Chapter 14: Voided Bonds

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She cries out, part in surprise, the rest in rage and desperation and grief, and extends her arm toward the beast. She can feel her feet about to leave the ground, the pull of the void’s energy tugging on her arm like she’s nothing more than an old Usuki being torn apart by a rambunctious child. Further and further the power extends, twisting and solidifying into a construct, a tentacle that speeds toward Ozzy, closer and closer but never close enough—

“Nyx! Look out!”

Her world widens again with the sensation of a voice piercing through her senses, but Nyx’s mind remains just a second behind: it isn’t until she feels something scrape against her arm, and something else barrel into her side, that she registers the rumbling and crumbling and crashing all around her. Whatever hit her sends her tumbling to the ground, filling her sight with dirt and dust and whirling colours of brown and grey and red and trampled-grass green and dissipating purple.

And then she comes to a stop.

Groaning, Nyx lifts a hand to her head. The final remnants of the void tendril she had conjured dissolve into nothingness, and she lets out an anguished whine. Ozzy and the Malevolent Being are further away than ever—further away than Nyx knows she can even attempt to reach. But she still has to try. She has to save him. She can’t abandon him again—!

She tries to stand up, but something is holding her down. In her single-minded determination, Nyx still hadn’t fully grasped the situation around her: there are broken pieces of marble and concrete surrounding her, dust still floating in the air and scratching down her throat as she breathes it in. She coughs, and then so does something—someone—else: the heavy lump of red and orange fur sitting atop her chest.

Luxinia and Baelia rush over to them, arms extended and voices mingling to form a shapeless noise that Nyx can’t comprehend. She sees Luxinia in front of her, reaching down to pull Tavi off her chest—

Tavi.

It was Tavi.

Tavi who had pushed her. Tavi who had broken her concentration.

Tavi who had stopped her from reaching Ozzy.

Baelia’s hands reach for Nyx next, wrapping around her wrist to pull her to her feet. It hurts, for some reason, but something that hurts far worse is bubbling up beneath the surface of Nyx’s skin instead, and the moment she’s upright she wrenches herself out of Baelia’s grasp.

“What was that for?!” Nyx demands, whirling on Tavi immediately.

Tavi flinches, eyes wide, and Luxinia is so startled she backs up a few extra steps, letting go of the Kyrii entirely.

“What are you talking about?” Tavi asks, stunned. “Nyx, didn’t you see—”

“I almost had him!” Nyx stomps her foot, jamming her finger up at the sky to point at where Void Beast—Vocivus, the Malevolent Being had called it—is now little more than a wriggling speck. “Just a little more and I could have—I could have saved my brother if only you hadn’t—”

“Nyx,” Luxinia starts, but Tavi interrupts her gently with a raised hand.

“It’s okay, Lux,” she says, calm despite the obvious strain in her voice. “Nyx, I know you’re upset, but—”

“I was so close!”

“No, you weren’t.”

“You have no idea how I feel,” Nyx spits, and regrets it the moment the words are out.

Tavi flinches again. Luxinia moves to stand in front of her.

“Maybe not, but I do,” the Light Faerie says. “And I also know that Tavi is right, Nyx. You couldn’t have reached Ozzy just then. The building next to you—it… it was coming down, and it would have crushed you if Tavi hadn’t jumped in to save you.”

Nyx blinks. “What?” She looks to the side, where, sure enough, the building she had been next to was standing just a moment ago. Now all she can see is a pile of dust and debris—the same dust she’d been coughing on as Baelia had helped her to her feet.

She looks back at Luxinia, and then at Tavi. Nyx bites her lip, then, and because she can’t face them—can’t face the truth—she looks away.

“I didn’t ask her to save me.”

Luxinia gasps. “You don’t mean that, Nyx.”

“No, I do!” With an anguished, aggravated groan, Nyx reaches up to her head and grabs her own ears, tugging them down to try and distract from the flood of emotions battering against the dam of her self-control. “All I wanted to do was save my brother, but no one asked me what I wanted! No one ever does, least of all Tavi! She always thinks she knows the right way to do things, even if it’s a gamble! She never stops to think about what other people want. It’s always all about her and her tea and her stories and—”

“She saved you!” Luxinia insists. “You were so focused on saving Ozzy that you stopped paying attention to everything else. You didn’t see that building start to crumble right in front of you. And if you had been—if you had—” She cuts herself off, voice choked-up. “Where would we be if the worst had happened? Both—both you and Ozzy would be gone, and we’d have lost two friends.”

“That’s enough,” Baelia says, her voice soft and quiet, but there’s an air of finality in her words that Nyx finds she can’t argue with, even though she wants to. Even though she’s embarrassed, and even though she’s frustrated, and even though she’s guilty of having said such hurtful things to her friend.

But when she blinks, she returns to Altador from the cold, desolate place she had almost withdrawn to in the back of her mind. The sounds of chaos and destruction rise up around her anew: Luxinia calling out for anyone injured, Styx barking as he sniffs out someone else buried under the rubble. There are countless other cries for help, too, some familiar and some not: an adult calling out for their child (a mother for a son, or a sister for her brother?); howling petpets, strays who have nowhere to go; high, shrill sobs of little children who don’t know what’s going on.

