Chapter 100
Helios was perched on the high-rise canopy bed waiting for Luna when she stumbled in.
“Well?” “How’d it go?” Helios’ hopeful pea-green eyes were too much for the tired girl, and she burst into tears once the door had closed solemnly behind her, embracing the rabbit that’d immediately buried his pink snout into her midriff.
“I want to go home, Helios! “I don’t belong here!” Luna managed to sob past the lump that had grown in her throat.
“What do you mean?” “This is home!” The rabbit cooed, and Luna realized it was home after all. She’d only bonded with Helios after her fall into Arcadia, which the little humbug couldn’t possibly have understood.
“I need to find a way to get back to the lost city!” Luna prodded huskily, glancing around the sparsely furnished room as though the pinewood walls had sprouted offended ears, an odd look crossing the rabbit’s face just before the flash of a porcelain white bulk came flying through the window, the glass slicing Luna cleanly across the cheek as it broke.
The burnt crisp of a half-eaten gnome head lay smoldering on the brown fur carpet at Luna’s feet.
The Gnome's green pointy cap stayed glued on the white porcelain forehead that was stained black with blood, as the pair froze wide-eyed with horror, a scream of surprise trapped in Luna’s throat.
“No, don’t!” Luna screamed, reaching out a hand to stop her familiar, but it was already too late. Helios had gingerly picked up one of the bloodied glass needles that were scattered around the head from where it had rocketed through the stained glass of the bedside window.
“Sulfur, it smells like decay.” Helios whispered after taking what Luna suspected was an unhealthy sniff of the goo, the pink button of his snout shriveling as the hairs rose on his grey coat of fur.
Screams rained outside Luna’s quarters, the long, winding ring of the emergency horns going up around the castle as more shivers broke out across the girl’s small frame.
“What in heaven is that?” Luna squealed in a high-pitched whisper as Helios hopped on the canopy bed to stare out the cracked window.
“Helios! Get away from there!” Luna shrieked, tugging at the foam from his paw as they both tumbled to the floor. She’d seen it though—the cloud of blackness that had crested the winged beam of the giant silver gates of the Queen’s Castle.
“That girl has doomed us, I tell you!” Agatha’s voice broke through the panic, drifting up to Luna’s silver-studded ears and making the girl visibly shrink away from the window.
Luna had seen the giant, multi-legged Cthulhu swirling in the lightning-rich blackness. It looked like it was breeding, forming more Shadowlings, as the first snarling shadow monster flew from the cloud of smoke and tore off a guard’s head before it was shot down by the Archer Elves, their light arrows passing through the willowy frames of their smoky bodies and blasting them from the inside out.
The darkness had been moving up, turning the yellow skylight into something red and dark with foreboding, clashing with the Queen’s light energy.
“Look! The light mages are fighting it!” Helios praised, hopping up and down as Luna’s brown eyes found the flame-colored fairies with their small, wooden wands lined up on the castle walls and shooting bursts of light at the budding brood.
It was not working; the darkness seemed to be eating it up as more and more villagers ran into the fortress through the half-open gates of the castle.
The girl realized with open-mouthed horror that she’d just seen a Dryad Fae lose her balance and get trampled over in the stampede. She rubbered down until the fae was only a green puddle under the mass of running feet.
It made Luna sick to her stomach as she stumbled away from the window, promptly throwing up on the high-end rug.
The sound of panicked fists pounding on the redwood of the door hard enough that it shook on its brass hinges made Luna whirl with a panicked gasp. She imagined a black, red-eyed hell hound bursting through the door and snapping her up. Her wide cheeks squeezed together in the creature’s drool-slick jaws.
“Come in!” Luna gasped, wiping at her eyes smartly, but the tall form of the Elf King had already barged through, his gold-plated armor bright enough to spring more tears into Luna’s sore eyes.
“Arkavis!” Cassius greeted, his chest rising with rapid breaths as his bright purple eyes raked over Luna’s astonished face. Luna thought she saw a look of worried concern flicker across his gaunt face before he brushed it off.
“Shadowlings have breached the barricade; half the villages have fallen; we need all the light we can get!” He spewed as Luna bobbed her head frantically, trying to process the horror, only dimly aware of Helios hopping beside her frantically.
“We need to get to the Queen first!” Get her out of her quarters and somewhere safe—the underground temple! The tall man gushed, pointing a long, ringed finger down, as Luna’s head flew to her feet, the bile rising in her throat when she glimpsed the gnome head that’d now grown small, whitish maggots.
“We’re ready,” Helios reported, much to the girls’ dismay. The rush of fear made Luna’s hands shake inside the Elf King’s long fingers as he marched them through the Queen’s Castle walls.
“After that, we go into the darkness,” the elf king continued, looking about with his sword drawn.
“Into it?” Luna squeaked, wringing her hands furtively. She didn’t want to go into the mass of soul sucking draft!
“Some of the villagers are still trapped there, Luna!” “We need to help them,” Cassius offered softly, as though comforting a child.
“Search and rescue patrol!” Helios chattered with more excitement than Luna felt, and the purple-eyed Elf King nodded his mass of sunny curls that fell in a slick cascade down his broad shoulders.
“How bad is it?” Luna whispered, a small halo of ivory white flaring around her reflexively as her heart rapped furiously in her chest and more platinium-chested Elves marched past, squeezing around them, a cloud of snow-white Sylphs hovering over each soldier.
“If the Shadowlings are not exterminated now, Luna, Arcadia will fall.” The Elf King whispered, the pointed tip of his heavily jewelled ear flexing with panicked rage as he closed Luna’s fist on the hilt of a long, double-edged sword.
“I thought they’d been contained, Cassius! Why is this happening?” Luna coughed up a sob. Fighting demon faeries and shadowlings didn’t feel like her; it made the girl sick to the pits of her stomach.
“Your cleansing probably awakened them; the Shaman will know more once we contain the corruption.” The man’s honeyed voice was hesitant as he peeked at Luna through the corner of his eyes, blasting an aura of light in front of them as the Castle energy dimmed more.
He'd rather not have been answering questions from the overtly cautious Maiden; if it had been anybody else, Cassius would have ignored their badgerings, but it was Luna. The wide-eyed girl with hair the color of evening skies The elf wondered what was becoming of him.
“And if we can’t contain it?” Luna’s small voice echoed in the mouth of a secret hallway, the Elf King’s broad back finally turning so he could rake his eyes across her face.
“Arcadia will become a forgotten realm, Luna. “We can’t let that happen.” He pleaded, and they listened with bathed breaths, crouched in the narrow, candle-lit passageway, as the hammer of fists on the castle gates mixed with high-pitched screams of terror that echoed through the air.