery ball erupted from his hand, dodging that and instead taking a hit from his blade. It had to be one or the other in the position she'd been forced into.

Tor jumped forward, slashing with his sword to distract the Assassin as she recovered from the blow. There was no time for him to check how badly she'd been wounded as the gelert parried his strike.

The two matched, blow for blow in strikes so fast their blades were only a flurry of silver in the dim light. It was during this that both fighter seemed to realize how far Tor had come since their last encounter and at the realization, they both fought ever harder. Their weapons made resounding metallic clangs through the air as they each tried to force the other back.

Tor managed to get the first strike, a deep cut into the shoulder. But it wasn't nearly enough damage to hinder the gelert.

"You've come far," the Assassin commented.

"Was that a compliment?"

Tor sensed Roberta coming and dived to the left, feeling the Assassin's blade rake through the air next to him. While the Assassin was still raising his weapon again from his missed strike, Roberta slammed the steel butt of her wand into his stomach and kicked out his legs from underneath him in a swift movement.

As the Assassin fell and Tor stabbed with his sword to take the final blow, he met only a cloud of smoke and the tip of his sword dug into the ground next to a crater in the earth from the spell Roberta had sent. Both felt the ground quake from the impact and Tor winced, imagining the pain that the spell would have created, but then a stronger emotion filled him. He wrenched his sword out of the ground, furious that the Assassin kept escaping his blows.

"Where is he?" He snarled, spinning around in a circle. When he received no answer from his companion, he stopped his movements and looked at her curiously. "Roberta?"

Her eyes were closed and her body completely still, like she'd fallen asleep right there in the midst of battle.

"Now is not the time for a nap!" he snapped. It might've been a joke, but his voice was so filled with anger it would've been hard for anybody to tell.

Slowly her amethyst eyes opened and Tor sensed something strange about them. But then she spoke and the thought went away with her words. "I don't sense him."

"What?" Tor hissed. He whirled around, shouting, "Come out and fight, Assassin!" No answer. "ASSASSIN!"

When there was nothing—not a single dark chuckle, not the swish of a blade, not the swirl of smoke, only the sounds of the battle of werelupes that still raged on as a completely separate fight—Tor snarled in annoyance and went to leap into the fray and help the resistance.

If the Assassin wouldn't come out to fight, then he would do what he could to help the others in their battle.

But then a hand on his arm stopped him. He frowned. "What now Rob—"

A small gasp escaped him as he turned to face the sorceress. The sharp pain in his abdomen—and a sickeningly familiar pain at that—made him look down, fearing what he would see.

A dagger, Roberta's dagger, with her small hand still clasped around the hilt.

His eyes snapped up to hers, his mouth hanging slightly open as her twisted into a terrifying smile. "What?"

She wrenched the dagger out and Tor doubled over in pain, clasping his hands over the wound that bled through his fingers. His sword clattered to the bloody ground beside him. He looked up at Roberta, his golden eyes filled with pain, anger, confusion and betrayal.

Tor coughed and he kneeled forward, lifting one hand from his wound to place on the ground, his blood mixing with that of many others. He felt the strength leaving his body already and soon he was gasping for air. He raised his head again, the strain of it excruciating. But any words that had come to his mind—all of them harsh and biting accusations and curses, ready for him to shout—left him when he saw her face.

It was filled with horror as she stared between him and the knife in her hands. With a loud cry filled with despair she dropped to her knees, grasping Tor's shoulders to steady the both of them. Tears were leaking from her eyes.

Roberta never cried. Never once in all the years he'd known her. Granted that was only about three, but that was long enough for him to know her through and through.

"Tor, it wasn't me, I swear!" she sobbed. But Tor could only groan in response as his head began to ache.

It was a feeling that he had felt so many times before during their travels, but never to this degree. And he realized then in that moment through his foggy and confused mind, that the dagger was poisoned. There was no way that this amount of pain had come from a single stab. He fell over onto his side and rolled onto his back, gasping.