Nyx bites her lip. She can feel herself shaking, but tries to suppress it and push it away, dismissing it as useless residual anger. It doesn’t quite work, but she has to try and ignore it. Everyone—Tavi—had just wanted to help, but…

Her breath comes faster. Shallower. She tries to steady it, to calm herself, but the racing of Nyx’s heart is now almost as loud in her ears as everything else around her, and the sound of her panting breath is just making it worse. She has to focus—noise or no noise, there are people in need. She has to save them. She has to.

Just like she couldn’t save Ozzy.

“Yip!”

Bracing herself against the noise, scrunches her eyes shut and tugs on her antenna-ears, digging deep inside herself to call on that thrumming energy within as she stomps over to the first pile of rubble. The power of the void crackles inside of her, sparking and popping, and she focuses hard to try and smooth out the crinkles as she forms it into long, smooth tendrils that stutter and fade intermittently. She needs to focus, because there are people calling out for her to help—calling and calling and calling and calling—but—

A tug at her tail brings Nyx back to herself again, and all attempts to summon her powers fizzle out and dissipate. When she looks down, Juni is looking up at her, his glittering void-covered fur too bright in her eyes. She lifts a hand to cover her face, then turns away from her little friend to rush over to where a young Pteri’s tail is stuck under a crumbled statue.

“Yip? Yip yip?”

The Pteri flies away when Nyx frees him—good, no injuries to his wings—but there’s no time to celebrate. Nyx shakes her head and moves away, frustrated at how slowly she’s moving, and gets to work tossing stones and broken marble columns aside with her hands. “Not really,” she says, belatedly remembering to answer Juni. “I… I keep messing up. It’s getting to me. But there’s no time to let it bother me; there are people who need us.”

Juni whines. He flutters up to sit on Nyx’s shoulder, his fur itching as it brushes her cheek. It makes her skin crawl, and she jolts—not because she doesn’t appreciate the gesture, but because there’s something wrong with her right now, and it feels like every sensation is too much.

Luckily, Juni is the smartest Faellie in Neopia, so he hops off her shoulder the moment he realises she’s uncomfortable. “Yip…”

“It’s not your fault,” Nyx says. She pauses her rifling through the rubble to grind the heels of her palms into her eyes, then gets right back to it. She manages to summon a few void tendrils, but they fade after batting away a stray Shade, and it makes her growl in frustration. “It’s not anyone’s fault but mine. It’s always my fault, always…”

“Yip yip yip yip yip!”

“Yes, it is!” Nyx’s voice comes out louder than it needs to, and she clamps her hands over her mouth as if that can retroactively soften her tone. Juni stares up at her, head tilted, and she lets out a quaking breath, trying to scrape the sob out of it before her friend can hear it.

“I’m fine,” she insists, even though Juni hadn’t asked this time. He doesn’t enquire further, either. He just scurries off, using his newly-acquired sight powers to seek out more Neopets in need, and points them out to Nyx.

She follows Juni’s lead, and the teamwork helps to settle her—at least a little bit. The physical labour helps, too. Having something to focus on at least can quiet her mind for the time being, but Nyx can still feel herself trembling. It makes everything so much harder: she keeps dropping what she’s holding, she can barely focus on her powers, and her arm hurts—it’s still bleeding, she distantly notes. But that’s okay. She’s making some progress, at least, and that’s what matters, right? As long as she can save someone. Anyone. And it’s probably for the best that she can’t focus on her powers long enough to properly manifest her void tendrils, anyway, because every time one materialises she sees his face, panicked and scared and desperate to be saved, and she sees—sees that eye, and—

“Yip!” Juni points to another pile, and Nyx obediently heads toward it, breathing hard and fighting back tears as she rips away pieces of debris with her bare hands. She sinks down to her knees, and Juni comes up beside her, lifting away smaller stones himself.

“Yip… yip, yip yip,” he says, after a moment, still helping her dig.

Nyx grits her teeth. “Yeah,” she says, short. Another chunk of ravage gone.

“Yip yip, yip yip yip yip. Yip.”

“I know!” Nyx pounds her fists against the pile of wreckage they’re digging through, and it nearly causes a miniature landslide. “I know I should. But it’s not that easy. I’m still mad at her, and I…”

“Yip yip, yip yip! Yip—”

“It’s not okay!” The sob that Nyx had been holding back before wrenches from her now. “How am I supposed to face her after what I said? I can’t even—”

Nyx’s heart has started racing again, pounding so loudly in her ears that she can hardly hear Juni over it. Her breath comes in short gasps; her hands shake more than ever. But through her blurred and streaking vision, she sees Juni pointing toward something—”Yip!”—and hears the same rrrrrumble and crack! as she had when she’d tried to reach for Ozzy.

When Tavi had pushed her out of the way of a falling building.

Tavi!

That’s what—who—Juni is pointing at. When Nyx follows the line of his paw toward one of the few tall buildings left in Altador, she sees Tavi standing atop it, her arms wrapped around two small children who must have been stranded.

