Enchantress 4 - Turtle Eclipse

Lord Slipspring stepped closer to Nick and said, "These two men were caught invading Lancre, and these two men were spying."

"Duke Hampton and Colonel Handpipe were traveling under MY invitation, Don and Wayne were looking for them under MY orders." He turned to the king and said, "Your Majesty, I charge viscount Slipspring with kidnapping, battery, and attempted murder of nobility."

King Verance looked at Nick and shook his head slowly. He was mouthing words but nothing was coming out.

"Honey," said Octavia, "something is very wrong..."

"Can you get the captives back to the watch house?"

"Here," she handed Nick the baby who would normally be watched by Crown Princess Esme, then she and the four men disappeared.

"You just declared war on Lancre, our troops will be marching on Wægn within the hour." Slipspring was practically dancing with glee, while Lords Cadence and Singe grinned at Nick.

Something behind Slipspring fluttered, then he remembered what Octavia told him in the sauna during that horrible blizzard... "Watch the shadows."

Suddenly Octavia reappeared and said, "let's go."

"No, we have to fix this." Nick handed her Marlon and then changed his eyepatch, taking it off his bad eye and putting it over his good eye. He opened his eyes wide, and it was unnerving for the court to see Nick's golden eye. "Watch the shadows..." He grabbed Slipspring by the collar of his ridiculous gown just as the shadow behind him flashed, and when that happened, Preston, Octavia and Marlon disappeared.

Annabelle, who just returned from the stables, shrieked in horror as her husband, the father of her baby, disappeared. Nick felt a tug as if he was supposed to go too, but he kept his grip on Slipspring. Something snapped in Nick, there were no rules now. He still had Virga in his right hand and he pressed the nob against the side of Slipspring's head. "WHERE DID THEY GO?"

Lord Slipspring shrieked in agony as Virga pillaged his mind and that's when the sky started to darken.

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The Great A'Tuin smiled to herself. Cobbler Joining I-Ecks was a big comet, and it was coming fast, but her timing was perfect as she lifted her great fore flipper. She was going to put on a show for her friend, for all her people. Ready... Steady...

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Nick saw the flipper rising above the edge of the rim with that golden eye of his, reaching higher and higher. Who are these people that write the Almanac? They're never wrong! He almost didn't hear Lord Cadence cackle, "Your family is in the dungeon dimension with the king's family."

"YOU SENT A BABY TO THE DUNGEON DIMENSION?" Nick has never hated anything in his life other than his father, but he's learning fast the art of hate. As Slipspring withered under the glare of his solid gold eye, he drew Slipspring closer and closer. 'Where is that flickering shadow?' Thought Nick. He tried to drive the horror of the dungeon dimensions out of his mind. The beasts and demons that populate the dungeon dimensions feed on life, if those people that tried to kill him were taken to the demon dimension, they're dead now. He's got to work fast to rescue Octavia, Marlon, and Preston.

There it is... that telltale unique flicker. "Nithe Skelm! I know where you are from. You're not from here where real magic rules. First, I will take away the sun, then I will set the stars spinning, and then I will take you. Return my people!"

"Who do you think you are, boy?" came a voice from no visible person. The voice began to chuckle.

Suddenly, the sky went black as A'Tuin's flipper reached above the edge of the disc and blotted out the sun and the stars came out - a Turtle Eclipse. "I've been called Savior of the Turtle!" shouted Nick.

A'Tuin's continent size flipper curled and dug into the æther and she began her 360° flip and roll, causing the stars to start to spin across the sky on curved trajectories. Clearly only Nick knows that A'Tuin was rolling to avoid Cobbler Joining I-Ecks. Doesn't anyone read the almanac?

The shadow behind Slipspring was flickering more and more, but Slipspring was fighting against Nick's grasp. "Knock it off," grunted Nick. Slipspring gave Nick a curl lipped grin, causing Nick to kick Lord Slipspring in the "gentleman's legumes."

In agony, Slipspring doubled over, and Nick could see the entire flickering shadow. Without thinking, he used his wizard's staff. Virga is a piece of pure sapient pearwood, the most expensive wood on the disc. It is topped with a jewel the size of a softball more valuable than the entire castle. Virga is a self-aware Master Wizard's staff, it's imbued with two millennia worth of magical knowledge and has more magical power than Nick, but Nick could only think of one way to use all that power.

