SGE His Darkened Heart (A Japaric Fanfiction)

BONUS CHAPTER #4

"Together," Japeth confirmed before the two started outside.

The night sky had stars flecked in it's vast darkness, Stars that twinkled down on Japeth and Sophie as they stopped in front of the newly repaired stage Tedros had once almost been executed on.

Japeth held the ring flat in his palm as he nodded to Sophie. She found a stick in the grass and used her pink fingerglow to light up the end of the stick. As the flames threatened to lap up the stick and burn Sophie's fingers, Japeth took it from her. Sophie could see his fingers shaking as they curled around the stick and she shot out her hand to place her hand over his, guiding his hand over his palm.

The flames danced closer to the ring in Japeth's palm, closer and closer until Sophie smelt burning metal and she watched the silver band burn, melting into Japeth's palm like a forever scar. Sophie could see Japeth holding his breath as if he feared it wouldn't work and when the ring was nothing more but a pile of ashes coating Japeth's scarred palm, nothing out of the ordinary seemed to occur.

"What happened?" Japeth began, his tone distressed as he spun around, his face hard. "I don't feel anything. Aren't I the One True King now? Aren't I--"

As suddenly as Japeth's cry rose to an inferno, something out of the ordinary did happen. The ground began to tremble beneath Sophie and Japeth's feet and the trees lining Camelot began to sway angrily as if a storm had decided to make its presence known. Sophie's eyes widened as she saw the ground begin to crack beneath her. Long scores scarred the earth, so deep and wide, a person could fall in and than Sophie's attention snapped back to Japeth.

But something dark and foggy had begun to overtake Japeth. A dark cloud enveloped him whole and Sophie heard a cry rip from his throat. Before she could think to help him, the darkness closed in around her too, suffocating her as she struggled to get away.

Through her panic, Sophie heard ringing, a painful ringing noise that made her skull pound. She couldn't see anything, couldn't hear Japeth's cry anymore, and she could feel herself slipping further into the unknown, into a place she wanted out of.

~.~ ~.~ ~.~ ~.~ ~.~ ~.~

Japeth didn't know where he was or how he even ended up here. All he could remember was burning the last ring and being sucked up in shadows soon after.

Dirt smeared at Japeth's hands as he crawled across the leaf strewn ground. The trees surrounding him made up a twisted dark forest with branches that blocked out the moon. Somewhere in the trees, Japeth could feel a hundred pairs of eyes boring into him and he caught glimpses of white bones in the branches.

It was only when he heard a screech, the screech of a bird, that it dawned on him. He'd seen this forest before in a storybook, Sophie and Agatha's storybook to be exact. But what was he doing here in this place of Stymphs who all probably wanted to eat him alive--

Oh. How could Japeth ever forget the place Aric had died in?

Japeth had wished for Aric back, and since the Stymph Forest was the place he'd died in, it was only logical that Japeth come here. Japeth remembered the details of Aric's death in Agatha and Sophie's storybook. The Storian had only recorded what had happened, not what Aric had been feeling as that wretched fairy Godmother ended his life.

But what now? Where was the one boy Japeth had wanted more than anything else? Where was the friend Japeth had chosen over his own blood?

"ARIC!" Japeth cried, his voice echoing in the dark sky, startling some of the Stymphs from their perches. "Where are you...?"

Japeth lurched up from the ground and suddenly found his scims were not the only things that covered him. A billowing cape flowed from his back, made from a strange material and sitting on his mess of copper hair was a crown. Japeth took it off to find the inscriptions from the many rings that once tied the woods' belief in the Storian were now etched into the golden surface of the crown.