7
DANICA
It
was cold, so cold.
The last thing I remember was the
devil ducking into my body and me screaming the place down. The next thing I
knew when I opened my eyes was the dark void of space, the skies scattered with
millions of millions of stars.
I shivered, my breath freezing in
the cold. I rubbed my hands together and blew on them, but none of that worked.
I floated endlessly in the darkness of space, every joint in my body aching. I
didn’t know where I was, but I knew I should’ve listened to Avery.
Avery.
Her name rang in my ears, and
suddenly a creepy voice that sent tingles up my spine wafted out to me: “You
were foolish…….Now you can never see any of your friends again….”
I
doubted that was wrong.
VANESSA
I gazed down at the little elf town that
shown out of my crystal ball and shivered. If this is what Elvaeda had become,
I didn’t want to stay here for long. The faeries would definitely be coming.
I snapped the open book at the side
of my table shut and shoved it into the folds of my robe, then drew back the
curtains. The sky above glittered with thousands of gleaming stars, taking my
breath away, but I couldn’t stay for long. The stars were lucky; they didn’t
have to worry about faeries or demons or the creatures of the afterlife.
I opened my door hastily, and froze
as the sight outside greeted me: Dozens of faeries surrounded my little brick
house, holding spears and swords and bows to my face. A faerie at the front
jabbed the tip of his spear to my face, and it sneered evilly at me.
“Elder Vanessa?” The faerie asked in
a gruff voice, and I sighed, putting my hands up. “Yes, you caught me, I
surrender.” I said with a long sigh. What could I do? Fight through dozens of
faeries with a book? I don’t think so.
The faerie whispered to another one
standing beside him, and they both nodded. Then the faerie shouted: “Madam! We
have found the one you were looking for.”
Footsteps could be heard at the back
of the huge crowd of faeries, which drew back hastily to let their leader pass.
I didn’t know who the leader was until she was right in front of me, sneering
in my face.
“Vanessa,” she said in a soft
whisper. “Good to see you again.”
I froze, my gaze frozen on the young
girl standing in front of me, an elf in a faerie’s royal gear. “You traitor….”
I whispered as a faerie bound my hands together tightly. “You…you are a
disgrace to our clan!! You will never win!” The elf in front of me just smiled,
her black-brown hair swooshing in the breeze.
“We shall see,” Isabella said.
AVERY
The blast that made the hole in the
wall must have been really loud, because just seconds after the devil made
Danica jump off into the night Serene and Dennis crashed open the vault door
and ran in, equipped with rifles.
Jackie noticed them before they even
came in and grabbed my hand, startling me. “Av, looks like we’ll have to make a
quick exit before those two faeries blast our heads off with their damned
rifles,” and before I could even reacted she pulled me forward and jumped into
the dark night, me with my arms flailing, screaming like a maniac and Jackie
going: “WHEEEEE!!!”
We landed on the ground below with a
muted thunk and tumbled inelegantly down a small hill before resting to a halt.
10 meters
was quite high and I was relieved that I didn’t break anything. Jackie
stretched her arms and legs and we could hear the two faeries swearing from
atop their house.
I stared up at Dennis’s house, which
seemed like a small hut when I first entered it but was amazed when I looked
back up at it and it seemed like a palace. We were lucky we weren’t held
captive on one of the higher floors or the drop would be way higher and far
more risky.
Suddenly a buzzing could be heard as
the two faeries flew from the hole in the wall, out towards the night and right
towards us. Jackie sprang into action and grabbed my hand, and together we went
tearing down the rubber tree forest, unaware of where we were even going.
After awhile of running Jackie
ripped through a mini forest of rubber trees growing especially densely
together, pulled me into it and jumped in herself, allowed the rubber trees to
fall back in place and waited, our breath ragged, our hearts beating painfully
against our ribcage.
The faint buzzing grew louder as the
faeries flew closer to our direction. I held my breath, thinking: Please go away, please go away. After
what seemed like forever of waiting, the buzzing grew fainter, fainter and
fainter still as the faeries flew to the other direction, until the noise
disappeared altogether. Though the faeries were gone we still waited for five
nerve racking minutes before we finally climbed out of the mini forest.
Jackie breathed a sigh of relief
before she crumpled to the floor, wiping her sweaty forehead with the back of
her palm. I rested on a rock, my lungs gasping for more air. For awhile we just
sat there, legs tired from running, lungs exploding in our chest. Once we got
enough rest, we managed to stand up and stretch. I grabbed Jackie’s wrist and
tried to pull her forward.
“C’mon, Jackie!!” I panted, still
quite tired from the endless running. “Danica couldn’t have gone far, so let’s
hurry!!” But Jackie kept her ground, and I stopped too, glancing back at her.
“Jackie,” I muttered, my grip
loosening on her wrist. “What’s wrong?” Jackie looked at me, her face for the
first time since I met her serious, which startled me, as she had always kept a
happy-go-lucky attitude. “Avery,” she said softly, and a cry as gaggle of birds
got scared by an unknown thing in the forest sounded through the air, as we
continued standing there, doing nothing.
Jackie sighed, then said:
“Avery, we can’t go after her. Our duty was to complete our quest to find the
Great Spirit and bring peace to the elves. We have to let Danica go, for now.”
I stared at her, appalled. “Wh-what are you talking about?” I said, my voice
cracking. “We’ll finish the quest as soon as we find Danica!! You know, the
more, the merri-”
“Avery!!!” Jackie shouted and
shook me, and I was shocked. Since when was Jackie ever this way? “Avery, just
think!! Just think for awhile!! Even if we find Danica, which is impossible,
with us being in the woods and it being night, what are we supposed to do to
free her of that devil? Tell me, because I darn right wanna hear it!! Tell
me!!”
