Child of the Moon.

~Chapter Twenty-Six~

Hector kept hearing Eugene mumble to himself from where he was sitting behind him. He still kept one arm wrapped around Hector's waist, but his main concern was in reading over the paper that Hector had given him for the sixth time.

Only a few minutes into the ride to the capital of Corona from Cassandra's black rock fortress, Hector had started thinking over the best way to defeat Zhan Tiri and Cassandra. After around an hour and a half, he had come up with as good a plan as he was going to get.

He had then reached into one of the pouches on the side of Tekakwitha's saddle and pulled out one of the journals he kept. He had to reach down a second time to get the quill and ink, but once he had everything he needed, Hector began to quickly write down his plan.

Once he finished and the ink had at least mostly dried, he had torn the paper out of the journal and handed the paper back to Eugene, instructing him to read it carefully before passing it back to Edmund and Adira. But after everyone had read it over, when they passed it back up to Hector, Eugene kept it. He had now read over it multiple times, as if he were scared that he would forget the whole plan when they arrived at the city.

The plan itself was relatively simple. Hector knew from what Adira had told him plus his own reasoning that the only way for the Moonstone to be neutralized was for it to come into direct contact with its counterpart, the Sundrop. In other words, Rapunzel had to touch the Moonstone for anything to happen. No one was entirely sure what would happen to Rapunzel herself, but they knew that the Moonstone would be destroyed upon contact with its opposite. And so, Hector knew that first and foremost, Rapunzel had to touch the Moonstone at any cost.

Eugene had informed Hector of Varian's plan to use Demanitus' portal to send Zhan Tiri back to the netherworld, where the engineer had sent her last time she'd been wreaking havoc on Earth. Hector had been immensely proud to hear that his nephew had been so brave and such a genius in building the portal. However, he was worried for the boy's safety on top of his fear that the portal hadn't worked at all. If Zhan Tiri was still at Cassandra's side, then it would be almost impossible to get close enough to the thief to neutralize the Moonstone. And so, Hector just had to trust that his nephew's mission had gone according to the teen's calculations.

Hector hoped to use the small army that Eugene had managed to form from the refugees to distract Cassandra enough in order to allow Rapunzel to get close enough to touch the Moonstone.

Rapunzel's seventy feet of magical hair actually helped majorly in this plan. Eugene had told Hector that all magical connection to the Sundrop had been expressed through her tears or her hair. Hector hoped that this meant that all Rapunzel would have to do was throw some of her hair around Cassandra's chest from a relatively safe distance, therefore connecting the Sundrop and the Moonstone.

Finally, as the last half hour of their journey to the city began, Eugene handed the paper on which Hector had written his entire strategy back to the warrior. Hector took some thin twine out of the small pouch on his belt and cut a piece of it using his teeth. He then rolled the paper up and carefully tied the small scroll closed. Hector secured it to his belt with another piece of twine.

Soon after, the four began to hear the crashing and splintering of crumbling buildings and walls accompanied by the screams and battle cries of countless people. More and more black rocks cluttered the roads and countryside the closer that they got to the city. The smell of smoke began to fill the air.

The city came into view as Tekakwitha broke through the tree line. The city somehow looked worse then the last time Eugene had seen it. New black rocks erupted from the ground puncturing the building and walls, most in the center of the city, near the palace.