“No!”

Then she hears it: the telltale CRACK! and BOOM! of something giving way and breaking. Dust billows up from the ground at the base of the building Tavi’s standing on, where long, thick, jagged lines have cut through the clean white facade. On the roof, Tavi drops to her knees and pulls the children closer, bracing them—

Suddenly, Nyx is gone, her mind transported somewhere else entirely. A flash in the back of her mind, a split second of panic, and she’s back out in the far reaches of space with Juni, the moments right before her ship had pitched wrong and its walls and windows began to crack under the pressure systems’ failures. She had pulled Juni to her chest, wrapping his tiny frame in her arms and curling around him, trying to shield his body from impact. And then…

Then they had been lost, stranded in the emptiness of the universe before being sucked into the Void.

Another rumble, and a shrill scream. Nyx is back again, then, her eyes wide and vision tunnelled in to focus on Tavi and the children on the building’s roof.

And then, as if in slow motion, the building begins to fall.

“Tavi!”

With a leap and a flare of energy, Nyx takes off. She rockets past Juni, careening through the ruined street to reach her destination. Shades fly at her, drawn in by the sudden movement, and without thinking, Nyx conjures up tendrils of void energy and bats them away with ease. They don’t matter. Nothing else does. All that matters now is one thing—one person who needs her, now.

Just like Ozzy had.

She skids to a stop before the crumbling building, barely taking any stock of the situation. The ever-widening cracks in the front of the building don’t even register to her, nor do the chips of stone and marble dropping from above. They should hurt, but Nyx can’t feel any pain—all she can feel is the drive to move. The building tilts dramatically toward her, and Nyx backs up, stretching her arms out and conjuring the power of the void.

“Jump!” she cries, reaching for her friend and the kids she’s protecting with open arms and tendrils both. Tavi doesn’t hesitate: she pulls the children with her and jumps off the roof of the building. Nyx leans up, begging and pleading with her powers to just stay stable long enough to save someone, just once—

A tendril wraps around Tavi and the kids, curling safely and securely around the three of them. Nyx grimaces through the staring, but she’s grinning, too. They’re safe, they’re safe, they’re—

She sets them down on the ground a short distance away, where nothing can get to any of them. Tavi straightens up, checking on the children to make sure they’re all right, and then turns to Nyx, her eyes wide and teary.

“Nyx!”

Nyx releases the void energy and laughs as she starts to run toward her friend, relief flooding through her every bit as much as the renewed hysteria of almost losing someone else.

But it’s not over yet. Distantly, Nyx registers that pieces of the building are still coming down around her, pelting her skin like hail on concrete. She thinks it should hurt when she realises what’s happening, and she expects to feel the pain of their impact, but all she feels suddenly is a strange, otherworldly cold seeping in through her skin.

The last thing Nyx sees before the building crumbles is Tavi reaching out to her.

She cries out, part in surprise, the rest in rage and desperation and grief, and extends her arm toward the beast. She can feel her feet about to leave the ground, the pull of the void’s energy tugging on her arm like she’s nothing more than an old Usuki being torn apart by a rambunctious child. Further and further the power extends, twisting and solidifying into a construct, a tentacle that speeds toward Ozzy, closer and closer but never close enough—

“Nyx! Look out!”

Her world widens again with the sensation of a voice piercing through her senses, but Nyx’s mind remains just a second behind: it isn’t until she feels something scrape against her arm, and something else barrel into her side, that she registers the rumbling and crumbling and crashing all around her. Whatever hit her sends her tumbling to the ground, filling her sight with dirt and dust and whirling colours of brown and grey and red and trampled-grass green and dissipating purple.

And then she comes to a stop.

But when she steps out of the rubble of the building that had collapsed on her, and follows the sound of the sobbing…

…It’s her friends’ faces that greet her.

“Guys…?”

“Nyx!”

Baelia is the first to notice her. She stands up from where she had been huddled up and tries to run, stumbling over her shaking legs, reaching out for Nyx as she goes. Nyx reaches back, her eyes welling with tears to match the ones starting to pool in Baelia’s.

“Hi, B.”

Baelia’s hands fall on Nyx’s shoulders, then pull her into a hug. Nyx returns it without thinking, tilting her head to tuck it into the crook of the Grey Faerie’s neck. Something in her throbs, then—not in pain, not exactly. But there’s a burning in her throat and an ache in her chest that makes her wonder when she’d last been hugged.

Baelia lets her go too soon, but Nyx doesn’t say anything. She looks past Baelia to her other friends, who have gathered around for their turn: first Luxinia, then Styx, and finally Juni, yipping like mad to scold her and welcome her back at the same time.

“I missed you, too,” she says, ruffling the tuft of fur atop her Faellie companion’s head. Juni jumps back down to the ground, mock-offended, and tries to flatten it back out again. Nyx laughs, and almost cries again—it feels like it’s been forever since she last laughed, too. But then she looks up, searching for the one person who hadn’t greeted her yet.