"TOR!" Roberta screeched. She leaned over him, her dark hair falling in a curtain around them just as it had when the arrow had been torn out of his leg. But now the situation was far different. Then Tor knew that there would only be pain. Now there was darkness swimming in the corners of his vision, creating a tunnel that showed only Roberta's distressed face. Her head dropped to his chest as she screamed at him, pleading. "I'm sorry! Please, don't… don't!"

Tor heard the laughter even if he couldn't turn his head in the direction it was coming from. He closed his eyes.

…

"You!" Roberta hissed at the Assassin. "You possessed me!"

The hooded gelert chuckled. "Not possessed, no. I just… twisted your will a little." He sighed dramatically. "The magic you can discover when you dabble in the darkness." His eyes meet hers and Roberta could see the madness in them, the darkness, the knowledge. "You have dabbled as well. Is it not intriguing?"

Roberta tried to ignore his words as she dug around in the pouches hooked to her belt, mostly because he was right, as though he was seeing right through her.

Darkness could draw you in with a power that light did not have. It could twist your mind, change your morals into nothing. Delving into the darkness could ruin you. Roberta had fought it off many times during her studies.

She could feel his glowing eyes on her, merely watching as she pulled out a small vial with shaking hands. Inside a bright green liquid swirled. She uncorked it with her teeth and poured the liquid down Tor's throat.

It wouldn't heal his wound, but it would stop the poison from spreading. At least she would no longer have to worry about that. Hopefully, Tor could just hold out for a while longer. Hopefully the battle that raged around them as though in a completely separate plane would end and somebody would come and heal him.

Roberta dropped the vial onto the ground and picked up her dagger and her wand. She stood, each weapon in hand as she stared down her opponent with eyes that had struck fear into the hearts of most men. She wiped the tears away and steeled herself.

"And now I deal with you."

She did not hesitate for a second, her wand arcing above her head, electric blue bolts hissing around the rod. Lightning shot out toward the Assassin, whose eyes widened briefly at the speed of it. But still, he only dodged the blast in a calm manner, taking a mere two steps to the left.

By then a second bolt was already coming, and then another. The next spell the sorceress changed it up and the Assassin was dodging knives, a flurry of about ten of them.

"You're quick," he said when Roberta had stopped. She was panting, but only slightly. "Faster than your mentor even."

"How do you know of Seradar?"

"Why, my dear girl, every neopet between the two Kingdoms knows of Brightvale's mighty Royal Sorcerer," the Assassin said in a taunting voice.

"Not what I meant," Roberta growled in a low voice that was heard even across the few yards that separated them.

"We are… Old friends, you could say," the Assassin answered. "However, he was always more of a man who tended to follow the rules. I was not."

"Clearly." Roberta raised her wand and dagger, falling into her battle stance. "That is enough of talk."

She dashed forward, her dagger ready to deflect any attacks with his sword, her wand ready to cast any spell.

Tor was out of commission. She would have to fight for the both of them now.

A scream tore from her throat, full of vengeance and ferocity as the spells flew from both sorceress and assassin. Roberta ducked under his blade and struck out with her dagger. It's tore through his dark robes, but no deeper.

"Nice try, kid."

Now that annoyed her—though it wasn't as terrible as everything that had happened in the past few minutes, although it could've been longer than that. But still, she had not been called 'kid' in a good five years! She was a seventeen year old woman!

Roberta narrowed her eyes. She really did hate it when her opponents spoke to her during a fight. It always did its job, distracted her. Tor loved it, something that had annoyed her endlessly over the years. She figured it had something to do with him being a knight of Meridell. It seemed that every one of them had been trained to do it.

The Assassin moved through his smoke and Roberta followed suit, teleporting back to the tree branch she and Tor had been perched on earlier. From there she watched the battle below, searching for the Assassin.

For the first time she noticed that the resistance fighters and the reinforcements were managing to get the upper hand. There were many familiar faces there, from all over the lands between Brightvale and Meridell, thrust into battle with the werelupes.

"Behind you!"

There was no time for Roberta to react, so distracted by the battle below and she received a swift kick to the small of her back. He could have so easily killed her instead, but she was grateful that she was only sent flying through the air instead.

