"The Finale"
(Part 1)
Edri slunk past the cages, ignoring the barrage of scents that
assaulted her, even from these cages long-since-abandoned. She picked up
her head as her nose caught a whiff of the person she wanted: Zayra,
former Queen of the White Castle.
“Your highness!”
Zayra
sat at the edge of the pen originally designed for zebras, according to
the plaque overhead. She sat with her head bowed, her golden hair
draped limply to conceal her face. She barely moved as Edri approached.
The soldier threw herself at the Queen’s feet.
“Your Majesty, at last I have found—“
“Why
do you do this?” Zayra lofted her head, a vague disorientation in her
gaze. “I am broken; I have no thrall over you—yet you still refer to me
as your queen.” She shook her head. “It is over, Edri. I am dethroned,
and furthermore, now I know the full truth of what I am.” Sobs gathered
in her throat, choking her words. “I am a monster! A heartless leech
that feeds on the freewill of others, sucking them dry to the point of
death, and then casting them aside like garbage!” She covered her head
with her hands. “I murdered my own parents without so much as a second
thought! Why did I do it? What manner of creature am I, that I would do
such a thing?”
Edri watched the young woman vent her sorrow.
Perhaps it was true, what she said about the thrall. Edri certainly
didn’t feel the dense fog crowding her thoughts and reshaping then
anymore. Yet one thing did still remain.
“Milady—“
“No
titles, please. I am no better than an UnGifted citizen. The only
reason I came to live at the castle was at the behest of others. Call me
Zayra.”
“Zayra.” The name still felt queenly to say. “If you
believe nothing else, trust me when I say that I am not here because you
took my freewill.” She placed a mailed hand on her breastplate. “I came
because I gave it to you, without reservation.”
Zayra gave a
shaky half-smile. “Your zeal is commendable,” she remarked, “but I am
not worth your loyalty. I am certain it belongs rightfully to another.”
Edri
frowned. Would Zayra plan to reinstate the Twins, then? Surely Troy
would succeed in killing off the Princes and their allies before they
could find a way to stop him! With a shake of her head, she refocused on
her present. “Where you lead, I will follow,” She pledged.
This time, Zayra truly smiled. The tears fell no longer, and she took a deep breath to draw herself upright.
“That’s precisely what I am counting on, my bold, brave Lion.”
>>>>>>>>
Jade
stood with the others in the middle of the room as the battle raged
anew, this time coming from scores of angry villagers tricked into
believing that their king wanted to take their rights, their land, and
their lives to serve his purpose. Tricked because of lies her brother
told.
“Someone’s coming!” Azelie announced, just before a young man with curly red hair entered the darkened throne room.
“What’s HE doing here?” Denahlia cried.
Kaidan held up his hand. “Peace, Hunter. I know how much you mistrust me because of the way I misused you in the past—“
“More like you just used me,” Denahlia muttered.
“—but
my sister has explained the situation and I have come to help.” He
glanced around at the other three: the Wolf, the Dragon, and the
voiceless Paragon, who nodded.
“He is telling the truth,” she said. “I believe him.”
“Great,” grunted Velora. “Let’s get this done, then. What do we have to do, Jade?”
The
Angel regarded her brother’s body through the open door of the cage.
“We need to get his Shadow back into his body by activating each of his
senses. That means—AHH!”
She screamed as a huge mass of darkness coalesced and wrapped around her like a giant snake.
“So!”
The voice boomed in the large empty room. “This is where you’ve been
hiding from me, eh?” Troy’s face grinned as the tendrils of shadow
wrapped tighter around Jade, pulling and twisting her body, and yet
covering her mouth to muffle her cries. “What were you planning,
Sister?” He saw the cage, and an instant of fear glanced across his
face. He covered it with an angry scowl. “My cage? My body?” The shadows
threw Jade across the room, only to pick her up and bind her again when
she landed. “You were going to trap me again?” Troy guessed, using the
shadows to pick her up and slam her down on the ground. “You think this
pitiful gang of messed-up humans is going to be able to stop AN
ABNORMAL?”
The tendril wrapped around her neck, squeezing
tighter with the same force as an actual limb, yet there was nothing
that Jade could feel. She couldn’t speak, but she could think.
Azelie
met her gaze and nodded. She said nothing, and her words were hidden
from Jade, but Kaidan moved into position alongside the body.
Jade couldn’t see what happened next because Troy tossed her again, and she slammed into a blackened pillar.