“Tavi…”

A short ways ahead, Tavi turns her head. Her lips waver, and her eyes screw shut, as if she were fighting against herself. Nyx can’t blame her. After everything she had said before, when Tavi had only been trying to help…

No. When she had helped. When she had saved Nyx, Nyx had shown gratitude by yelling at her.

“We looked everywhere for you,” Luxinia says, somewhat awkwardly; Nyx wonders for a moment if she can sense how upset both she and Tavi are. “We thought you were…”

“Don’t worry, I’m not,” Nyx says. “I’m fine. I don’t… really know how, or why, but I think it has something to do with this Void stuff on my arm. I think it’s changed me a little more than I realised.” Before anyone can ask any further about it, she shakes her head to stop them, because she doesn’t really want to relive everything that had just happened. “How is everyone else, though?”

The others exchange a glance. “We… We’re all fine,” Luxinia says, biting at her lip. “After what happened to you… Well, we and many others helped to get as many people out of the city as possible.”

Nyx swallows. “H-how many…?”

She looks at Juni, trusting him to give her a fair, accurate, and (mostly) unbiased report, even though Nyx isn’t sure she really wants the answer. But she has to know.

When Juni’s ears droop, Nyx’s stomach sinks. It’s what she had expected, but…

“Not enough,” Baelia whispers, just to confirm it.

Luxinia jumps in. “But—but you know, a whole building fell on you!” she says, aiming for chipper but falling just flat. Nyx doesn’t know how to feel about that. “You made it out of that okay, right? So there’s no telling, you know?”

“I guess.” Nyx sighs. “I’m sorry. I… This is my fault. If I hadn’t gotten so mad and gone off on my own, maybe we could have worked together to save more people.”

“Nyx…”

“No, Lux. Don’t tell me that isn’t true. I know it is. I thought I had been growing, and I was trying to be better, but I keep getting angry and… And look where it’s gotten us: Ozzy’s gone, I upset you all, and so many more people have been hurt, all because I was selfish.”

“But Nyx—”

“Stop it. Both of you.”

Nyx and Luxinia turn. It’s Tavi who had spoken, this time. She’s looking right at Nyx, her whole body shaking. “You did the best you could. We saved as many as we could. Now we need to go save someone else, don’t we?” She tries to force herself to smile, but Nyx doesn’t need Luxinia’s powers to know that it’s fake. “Lux was just telling us that she knows a way to get us to Faerieland. So go on, Lux, tell us.”

“Um… right,” Luxinia says, her eyes darting from Tavi to Nyx and back again, until they settle on Nyx. “You remember my friend, the giant Walein…?”

Luxinia had told them her plan: construct a giant horn to summon the Walein that brought them to Neopia Central at the beginning of their journey, using pieces scavenged from the rubble. Baelia had reassured them that she could make one… not quite easily, but she could do it. When Nyx looks over to see her progress so far, it seems to be going well: the mouthpiece is done, and she’s working on a cone to put at the end of the horn now. Next to her, Styx drops a twig on top of a pile of sticks he had gathered, and Baelia graciously makes a show of trying to make them into something useful.

Everyone else has scattered to dig through the wreckage for anything they can find. Luxinia is using her lantern to search from above, and Juni is scanning the rubble with his new sight-powers, which they’ve decided to call Nether Sight. That leaves Nyx alone to use her void tendrils to sort through the debris—they’re working again, albeit with slight flickers here and there. And Tavi…

Nyx puts down the brick she had just lifted, deeming it useless. She glances over her shoulder at where Tavi’s poking around the rubble, but it doesn’t look like the Kyrii has accomplished much.

Nyx takes a breath and resolves to go over there, even though a tight knot in her chest warns her that Tavi probably doesn’t want company now. (Or maybe just doesn’t want hers.)

She goes over anyway.

“Hey,” Nyx says, boots crunching gravel beneath them. Tavi stops what she’s doing and lowers her head further toward the ground.

“Hey,” she says back, without looking up.

Nyx swallows. “Tavi,” she starts, voice wavering, “I just wanted to say… I wanted to say that I’m so—”

Before she can finish, Nyx is knocked right off her feet, the breath punched from her lungs. She lands flat on her back with a small “oof!” and scrambles for a moment, but then realises she’s trapped where she is, because there’s a warm, soft, shaking red Kyrii on top of her.

And that Kyrii is crying.

“Tavi—?!”

“Don’t you d-dare apologise!” Tavi sobs, lifting her head and pounding (a little painfully) on Nyx’s chest. “I’m the one who should apologise! I was upset and took a risk I shouldn’t have, just like I used to, and I—you almost—and the last thing I would have said to you was that you couldn’t have saved your brother—and then we were just going to leave, because we thought we’d lost you!”

She heaves one more great, trembling breath, squeezes her eyes and mouth shut, and then shuffles off of Nyx, wiping at the tears staining her fur. Nyx sits up too, letting Tavi cry for a second, because she doesn’t know what to say. And then…

“I yelled at you,” she says, softly, “because I didn’t know how to feel about the fact that you’d saved me. Nobody has ever done anything like that for me before, and I—I don’t really… know how to have friends.” Tavi opens her mouth to protest, but Nyx lifts a hand to stop her before she can get the words out. She doesn’t want to make Tavi lie and say she really is a good friend. She isn’t.