Sometimes it's hard to keep track of which reality is which. The shadow was indeed flipping back and forth between here and somewhere else, but it's not a dimension, it's a reality. Nithe Skelm discovered that there's more than multiple dimensions, there are countless other realities. In one reality, he's standing in an empty field, the town of Lancre was destroyed ages before or it has yet to exist. The castle in Nick's reality was also an empty field at the top of a rise to Nithe Skelm. He learned that it is so much easier to bounce back and forth between realities than hopping between dimensions. However, he is entirely real in both locations and if someone figures that out...

Nick brought the most powerful wizard's staff ever created, crashing down on the head of the flickering shadow like he was wielding a hockey stick. With a flash and a painful sounding bang Nithe Skelm appeared, a small man with squinty eyes and a large bent nose, he looked like an angry garden gnome. As he crashed into Nick's reality, the sight of the stars spinning slowly across the sky terrified him almost as much as the sight of the giant golden dragon that scooped him up. "APOLOGIZE!" Nick's roar echoed off the palace walls and carried over Lancre Town. He held the hate fueled wizard in the left talon while holding out Nithe Skelm's other hand with his right talon. A white-hot breath of flame at Skelm's hand convinced Nithe Skelm that Nick wanted fast responses.

Annabelle stepped forward in shock, she had returned just as Preston disappeared. Is this angry gnome the cause? "I'm sorry!" the little nightmare cried. "Release me!"

"BRING THEM ALL BACK AND I WILL RELEASE YOU!"

Through the pain of being squeezed by dragon talons and his hand being burned off, Nithe Skelm looked up and saw the stars change directions as A'Tuin started a pirouetting twist, mostly to impress Nick. Suddenly, that view was blocked by the flame from the dragon's mouth. "They're back! They're back! Release me!"

Preston returned to Annabelle's feet, beaten and broken. While he was in the dungeon dimension, he tried to defend Octavia; she was surrounded by beasts that were hungry for her, her magic, and her baby. Weeping, Annabelle kissed her husband, but she looked up when Nick roared, "YOU'RE FREE." He opened his talon and let Nithe Skelm drop.

It happened in slow motion for Annabelle; she saw the little bastard falling, and she knew that he would survive a twenty-foot drop. It wasn't a far enough to fall to kill him. She leaped up and ran as fast as she could; she saw that he was starting to conjure as he fell, and she was going to make sure that he wasn't going to get away! After a couple of strides, it became easier to run with four feet instead of two and she crossed Traitor's Court with distance eating leaps, her tail swinging in the air, her ears flattened back and her teeth exposed as she leaped. With a snarl, she jumped up and got her jaws around Nithe Skelm's neck, just as he was about to disappear.

Nick looked down at the werewolf that savaged the monster that tried to set the disk at war and smiled. He didn't think Annabelle could do it. Turning, he saw Octavia crawling to Preston; her leg was clearly broken, and Marlon was screaming in horror. Quickly returning to his body, he saw that Nithe Skelm brought back several corpses. One of them was the king's son. "GUARDS!" demanded Nick.

"Your grace?" two guards came running.

"Slipspring, Singe and Cadence, gather them up and put them in irons, chain them to a post, then get some wood and build a pyre, and burn that body that the wolf is gnawing on."

"Aye, your grace."

Nithe Skelm dusted off his robes and looked down and the bloody mess that the young wolf was gnawing at. "The poor bastard."

"NO ONE HAS EVER SAID THAT ABOUT YOU." Death swung his scythe, severing the blue line between Nithe Skelm and his body.

"That's it then?" shrieked Skelm. "The most powerful wizard in the multiverse reduced to dog food?"

"YOU SHOULD HAVE STUCK TO CARD TRICKS, PEOPLE LIKED YOU THEN."

Former nobles, Slipspring, Singe and Cadence, were easy to round up, they were gazing at the sky wondering in shock how Nick somehow spun the stars. "Am I the only one that reads the Almanac?" he asked no one in particular. Guards gathered wood from the kitchen and lit a big pyre at the end of the court, then looked at the duke helplessly as the werewolf continued to chew up the body of Nithe Skelm. "ANNABELLE! Come here girl! Good girl!" The werewolf turned to the sound of the voice and looked. "Come get Preston! Come here girl! Preston needs you!" at the sound of Preston's name she began to bound to where he lay, and by the time she got to him she was back in human form.

"You changed!" said Preston weakly. "I'm so proud of you."

"Oh, gods baby, what did they do to you?"

