I Will Always Love You - Empires SMP S2 AU: Nature Wives

Chapter 6: Shadows Creeping (Shelby)

“...and just up here is the library,” Katherine’s head advisor Oscar jabbed a finger upwards, indicating that the library was up the spiral staircase that lead up into one of the many towers of Glimmer Grove castle.

Shelby’s stomach reeled at the sight of so many stairs, “Great,”

“Princess Katherine will join you later,” Oscar turned to exit the library stairwell, a long list clutched in hand, “When she has finished sorting out the bickering fisher folk. They’re always getting into arguments,”

“A bit like me and Tortoise,” Shelby nodded, still baffled by the amount of stairs. Oscar turned and gave Shelby a quizzical look, but she dismissed his unspoken question with a wave of her hand. The advisor turned, with a shrug, and left, hurrying down the corridor to put as much distance between him and the ‘crazy’ witch as possible.

Shelby narrowed her eyes at the stairs, following their curve up to the top of the tower and with a sigh, began to ascend them.

It sucked that Katherine had princess duties to attend to, that meant that Shelby wasn’t able to spend much time with her as she wanted too. Half way up the stairs, Shelby’s mind drifted her grandma, she must be hopping mad. Shelby hoped that she could get away with spending a day away from home.

By the time she got to the top, a slight trickle of sweat was dribbling down from her brow, which Shelby wiped away with the back of her hand, shaking her head at her form.

The smell of books wafted over Shelby and those thoughts were pushed to the back of her head.

She looked upwards taking in the shelves of books that stretched up to the ceiling in wonder. Surely there must be something here about Katherine’s curse. Running her finger along the spines of the books, she made her way to a massive window opposite the staircase.

She looked out down into the bustling village of Glimmer Grove with a small smile spread across her lips as she spotted Katherine down by the docks surrounded by angry looking fishermen who were jabbing fingers at each other.

Katherine had her hands out in attempt to get them to shut up with an annoyed expression in her eyes.

Shelby turned back to the books, focusing at the more important task at hand: finding a cure for Katherine’s curse.

Grabbing the small step ladder from the corner of the small library, she decided she would start browsing the top shelves for any clues. There wasn’t much on curses specifically but there were thick volumes of history that were gathering dust.

Shelby tapped each one of them, wiping the dust from its spines to read the titles:

A complete history of the Overgrown

Skeletron, your worst nightmare. How they came to be.

Top 10 most powerful wizards to have graced the planet.

Et cetera.

Shelby was in the middle of pulling ‘The worst mistakes in history’ from the shelf when the stairs creaked and the room darkened.

“Katherine?” Shelby grunted as the dust from the unread book flew up into her face.

Once the book was securely in her arms, she glanced down, “Where did you get all these books from?”

It wasn’t Katherine.

A smoking figure stood at the entrance to the library from the stairs and was looking up at Shelby with manic read eyes that stood out boldly against the black smoke that was rising up around it.

“Who the hell are you?” Shelby asked as she descended the ladder, wobbling slightly under the heavy weight of the book. She placed it down with a thud on the windowsill, ready for reading and turned to the quiet figure.

She drew her wand, gripping it tightly in her hand, “Could I please ask you to go? This isn’t your castle,”

The figure however stood silently, watching Shelby, a bemused spark in his eye. The smoke had peeled a little away from his face, revealing a pearly toothed smirk.

Shelby watched him as he began to laugh. A low unpleasant sound that echoed in Shelby’s eardrum.

She felt a sharp spark fly down her wand arm and disappear into the core of the wand, “Look. I don’t know who you are, or what you are,” her eyes flicked over his shadows, “But you are not wanted here so clear off,”

“I think you do know me though, don’t you,” said the figure.

He was right. Shelby recognised his accent through the gravelly scratch of his throat.

“Sausage-?”

The figure smiled and the shadows peeled back even further revealing the familiar face of her friend Sausage.

“But you’re-,”

Shelby didn’t have time to finish her sentence as the castle began to shake.

The sky clouded over and black oily rain began to fall from the sky as Shelby lunged for a book shelf to steady herself as the castle shook, a great rumbling sound echoing through the castle. She turned to see if Sausage was holding onto something, but he had disappeared just as quickly as he had appeared.

Shelby watched, eyes wide as the castle shook even harder and the crack of plaster and brick split through the silence. Books tumbled off the shelves, landing with puffs of dust on the wooden floor around Shelby as she brought up a protective shield around her with the help of her wand, still clutching the bookshelf next to her for support.

She gritted her teeth as one final rumble screamed through the castle and soon after that the castle stopped shaking.

The witch stood panting for a second, waiting for something to happen but when nothing did, she prised herself from the book shelf, letting her magical shield fall from around her.

Upon instinct the first thing she did was dash over to the window, hurdling over fallen tomes to get to it.

She planted both of her hands against the glass as she peered out, looking in shock at the landscape.

The curse had spread.

The infertile land had crawled forward a lot, past Shelby’s magical border and swallowing some of the royal gardens in its wake.

The villagers were now gathered and panicked in the royal gardens, pointing fingers at the cursed land. Katherine was at their head, trying to calm them, which proved to be harder than it seemed.

Katherine.

Shelby left the window, stumbling over the books, making for the stairs to go down to the ground and help Katherine.

She nearly fell head first into Shadow Sausage who’s eyes were glinting with malice.

“Be careful, Shelby,

It will get you too,”