Star Child

Chapter XIV: The Witch, the Queen, and the Stardust (Part 1)

As the fire echoed across the hall, something possessed Nicolas to get up slowly and watch, instead of fleeing like most of the other guests. Next to him, Celine stood up as well, her breath shallow and her eyes alit with the passion and flickering of the blue flames. Azure glowing showered the room as the lights dimmed because of the chaos, leaving the flickering flames as the only source.

"We need to stop her somehow," spoke Nicolas numbly, watching the fire in a stasis of fear. "But I don't think I can move." Celine looked over at him and saw that his fear had locked his body in place, with invisible chains of a non malleable iron. Celine, her mask singing her face because of the heat, removed both hers and Nicolas'. "She's spicy though, isn't she?" Nicolas whispered as Celine took the masks, chuckling slightly and nervously.

"How on earth do we stop this heck-ish witch?" Celine responded as Nicolas attempted to gain the courage to do something, which he wasn't sure of. In a blitz of fiery haze, Nicolas felt a bony hand creep onto his shoulder and a familiar voice whisper in his ear;

"Be the stars."

Nicolas looked back to see where Catrina was, but she had vanished before he could glimpse upon her painted bones. Next to him, Celine was focusing on formulating a plan, talking to herself, but time was running short.

"We need some sort of lure... get her over to the cake..." Feeling his pockets, Nicolas found the bottle of flower petals, took it out, and opened the stopper. Dropping the small petals into his hand, Nicolas followed its instructions and blew the petals out into the fiery air. Flowing through the flames by following some sort of air current, they whisked right into Matilda's face, snapping like fire crackers.

Producing brilliant and dazzling flashes of light, not unlike a fireworks show, the flower petals snapped and crackled and popped all around Matilda, burning her skin with the crimson lights that it produced. Once he did it, Nicolas realized what a bad decision it was to do that; at the time, it seemed good, because it would provided a distraction to allow Celine to formulate a plan. But now, he realized that Matilda was terrifyingly powerful.

"YOU!" the Witch screamed through the cackling flames.

"ME!" Nicolas screamed back.

"What the heckie did you do, Nicolas?! I'm not done with the plan!" Celine shouted at Nicolas as he took a small cake, shoved it in his starving mouth, drank a small glass of some weird liquid that looked like but was not water, and sprinted for his life.

"I'm sorry, Celine!" Nicolas yelled in a panicked tone. "I'll try to distract her while you finish your plan. Also, I'll try not to die." And he raced away, dodging in between the weaning amounts of people who were still in the room. The guards who were there had tried to stop the raging witch, but it ended only in a fiery massacre.

"It's alright star child! Just keep her away from the cake for now!" Celine called back.

"My name's Nicolas!"

"Oh, right."

Hoping that the wind spirit was still somewhere inside of him, even if just a little bit, Nicolas dashed across the room and through the last of the people. Now he could see; all that was left was Celine's brother, that abusive guard from before, that weird wolf masked person, some raven-looking lady, the Jester, Theo, Selena, and Matilda. Not to mention Nicolas and Celine.

Suddenly, the tickling of fiery fingers began to caress his leg, and Nicolas realized that she was right behind him. This was then proven when she tackled him right into a table, sending the structure to the marble floor.