“Who is this interloper?” Creature Breach raged.
Blue raised an eyebrow. “Who is this little toad?”
Celia ignored both questions. “What do you mean, a major problem?”
“Well,” Blue shifted awkwardly, “You said to take them somewhere safe, right?”
“Yes, I said to take them somewhere safe,” Celia confirmed, slowly.
“And I did. Except the safe place turned out not to be quite so safe after all.”
“What is the meaning of this?” Creature roared. “Who is this fool? What is this nonsense you are speaking?”
“Blue,” Celia said, urgently, “is this to do with the shadows?”
Blue shrugged, and then nodded. “Yeah. It’s to do with Necromancers.”
Celia groaned in frustration. “Where the hell did you take them?”
“Hey, it was just a field!” Blue defended. “I went there once, with school or something! A field on a farm! Nothing major! And suddenly there’s a whole load of people in black and an army of zombie whatchamacallits!”
Celia shut her eyes. “Ok…ok…just let me think this through…”
“Will somebody tell me what is going on?” Creature screamed.
Everybody looked at him.
“Who are you?” he shrieked. “What are you?”
“Blue Last,” Blue gave him a grin. “Traveller, outlaw, vigilante and the bodyguard of the Night Princess.”
“When were you a vigilante?” Tala became visible again.
“Tried it for a day,” Blue pulled a face. “Wasn’t really my style.”
“No, you’re more the selfish take-all-I-can type person,” Tala agreed, amiably.
Blue rolled his eyes. “I left Zephyr and Merry behind. It’s quieter to travel alone, you see. It would make too much noise, taking them with me. They would notice.”
“You left them?” Sophie cried, shuddering.
“Why is no one paying attention to me?” Creature wailed.
“Don’t blame me! They’re your bloody Necromancers!”
“That’s not fair!”
“Stop squabbling, the pair of you!” Chrysanthemum snapped. “Now!”
Blue and Sophie fell quiet, shooting each other taunting looks to try and convince themselves that they had won.
“Alright,” Chrysanthemum took a deep breath. “Necromancers. Remember what Sophie said about the Shadow? This is going to be something to do with that. It is likely that the farm is now a base for them.”
“Escape and run far, far, far away?” Sophie suggested, pleadingly.
“Fight and kill the whole lot!” Blue declared.
“Blue,” Tala gave him a look.
“Yeah, Blue,” Celia stuck out her tongue.
“Shut up! All of you! You are under arrest! Do you hear me? Is anyone listening? You’re under arrest!” Creature was purple in the face, jumping up and down and screaming.
“Unfortunately,” Chrysanthemum sighed, “Blue is right. We shall have to fight them.”
“Why?” Sophie stared.
“We have an advantage that we cannot risk losing. It’ll be alright, Sophie. You’ll make it out. They won’t be aiming to kill you.”
“Thank you,” Sophie murmured, “So comforting.”
“How many can you take at one time?” Celia asked Blue.
“One, reliably,” Blue frowned. “Maybe Tala and Sophie, but landing would be chaos and I’ve kind of left them up a tree.”
“Trees!” Tala spread her arms wide. “Finally!”
“Listen,” Celia grabbed Blue’s arm. “Get Tala there and get her to do her best hiding the other two. Then bring Chrysanthemum, then Sophie. Leave me till last. If anything happens, get Sophie out first. She doesn’t have a clue what she’s doing.”
“Hey,” Sophie protested. “I’m not that bad!”
“Go,” Celia shoved Blue forward. “Get out of here! Go!”
Blue and Tala vanished into nothing.
“What is the meaning of this abomination?!” Creature screamed, his face blotched indigo and eyes bulging like a frog.
“Oh, sorry, didn’t hear you there,” Celia grinned. “Just popping out. Be back in a bit. Ok? I’d tell you to help yourself to biscuits but we don’t have any.”
“You are under arrest, Karn! You’ll regret this! I will not let you leave!”
Blue had already returned and whisked Chrysanthemum away.
“Then stop me!” Celia challenged. “Quit with the shouting and threats and just start stopping me. Go on, Creature. I dare you.”
