Annabel awakens to the unpleasant, but now totally familiar, stench of sulphur. She pries her eyes open to see Lucifer, Charleton, and Corliss stumbling through her pile of discarded clothes. She is far more comfortable now that she has changed, and she feels a bit safer, what with her knives with her and all.
"Good morning," Annabel remarks simply.
Lucifer grins and waves, Corliss nods, and Charleton pops out and back in, bearing a large plate of various food, few of which is familiar even vaguely to Annabel. She can not help but chuckle as she sits up and takes the plate. He pops out again and returns with a fork and knife.
"Morning!" he remarks and makes one final trip, returning with a glass of water. "We made you eggs, bacon, pancakes, and green beans!" he declares, pointing to each item. He pokes her with the butt of the fork before whispering, "And you'd better eat all your green beans! We want you to be strong and healthy and all that raff!"
Annabel laughs and takes the silverware from him before chowing down and thoroughly enjoying the food.
"We stole it from Hend's personal kitchens," Lucifer explains before Corliss can elbow him and Charleton can cuff him upside the head to be quiet. He grabs his head and screams, "OWWWWWW!! Always abuse!" and then promptly teleports to Annabel's shoulder.
They wait in relative silence until Annabel finishes her breakfast, green beans and all.
"Lucy tells me you've awakened," Corliss begins when Annabel has finished.
"He's told me the same. I don't know what he means, really," Annabel admits. "Though he tried to explain for me." She tosses an apologetic look to Lucifer who heaves a sigh.
"I'll get the Cöd," Lucifer responds monotonously and teleports off Annabel's shoulder. He returns in a few moments with a battered copy of a book. The title has long-since faded from the cover, and Lucifer lays it down before her with the utmost care. Pages are torn, crumpled, and otherwise simply missing all throughout the book, and he turns the pages gingerly, definitely afraid of damaging it further.
"This is probably a silly question, but what is the Cöd?" Annabel probes as they wait for Lucifer to find the proper spot as he turns the pages with his hooves, oddly enough.
"The Cöd is the book of prophecy that appeared after Hend built the labyrinth. One of its tales is so similar to our predicament here, that we have ascertained that is a true prophecy," Corliss supplies. She turns to Charleton, who nods in agreement. "We imagine that 'Cöd' is not its true title, but it came to us so battered, so beaten, that all that remained of its title were the letters C, O, and D. Rather than call it Cod, since that was the name of one of our number at the time, we called it Cöd."
"I found it!" Lucifer suddenly declares.
"Ah! Very good!" Corliss replies with a kindly pat on his back.
"So what is the prophecy of the awakening, exactly?" Annabel wants to know, for she is curious.
Charleton bridges the gap to the book and points with his hoof to a note in the margin. "After the awakening, the savior is able to cast spells of amazing power. They are listed, as this note here says, in Appendix Q. Unfortunately, however, Appendix Q had been removed when we found the book. I can only assume that Hend fears the spells, and thusly removed them from the book. Then again, someone else could have taken them and used them in lue of toilet paper for all I know," he admitted with an indifferent shrug.
"We've started to reconstruct Appendix Q," Corliss interjects, fixing her brother with a pointed, though totally blank, stare. She turns back to Annabel and spreads her arms wide in an all-encompassing gesture. "We've scoured the book for any mention of you, good Mistress Nabel, and your spells. We've found quite a few, but I hardly think they're enough to fill the missing section." She ducks her head appologetically.
"But you have some, and that is a good thing," Annabel replies, trying to stay positive.
"Of course it is," Corliss replies. "I'll go get them for you." She pops out, and stays away for a spot of time.
Annabel sighs while the gorgon is gone. "All this popping in and out is going to drive me batty," she groans.
Lucifer chuckles as Charleton inspects the Second Gate's inscription, teleporting high and letting himself read as he falls before repeating the process before he can hit the ground and hurt himself..
