Max and the adventure

Chapter 21 Fairy garden

So, my objective is clear, in my traing stay still like they want me to. That way Frank can easily sneak behind the castle and steal the ruby. Its probably going to work, but im not certain.

"Wake Up Slave!" Nevar's Voice is harsh, with a bit of humor where i can't tell if he's joking or not. "You've guarding to do!" His voice is kinda annoying right now, tho i am in a cage right now. Nevar opens the cage and brings me back into the changing room, puts me back into the uncomfortable black armor and we go back to the same entrance like yesterday. Like yesterday, the entirety of his army is here watching over me that i don't do anything against them. Meanwhile Frank is already in the treasure room with the ruby through the second entrance.

Then all the color turns off, everything. My color, the sky loses its red, the grass has become wilted and grey and everything is grey, except their armor. The soldiers look weaker, almost sick, as if something close to their life source is not there. It feels like time is stopped for them. Im able to move, but they are frozen, its weird.

Frank runs up to me, holding the ruby, the only bit of color here. We hug each other and celebrate, we've won.

But something feels off, like im not sure if we've actually won. We can put them in their own cells, which we did, but now time is frozen and the world is colorless. What are we meant to do- "could we bring back the fairies?" I talk to myself, "with the ruby?" Frank asks sounding a little confused. "Well it's magic afterall..." im not quite confident it'll work, but hope it does, i really want to have them back. They were some of my best friends back in the day. The ruby iluminates its red color. How would we use its power to reverse death? That is the question im asking myself, well im still wondering how we reverse that frozen time, which i think should be dealt with first. Could we use it to get back Lilath too? There are so many things we could do, so many...

The colors return to normal and nevar and his army is trapped in his own cell he can't get out of right now.

I think We should first walk to moonchester to celbrate. We walk on a green dirt road that goes to moonchester's dark castle, we arrive to a bombed castle, it barely looks like anything, but we can tell it was the castle. There isn't anything to hint it was more than a fancy house as it is completely destroyed. I completely panic to the thought of one of our most trusted ally being dead.

We look around and inside the ruins, walking past Lilath's grave and through a basement door in the ground that i nearly forgot existed. It is also quite damaged, but not as much as the main building that already had some damage from the years of it being left to rot.

Frank lights a torch and we go into the dark basement. It begins with a giant flight of stairs. I can't tell if i should feel protected by the fact its underground, or be intimidated by the amount of stairs. The ruby glows more, the closer we get to the bottom of those stairs. After minutes of steap stairs we get to the end of the flight of stairs. The ruby is brighter than the torch frank brought, so he puts the fire out. Im to scared of fire to look at him doing it. The bottom reminds me of the dungeon that my grandma's basement is, slowly falling apart with its stone structure and old, slowly rotting wooden doors. I have a bad feeling about this place. We explore more, the ruby dimming the deeper we go through the basement. "Frank, im scared" i cling to frank. "Max, im sure this is going to be fine, im not going to let you die now." Frank is reasurring. We venture deeper into the maze that is this basement. My heart beat stops for a second and my stomache hurts as we get into the 50th room.

Moonchester's corpse lies there, multiple bullets through his helmet and chest armor, his body slowly decaying. I cry, i feel vulnerable. I feel lost, like there's no point in doing this if everyone i ever care about just dies. There is an argument to be made that the fairies that got turned into stone could be saved, but not for Lilath, not for Moonchester... not for the snow town...