Creature hesitated. “We know all your friends, Celia. They’ll suffer for this. Cruel and Melamine and Ocean and Bright and your dear friend, Meritolo…they’ll all suffer for this.”
Celia gave him a brittle smile. “They can defend themselves. That’s their whole purpose, defending. Defending the world, Creature. That’s what I’ve always done. Can you take over that? Take over sacrificing people you love for the sake of everyone else, who never understands and never says thank you?”
“That is not your job, Karn, and you well know it.”
“It is my job, Creature. They just didn’t write it down like that. Save the world, from whoever I’m told is wrong. A lot of people I cared about died for this world, and so far the reward hasn’t been worth the price. But I did it, because it’s what I have to do.”
Sophie vanished into thin air, leaving Celia and Creature alone in the room.
“If you know what’s right,” Celia said, softly, as if she was telling him a great secret, “it is impossible for you to do wrong. Because you can’t live with it. And saving this world is right, the only right, the only choice I can ever make. No matter how much it hurts. And you, Creature Breach, are not a bad man. But you are not that strong.”
Blue rematerialized and both he and Celia vanished, while Creature stared in shock and fury at the space where they had been.
It was not a very comfortable tree, however you looked at it. It had a fine supply of spiky twigs, unfortunate knots and head-height branches with a regrettable lack of wide, convenient stretches of wood which one can sit on like a bench without being prickled, poked or in constant danger of falling off.
Sophie was perched in a dip of a branch that would have been fine without the twig that poked her relentless in the small of her back. A branch was directly where her head should have been, forcing her to twist awkwardly and balance with two arms looped around it to stop herself plummeting to the ground.
Down below, there was a field. As fields go, it was a pretty good field. There were trees at one edge, more fields at the others, and it had knee-high grass, a few mole hills and a water-trough for animals that didn’t seem to graze here very often.
It also had zombies. Well, Chrysanthemum hadn’t called them zombies. She’d called them “vivens mortua”, “puppet-like animations of deceased corpses” and “decaying human shells containing quantities of black magic to permit a mockery of life”. But, fancy words aside, they were zombies.
They seemed pretty relaxed, for the walking dead. They were sitting in groups or wandering about like a school group at a picnic. They spoke to one another in chattering, clicking noises, like excited mice or cockroaches. None of the watchers in the tree could make head or tail of it.
“Did you see last week’s episode?” Blue murmured. “Yeah, it was great, wasn’t it? Didn’t like the ending, though. Hey, have you noticed what Sasha’s wearing today? Looks awful, doesn’t it? I know, right? She looks….”
“Shut up, Blue,” Celia muttered.
Blue pulled a face at her back. “I was translating word for word.”
“You were doing nothing of the sort. Now, be quiet and let me see what’s going on.”
Silence continued.
“That’s the farm,” Chrysanthemum frowned, “and it’s reasonable to assume that the Necromancers will be in the building, or at least in the barns and stables. There are a few vivens mortua near the forest, a few more on the perimeter of the farm itself, and a couple in the yard. But other than that, they are all in this field.”
“Maybe something’s here,” Tala said, reasonably. “I mean, this tree could be something. There could be something in the ground. Let’s face it, we know nothing about the Necromancers.”
“For all we know, the Doors of Death could be here,” Sophie added.
They all gave her startled looks.
“What?” she hissed. “They could be.”
“Why?” Chrysanthemum glared at the zombies. “Why are you here? Why this field? Why now?”
“Maybe they know we’re here,” Merry suggested. “I mean, we’re not exactly well-hidden.”
“I’ve done the best I can,” Tala grumbled. “Light camouflaged, so that we blend in a bit. That’s all I can manage on this many people and is, I’ll have you know, more than any other elemental could manage.”
Sophie felt a prickling feeling up her spine and turned round sharply.
“Hello, Sophie,” Blacktouch grinned. “It’s been a while.”
He swung from a branch, feet shooting out to kick her in the chest. Sophie fell backwards, slamming into the ground. All the air rushed out of her lungs. The zombies turned their heads at once, staring. Blacktouch landed lightly beside her.
“I think you’ll be coming with us,” he smiled. “Unless you want my army to attack your little friends…?”