Annabel stares off into the labyrinth, waiting for Corliss to return. She drums her fingers on the ground impatiently as Lucifer makes off with her breakfast dishes. He returns with a glass of water and a toothbrush already pasted. "Brush," he commands in his shrill, tiny voice.
Annabel brushes her teeth, and they wait some more.
Corliss riffles through the stack of papers, searching desperately for the compilation of the spells they had created for Annabel's awakening. She begins cursing violently, for as she stares blankly outwardly, her inner foresight tells her she's not going to find what she seeks. Someone else has it.
She turns and stares straight ahead. She senses the presence of a hand, and then something snares her, holding her so that only her feet and her head are free. Her captor laughs.
"Let me go, Mel!" Corliss demands crossly.
Mel only laughs harder. "I don't think so, old lady," he replies, and he tosses her in a jar.
Immediately, Corliss' first reaction is to teleport away. However, something in the jar keeps her from doing so. She then tries flight, but the confines of the jar are too small for her to stretch her wings.
"You wretched lout!" she screeches. "Release me! I command you!"
"I don't take orders from you, Corliss," Mel replies, and he screws the lid onto the jar.
Charleton and Lucifer suddenly jerk their heads upward, staring off into the darkness before turning to one another and then to Annabel.
"What's wrong?" Annabel asks, suddenly enveloped in a blanket of impending doom.
"Mel," Lucifer snarls with disdain before teleporting away.
Charleton stares a bit longer at Annabel. "Go to the Third Gate without us. You can figure out its riddle. Turn right at all the forks and left at all junctions of three or more. You should be there soon enough. Best of luck!" he cries, forcing cheer, before teleporting away, leaving Annabel alone in the darkness.
Annabel followed Charleton's instructions quite religiously as she traveled through the serpentine corridors. Right at the forks, left at the intersections. It wasn't all too difficult to find her way, and she rightfully assumed that the Third Gate was the only anomally in the whole mess.
Now, she stands before the Third Gate, watching it. It is a fountain overflowing with a dark liquid. Phosphorescent plants line its edges, and a very wide river flows through it. The bubbling liquid suddenly jets high into the air, hissing, spitting, and steaming away.
It falls and splashes all over Annabel. She, fearing it to be acid, immediately panics. However, she soon finds the panic is undue, for her skin is not at all seared by the carbon-eating properties of acid. Instead, the liquid is simply warm on her skin. It feels, vaguely, like the blood of an enemy has splattered all over her. Perplexed, she crouches by the fountain.
This near to the glow of the light-bearing plants, Annabel can not mistake that the liquid is colored red. It pulses towards the fountain, where it bubbles up, before continuing on its eerie trek through the maze. What could she have to do here? She must cross, but it would be stupid to cross a river in barely-augmented darkness. She could easilly take a wrong step and fall in, and since there had never been any wells of water on World, she has no clue how to swim. That would be bad, for she could drown.
Still curious, Annabel is suddenly stricken by an insatiable thirst. She cups her hand and dips it into the river before sipping the substance tentatively. Indeed, it carries the irony bite of blood. However, that taste soon dissapates into that of cold, clean, clear water. She feels refreshed and contented from that simple handful of water.
"This is strange, and really pushing whatever this awakening thing is supposed to entail," Annabel mutters suspiciously. Wondering, she thrusts her hand into the bloody river. At first, the river remains unchanged. Then, as soon as she decides that nothing will happen, the blood changes to water. Glowing water.
Annabel laughs at the absurdity of it all. Water doesn't glow! Well, all the water that she has ever seen never glowed. It's simply a silly concept.
However, the pure, crisp radience of the water in the river can not be discounted. This water definitely glows. Suddenly, it begins to become more than simply cold. It becomes freezing cold.
Annabel recoils in surprise, jerking her hand out of the river. She blinks at her hand and touches it to her cheek, pressing both palm and knuckles to her face. Her hand is as warm as the rest of her, and it is not even wet. Could the river be an illusion?
No. The water tasted far too real for it to be illusory. Annabel rises and walks cautiously to stand before the fountain. The riddle of the Third Gate is an odd one. Evidently she has to turn the blood of the river into water. The question is: How should she go about it?
