Royal Blood

XXXI: Requiem

Cause when the villains fall, the kingdoms never weep. No one lights a candle to remember. No, no one mourns at all when they lay them down to sleep.

~Dear Evan Hansen's "Requiem"

Waking with a start, Adelaide tumbled off her bed and onto the floor. She scrambled to her feet and rushed out if her room like a bat out of hell, untangling herself from the sheets as she went.

“Your majesty, you should be resting,” said one of the servants as Adelaide rushed past.

“No time,” She breathed.

Seán's workshop was on one end of the castle and Adelaide's chambers on the other, so she blurred in short bursts in the workshop's direction, disappearing and reappearing, cutting the travel time in half. Once in  the workshop, Adelaide began skimming through Raththa', Ruh Aldami. There had to be some kind of spell...

“Come on, come on…” She muttered to herself. As she neared the end of Raththa’, Ruh Aldami she feared there was nothing to save her friends from a gruesome battle they were sure to lose.

Until a loose page was freed and floated down onto the table.

Adelaide examined the page and her eyes grew wide. “Using this spell could get rid of Gregory forever… If we hit him on the first shot.”

•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°

By the time Adelaide arrived at Demon's Field, it was flooded with a black substance, like ink, and as she waded through it she could see Caitlyn, Seán, Mark, and Nadia fending off hoards of monsters that resembled the strange creature that attacked her in the library. There was no sign of Dark or Gregory yet.

“Hey, not the hair!” Mark shrieked. “Or the face!”

“I would like to point out,” Caitlyn yelled. “You did not cover this during training, Nadia!”

“Oh, Eòin… I fought my first battle when I was sixteen, consider this a mercy”

From the swarm of creatures a voice could be heard.

“Get the fuck off me before I go all Shadow of the Colossus on your asses!”

Adelaide sloshed through the ever rising black liquid in the direction of the voice, bashing screeching creatures with her fists as she went. “Anti?” She called. Anti was there, struggling against two particularly bulky creatures. The Dagger of Draven glowed white in his grip.

“A little fuckin’ help?” He demanded as if it was obvious, which it was.

Adelaide raised her palms. A heat was rising, she could feel it in her core, begging for a release. Before she really knew what was happening her hands thrust themselves forward, jerking her body forward as well. A blast of lavender light shot out of her hands and into each of the creatures “faces”, melting them back down into the sea of ink.

“The fuck was that?” Asked asked, bewildered.

Adelaide shrugged. “The witch side of me?”

“Well keep doing that. It'll help a fuck ton.” With that, Anti charged back into battle.

Adelaide spun around, trekking through the murk in search of Seán, when something wrapped around her ankles and pulled her under. She hit her head on the dense ground, knocking the breath out of her, forcing her to inhale the thick black liquid. Even though standing the water was only a few feet high, as Adelaide laid on the ground pulling at the tendrils wrapped around her legs, and now her arms, the liquid seemed to rise higher and higher.