She hit the ground with a dull thud that sent her head reeling.

Tor was right next to her, his eyes closed, but his chest rising and falling. It looked as though he—or somebody else—had bandaged his stab wound with what appeared to be his shirt. Unused scraps of it lay in a small heap.

She was shocked into complete stillness when his head turned toward her. "Keep fighting," he rasped. Get up and keep fighting!"

Roberta had no choice really, but hearing Tor's voice strengthened her, renewing some of her lost energy. She smiled warmly at the lupe, her friend. "What do you think I'm doing?"

She rose back to her feet and stepped into the Shadow Plane, time slowed down to a near stop. She weaved through the bodies—even though she could past right through them as though there was nothing there—searching for the Assassin.

She only heard it because there was no other sound to fill her ears, and Roberta barely dodged the blade, the edge cutting into her cloak as it flapped around her, into the skin on her side. Blood welled and she quickly clamped a hand over the wound. Not very deep, luckily.

Still, Roberta couldn't suppress a short gasp, not having known that physical attacks in the Shadow Plane were even possible.

The Assassin was grinning, his pointed teeth stained yellow, his eyes sharp but maniacal.

"It seems you haven't done enough research."

And then he disappeared.

Roberta grew nervous. Her power was growing limited, spending so much energy using smoke step in such a short amount of time, shooting off the most powerful spells she could at a near constant rate. She had to get out of the Shadow Plane, and hope that she could move fast enough when the Assassin appeared next.

Unable to find the dark wizard, and worried for Tor's safety, lying broken on the battlefield, she found her friend again. He had found somewhere somewhat safe, in between the gnarled roots of an old tree that hid him well. He was propped up against the trunk, his eyes closed, breathing shallow. His cloak was open, showing his haphazard bandaging work that was stained red.

"What are you doing here? Where's the Assassin?" Tor asked in a quiet voice. Roberta grasped his hand as she crouched down on her knees, finding comfort that he was still well enough to find the strength to squeeze her own, smaller hand.

"I don't know… I don't sense him." She said reluctantly, already aware of the response she was going to get from her friend.

Tor growled lightly, his golden eyes opening very suddenly. There was pain there, mixed with anger and hatred. But they were also clouded with exhaustion and the strain of trying to keep from going out. "We have to finish this, Roberta!"

"I know, Tor!" she shot back heatedly. "And we will! But this is too dangerous for you right now. We have to get you somewhere else."

"Forget it! There's no time. Just…give me some potions or something. I have to fight."

Roberta sighed. They had no potions. And Tor was actually right; there wasn't any time for this. There was a battle going on all around them, one they should have been taking part in.

But no, they were hiding, exhausted and wounded.

"But you can't fight. Not like you are."

Roberta squeezed her eyes shut. They were in way over their heads. This man, wizard, assassin, was fighting them with over a hundred more years of experience than they had, and fighting them with every ounce of it. Just keeping up was stretching their limits.

They were going to fail. She had made a promise, the same promise to so many, that she and Tor would finish this and end their fears of the Assassin.

"Roberta?"

She looked up at Tor, his concern for her open on his face. Then her amethyst eyes fell back to the bandages, a clear sign that her worries were true.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, wincing at the sound of a strangled howl, one that was gargled out painfully around a mouthful of blood. Which side had lost another? "I… I wasn't strong enough. I'm not strong enough. He got into my mind, and I couldn't fight him off. I almost killed you. And you're still not even in the clear."

Surprisingly enough, Tor chuckled, a near silent one that was raspy and dry. "I'm no stranger to stab wounds, Roberta. You've treated more of them than I'm proud of, so you should know." He leaned forward as much as he could before the pain stopped him. "Listen, you're right. I'm useless like this. The poison is gone…but the effects are still there."

Roberta winced again.

"Which means you've got to fight strong enough for the both of us, which I know you can. He's still around, I know it, probably watching us from the other plane."

When did Tor ever get so…what was the word? Not intelligent—though that's not to say he wasn't.

He seemed more adult, more thoughtful.

Or maybe Roberta just felt that much of a wreck that it seemed so.

