— an unknown place —
Ruby woke up in a strange place. The sky was pitch black, and unlike the night sky she always saw, it was completely barren, not a single star shining. The ground was a gray, rocky plain, one which painfully chilled her feet as she stood on it as if she was barefoot. She rubbed her eyes to get a closer look at the place she was in.
"What is this place?" Ruby thought. She had never been there ever in her life, so why was she here? Was she dreaming?
Yes, that was the prevailing theory Ruby thought as she walked across the place, trying her hardest to resist the burning cold at her feet. The last thing she remembered was scavenging food for herself and Amber to eat then going to sleep. This place was probably a dreamworld.
"Hello?" Ruby called out. "Anybody here?"
As if on cue, a giant chain suddenly lurched out of an unseen wall towards her. Ruby didn't get any time to react as she was stabbed through the heart, gasping in shock as blood spilled out violently before she was pulled into said wall.
Soon, Ruby was thrown into a gray hallway with a glass window on its side. There were cracks on the walls and floor, and she could barely register the wound in her chest.
It didn't even hurt. It was just there. And she barely felt anything despite the chain having gone straight through her heart.
"Where am I?!" Ruby shouted in confusion and terror. That was all she could think of. She should be nestled in the pot in Rainspell Island, sleeping next to Amber, not this… hellish dimension.
Was this a dream? It felt like something real.
As she wandered through the hallway, curiosity itched her to look at the window. And she followed those stray thoughts, the Red Fairy walking to the window and looking deep into it.
Nothing. The window was too foggy to see through. So why was she so interested-
Then, before she could finish wondering, a grotesque figure suddenly smashed through it and clawed at her face. She immediately batted it away, even if it left some nasty scars on her face, and staggered to the back to see what it was.
It appeared to be a goblin wearing the uniform of the mortal soldiers. It was impossible to know what he was saying, it appeared to be some kind of zombie groaning under a radio.
"I need to get out of here!" Ruby thought, desperation kicking in as she saw the goblin-mortal hybrid crawling into the room. In a hurry, she flew to the door on the other side of the hallway and repeatedly banged on it.
Nothing.
Ruby then looked at the strange pad on the wall on the side of the door. She'd never seen anything like that before; every door she opened had a handle and a lock. Was this how they opened doors now?
She then saw the monster nearly halfway through the broken window, and in a frantic haze pressed several numbered buttons on the they typed a code here to open it!
All it said was "NO EXIT".
The only other door was a regular door that, given that it was located next to the window, almost certainly led to where the goblin zombie was.
She was trapped. And as the goblin zombie made it through the window and into the hallway, all she could do was panic.
It got up to its feet and stared at Ruby before taking hold of the assault rifle slung on it and firing. This startled her, and the Red Fairy desperately flew across the room trying to avoid the shots. Was this what she was risking happening to her when the mortals surrounded her?
Of course. Ruby had deduced that this place was some sort of nightmare dimension at that point. Her fear of the mortal soldiers was one of the many things eating away at her mind when she was banished to the mortal world with her sisters, and seeing a goblin wearing a soldier's clothing and weaponry was the natural outcome of it. She kept dodging, her wings fluttering as she tried to think of a way to get out of this danger.
Eventually, she gave up dodging, and decided to go in for the attack. That was clearly the only way she could escape the goblin zombie. So she readied in an attack and flew towards the creature, knocking it off balance by shouldering it to the ground. She then punched the creature in the face when it tried to get up, and in a fit of desperation, took the gun and smashed its head with it over and over, crumpling its long nose, smashing the glass visor and caving in its head until it finally stopped moving. A pool of blood formed around the creature's pulverized head, with some staining the rifle and even splattering onto Ruby's face a bit.
Ruby took a moment to analyze what she had done. She killed something. Yes, it was in self-defense, and yes, it was a hostile product of this strange dimension. But the blood on her hands was impossible to ignore. She never thought that ever in her life she would kill someone or something. Yet here she was, having been driven to kill a creature out of necessity. How would the other Rainbow Fairies think of this? How would the frog footmen react? What would Oberon and Titania say?
But it didn't matter, for this was clearly not the magical or the mortal realm, but another dimension entirely. And she was thrown into this place, being forced to do nothing but survive.
Ruby then put down the rifle and began touching her body in search of her wand. These weapons couldn't replicate the power the wand's fire has, so she was surely more comfortable with using a wand than a dull mortal weapon!
But it was missing. Every place on her person she would normally store her wand - her dress, her braids, her wings - it wasn't …she thought in resignation. Guess she had to use the mortal weapon to survive.
Ruby steeled her nerves and opened the door to her right, the rifle back in her hands again. True to her fears, there were more zombie goblins out for her blood, though they still had the capability to use weapons. One of them had the same rifle Ruby had pilfered from the first creature, another had a smaller pistol (Browning Hi-Power), and the third one had a larger white pistol (Desert Eagle) and two daggers strapped on its torso. The Red Fairy knew this was going to be difficult.