But she wants to be.

“I blamed you when I shouldn’t have,” Nyx continues. “It was easier than blaming myself for being too slow, or for not being there when Ozzy needed me… again. I couldn’t control my emotions, and I… I panicked. I said a lot of things that I shouldn’t have, and a lot of things I didn’t mean.”

Tavi sniffles. “You were upset. I d-didn’t take it personally.”

“But that’s just it. In the moment, it was personal.” Nyx reaches out for Tavi, but stops just shy of taking her hand. “I decided to be mad at you because I was mad at me, so I lashed out… and nearly lost one of the best friends I’ve ever had because of it.”

There’s silence between them, just for a moment. Tavi sniffles again, then smiles—a real smile, not forced this time—and laughs, a hiccup more than anything else, before closing the distance between their hands to entwine their fingers together. “You know… I’m loving all this self-realisation, and I appreciate the apology, but the truth is that you could have shot me with one of your void blasty thingies instead of just yelling at me, and I still wouldn’t care right now. I’m just so glad you’re alive!”

“I’m glad I am, too,” Nyx says. “And that you’re safe and sound. Thank you for saving me, Tavi. And I don’t just mean from that building.”

Tavi turns her head, trying and failing to hide the flush staining her cheeks beneath her fur. “Aw, I know you’d have done the same for me… and you did! So I’d say we’re about even now.”

“I don’t know about that,” Nyx mutters, but she accepts the concession anyway. There’s one more thing on her mind, though…

“So… are we good, Tavi?”

Tavi nods. “We’re more than good,” she says, squeezing Nyx’s hand. “And we’re going to make things right. Not just between us, but between you and Ozzy, too. So come on.” She grins and stands up, pulling Nyx to her feet beside her. “Let’s find whatever B needs, call that giant Walein, and get our butts to Faerieland!”

The Faerie Queen’s eyes harden, and she lowers herself into a fighting stance, the dust beginning to swirl about in the air again as a breeze kicks up around her.

“Please, don’t make me do this,” Fyora says. Her voice is cold, but there’s a tremble in it—could that possibly be a hint of regret at what she had done? Or is that simply fear for what is to come?

Either way, it nearly draws a laugh from Drakara. She clicks her tongue, tsk-tsk-tsk, as the light in the room begins to change. Orange and yellow and green and blue and periwinkle and violet all begin to swirl around Fyora as her hands and her staff begin to glow, and she summons a shimmering orb of white-pink light before her.

Drakara lifts the Acrimonious Paint Brush, holding it loosely, almost lazily, in her hand. Fyora grits her teeth. That does make Drakara laugh, and she steps forward, pulling back the hood of her cowl.

“Try me,” she says, welcoming the fight she had been dreaming of for almost longer than she can remember.

They move at once. Drakara brandishes the Acrimonious Paint Brush: sloshing rivers of grey sludge and Void essence whorl around her feet, rising into the air to surround her. They bubble and glimmer, Void energy and Faerie-magic combining with the brush to create something stronger, more powerful than that paltry tool, her failed Grey Painter, could ever have conceived. In time, perhaps—if he had been left in the forge just a little longer—he may have proven worthy of her careful planning. But now, as ever, Drakara knows she must only rely on herself.

The streams of grey and void and magic converge into a wave, and Drakara sends it rushing toward Fyora with a cackle of glee. It is all Fyora can do to raise her arms up before her and divert the tsunami with a wall of pink light, sending it cascading past her in two separate rushes. The dual waves crash against the walls, decimating everything in their path, sending furniture flying and glass and wood shattering. A part of Drakara internally sneers at the shoddy craftsmanship of everything in the room, but she isn’t terribly surprised by it.

The last of the deluge fizzles away, and Fyora leaps into the air. She conjures her magic again with her staff, pink glowing against the remnants of grey sludge, while her beautiful, perfect wings flutter to keep her aloft.

“I don’t want to hurt you, Drakara!” she cries.

“Oh, that’s funny,” Drakara retorts, though there’s no laughter on her lips. “You certainly seemed set on it before!”

Something snaps in Fyora then. She sucks in a breath through clenched teeth and grunts, shooting a beam of sparkling pink magic at Drakara from her staff, flecked with rainbow hues. It’s child’s play compared to the power Drakara now wields, and she sends another wave of grey magic at the Faerie Queen, meeting her head-on.

The two beams of energy collide, erupting in a flare of power that sends both Faeries careening back. Drakara manages to keep her footing, but Fyora, with all her dulled edges from years of complacent rule, is not so lucky: her back hits the chamber wall and she slides a short way down it, staff falling from her hand and clattering to the floor.