Nick splinted Octavia's leg, and they kissed, fighting to hold back the tears as Marlon shrieked in terror. "Darling, hand me a pacifier." That was when Nick realized he had the baby bag. The strap was over his shoulder the whole time. Placing a "noocher" in Marlon's mouth, it mellowed the shrieking, the sound of his terror and anger came out of his nose as he gnawed on the nipple. "I built a ward around him, they couldn't get to him while I was alive," wept Octavia as she hugged Nick and Marlon. "They clawed and bit the ward, but they couldn't get through." Marlon slowly calmed down as he gnawed on the pacifier, while his mommy and daddy kissed and caressed him.

"I have things to do," Nick said apologetically.

"Go get to work," she said, then she said, "Hey..." and pulled him back for a kiss. "I love it when you save the world."

"You are worth the trouble," he whispered and with one more kiss he started tending to Preston using bandages made from the robes he stripped from viscounts, Slipspring and Laird. "What did you do Preston?" gasped Nick. Preston's legs, arms, wrists were broken.

"The demons..." his eyes were shadows of horror.

"Fix him!" wept Annabelle.

"Let me try," said Octavia and she placed her hands on Preston's temples. "Thank you so much, Preston," muttered Octavia over and over and slowly he began to relax. "I don't know if he'll ever talk about it, but he was a hero. He saved Marlon and me..."

"What... what was it like?" gasped Annabelle.

"It's hell," was all Octavia could get out, and she went back to hugging Marlon.

"I saved the world, but did I save my king?" thought Nick as he splinted Preston's broken wrist. It was grim, the king clung to his daughter Esme, she was clearly mentally affected by her time in the dungeon dimension, his son Exavier lay dead, their youngest, two-year-old Prince Abraam was nowhere to be seen, but where is the queen? "Where is the queen?" cried Nick. "Has anyone seen the queen?"

"She's alive, I can feel her," said Virga.

"Go find Magrat," said Octavia, "the king needs her."

Nick followed Virga's directions and found himself heading downstairs into the dungeon. "Hello?" called Nick, but there was no answer. Finally, he came to a cell that Virga said contained the queen. "Queen Magrat?"

"Who's there?" Queen Magrat asked. She sat up and looked around. "Who is it?"

"It's me, Nick."

"Oh, Sir Pommy!" she got up and stumbled toward the door, her hands held out in front of her to ward off bumping into something.

"They blinded her!" gasped Nick.

"There's no light down here, your grace," said Virga.

"Oh." Nick just remembered that he covered up his good eye. He took his eye patch off and, with his good eye combined with his enhanced eye, he could see everything, but he also recognized that it was dark. "Virga, give her some soft light while I look for a key." Nick wandered around the dungeon for a bit, he found what must be a guard's office with a large key hanging on the wall, the only other thing occupying the office was a skeleton in a partial suit of armor that sat in a chair. "Are you alive or dead?" asked Nick. Sometimes it's necessary to ask.

"I'm not sure, but I am animated."

"Can you walk?"

"Yes." The skeleton stood up and turned to face Nick, and was a bit grumpy. "I've been guarding these cells for two hundred years; I've never heard such insolence... do you ask everyone if they can walk?"

"I'm a witch, I ask everyone questions."

"A witch?!? You're hardly witch material," huffed the skeleton. "A proper witch is a well-aged female. You're but a young buck."

"Don't you believe in equal rites?"

"You have me there, sir witch."

"I am the Duke of Wægn, please call me Sir Nick. In a few minutes, we are going to lock up three nobles that attempted to dethrone the king and throw Lancre into war against Überwald. I would appreciate it if they didn't get much sleep."

The Skeleton gave Nick a lipless grin. "My specialty Sir Nick!"

"I'm going to escort the queen out and reunite her with the king. Please stay here. I'll be back with the key. What's your name?"

"Stan."

"Stan?"

"It's short for Stanislaus."

"I like it. I'm going to insist on some light down here, not a lot, just enough for them to see that you're a... a bit slim."

"I intend to enjoy it."

The cell door opened, and Nick led Magrat out and up the ancient stone stairs. "What happened here?"

"Your highness, I..." Nick couldn't do it. He couldn't form the words that conveyed the experience. "The head of defense tried to plunge Lancre into a war with Überwald. Lords Slipspring, Singe and Cadence teamed up with an evil wizard from a round world."

As they mounted the stairs, Nick stopped at a landing and stopped his mentor. "Ma'am... I have to warn you, the king... he's...... I'm sorry, I can't..."

