Arthur 4 : The return of the prince

Chapter 1

It had only been a few hours since M the Evil had been defeated. Everyone was trying to repair the damage he had caused in this small village in the human world. The last fires burning the buildings had been extinguished, the last care was applied to the wounded and the last stones of M the Evil were captured and taken away by the military forces who intervened on the spot. The clouds of smoke had cleared, giving way to a beautiful late afternoon sun.

Only one detail remained disturbing: the remains of a black costume on the ground, inside a building whose door was always open. The fugitive must have tried to hide in this makeshift disguise before fleeing, leaving his costume behind. No one seems to have noticed this detail, except perhaps a journalist who has been taking a powder for a long time. Anyway, the concerned fugitive was already far from the village.

Here he is, running through a field. Except for him, no one was in sight. He seemed to measure not far from two meters and his physique seemed impressive. He was wearing an imposing brown suit of armour, resembling an amalgam of dried walnut shells, with tips sticking out of his shoulder pads. His matching helmet was adorned with a few blades acting as a crest, and he covered the upper part of his skull, eyes and nose. The unprotected part of his face revealed an extremely pale chin with a scar, and a mouth full of pointed teeth, as well as two long ears, each of which hung on one side of his skull. Although it may seem frightening at first glance, a sentence that was said to him allows to claim the contrary: "I must convince everyone that you are a good person, Darkos. I’m glad you and I are friends."

Knowing that he had only one place left to go, Darkos went there immediately. It was the only place where people could trust him and the only place to remind him of his origins, when he was only two millimetres tall. It was the home of Archibald, the grandfather of the hero of the seven kingdoms in which he had grown up.

In the next field, on the other side of the tarred road, a bee seemed to be heading in the same direction as him, except that it had finally overtaken Darkos, who, by dint of running, had ended up slowing down the pace under pain of falling tired. If you look closely, you might see two tiny passengers on his back. The passengers were at least two millimeters tall, both with reddish hair and a pair of long pointed ears, resembling elves. But the minimoys, as Archibald called them, were much more than that.

The first minimoy looked like a little boy, a little plump and with beautiful blue eyes. The second minimoy, located behind the first, was a beautiful girl with a sword in the sheath hanging from her belt. But she seemed somewhat saddened, in spite of the victory against M the Evil, that she would soon tell her people.

An hour later, the bee finally arrived at Archibald’s house. When they flew over the garden, the girl spoke and addressed the bee:

"Pretty, please take us down to our village."

His brother seemed to hear a touch of bitterness in his sister’s voice. So he spoke in turn:

"Selenia, is everything okay?"

"I’m all right, Betamèche," she said, before a long sigh, "I just miss him already."

"So do I sister, so do I..." replied Betamèche, trying to console her, when the bee had finally touched the ground.

Selenia and Betamèche finally put their foot on the ground, and thanked the bee for having placed them near their home before letting her go back to her hive in the forest. They advanced towards a tunnel that sank into the earth, until they reached a crossroads underground. To their left, the tunnel extended as far as the eye could see. To their right was a large door. Instinctively, Selenia and Betamèche went towards the door, since it was the door of their village.

Selenia leaded her little brother in a slow move, taking time to observe the tunnel around her. She reminisced every time she has taken this path with her beloved little man. She remembered, for example, when he rescued her just in time from an ambush of seids hidden behind a painted canvas, during her very first encounter with the chosen one of her heart. She relived the first steps of her very first adventure at his side, as well as the hasty return to their village in his car driving as fast as it could to escape the ruthless flood that M the Evil had unleashed on them. * This underground corridor was loaded with their common stories and Selenia was distressed that she could not take this path again with her soul mate, hand in hand.