“Sister,” Luna softly said, sitting on the bed and gently nudging Falla who remained curled into a ball atop the covers with her face buried in a pillow. Beside them Doku sat down and gently brushed her wing against Falla’s head, the butterfly slowly peeking up at them with watery eyes before she sat up and struggled with holding in her sobs. Star warped into her hammock above the bed and watched Daniel with slowly waving tails, a worried look easily noticed on her as she remained silent just as the other girls. Alyssa placed her staff against the wall and sat down on the edge of the bed, her eyes going around at the girls in the room before resting on Daniel as she wiped a single tear away.
“Before Daniel begins,” Triska spoke up. “Where’s Rolian? I haven’t seen her in a while.”
“In the dining room sleeping,” Alyssa answered.
“I checked the dining room before getting Specca. She wasn’t in there.”
“Did you look up?”
“Um… no.”
“Last I saw her she was passed out from drinking too much again,” Alyssa sighed. “Hanging upside-down in her canopy of spider webbing over the dining room entrance.”
“She’s still living in there?” Specca tiredly asked.
“Would you rather she move her web into the library?” Alyssa dryly questioned her. “That chamber is a lot bigger after all.”
“God no,” Specca quickly replied shaking her head. “It’s bad enough we have her hanging above us while we’re eating. The last thing I want her doing is hanging on the ceiling above me while I’m trying to read.”
“It’s been rather difficult to move her out of the dining room,” Doku hesitantly admitted. “Any of the other rooms aren’t much better of a location for her to… nest, as she has. And I just don’t have the heart to tell her to leave. If it wasn’t for her we never would have known about the elves in Green Haven being in trouble.”
“What are we going to do with her?” Triska groaned with a face palm. “She’s been a big help but now she’s being a big pain.”
“We’ll deal with her later,” Clover said, eyes never leaving Daniel. “Right now this is more important.”
“Daniel?” Pip wondered, herself and the girls turning their focus to him as he was staring at his right hand in silence. After taking a slow breath he gazed around at the hushed looks of unease everyone had, everyone except Snapper who was again busy coughing out sand without a care in the world.
“I want to start by saying I’m sorry,” he began with a remorseful frown. “Losing Squeak… cut me deeper than anything ever had before. I couldn’t stand to think that I would never see her again, never hear her squeaks again, never feel her touch again, that she was really gone. I’ve been pushing myself so hard to find Kroanette these past few days, but not just because I’m scared of losing her too. I was scared… to accept the truth about Squeak. To talk about it. To think about it. To see you cry from it. I ran away in my pursuit of Kroanette, and in doing so I left you all alone without any comfort that you so desperately needed. I’m so sorry, all of you. I hope you can forgive me.”
“We don’t blame you for any of this,” Specca said. “Losing our co-mate… has been unbearable and something none of us are going to recover from so easily. But her death wasn’t your fault, Daniel.”
“I let her come with us,” Daniel argued. “I let her go to Green Haven. I could have stopped her.”
“It was her choice to go,” Triska countered. “It was all of your choice to go to Green Haven to save the elves. She wanted to be brave and help others, just like you.”
“If anyone is to blame for her death it’s me,” Clover regretted. “I was right there. I could have saved her, if only I had one more fucking arrow. Just one more goddamned arrow and I could have stopped her from being killed like that. It’s all my fault she’s gone.”
“It’s none of your fault,” Triska decisively stated. “Squeak… knew the risks of going. You all did. She chose to go because she placed the lives of those elves over her own. She’s a goddamned hero for helping them escape The Sisterhood. And the gemini… they’re going to pay for what they did. You can mark my words I’m going to kill them for taking her from us. I’m going to fucking slaughter them the first chance I get.”
“They’re already dead,” Daniel said, with everyone turning to him in confusion. “Jovian and Jacqueline, they’re both dead.”
“What?” Alyssa asked. “They’re dead? But… how? Nothing can kill them but a simultaneous strike with the Archlight’s Blade and Hellfire’s Edge. How could they have been slain when we only have one of the swords?”
“Was the Archlight’s Blade there too?” Specca wondered, then gasped in surprise. “Wait, that swordsman, Daemon, he has the Archlight’s Blade. Was he there in Green Haven with you?”
“No,” Daniel said shaking his head. “It was just me and the gemini during that last fight.”
“Then how could they be dead?” Triska asked. “Nothing else kills those monsters, something we’ve seen firsthand.”
“What happened, Dan?” Clover inquired with a careful eye on him. “When you were fighting the gemini, something really fucked up happened. Something that I can’t even begin to understand. What exactly did you do to them? And how?”
Daniel stared at his right hand while slowly turning it, feeling the faint presence of something holding onto it still as all eyes were keenly focused on him now.