“Good
night, Jade!” Troy spat in disgust. “Haven’t you done enough? The
destruction of this Realm is your fault, you know!” He flung her back
against another wall. “You dared to spread the Gifts where they did not
belong. You refused to give them the power they needed. Why? Were you
afraid, Sister?” His shadows gripped her hard as his face came close,
sneering at her. “Afraid they would become too powerful for you? Afraid
that if they reached their full potential, they wouldn’t be so impressed
with you and your amazing wings?” One of the shadows wrapped around the
bone at the top of her wing and wrenched in the wrong direction. Jade
grimaced and couldn’t restrain a scream.
Troy relished her
pain. “Did you really believe in Juros’ plan, to normalize and integrate
Gifts into the Realm? Did you honestly think such a thing would even
work?” He twisted her wing until they both heard a pop, and Jade could
barely breathe through the pain. “There are dozens of UnGifted out there
right now who are ready to prove you wrong, Jade.” He dropped her body
and let it plummet to the floor, the dislocated wing flopping uselessly
behind her. “Those stupid yokels were all too easy to manipulate, even
if I couldn’t affect them directly! They would NEVER accept something
like you or me. We will NEVER belong among them.”
Jade tried to move, tried to signal the group somehow, but she couldn’t.
“Do it!” She thought, hoping that Azelie would get the message.
Seconds later, the pressure on her limbs slackened.
“What?” Troy gasped, as she shadows slipped from his control. “What did you— Ow!”
Jade
felt a surge of hope; how long had it been since Troy felt pain? She
forced herself to look back toward the cage. Kaidan knelt with his hand
on Troy’s physical body. She could see the tether of light now
stretching from the body to the nexus of shadow that was Troy’s
incorporeal form. Setting her jaw against the excruciating pain of her
wing, Jade turned and shoved Troy’s shadow-tendrils aside—they had more
substance now, like an icy sort of slime.
“Hey!” The slime lunged for her again, grabbing her leg, but she saw Denahlia crouch down next to Kaidan.
“This
is for all the trouble you caused me with your system upgrades,” The
Hunter muttered, reaching to cover the top of his head.
Still in the air, Troy grimaced, and his face changed. “Argh! I can’t see!” He whined. “What do you think you’re doing?”
The
eyes on his physical body opened, and he stared straight at Denahlia.
“Oh, hello!” Cried his voice from above. “You are meddling with things
you don’t understand. Stop this!”
The Hunter glared at those eyes. “Never,” She enunciated very clearly.
“My turn!” Velora said, kneeling and placing her hand over his chest.
Immediately, it began to rise and fall.
“What are you—“ Troy’s voice broke off with a choke. When he spoke again, his voice issued from the body in the cage.
“Well,
this is a strange situation. I suppose I can still adapt, though!” The
tendrils of Shadow still writhed and wrestled the wounded Angel, who
tried to stay as far away from the cage as she could, to give the others
the best chance of succeeding.
“This party is boring,” Troy’s body said. “Let’s set it on fire!”
Immediately,
the broken stained glass window filled with the fiery form of a
Phoenix, as Damaris glided down toward the group huddled around the cage
with a screech.
“No!” Jade called, struggling madly against the shadows, “stay strong!”
The
flame from the swooping phoenix illuminated the room, so that she could
see Erlis and Azelie joining hands. The Dragon had no fear of fire, and
she knelt along with the young Paragon.
“You won’t get away with this!” Jade hissed at the shadows surrounding her. “You cannot escape this time!”
“What was that?” Troy responded. “I can’t hear you.”
Azelie smiled as her touch had opened his physical ears. Erlis leaned over him.
“Then
listen closely,” she whispered. “It’s time you had a taste of what
you’ve done to all of us.” She gripped his shoulder, and the body began
to writhe and scream.
“ARGH! NO!” Troy shrieked, as all the
shadows, every last part of him that remained in the room, rushed to be
absorbed into the body in the cage. The body itself thrashed and
flailed, but everyone held on, until at last, he lay still.
The five allies looked at each other.
“Did it work?” Velora asked.
The
eyes snapped open. Hands gripped Erlis by the arm and tossed her into
Kaidan and Velora on the other side, while Azelie felt a blow against
her side that knocked her away. Troy stood, as strong as ever, and
walked out of the cage with a laugh.
“You idiots!” He crowed, as Damaris swooped around, herding the group into a small cluster.
“You
thought that returning me to my body was going to stop me? Jade
probably told you that returning me to the cage would trap me, weaken
me...” he leaped halfway across the room in a bound, making his way to
where the injured Angel struggled to her feet. “Well?” He snarled,
kicking her back down again. “DO I SEEM WEAK TO YOU?” He laughed again
and leaped to the wall with the broken window.