"OWWW!!"
"Begone! Fiend! Wretch! Away with you!"
"STOP POKING ME!"
Laughter follows, and Mel, who is less than entertained at having been bested by a bunch of tiny, quasi-sentient magical beings disappears. The jar containing Corliss falls to the ground, shattering on impact.
"Well no wonder I couldn't get out," she grumbles. "It was simply glass!" Charleton and Lucifer pull the heavier shards from off their sister and help her to her feet.
Charleton blinks and shakes his head. "I can't believe you, of all of us, would neglect to expect the obvioius."
Corliss whomps him good for that crack. "Listen, Buster! Just because I'm a Seer doesn't mean I can't make mistakes! I'm only Gehenian!"
Charleton is quite glad that Corliss doesn't have hooves, but he cowers just to mollify her bruised ego. "Of course, Corliss," he breathes.
Lucifer suddenly glances around. "We left Annabel alone!" he exclaims, fear widening his eyes. "No one's watching her! Something bad could happen!"
Charleton rolls his eyes, but Corliss pats her youngest brother on the shoulder comfortingly. "There, there. She's not destined to be the savior with us coddling her all the time. Let's go see how we can help her, though. Or at least just watch her, to make sure she stays out of trouble."
Lucifer nods and he and Corliss pop out. Charleton, however, has not discounted that they never did get the spell list back from Mel. That could be dangerous. Though it has been proven that Gehenians can not cast the spells, no human has ever tried to use them. If Mel does and is successful...
Charleton shudders to think and follows his siblings to keeping a watchful eye on their good savior.
After long moments of deliberation, Annabel finally decided that walking in the fountain itself would probably achieve the desired effect. So, now she walks through the fountain, but she had not counted in that, of course, the water would have no reason to be shallow. Silly her. She takes another step, and she finds herself dunked in the water. She pushes desperately and finds herself barely able to keep her head above the bloody pool, but at least the blood is begining to turn into water. Her means may not be very affective, but the end result is at least the desireable one.
Suddenly, a force from above presses down on her neck, shoving her deep into the water. She gasps, startled, and inhales a lungful of water as a result. She coughs and sputters, but all she happens to do is lose her only hope of staying alive.
Panicking, a dull pain echoes through her back, and she notices her wings have emerged again. She has absolutely no clue as to what to do. Then, on an impulse and hoping whatever it is doesn't try to break her neck, she wills her wings to flap, and they obey. She rockets up through the water and outward. She feels the heavy force fall away from her neck, and then she turns to face its creator.
She should have known to expect to see Mel kneeling by the water, shoving her further downward. She mentally kicks herself for even thinking that she had permanantly bested him. Of course he has not been beaten. She opens her mouth to speak, but she chokes on water.
Any sort of majesty that may have been commanded from her sudden, literally brilliant appearance, is lost as she descends quickly to the other bank to cough up water. She coughs and gasps for a good five minutes before looking up, fires burning in her eyes. She glares at Mel, who had not moved in the time, and launches herself at him, gliding on her wings.
Mel, however, is not so stupid as he ever seemed. He is not there when she arrives. He did not move or anything, he simply disappeared, like how he did when he did once he was finished lecturing her yesterday. Annabel's wings melt into her back, and she throws herself into a kneel.
"WHY!" she screams, her voice echoing off the walls of the maze.
"Why what, good Mistress Nabel?" Lucifer ventures as he and his siblings teleport into view beside her.
"Why can't I kill him?" she demands.
"Well..."
"Why can't I make him pay for what he's done?"
"You see..."
"Why can't everything just be as simple as it used to be?"
She takes a deep breath and glances at Lucifer and the others. They aren't looking at her. Instead, they are staring at the Third Gate. It is glowing a brilliant, milky white, the water flowing in both directions from the fountain. The dark blood that had previously inhabited the rivers is eliminated. Success.
The Third Gate has opened.
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