“Daniel?” Falla sniffled. She and Luna crawled forward on the bed to the edge and sat together near the girls, both of them showing watery eyes as he turned his gaze onto them. “What happened to them? What happened to those monsters that took Squeak from us?”
“I killed them,” Daniel answered, earning surprised looks from everyone. “I killed them for what they did to Squeak, for what they did to so many innocent people.”
“You… you did?” Triska slowly asked. “But… how could you have? How…”
Daniel carefully lifted his right hand up in front of him, the girls looking to it then him as he showed a focused expression while remembering that fateful event.
“It’s another reason why I haven’t wanted to talk about that night. Something… very strange did indeed happen. Something that I’m still cautious and a little concerned about to this day, and for good reason. I’ll tell you all what happened, you deserve to know. The truth is… it wasn’t just me that slayed the gemini during that battle. I had help from… something else.”
*****
Within a narrow corridor of sleek white metal and neon golden engravings pulsating across the walls and ceiling, two small girls were flying straight through the hallway with soft blue light trailing behind in their wake. Their ridged, square wings hummed while remaining suspended just behind their backs, their white togas fluttered around their hips and shoulders, the white puffball antennae atop their heads bounced slightly in their flight, and their cups filled with warm glowing yellow liquid didn’t spill a single drop despite the two girls traveling through the ever-extending corridor that quickly veered straight down, then to the left, then right, then down, and then up again.
“Did you get a load of the new girls?” one casually asked before sipping her drink.
“Yeah. Luckily they’re not in our division,” the other muttered with a roll of her eyes. “New pixies are always a pain to properly train.”
“They looked pretty eager. Though maybe a little too eager. I don’t like it when they’re that eager. You just know they’re going to bite off more than they can chew.”
“Whatever. Not our problem, thank the Creator,” the other praised with a small hand wave. “We don’t get new girls in the private division, at least not brand new ones like them. Too much risk of one of them making an error.”
“True. Though I wouldn’t mind getting to know some fresh faces. Seriously, there’s only 5,607 of us in this division. I know everyone here way too well by now, there’s just nothing new to see or hear from any of them. Even you. I know ever
ything about you. And you’re boring, you know that?”
“Hey!”
“I just want something new to happen,” the pixie groaned as they veered straight down in their flight followed by a sharp left within the square corridors. “We’ve been doing the same thing for 1,578 years now. I’m so bored!”
“Watch your tongue,” her friend snapped. “The fact that nothing has happened in all that time is a good thing, remember? It’s our job to make sure nothing happens, especially if that means nobody else has to know about all of this. If all goes well everyone will eventually forget about our division and it can fade away from the memories of everyone in the world.”
“Oh Creator,” the pixie groaned before taking a drink. “I’m going to be so bored for the rest of my existence. I just want one exciting thing to happen. You know? Just one.”
As the pixies flew towards an intersection they saw a dozen more quickly zip across in a barrage of blue and green lights. The two girls glanced to each other in question then followed after their sisters, seeing the whole flock of pixies racing through the corridor in frantic distress. As they did flashing red lights were seen going off along the walls and floor in foreign shaped emblems, the images also lighting up as outstretched signs in the tunnel that the pixies flew right through with flickering distortions of light.
“This is bad! This is bad!”
“How could this happen? Who was in charge of it?”
“We don’t know! All we know is that it’s out!”
“This better be a bad joke or something!”
“Oh Creator! Oh Creator! What are we supposed to do now?”
“Panic! Just do as I do if you don’t know how! It’s actually pretty easy!”
“What’s going on?” one of the two pixies in back called out.
“We’ve got a Code Red!” another shouted back, with the two pixies gasping in shock before speeding up their flight with their sisters. The flock of pixies zipped forward, up, left, down, and then forward through the angular corridors as more warning lights were flashing the deeper they went.
“Please tell me this is just a test,” one of the pixies whined. The group zipped forward before going up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right and then full speed ahead past two intersections where more pixies quickly joined them from. The flock of flying girls panicked more and more as the number of warning emblems were rapidly increasing, all of them nervously shouting at one another before racing out into a larger square chamber with dozens of others tunnels connecting to it from all sides. Buzzing around in straight flight patterns were hundreds of other pixies, all of them screaming and crying in distress as they rigidly circled a central cube that was slowly spinning on its axis in the middle of the room. The box was nearly transparent, having hundreds of tiny golden lines sprawling all over its sides and through it that pulsated with neon glowing light. And on one side of the cube was a specific red emblem that was flashing with rippling red lines bleeding away from it. One by one pixies kept flying by in front of the crown shaped icon that was flashing, screamed and shook their head in fright, then continued on their flight as other pixies passed by and did the same.
“Is that…” one of the little flyers who just entered the chamber nervously asked.