“Stop him!” Jade yelled.
“Gladly!”
Denahlia replied. She switched to her hypnosis vision—but she only had a
few seconds before a fierce pain lashed through her head. “UGH!”
“Aww,” Troy goaded her. “Are your special abilities too much for you? Here, let me help.”
Denahlia felt the pain subside and looked up at Troy. She blinked.
Nothing happened.
“What have you done?” She yelled.
“Never forget, Hunter!” Troy snarled. “I have all the power over you!”
Velora
advanced toward him. “You might control these others, but you don’t
control me!” She flexed, letting her wolf abilities come forth. If he so
much as twitched, she would tear into him.
Troy smiled. “Or do I?” He pointed at her, flipping his hand palm-up.
Velora’s
animal instincts took over, and instead of attacking the man in front
of her, she turned and lunged for the smallest, weakest person in the
room: Azelie.
“Get away!” Erlis warned, as the group scattered.
“Have fun with that one!” Troy crowed, vanishing from the room. Shortly thereafter, Damaris landed with a screech.
“Lizeth! We need you!”
The
medic heard the cry as she vainly tried to help as many wounded
villagers as she could, in an attempt to convince them that the Gifted
were not the enemy.
“Hang on!” She repaired another broken bone and headed toward the castle.
Troy
was back, after they had worked so hard to supposedly stop him. Is that
what Jade had wanted all along? He teleported many places, popping up
next to anyone with a Gift and either rendering them impotent (like
Justin, who couldn’t lift so much as a pebble anymore) or sending their
powers wildly and violently out of control (like Javira and Beren, so
much that the castle courtyard was buried in tree roots on one side, and
a glacier on the other, with the frightened, aggressive, confused
villagers trapped in between); it was hard to tell which side would
prevail, but one thing was certain: the battle wouldn’t last forever.
So what else did the Angel have planned for them?
The moment Lizeth neared the door to the throne room, she had to dive out of the way as a sword neatly split her in half.
Velora, a crazed gleam in her eye, charged and swung at anything that moved—much like a cornered wolf.
Lizeth
ignited her bluefire, attracting the attention of Velora, but stifling
any more aggression as the young woman shied away from the flame.
“Stop,” Lizeth commanded, holding out the flame toward her.
Velora
still gripped the sword, panting heavily through bared teeth, but she
didn’t move as Lizeth advanced slowly, step by step.
Finally,
as Lizeth stood an arm’s length away, she made a desperate lunge and
caught Velora’s sword arm. The young woman let out a howl as the
bluefire spread over her, but when it receded, she was herself again,
gasping for breath as her knees trembled. She dropped the sword.
“W-wh-what
was that?” She stammered. Velora turned to see the others staring at
her in terror. “What are you—“ she stared at the sword on the ground,
and then at her hands. “What did I do?”
Lizeth patted her on the shoulder. “Nothing terrible, I think.”
Velora shook her head. Damaris screeched and stepped toward her.
Lizeth
smiled. “At least he can not control you anymore, young man.” She
reached out and mingled her bluefire with the flames of his feathers.
Blue overwhelmed the gold, and as it died, Damaris stood in place of the
Phoenix.
“Damaris!” Velora was the first time step forward and hug the boy.
“Ugh, I am so glad that’s over!” He grumbled. "Have I mentioned how much I hate flying?"
“What
happened in here?” Lizeth demanded. “I thought you were supposed to
stop Troy, not give him a second chance to destroy us all!”
“It
was my fault,” Jade staggered over to them, her wing dragging behind
her. “I thought that if Troy returned to the cage he would be trapped in
there just like in Justicia. I didn’t expect him to regain vitality and
escape.” She stared at the empty cage. “We need to get him back into
that cage again.”
“But how?” Kaidan asked. “It’s not like we
can get him to come back in here again. And he can just mess with our
Gifts if we try to get close to him.”
“Perhaps
we can be of assistance?” Asked a voice that made everyone tense in
fear. They turned toward the side entrance of the throne room as through
the door came Zayra, the Mad Queen, followed by Captain Edri, her
fiercely loyal bodyguard.
>>>>>>>>>
Series Finale, Part 2 >>>>>>>
SEASON 1:
SEASON 2:
Episode 1: "Upgrades" Episode 2: "Strategic Maneuvers"
Episode 8: "Damaris and the Dragon"
Episode 10: "The Zodiac at Zero Hour"
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