Though he couldn't know why Maea was so adamant that the princess be saved, Hadama gave a subtle tilt of his head in acknowledgment. She was his guide to this tale and he trusted her sense of the story they had to wend their way through. Though if it took sixteen years - or even sixteen days - there would be much larger problems to deal with.
Sharp ears caught her murmured suggestion but as they reached the gates and the rest of the guards came forward there was little he could do but give a haughty nod in her direction, as if in mocking courtesy for her escort - and the flicker of a wink to show he understood. "I am sure we will meet again," he rumbled to the Knight, his sonorous tones implying a far more sinister cast to his words than he meant.
He stepped out of the castle and raised his staff, having a better feel for the story's mechanics now. He brought it down on the bridge and a clap of thunder accompanied the impact. Smoke billowed out around him, and when it cleared he was gone.
As for where he went? Well, where else would a Dark Fairy go but to a Dark Tower? A spire of black stone thrust up from the center of a shadowed forest. Without doors or windows on the lower levels it was a forbidding structure that rose above the tops of the trees before it opened into a large chamber with windows looking out in all directions but one. Hadama, in his wicked guise, appeared in the chamber in a second billow of smoke and looked around cautiously. Floor-to-ceiling shelves of packed the walls between each window, mostly filled with books but occasionally other things as well: mortars and pestles, bowls and beakers, the skulls and feathers of birds and various jars and vials whose contents Hadama did not care to investigate too closely.
The only wall without a window held a wide hearth, and in it a bubbling cauldron of something green and faintly glowing. On the other side of the room was a worktable with more books and components of sorcery and alchemy laid out, as if in the middle of some experiment. The final furniture of note was a round table in the room's center, and on it a polished sphere of crystal the size of his head. Within its heart he could see movement and color: the throne room he had so recently left behind, where much fuss was being made over the infant princess and the Queen who held her.
Sharp ears caught her murmured suggestion but as they reached the gates and the rest of the guards came forward there was little he could do but give a haughty nod in her direction, as if in mocking courtesy for her escort - and the flicker of a wink to show he understood. "I am sure we will meet again," he rumbled to the Knight, his sonorous tones implying a far more sinister cast to his words than he meant.
He stepped out of the castle and raised his staff, having a better feel for the story's mechanics now. He brought it down on the bridge and a clap of thunder accompanied the impact. Smoke billowed out around him, and when it cleared he was gone.
As for where he went? Well, where else would a Dark Fairy go but to a Dark Tower? A spire of black stone thrust up from the center of a shadowed forest. Without doors or windows on the lower levels it was a forbidding structure that rose above the tops of the trees before it opened into a large chamber with windows looking out in all directions but one. Hadama, in his wicked guise, appeared in the chamber in a second billow of smoke and looked around cautiously. Floor-to-ceiling shelves of packed the walls between each window, mostly filled with books but occasionally other things as well: mortars and pestles, bowls and beakers, the skulls and feathers of birds and various jars and vials whose contents Hadama did not care to investigate too closely.
The only wall without a window held a wide hearth, and in it a bubbling cauldron of something green and faintly glowing. On the other side of the room was a worktable with more books and components of sorcery and alchemy laid out, as if in the middle of some experiment. The final furniture of note was a round table in the room's center, and on it a polished sphere of crystal the size of his head. Within its heart he could see movement and color: the throne room he had so recently left behind, where much fuss was being made over the infant princess and the Queen who held her.