She manages to land on her feet after pushing herself off the wall, but the landing is rough: her knees buckle, but she stays upright, and she glares at Drakara through the messy, misplaced strands of pink hair that have fallen over her face. Through her teeth, Fyora grinds out, “We don’t have to do this. We can work this out—”

Another deluge of grey slings itself at Fyora, nearly knocking her back off her feet. At the last second, she manages to pull up another barrier—without the aid of her staff, this time—but it isn’t enough. The grey energy is supplemented, now, with tendrils of void energy, each and every one of them lashing against the barrier like greedy, starving tongues.

“Oh, like that’s ever been your strong suit!” Drakara sneers, pushing harder against Fyora’s barrier. Harder, harder, harder; more and more force applied—a hammer striking at a crack, a whittle carving around a flaw—until the barrier shatters, and Fyora is once more sent staggering back.

Drakara advances. One step at a time, the steady ring of a struck anvil sounding out with every click of her boots.

“But then again,” the Dark Faerie says, “you always were afraid of what I was capable of, weren’t you? You were afraid of what my weapons could do. How they could so easily strip you of your power.” Her lips curl up into a sharp, joyless smile. “That’s really why you did what you did, isn’t it?

Fyora steps back. “Drakara—”

“Don’t call me that,” Drakara snarls. “You lost that right long ago, Fifi.”

“Look out!” she called back, her pale blue wings glittering. Belatedly, the Fire Faerie leaned to the side and spun into a proper roll, very nearly rocketing through the fountain instead of around it; the end of her dress wasn’t lucky enough to make it out of the roll entirely dry, but she didn’t mind. The strength of her flames would make everything right again.

More importantly, her friend had pulled ahead of her.

“Wait up, Fifi!”

Drakara sped up in the air, extending her arms to cut through the wind resistance. Fyora laughed, rising up higher, and the two of them continued their pursuit. The tiny mechanical Carmariller was just ahead of them now, and they were gaining fast…

POP!

Something fizzled. Drakara’s eyes grew wide, and she reached for Fyora’s arm—“Look out!”—to pull her back. The Carmariller’s flight pattern stuttered, and it swerved and zig-zagged in the air, the mechanical parts of it rattling…

Drakara made a dive for it, but was held back by a sudden gust of wind. Fyora’s arms stretched out toward the Carmariller, guiding the savage breeze she had conjured to swirl around and surround it. The mechanical Petpet jittered in the air, its flight completely stopped, and went briefly, eerily still—

Before it fell apart with a tiny burst of fire.

Nuts and bolts and gears broke off from the Carmariller’s central mechanism, bursting through its metal carapace. Most of the shell remained intact, but with the damage that had been done, the poor clockwork creature could no longer function. Its pieces floated around the now-nonfunctional shell, dancing around it in an invisible tailwind, and slowly, Fyora used her magic to lower the whole thing to the ground.

“Quick thinking, Fifi,” Drakara said, alighting upon the cloud-garden’s ground next to her dearest friend. “You’ve really been practising your wind magic, huh?”

“A little,” Fyora confessed, a sheepish smile on her face. “But really, with how much trouble you get us into, I’ve just been practising to keep us safe!”

“Oh, like you’re not the one who suggested I make this little guy to keep an eye on what was going on in the castle.” Drakara laughed, laying a hand on Fyora’s shoulder. “I don’t know what you were hoping to achieve with that, anyway.”

“Me neither, truth be told,” Fyora said. “But there has to be something going on. It feels like something big is coming—like the queen is hiding something, or like there’s unrest in the court. Can’t you feel it too, Drakara?”

Drakara looked away, down at the broken Carmariller. She forced herself to smile, and walked over to pick it back up. “I don’t know. But if something is coming…” She turned to Fyora, and her smile became real. “We’ll stick together through it all. Won’t we?”

“Congratulations, Fifi.”

The voice came from somewhere behind her, echoing throughout the chamber. Fyora drew her attention away from the mirror, from her own as-yet unfamiliar reflection staring back at her: her wings, no longer the beautiful hue of the morning sky; her hair, fully pink now, without a single strand of blue left.

“Or should I say ‘Queen Fyora’?”

Fyora didn’t know how to feel about it, but she did know how to feel when Drakara came into her line of sight, leaning against the grand archway that made up her new bedroom door. Relief washed over her, blooming in the form of a smile.

“Thank you,” Fyora said. Drakara pushed off from the doorframe and made her way over, her beautiful, flame-orange wings fluttering as she moved. The tiniest crackles of fire danced in their iridescence, and Fyora felt her smile grow wider. Drakara’s energy always had been infectious, and she could practically see the excitement dancing beneath her skin.

She came to a stop before Fyora and reached out, running her long, calloused fingers through the ends of Fyora’s hair. “This’ll take some getting used to,” she said, in that teasing, clever way she sometimes would. “And so will this.”

Her hand danced up to trace the contours of the crown now sitting atop Fyora’s head. For a moment, she just lingered there, staring—but then she drew her hand away and turned toward the bed, making herself at home and sitting on the edge of it. “How does it feel?”

“Strange,” Fyora admitted. She looked at herself in the mirror again. “But not… wrong. I feel like… Like this was meant to be. Like I’ve become more like myself.”

“We always knew you were destined for greatness,” Drakara said.