"I am your queen. I order you to tell me everything." It was the first time Magrat ever had to say something like that.

Ma'am... Exavier is gone, and Esme is... she's not good, ma'am."

"What do you mean, gone?"

"The wizard sent many people to the Dungeon Dimension, including your children. Exavier passed away; several people came back..." Nick was having problems keeping it together.

Magrat held her composure and demanded, "And Abraam?"

"We don't know... he didn't come back."

He led her to the Traitors Court where King Verance sat with his daughter, now talking on a four-year-old level, and the body of his son, Prince Exavier. The king looked up at Magrat and burst into tears. She crouched down and hugged her husband while her twenty-four-year-old daughter, the heir to the throne, babbled baby talk.

Nick recognized a few of the other dead bodies, a couple of nobles, some guards, several members of the household staff, but no Prince Abraam.

"Let's go, Slipspring, Singe, Cadence, I'm going to show you to your new accommodations..." With a pair of guards Nick led the three conspirators down to the dungeon where he locked them up in cells with an empty cell between each of them. "Your jailer, Stan, should be around shortly. Breakfast is gruel, dinner is a gruel sandwich, you get one bucket it will be emptied weekly, please don't spill it."

"Lord Worblehat-Stein, you can't..."

"MISTER Cadence! Until you can produce a healthy, happy Prince Abraam, you will sit here and wonder what happened to your entire family."

"I had no control over Skelm! It wasn't my fault!" His shouts and cries continued as Nick returned to Stan's office.

Nick hung the key up and said, "They're ready for you, Stan."

"This is the best part," chuckled the skeleton. Stan lit his torch and said, "It's the little things that make this job fun." He walked slowly down the corridor and he peeked into the opening of each of the big wooden cell doors. He glared into the cell until he was rewarded with screams of terror.

Returning upstairs, Nick bumped into Baily Ogg, the young guard, and asked, "Where are all the guards?"

"The king gave them the day off; Lord Cadence told us."

"Go tell your Uncle Sean to recall the entire guard. There's been an attempt on the king's life... go!"

Nick returned to the Traitors' Court and sat down next to Octavia, who finally got Marlon to calm down. Soon he started to shake. He held poor Octavia's head on his lap and tried to calm her nerves, but she said, "They need you."

Nick looked over at the king and queen, who were trying to calm their daughter Esme and they were being barraged by questions from nobles and staff. "Damnit..." He got up and stood over Queen Magrat and said, "Excuse me, but the royal family needs their privacy, if you have a question ask..." he looked around for Lord Baltimore the most senior of the royals, but he was gone. "Ask me." He was suddenly barraged with questions. Looking around at the scene, physically and mentally shattered people lie around, mangled corpses, the remains of a well chewed wizard smoked and smoldered on a funeral pyre... "Let's go inside."

In the throne room, Nick glared at the crowd. "If you ask me for something you can handle on your own, you'll spend the night in the dungeon. First question... Anyone?" He was left with a few staff people who wanted to know what the king expected. "We need medical people; the palace must have doctors on call... get them in here. Or get me witches, find Nanny Ogg, get her out of retirement, witches know medicine. Anyone out there in the Traitor's Court who is injured is going to spend as much time here as they need, so start setting up rooms... do we have enough rooms?"

"There are over fifty available rooms, your grace."

"Stretchers, we need stretchers. Beg borrow steal, whatever it takes," said Nick, "and prepare for a royal funeral." The crowd gasped and Nick said, "We lost Prince Exavier and Prince Abraam." The shock ran through the staff, and some ran off weeping. Nick remained firm as tears rolled down his cheek. The memories of Exavier playing with Emperor Jia at his farm were burned into his memory. Little Abraam splashing in his pond with his mother... it's too horrible to recall. "Keep it together Pommy," he told himself.

As the guards started showing up, Nick got them to escort Verance, Magrat and Princess Esmeralda to their apartment. He spent the next few hours providing first aid for whomever needed it and arranging recovery rooms for the injured.

It seemed like it had been days, but eventually the Traitors Court was cleared of the dead and wounded. He threw more wood onto the funeral pyre and spit on the flames. Heading back into the throne room, Nick felt like he had never seen this place before. Somehow it has grown dark, evil. He gazed about the immense room and saw a familiar face at the far end peering in the door; it was Harold Lorechestershire, Steward, Chamberlain, Marshal, and head butler of Lancre Castle.

"The duchess would like to know if you are ready for dinner, your grace."