The Goblin's Crown

Chapter Seventy Three: I am Here

Our breathing echoed as loud as the rushing winds outside the palace walls through the maze-like corridors as we followed Agi's soul making its way back to its creator...to its source. The source of all goblin life. The Hollow's seed. The goblin's crown.

"Hold on tight," Lysander said close to my ear. Suddenly Ib and I went airborne. With an arm around each of our waists, Lysander flew through the passageways. Orange and Gold flames trailed his wings, enveloping us in their ragefull light.

Even with Lysander carrying both Ib and I as fast as he could on his powerful wings, it felt as if we were barely moving. Agi's soul remained far ahead of us, burning in the darkness like the northern star. His soul was so bright and seemed so near, yet when I reached for it, even as I chased after it on a phoenix's wings, it remained just beyond my grasping fingers' touch.

"Faster!" I roared, commanding Lysander as if he were a goblin thrall. "Faster! Faster!" I held my hand over Agi's flying soul. I curled my fingers around it as if to pluck it from the sky. Wherever that star fell was where my love was being held. "Tear down every wall if you have to!" No matter the distance I had had to travel, no matter the number of souls I myself had had to destroy or the pain I'd endured, I was within a breath's distance from him now. A building certainly wasn't going to stand in the way of me holding him in my arms again.

The flames coming off Lysander's wings glowed brighter turning from angry fire to the startling, colorless light of lightning. It wrapped itself around him, sparked in his stormy eyes. The color of them, roiling and darkening like a true stormy sea. In them, I saw waves crashing against a ship, splintering it against a rocky shore and pulling its men beneath their waters to drown. The water the same gray color as the sky above it as lighting shot through it, striking a tree upon the shore.

Slowly, the bright green dot of Agi's soul grew within my grasp until we were right below it. The soul burned bright, bright green. It weaved and bobbed as it flew, as restless and energetic as Agi was in the flesh. It seemed to slow its flight as we neared it as if it were finally realizing that we were following it and was waiting for us to catch up. It swurved down the next corridor to the left and we followed close behind it. It hovered before a door for a moment, presumably waiting for us to get closer, then it slipped into the room beyond it, phasing through the thick wood blocking our path as if it were not there.

My heart leaped into my throat knowing that soon I would see his face, that he would be safe again. I leaped out of Lysander's arms and raced for the door with Ib soon following behind me.

Suddenly, the doors of the other cells swung open with such force they flew off of their hinges and fell to the floor in heaps of splintered wood and twisted metal. I heard Ib hiss a curse, a word soon mimicked by Lysander, as hundreds of skeletal Oberons poured from the cells, choking the corridor with their number and cutting off our path to Knut's prison cell.

Lysander let loose a scream of pure hatred at the sight of those creatures. Flames reached out from his fingertips into the hoard. They poured into the creatures' bones, burned them away.

"Failure." The Oberons spoke in echoing unison. The gathering numbers behind him grabbed Lysander from behind. They hung off of him, weighing him down, trying to force him to the ground. Lysander screamed as their claws and teeth tore into his wings. "You are a failure. Not worthy. Never worthy." They garbled into his ear. "It should have been you. Not Aris. Useless. Pitiful. Worthless. Nothing." With each muttered word, they piled their weight more and more onto Lysander's back. "It should have been you. It should have been you that died."

That last hateful sentence seemed to snap something inside of him. His roar grew louder, turning from a normal scream to the roar of an inferno. His whole being exploded into flame. Fire rushed out in every direction, rendering the creatures to smoke and continuing onward turning the passageway into what looked like the path to hell. I grabbed Ib and wrapped myself around him, covering him with my own body and shielding us both with my iron. He squirmed beneath me, the iron hurting him, but I held on all the same. Better he is uncomfortable than burning alive.