The Descendants; The Return of the Unnamed

Gone for Good

A strange feeling of emptiness in her chest made Azaelia realise what she was too distracted to notice in the midst of battle. She couldn't feel Valkyrie anymore. It was as if her soul was...gone. The feeling sent her sprinting through the bustling Sanctuary in a hurry, desperate to find out if anyone knew anything about her sister's whereabouts. Azaelia arrived in the medical wing and Doctor Synecdoche pointed her towards a row of curtained off hospital beds where Kenspeckle Grouse was working. With a jolt, it was as if Valkyrie's soul was back on her radar. She only had to follow the pull in the pit of her stomach to locate Valkyrie, slipping through a curtain to find the girl ripping wires off herself.

"We need to get Alice and Vivi in here, now." Valkyrie was telling a tense Skulduggery and increasingly grumpy Doctor Grouse.

"Well, you have one of the two. And might I just add, you lucked out on which it was." Azaelia tossed her hair over her shoulder and smirked in relief. "What were you guys doing in here? Having a nice nap while the rest of us are actually fighting?"

"Alice...I mean, Azaelia, great, you're here. Long story short, we figured out that if we can slip into a deep enough state of unconsciousness, our souls can wander to the realm of the Enchantress and we managed to contact her. She was talking in this weird cryptic language and at first it was really confusing..."

"Tell me about it," Azaelia huffed and muttered under her breath, recalling her own strange conversations with their ancestor.

"But then," Valkyrie continued. "I stopped thinking about it in a philosophical way and started thinking about it literally. That's when it came to me. The Enchantress said that the answer to the future is the past. We want to know how to trap the Unnamed. Well, it's happened before. So how did they do it?"

"The Ancients caught him off guard in the Caves of the Void - I'm assuming it was because the crystals didn't sing - and pushed him into a time-rift with a constant loop of magic debilitating his own body." Skulduggery answered.

"Exactly. And Azaelia, you said that the Enchantress told you that the laws of the Universe are more powerful than the Unnamed, meaning that anyone left in a time-space rift gets torn apart and trapped. The small rift in the Caves was enough to keep him trapped, his own magic healing his body as it was ripped apart. However, being stuck between the fabric of reality...even the Unnamed won't survive. The way to push the Unnamed through that portal is to catch him off guard like last time. Only we can't take him to the Caves to confuse him. We need to come up with our own disorientating masquerade."

"And how do you propose we do that?" Kenspeckle questioned.

"The best way to catch someone off guard is by manipulating their emotions." Azaelia recalled how she bested Ellion in their previous matches. "

"But the Unnamed doesn't have emotions, just like the Faceless Ones." The old man countered the brunette's suggestion.

"That's not necessarily true." Valkyrie frowned, deep in thought. "When Skulduggery was trapped in the Faceless Ones' dimension they kept him alive to alleviate their boredom. It was fun for them. Like a child finds it fun to destroy their toys. They did have emotions. They acted like children, which they kind of are. The Forgotten made them as his children. It makes sense."

"Val is onto something. The reason why the Unnamed is so nonchalant is because he has a superiority complex and doesn't interact with anyone who he deems unimportant to him. But one thing that is important to him is revenge, fueled off his strong anger and resentment towards humans. This all started because he lost his beloved sister to a mortal man. He loved her and she left him for a human. He's never moved on from that. That's why he had such a fascination with Valkyrie and I, because we remind him of her." Azaelia began pacing back and forth along the tiled floor. "If there was one thing I learned while the Unnamed was in my head, it was that he let his anger consume him. What could make him more angry than seeing the mortal man that took his sister from him?"

"If we could make an illusion resembling that man, it would take up the Unnamed attention long enough for Ellion to sneak up behind him, invisible, and use the god-killer dagger to weaken the body before giving one mighty shove into a portal." Skulduggery nodded in approval.

"I think I know just the thing to help us with that." Azalea grinned as she thought of the strange cylindrical object the Enchantress had gifted her.

"I can lure the Unnamed away from the army and into a secluded part of Roarhaven while Azaelia, Ellion and Vivi hide in waiting. Skulduggery, you're going to need to come in as a faux trap, because the Unnamed will know Valkyrie is leading him into an ambush. It'll throw him off the scent long enough to produce the illusion. You two can goad him as a distraction, meanwhile Ellion will sneak up behind and as Ellion stabs him, Vivi and I'll make the portal. And then, crisis averted." Valkyrie plotted.

"Before we get there, we're going to have to take some precautions. Valkyrie, you need to make sure there is no chance of you being killed before you can get the Unnamed to the planned point." Azalea began listing the flaws in their plan. "Vivi, Ellion and I are all going to need to be boosted."

"The boosting is the easy part. The Unnamed not killing me part is...not so easy." Valkyrie hummed in dry amusement.

"What if there is a way to reactivate the Meryyn Sigil." Skulduggery mused.

"If there is a way, it's your job to find out, Detective." Kenspeckle said gruffly, gaining an explanation for the tattoo curling around Valkyrie's bicep.

"I think that for once in our lives we have a solid plan." The dark-haired mage grinned at her younger sister.

"Providing everything goes smoothly, that is." Azalea raised a doubtful eyebrow.