Yeah, that's it. I just need to pull it together.

She nodded, sucking in a breath to calm herself. But the confidence wasn't there. She needed Tor; there was no winning this battle without him. But there was no chance of him fighting in his state either.

The acara sorceress could feel the shift in the air and she became alert once more. He was there again, somewhere, moving out of the plane.

….

Tor watched as Roberta darted away. She'd found the Assassin again.

Hopefully she would have the strength left to end this battle.

Someone crept up on his right. Tor turned his head slowly, aware that there was no danger there, and stared into the golden eyes of Aryanna. A sigh escaped him, relieved.

"Come on, Tor. We've got to get you away. Turk is coming."

"I just need some potions, anything," Tor said as she put his arm around her. "I can't leave—"

"She'll be fine for the meantime," Aryanna assured him. "Some of the others will help her." When still Tor hesitated Aryanna ushered him forward again, more forcefully this time. "Tor, the best you can do for Roberta right now is to be healed! Now please!"

"Come on Tor," Turk came up on his other side and hefted the lupe up a little more, taking some of the pressure from Aryanna. The techno had a cut on his forehead and blood ran down the side of his face. The armor he wore had taken a few hits as well, but it had done its job of protecting him. "Just let your wound be healed, if only slightly, and you'll be back into the fight before long. Roberta will manage. Have faith in her!"

Tor had nothing but faith in Roberta. To make it as far as they did ne would need to trust their partner completely. But faith had nothing to do with this! Neither one of them could win this fight on their own. They had to work together!

So he let himself be led away, into the trees a ways where two more helmed soldiers took over for his friends and helped him to the makeshift medical station.

"Sir Tormund is in need of healing!" said the recognizable voice of Sir Cadmere. "Quickly!"

The lupe found himself placed into a cot, the bandage he'd made cut away. Blood had crusted in his fur around the gash, but the ragged edges of the wound were blackened and dead from the poison.

"What did this to you?" Asked the healer, a green aisha, aged and weary from seeing so many gruesome wounds.

"Poisoned dagger. I took a cure for the poison. Just heal the wound so I may fight!"

"Easy, Tor!" Cadmere warned. "You'll be taken care of. Just let the healers do their work."

"I have to get back!" Tor insisted. Even as he spoke there was a warm sensation, the magic weaving itself into his body, renewing his energy and closing his wounds. This method of healing was only to be used in dire situations, when potions were unavailable. It was not permanent, nor was it safe. Infections were not common, but they were not rare either. "Roberta needs me!"

"Just another minute, Sir Tormund," another healer said patiently. "Let your body recuperate. It was given a nasty shock."

"Is the wound closed?"

"It is."

"Then that is enough. I can rest when this is over."

Tor swung his legs over the side of his cot and Cadmere handed Tor his sword. "Good luck. End this."

"We will. Watch yourself, Cadmere. I hope to see you when this has ended."

Tor left then. Back to the battle, armor-less and without full strength, an ache in his entire body from the damage of the poison. He could still hear what sounded similar to explosions, which meant that spells were still being cast. A good sign. Roberta hadn't given up yet; not that he expected her to.

But a strange thing happened then. Everything got very quiet, even as Tor got closer. He pushed himself to move faster, anxiety growing by the moment.

He nearly collided with Turk, his friend standing completely still, even as Tor skirted closely around him. The lupe looked at his friend, the horror on his face and the way his shoulders had slumped. He followed the direction of the eyes.

The first thing he noticed was the amethyst color of Roberta's eyes meeting his. They were dull with defeat as she looked over at him rather than the Assassin who was no more than a foot away, his sword locked into her gut.

The Assassin chuckled darkly and strongly, and with a quick movement his rapier slid free and Roberta tumbled to the ground.

A scream tore from Tor's throat It was an angry sound that caught the attention of the Assassin. Gold met gold, and the gelert's mouth twisted into a terrifying grin as Tor charged forward. The assassin twisted as Tor reached out with his hand, fingers gripping the cloak as it billowed out. There was a flash of purple, then a blinding white.