Chaoter 49: The Snake Charmer

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a/n: sorry i'm not updating this book as often! i have two other books i'm also writing. 'until i reach your star' & 'runaway princess' sorry. i'm splitting my time on all 3 books. #promo! read them :)

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We're standing around in Aquarius' ruined theme park, not knowing where to go. I have to find Loke and shut his gate. Somehow, we had to return to the Lion's World. "I'm going to beat him senseless." Natsu growls.

"Lucy said not to go too far. And he's your friend, Natsu." I remind him.

"Leo the Lion is not my friend. Loke is." He retorts.

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I sniff around, catching Loke's scent anywhere in this place. "Where did that jerk Loke disappear to?!" Natsu asks. We look around and see nothing. Natsu gets onto his knees and hands. "We'll sniff him!" Wendy, Bonnie, Happy, and I mimic him. We bear crawl around the place.

After a while though, we all stood up and let Natsu do all the sniffing. Eventually he stopped at a huge ruin. Loke's scent leads inside. Having no choice, we enter cautiously. It was a lot of walking and the only thing brightening up the place was a few torches.

When we went down a couple of stairs, Wendy questioned, "Is that an altar?" We walk towards what she was talking about. It did look like an altar.

"Do you still smell Loke?" Bonnie asks Natsu and I. Both him and I take a strong sniff and shake our heads. I say, "His small stops here. In front of this altar."

"But there was only one passageway and there's no other way in or out of this room." Carla points out.

"A draft is coming through a crack here!" Wendy points to one of the bricks. We examine it closer. It's a door.

"Don't things like these usually require magic words to open?" Bonnie said.

Happy being Happy says, "I know this is cliché, but 'open sesame'!"

Natsu tells us to step back and punches it with a mighty fire iron fist. Thanks to Natsu's recklessness, the whole place starts shaking. Happy scolds him. The door opens though. We continue walking.

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We wind up in some sort of swirly place. His scent. I can still smell. "He's still here." I say. As we discuss, Natsu yells, "Look out!" I grab a hold of Bonnie and Wendy, shielding them both from sort of needle things. When they stopped glowing, it turned out to be thermometers.

"Who's there?! Loke?!" Natsu questions and stands up. We all get up and in the distance see a female figure carrying something. A nurse? With a needle?

"Who are you?! You're not one of the 12 spirits." Carla asks.

"I am the snake charmer celestial spirit, Ophiuchus. Thirteenth gate." She introduces herself. A board with a picture of constellations appears out of nowhere and she explains, "Okay! It's time for Ophiuchus' Study Corner! The 'zodiac' refers to the path the sun takes through the sky. And the 12 constellations along that path are the Zodiac constellations.

But in actuality, between the scorpion constellation and the archer constellation there's a snake charmer constellation. That's me! Incidentally, the snake charmer constellation is a medical constellation!"

"So you're working with Loke?" Natsu asks.

"Yes. I've been forced to step in due to many unexpected setbacks," She pushes the board away, "So it's time for you to undergo my checkup exam." The needle in her hand turns to a clipboard and we all jump back shaking.

"Chart cutter!" Lights shaped like paper start firing at us. "Followed by Magic Stethoscopes!" Stethoscopes come at us and start wrapping around our arms and legs.

"I will use brute force!" Natsu declares.

"Don't think so." She smirks. The end part of the stethoscopes come to our ears and she yells. Loudly. We all scream, not being able to bear the pain. She was using them backwards.

A giant spatula like thing appears next to her and she announces, "This is your next exam! I'm going to check your throat. Say 'ah'!"

"That won't fit in our months!" Natsu and I cry.

"I'll shove it in if I have to." She says in a very creepy voice. One by one, she stuffs it into our mouths.

"It looks like you've started to realise my dreadfulness. Now for this!" Bandages shoot from her hands and stick onto all of us and she rips it all of them off. A white chair appears with all sorts of things around it. Drill, shovel, hammer, wrench, whatever.

She straps us to the chair one by one and does a 'cavity' treatment on us. She drills something in my tooth and it hurt. When it came to Natsu though, he was calm. I could barely talk.

She shoots some sort of liquid at us with a needle and none of us are hurt thankfully. It didn't hit us. "Liquid explosives?!" Bonnie exclaims. An operating table appears.

"Now what?!" I whine.

The operating table releases some sort of black straps at us. It catches Wendy and Carla, straps them tightly onto the table.

"You're next!" The nurse laugh and the straps go after the four of us remaining. We all manage to jump and dodge them in time. "You're naive." The nurse says. When Natsu and I land onto the ground, we start sinking or something.

"I told you before I am the caretaker of the Astral Spiritus. I control this place at will."

Natsu and I try wiggling out trying to escape somehow. "Y/N!" "Natsu!" Both exceeds come and scoop us out.

"Charge straight ahead!" I order Bonnie.

"Iron dragon's: club!" I say and from a distance, I destroy the operating table, freeing Wendy and Carla. We hear the snake charmer get flustered and before she can threaten us, she's cut off.

"That's enough Ophiuchus!" Emerging from the shadows, Loke. "The ceremony is completed. No need to keep them occupied any further." Loke tells her. Ophiuchus disappears.

The ceremony is complete?

"So sorry but as we speak, your friends are being kicked back to the celestial world." Carla tells Loke.

Loke laughs and we hear rumbling noises going on outside. "The power of darkness has given us another chance to hold the Liberam! No matter how many setbacks we face, our desire for freedom is undying and indomitable." The place starts breaking down. "I will rise up however many times it takes to cast of the celestial spirits' shackles and graso true freedom!"

The place completely breaks down and it seems like we're outside. "This smell.." I hear Wendy say quietly. From a high rock platform, Loke yells, "Ophiuchus! Show them your true form!"

"True form?" I hear Bonnie question. From behind Loke, we see a huge snake. The nurse explains that she has become one with the snake. That is her true Eclipse form.

"This place is known as the Astral Spiritus is my entire body. You have been fighting inside my body all this time. Entirely and exactly as we planned." She announces and laugh.

"The Liberam ritual will release us celestial spirits from our contract with humans. And this time we will hold it successfully!" Loke adds.

"We shan't blunder... Celestial Spirit King." Ophiuchus smirks.

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