I was visibly shaken, unable to get words
out of my mouth. “I-I don’t know,” I muttered, Jackie’s eyes glaring at mine.
“We’ll think of something when we find her!! But what matters right now is that
we find her, and when we find her…..” my voice trailed off. I knew what Jackie
said was true, and that we had no plan, that Danica’s body could be hers
forever, just like in the chant: your
body is mine, mine forever.
I raked my fingers through my
messy hair, my fingers getting untangled in the multiple twigs and leaves stuck
in my hair. I pulled a handful of leaves and twigs from my hair, throwing them
onto the floor and sighing. Jackie’s words were right, all of it.
“Okay, you win,” I muttered and
stood up. Jackie’s face softened, and she sighed. “I’m sorry if I was being so
harsh.”
“I’m
sorry for being such a bore.” I replied.
Jackie grinned, and patted me on the shoulder.
I looked up into the millions of tiny little stars twinkling in the night sky,
gazing down on us; they’re little shining rays beaming onto our faces.
Sometimes I just wished I was a star, or a cloud, or anything that was floating
in the air, so I could escape my life’s problems.
I lifted my rucksack onto my
shoulders and looked back at Jackie, who was having a hard time untangling her
rucksack’s strings and was just sitting on the ground, silently struggling to
it herself. I liked a lot of things about Jackie, her undying enthusiasm, her
happy-go-lucky attitude, and much more, but the thing I like the most about her
is what she was doing now; when she had a problem, she didn’t like other people
to worry about it for her. “It’s my problem, I’ll figure it out. Don’t want you
to fret over it,” is what she would always say, but this time, I wouldn’t back
out.
I crouched down beside her and
helped her untangle her now even more tangled rucksack strings and for once,
she didn’t say anything, just smiled at me as we both pulled apart the tangles
until the string was free.
Soon,
we would do that for Danica too, even if it seemed impossible.
DAVILA (THE DEVIL)
I stared down the canyon as I balanced myself
on the edge of the cliff, spotting what I was looking for; Elvaeda.
I jumped down and landed just inches away
from a Faerie guard, the impact of my fall causing him to loose his balance and
stumble backwards, his spear sent flying. Picking up the spear, I pointed it
directly at his face and glared at him, speaking in a harsh tone: “Bring me to
your leader, faerie, or your death will be slow and painful.”
He stared into my red eyes, his dark
eyes clearly visible underneath his helmet. He knew I wasn’t just some typical
girl trying to act tougher than she really was. I could sense his heartbeat,
smell his fear. He knew who I was, and he wasn’t wasting another minute just
lying there on the ground.
He scrambled to his feet, and saluted
to me. “Yes, ma’am,” he sputtered, nervous, and led me into the ground of
Elvaeda. I smiled wickedly to myself. I love that effect I could do on anyone,
no matter what body I was in; fear. I stroke fear into people’s hearts, and I
loved every bit of it.
Finally, after walking for what
seemed like an eternity (My feet were already sore. Whoever this young elf was
it seems like she didn’t do much exercise) the faerie led me into the palace
that was supposedly built specially for the ruler of the elves, but now I knew
what it was for.
After entering the grand living room
as soon as I pushed open the door, I spotted Isabella daintily sitting on the
throne, trimming her fingernails. She paused when she saw me, a young girl
standing at her doorway, and sneered at me in disgust.
“Who are you, little girl? Get out
of here, already! You’re dirtying up the place!!” She mocked me, and my heart
burned with anger. So, she didn’t know who I was, was it? Well, I’ll make her
know.
“Isabella,” I grinned evilly,
making her immediately notice I wasn’t your average little girl, but it was too
late then. In lightning speed I ran behind her, and held a shadow dagger to her
throat. I heard her swallow, and say: “Who…who are you?”
I sniggered, then said: “You are
foolish, but of course, I was told that the elder of war wasn’t very bright.” I
held the dagger closer to her flesh, so tempted to just slice her throat in
half. I said: “If you should know, you impudent young elf, I am the devil of
this world, and I am seeking a deal with you.”
She gulped down a lump in her throat,
then said in a quaking voice: “What k-kind of deal?” I smiled, and held the
dagger away from her throat, and it dissipated into a cloud of dark smoke. I
folded my hands over my chest as Isabella rubbed her neck, relieved to have
that cursed dagger removed from her flesh.
“I want to be the heir to your
kingdom,” I said, sneering slightly as I did so. “If anything happens to you,
if you die, missing, whatever, I will take over this throne,” I jabbed my thumb
at the throne she was sitting on.
Isabella folded her hands,
slightly braver now that the dagger was removed from her neck. “And what if I
say no?”
“That is simple enough,” I half
whispered, and drew a rock from my pocket. “If you don’t cooperate, you will be
squashed-” and I demonstrated it to her, squishing the rock with my bare hand
and letting the small pebbles that was all that was left of the rock drop from
my fingers. “-like a grape.”
“But if you do….” I stepped on
the small pebbles sitting on the smooth marble floor, cracking them into dust.
Isabella swallowed, her gaze focused on what was left of the pebbles. “I will
do what you always wanted someone to do.”
She looked at me, her black
brown eyes glittering in the dim light. “And that might be……?”
I smiled, tracing my finger
down the ivory texture of the throne. Soon, all this would be mine, but I had
to answer her first. “The death,” I said, wrapping my fingers around the handle
of the gold throne, my greed for gold almost taking over me. “of the candidates
for the new elf queen.”
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