How to Find your Way in the Incomplete Archives

Seventeen

The sudden kind words rekindled her hope, "Please show me the way,"

"Very well, pluck out one of my scales,"

Archaea looked at her feet. The glossy scales all shone with an iridescent glow. The scale that she struck with her sword had chipped at the edge. It did not glow like the others but it came loose at the slightest tug, "I shall take this,"

The maze responded with a satisfied hiss, "Good. Let's call it the Time Scale. As to what you must do with it, your companions will tell you the rest,"

The snake fell silent but things around her were astir.

First, she noticed the translucent scales and the body of the snake were gone. The soft sand and translucent body had disappeared without a trace. They were back in the dim opening inside the tunnel. The three caves that led to the castle were in front of her.

Then she felt a movement near her feet, "Arlan!"

"Princess?" the groggy man seemed to have awakened from a long nightmare, "To stop that woman, you need to shoot the Time Scale at her while the Shadow King invokes the Eviction Incantation,"

He poured out the words before they faded from his mind. The influx of new information caught her off guard but it was the last part that saddened Archaea.

"Arlan, the Shadow King, he," she had to steady her voice, "Fremont was crushed to death by falling boulders,"

"Nonsense," another muffled familiar voice came from under the heap of gravelly debris, "I'm the Shadow King. Healing from these kind of injuries is child's play to me,"

"You're alive?" she looked around, doubtful.

"Yes, but now that the maze defeated me, I guess, I have to take its resting location to the grave."

The Princess removed the broken rocks from the pile using her bare hands until she could see the green eyes. Her Advisor joined in and they dug him out after a few hours. The young man still had some injuries but most of his wounds had closed.

"I can still perform that incantation, the one Arlan mentioned" Fremont flashed a disarming smile, "But I won't be able to do much else in battle."

The Princess pulled her two companions into a tight embrace, "I never want to experience that again! So promise you two won't die on me,"

****

'And they lived happily ever after?' the Archivist wondered out loud.

'No, Archaea manages to kill Luna and she then dies from losing too much blood.' The Librarian explained, 'That's how the story ends,'

'What? That solves our mystery,'

'Which one?'

'The whole publisher thing. No wonder the original publishers didn't want to put that story under their house. I bet the author is some indie writer who sprung it on them last minute and refused to change the ending,'

'I never thought of it that way. To me, that sad ending had a hopeful touch. Even the story implied that the three of them would meet again in the Land of Shadows,'

'That's it? Just implied?' The other was disappointed, 'That's not fun!'

'Sometimes not fun is the most fun a reader can have. That's the contradiction of human nature,'

'Boring!'

'Boring or not, did you take action on my other request?'

'Of course, Boss, you can count on me,' the record-keeper presented a list of one hundred and seventy-nine stories, 'When you mentioned running a scan of all the fanfiction, I thought we were going to ban thousands of records. I don't know about you but that was going to be a lot, and I mean, a lot of work,'