“I got rid of you once and I can do it again,” Luyna threatened.
“You may have tricked me from the shadows. Now I see clearly who my enemy is, I will not make the same mistake again,” the Fairy King promised.
The stairway was bathed in brilliant light as Luyna and the Fairy King dueled. Bakka desperately hauled the Matriarch to safety while the Sprites worked on releasing the Peritwinkle from his restraints. Damselfly struggled against her captor until Blakast pressed a knife to her throat, and Buttons shook his head to ward off any further struggle. the Fairy King appeared to be the only person enjoying himself; he danced across the stairs, singing at the top of his lungs, as he exchanged fire with Luyna.
“This, our proud Kingdom of Fable, is saved by the man with no equal. So if you have been living under a rock or at the bottom of a lake, or meet a traveller who took a wrong turn, be sure to advise them so they do not make a terrible mistake. For the name of their leader they must learn. For I am the Fairy King. For I am the Fairy King.”
Luyna felt her powers waning; the pull of magic at her fingertips was fading, and the Matriarch’s words proved true. With one final assault, Luyna dropped to the ground, her body wasted by the power that she had stolen. the Fairy King stood triumphantly, a reminder of a distant past.
“You are defeated. Tell your men to lay down their arms,” the Matriarch instructed.
“I still have this.” Luyna produced Death’s timepiece for everyone to see.
“Hand it over,” the Matriarch instructed.
“You want me to restart time? Perhaps I will,” Luyna teased.
“We want you to return time,” Bakka concluded.
For two individuals this statement was incorrect; the Fairy King had a frozen mask of fear imprinted on his face, and Damselfly struggled desperately in Blakast’s grip as
she remembered Death’s ultimatum:
You have one second to retrieve my timepiece or I will take your mother to the other side.
With a look of pure malevolence, Luyna pressed down the crown on Death’s timepiece and restarted time. the Fairy King clutched his heart, where Death’s scythe had made a fatal wound, before collapsing on the stairs. Jinx along with all the Sprites crowded around their fallen leader, hoping for some response; they were disappointed. “I defeated all my enemies, except time!” the Fairy King whispered, before falling to the ground.
The Fairy King was dead.
Damselfly, slipping from Blakast’s grip for a moment, screamed; her voice was high with fright, and from nowhere Trigger, the Dalmatian, leapt at the usurper who was forced to release his grip. Freed, Damselfly slipped away from her captors with Buttons and entered the royal apartments, which felt haunted. It was cold, dark and unfamiliar as if Damselfly had never walked these corridors before. The princess ran through the empty halls with Buttons struggling to keep up. She burst into her mother’s room and headed straight for the bed where her mum lay.
She was too late.
Death stood by her mother’s bed, almost indistinguishable from the shadows if not for the frigid atmosphere that made the hairs on Damselfly’s neck stand up.
“No, I did what you asked,” the princess pleaded.
“I restarted time. Luyna has the timepiece, go and take it from her. Please, do not take my mother.”
Damselfly may only have been twelve years old, yet she had learnt that no one can barter with Death as her mother’s spirit was taken away by the old king. Damselfly placed her head on her mother’s cold hand and cried until there was nothing left inside. After everything they had been through, it was all for nothing; her mother was gone. Luyna still held sway over the castle, and although time had restarted, it still felt like it was stopped to Damselfly.
“Why are you crying?”
Damselfly wiped her tears away to discover Buttontail sitting beside her solemnly.
“Did you say something, Buttons?”
The rabbit looked up to the ceiling where Phoebus, the owl, was hovering with some difficulty due to his age and large wing span.
“Oh, Phoebus, I did not see you there,” Damselfly replied. “I am crying because my mother is dead. Death gave me one second to return his timepiece and I failed.”
“You have not failed yet,” Phoebus contradicted.
“What do you mean?” the princess questioned.
“Here.” The owl dropped something from his foot onto the bed.
To Damselfly’s astonishment, she discovered her uncle Abeldine’s bell, the one they had won from the leviathan back in Shadowgarden.
“Where did you get that?” Buttons asked incredulously.
“Pariah retrieved it from the Hall of Bells,” Phoebus managed to remember.
“What does it do?” Damselfly questioned, reaching for the instrument.
“Don’t touch it, Damselfly,” Buttons warned. “You recall what happened to the Shades.”
Princess Damselfly retracted her hand, although the desire to touch the bell remained intense.
“That bell has magical powers,” Phoebus revealed.
“In the right hands it could do a lot of good, even potentially bring the dead back to life.”
For a brief moment Damselfly considered the possibility of bringing her mother back from the grave, though when she remembered Death’s presence it was surely too late.
“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” Damselfly stated.
“It might be the only way to stop Luyna,” Buttons considered.
“Perhaps there is a way to control the magic infused within this bell,” Phoebus offered.
“The lore of bell magic has been lost for decades. How could I possibly find it now?” Damselfly pondered.
“Maybe you should do what worked before,” Phoebus hinted.
The princess ruminated on this conundrum, repeating the owl’s words until an idea popped into her head.
“According to the