“And so are you.” Fyora stood and made her way over to her friend, reaching out to take her hand.

“Maybe.” Drakara looked away in what Fyora could only assume was a play at modesty. “That staff I made you did do a lot to get us where we are now.”

“Exactly. You’re the one who said every queen needs a sceptre,” Fyora teased. “I mean it, Drakara. We’re going to do a lot of good together. I won’t be able to do this without you.”

Drakara smiled.

“All hail the queen,” she said, and squeezed Fyora’s hand.

How could everything have gone so wrong?

The edge of Faerieland was cold, the wind screaming in Drakara’s ears. Below, she could see the rolling oceans of Neopia, the hills and trees and mountains that made up the world they were supposed to protect. She glanced back behind her to measure the distance, unable to contain her fear. A fall from this height, without wings…

One of the guards stepped forward, a dull box in her hands that may have once been silver. Dark smoke unfurled from the seams of it, drawing all light and colour out of the surrounding air.

“Please,” Drakara begged, her eyes fixated on the box. “Please, no…”

Behind the guard, Fyora approached. The shimmering pink of her wings seemed duller as she stepped next to her guard—next to the box, that dreadful, colourless box—and her expression was set. Drawn tight. Carefully, carefully blank.

Just as it had been for years now.

Drakara fell to her knees, unable to hold onto her pride any longer. She could feel flames begin to manifest around her in small bursts, desperation breaking through the fissures in her composure. “You can’t do this—Fifi, please! After all we’ve been through, after all I’ve done for you—”

“Drakara,” Fyora began. Her eyes fell on her old friend, cold and flat as the tone of her voice. “You have been brought here today to be sentenced for your crimes.”

“My crimes?” Drakara gasped out, disbelieving. “What crimes? The creation of weapons to ensure peace for—”

A deep breath interrupted her, Fyora closing her eyes to force herself back into the stoicism she had adopted as Queen of the Faeries. “For the creation of unfathomably dangerous weapons, and for the continued pursuit of magicks forbidden to Faerie-kind…”

“No!” Drakara protested. “I did it for—I made those weapons to keep us safe! To keep you safe!”

Fyora swallowed. Her eyes opened—there was a waver in her stony facade, now, a wobble in her lip. A flaw that needed to be mended. “You disobeyed warnings. Repeated warnings. You endangered all of Faerieland with your research and your subterfuge. You endangered yourself.” Here she took another breath, swallowing thickly. “You knew the risks of your work. The same risks that the warlock, Bertrand Ashby, took and lost his life for. And yet even after you were told to abandon your research—for the good of Neopia—you persisted.”

“I did it for you, Fifi! You know this!”

Fyora looked away, for the first time, as though she were in pain. “It matters not your reasons, Drakara. Your weapons, in the wrong hands, could bring about the end of Faerieland—or the end of Neopia itself.”

“Or they could do a lot of good!” Drakara pleaded breathlessly. “Like—like your staff. Look at your staff, Fifi, I made that for you, and you’re still—”

Fyora snapped her gaze back to Drakara, as composed as she could keep it. Cracks still shone through. “For your crimes, Drakara, you have been sentenced…”

“No!”

Fyora swallowed. “You have been sentenced to be banished from Faerieland. You will be stripped of your wings and magic, and will undergo the Grey Ritual.”

“No…” Drakara’s voice was gone, nothing left of it but a husk—a shell without clockwork, a kiln with no flame. She crawled forward, on hands and knees, and reached out, one last time, to the Queen of the Faeries. To her old friend. Her most beloved companion.

“Fifi… Why?”

Fyora turned away. She gestured with her staff—her precious staff, the exception to the rule she had made up to punish Drakara with—and struck her arm out sharply, as if she meant to slice the air in twain. The guard holding the box approached Drakara, unlatching the dulled silver clasp.

“Fifi! Fifi!!!”

“I’m sorry, Drakara. It is for your own good. Once you have found yourself… Found an identity outside of your… obsession, then you may return.”

Drakara scrambled forward, desperately reaching for Fyora. Another Faerie—the new Battle Faerie, with her violet hair and her brilliant ice-and-fire sword—stepped before the queen, shield raised and blade at the ready. Drakara’s eyes flitted from her to Fyora, and in that moment, she realised she was truly—and forever would be—alone.

The guards approached. Drakara tried to fight. But in the end, the box opened, ripping the colour and magic from her. Her wings shattered and fell away, dissipating into the air like smoke rising from dying flames, and she was torn from all that she had loved.

Pink-violet eyes narrow, and Fyora grits her teeth. “Of course I remember. I remember everything.”

“As do I.” Drakara’s smile falls, but she quickly replaces it. “But memory is all we share now, isn’t it?”

Fyora shifts, bracing herself against the wall. She can hardly hold herself upright, it seems. Good. But Drakara does not allow that small victory to distract her, satisfying though it may be to see her once-good friend in pain. “When you stole my power and stripped me of my wings, I felt lost. Alone. As though I would never experience joy, happiness, or companionship ever again—but the hollowness within me ran far deeper than that. I thought I would never feel anything again. Not rage. Not sadness. Not even longing.”