“Oh dear Creator, no,” another dreaded before zipping straight towards the flashing emblem. She stopped in front of it and held a hand against the diagram, stopping the cube from its spin while all the pixies quickly halted with their flights as well. The lone pixie shakily eyed over the neon red diagram then tapped her other hand onto the cube beside it, the golden lines shifting to blue and then back again as sharp white letters in a foreign language appeared in the air above it. The pixie read the writing before gulping and slowly turning to see everyone anxiously staring at her.
“Sivee?” her friend called over. “Tell me that’s not… that it’s not…”
“It is,” Sivee whined, with the pixies in the chamber turning pale as they started to nervously shake in the air. Turning back to the flashing red diagram Sivee slowly hovered away from it while being stunned to her core, the white letterings in the air fading away while the constant flashing of the crimson emblem drew out only fear from the tiny woman.
“Sovereign Armament Ragnarok… has been freed.”
The pixies holding their cups dropped them as they gasped in horror, the drinks falling quite a ways before hitting the ground and splattering their golden liquid that crackled with snaps of electricity.
“Oh… Creator…”
“You just had to ask for something to happen. You just had to ask for it.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“You should be!”
Sivee held her hands over her face and struggled to breathe steady, the pixie then screaming and rushing back to the cube as she struck her hand onto the flashing diagram.
“Inform Central that Sovereign Armament Ragnarok is loose! Right now!” she ordered. Dozens of pixies took off in every direction through the multiple adjoining passageways. Many others resumed flying around in a panic while some quickly gathered close behind Sivee as she brought up more information from the cube with her hand.
“How could this have happened?”
“What does this mean?”
“What do we do now?”
“Does this mean we’re going to be punished?”
“Be quiet!” Sivee cried out. She quickly swiped her hand to scroll through the writing that zipped past her. Her eyes hastily scanned what was passing by before she halted the listing with her hand, the pixie carefully examining the emblems before she glanced back to the others.
“It didn’t break free. It was pulled out. Someone took Sovereign Armament Ragnarok from its containment.”
“Someone… took it? But… how?”
“Who took it? Was it… oh no, was it…”
“It wasn’t her,” Sivee said shaking her head. Looking back to the floating writing she carefully scrolled through the information they had. “She’s still isolated in her prison according to the last report. There have been no incidents of her barrier being disrupted or any odd activity in her area.”
“She’s still locked away? But then how could it be taken out from containment? Who could have done such a thing if not her?”
Sivee read through the scrolling info while trying to keep her hands steady as the rest of her was trembling a little in fear.
“I don’t know. There’s no further info regarding the event. Only that it was still in containment during one cycle and then gone the next. The barrier is still intact! How… how in the Creator’s name could it have been taken out of containment without the barrier being removed? That’s impossible. Who could have done that?”
“So what do we do now?” a pixie whined. “I don’t remember the directive we’re supposed to follow in case of this event.”
“We have to find it and put it back in containment, that’s what!” Sivee yelled at her. “Inform all divisions, get every pixie on alert right now! This is a Code Red, this is our highest priority! We need to find it before everything falls apart!”
“We can’t disclose information about this to anyone,” another argued. “This is super-duper classified. We’re the only ones allowed to handle this information. Protocol says we can’t just-”
“Protocol is suspended!” Sivee shouted out. “We need to get Sovereign Armament Ragnarok back in containment right now and keep it locked away! That is our code! That is our job! That is the command of the Creator! We cannot fail with this! We have to do whatever we can to get this problem taken care of, and we need to do it now! Do you understand?”
“Well… if you say so,” the pixie worried as she slumped back. “But if we get in trouble for operating outside of our specified parameters I’m blaming you.”
“If we don’t get this problem fixed soon we’re all in trouble,” Sivee warned as they looked back to the floating scroll of writing. She hesitantly held her hand over it for a mome
nt before quickly swiping through the ledger in search of something else that poked into her mind. After a while she stopped at a different listing of information, swiftly reading through it before she sighed in relief.
“Thank the Creator,” she softly praised.
“Is it good news?”
“I hope so, I’m feeling sick to my stomach right now.”
“It’s good news,” Sivee assured. She read over the information again to make sure she wasn’t imagining what she had hoped to find before she swiped her hand to close the floating scroll. With a slow breath she turned to the others as they anxious awaited any good news to hear at that moment.
“Sovereign Armament Aegis is still safely contained. At least that’s one thing to be happy about. Now, let’s get to work and find what went missing before it’s too late. Someone took that weapon out of containment, and we need to find out who.”
*****
Inside their spacious bedroom all was quiet as every girl there was rendered speechless from what they were told. Standing before them Daniel was staring at his right hand with a focused demeanor, feeling all too well the ominous presence of the one he had revealed to be the true killer of the gemini sisters. After a while of nobody speaking one of the girls finally broke the silence.
“Are you fucking serious?” Felucia blurted out.
Chronicles of Eden: Season II - Act I Page 3