They immediately began firing at Ruby, and Ruby attempted to fire back with her pilfered weapon. But while she managed to score some hits - taking out the one with the Browning with a headshot and scoring wounds on the others - her accuracy was rather poor, and most of her shots missed. Not to mention the weight of the weapon was too much for her to handle with one hand, leading to several of her shots landing on the floor. But that wasn't a bad thing - the creature with the rifle was shot twice in the leg, causing it to go down, allowing Ruby to finish it off. But at that point, the rifle was emptied, leaving Ruby defenseless against the final creature. Speaking of which, the weapon had much stronger bullets than the other two, and it had a silvery white colour to it - and she had never seen it before, not even in the footage Bertram showed her. What was that thing?
She used the emptied rifle to defend herself from the powerful pistol, but soon it broke from the sheer power, causing her to throw the broken remains at the creature. To her surprise, it dazed the goblin creature, causing him to drop his gun. Ruby then finished it off by pilfering one of the daggers and slitting its throat with it. Ruby then flew into the next room, dagger clutched in both hands.
After stabbing an axe-wielding creature in the heart and throwing the dagger into the face of another before he could take out his rifle, Ruby walked towards the open, relieved at not having to fight any more of these nightmarish beings. Her thoughts were cut short, however, with a rather ghastly sight.
It was Saffron the Yellow Fairy's mangled skeleton, recognizable by the remains of her still burning clothes, being impaled by chains that ran from the sky. Ruby staggered back in sheer horror at the sight, seeing the fear of one of her sisters having passed away in the bombing come to real life.
"This is a nightmare, this is a nightmare," Ruby thought, panic and fear overtaking her. She wanted to run, to fly away, but there was no other place for her to go. "None of this is real, I'm just dreaming things! But that was what I thought when we saw the silver thing…"
Just then, Saffron's haunting skull soon moved itself towards Ruby's direction. There were no eyes, but she could still feel it staring straight into her soul.
"Why didn't you save me, sister?" The manifestation asked, a deep, ear-splitting reverb behind the twisted mockery of Saffron's voice.
Before Ruby could do anything, she was suddenly pinned to the ground by another chain which stabbed through her stomach. She couldn't even get to register the pain as countless spikes came down and skewered her.
— 10th June 2005, Rainspell Island National Park, UK —
Ruby woke from her restless slumber screaming in pain from her horrifying experience in the strange dimension. In an instant she jolted from her wooden bed, sweating and panting as she frantically looked around the pot, paranoid for more dangers.
Nothing. Just Amber and 6 empty beds.
Yet her terror remained, and Ruby flew out of the pot and the willow tree in search of anything that might be out there. After that nightmarish experience, she needed to know what was causing all this.
Eventually, she made it to the field, where, in the blackness of the night, it was also completely darkened. However, unlike the nightmare dimension, there were still stars and the bright moon illuminating it, giving what little light there was to make sure it wasn't entirely dark. It was almost peaceful.
And there was no danger there that was out to get Ruby and her sisters - not a single goblin or mortal soldier in sight. Barely anything could be heard beyond the hoots of owls, the chirping of crickets and the sound of horns and cars in the background.
"Ruby?" Amber's voice came from behind Ruby, to which the Red Fairy turned around to see. "What happened? I heard you were screaming and then left the bed."
Ruby fluttered close to Amber, a solemn look on her face. "I just had a nightmare."
"That's horrible!" Amber opined in concern. "What was it like?"
"It felt… painful," Ruby said, "The floor was too cold and there were horrific creatures everywhere. And when I got through it all I saw our-our dear Saffron's burning corpse…"
Ruby purposefully left out the fact that she was forced to kill the creatures to survive. She wouldn't want to know how disgusted Amber would be if it turned out she was sleeping next to a killer.
"Holy flutterbunnies!" Amber exclaimed. "You must have been really messed up by those mortals!"
"It seems," Ruby added. "All those days of danger and isolation have really gotten into my head. And I don't think it was a simple nightmare, either."
"Why?" Amber asked curiously.
"I don't feel anything in my dreams," Ruby answered. "But I felt all the pain here. And I couldn't remember anything I dreamt of, but I could remember everything here."
"Interesting," Amber opined. "If Saffron is still alive and the frogs manage to rescue her, maybe we can talk more about that bad dream!"
"We could," Ruby added. "Something tells me this isn't the only time this will happen."
"Anyways, I apologize for waking you up in the dark. We should go back to sleep."
"I guess so," Amber replied. "We've got another day to look forward to!"
The two fairies fluttered back to the pot and tucked themselves under the leaf blankets, continuing to sleep soundly and trying to leave behind the trauma they faced.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is the last of the chapters I pre-made before uploading onto this site. From there on, updates will come out slower than usual.
You can also view this fanfic on AO3: /works/54400813/chapters/137797267