She turns the Acrimonious Paint Brush in her hand. “I wandered for years, trying to find myself. Trying to figure out what I did wrong. And then, one day… I heard it. A voice I had long ignored, calling out to me again… Just as you once had. ‘How far you have fallen,’ it said. ‘O, sad Grey Faerie, you have suffered much in the darkness, while those who sought your downfall still yet bask in the warmth of the light. You, with no name, no purpose—come to me, and I shall give you all that your heart desires.’”

“And so I followed the voice. I obeyed it. And soon, once I had proven myself worthy of Her grace… She gave me what you took from me.

“Wings. Power. A name.”

Drakara’s lips curl upward, no humour at all in the cruel sneer that pulls at her expression. “She named me, and I was reborn. No longer a Grey Faerie, or even a Fire Faerie—a Dark Faerie. Who I was meant to be all along.”

“You’re wrong,” Fyora spits, stumbling as she tries to straighten her posture. “You aren’t a Dark Faerie, Drakara. You never were—not a real one. Just look at your wings!”

“Silence!” Drakara’s arm whips out, the wisps of grey energy surrounding the Acrimonious Paint Brush following the sharp, sudden motion in a blur. “You don’t get to tell me who I am! You don’t get to tell me how to feel when you’re the one who made me this way!”

The Acrimonious Paint Brush slices through the air, sending a wave of grey at the cowering Queen of the Faeries. Fyora ducks out of the way, conjuring up a wall of light to protect herself with, but the power of the Paint Brush batters against it, once again shattering the wall just as quickly as it had come up.

Drakara smirks—Fyora is weak without her staff. Perhaps she always had been.

And yet—

“I know you, Drakara,” Fyora insists, flying higher above the grey deluge. “You may act like a fully fledged dark faerie, but those feathered wings betray you—as does the use of your old name. There's still some of the Drakara I knew in there."

“But there’s none of the Fyora I knew left in you.”

The words are like acid, spat from Drakara’s lips. Fyora recoils as if she had been struck—but she still fights on, creating another barrier of light to shield herself from the next wave of grey energy rocketing toward her.

“I wanted to help you,” Fyora says. “All I ever wanted was—but I hurt you—and others, as well, all in the name of trying to make things right. I know that, Drakara. So please, stop this and we can—”

But Drakara barrels on, sending another barrage of grey at her opponent. “When I was given my new name,” she spits, “it was as if I gained back a piece of myself that I had lost. The piece that you took from me!”

Fyora’s eyes dart about. Drakara sees it—sees them land on her staff, a short distance away. The Faerie Queen lunges for it, but Drakara is one step quicker: she brings the Acrimonious Paint Brush down, as if trying to cleave the very air, and this time, her aim proves true: a barrage of grey slams into Fyora, sending her through the window of her chambers to land on the balcony outside in a heap, rolling and tumbling over herself—nowhere near the picture of elegance she was when the two of them were younger, back when they were nothing but an Air Faerie and a Fire Faerie. Two friends with nary a care in the world.

In the chaos and the overwhelming torrent of grey, Fyora’s staff gets swept up. Drakara directs the deluge toward the balcony’s edge and off it, sending her creation—her gift to Fyora, something she had been so proud of, so long ago—plummeting down to the gardens.

Fyora reaches for it anyway as it falls, but Drakara moves fast: she stomps on Fyora’s outstretched arm, pinning her wrist to the floor with a cruel grind of her heel. She grins, wild, and laughs, applying more and more pressure.

“It wasn’t just a part of me you took, Fifi. You took everything, and I have spent a lifetime trying to reconstruct it all! Now that what I seek is finally within my grasp, I will do the same to you as you have done to me!”

Fyora groans in pain. The sound is like music, played on the most finely-carved and tightly-tuned viola. Beautiful. But not as beautiful as the sight of Fyora is, with grey seeping into the violet-pink of her dress and slowly crawling across the surface of her skin. Even the tips of her wings are starting to lose their colour and vibrancy. It is as if, at long last, the very essence is being leeched from Fyora—slower than Drakara would like, and a part of her is mildly annoyed, but she has waited this long already. She can wait a little longer. After all, while the Faerie Queen did not achieve her position alone, until now, she had still been powerful enough to hold on to it by herself.

Fyora takes hold of Drakara’s ankle with her other hand, gritting her teeth as her fingers curl weakly around it. She yanks, but to no avail; Drakara simply grinds her boot down harder and sneers.

“Pathetic.” All traces of a smile have been wiped from the Dark Faerie’s face. Now there is only disgust and disdain. “You are nothing without the staff I crafted for you, Fifi. You are nothing without me.”

“Drakara…”

“That’s it. Beg, just like I did. It won’t do you any good, either.”

She steps off of Fyora’s wrist and reaches down, grabbing her old friend by the hair to pull her to her feet. And then, with one final smile as the Faerie Queen tries in vain to struggle from her grasp, Drakara lets her go. She shoves Fyora away, and watches as she falls off the castle tower, grey spreading halfway across her nearly useless wings.