𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐋𝐀𝐒𝐓 𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐏|Moonknight

viii.escaping the evil magician's mancave

"Hello" Nina's enthusiastically sweet voice engrossed through the peak of the transparent draped entrance.

"Sorry, Vincent Van Goat was being a naught." the woman continued, all the while signaling to the said goat whose forelimbs she had wrapped around either of her hands.

"How did you get out?" Arthur asked with a façade of intrigue, but only the ones standing close to him could see the fainted fear his words contained.

"Get out? Wha-what do you mean get out? Where was she? Where were you?" But Steven's words were yet again ignored as Nina continued,

"Uhm, through the door?" the woman shrugged as she cradled the animal closer to her body. Turning to Steven and as if it were nothing she just nudged her head, "Come on Steven"

To say that the man was flabbergasted would be the understatement of the century. With Blinky and widened eyes, Steven just followed Nina like a puppy, all the while thinking how she had just walked into the place, and asked him to follow her. And follow Steven did, although he was feeling like a six-year-old whose mother had just arrived to pick him up from a play date. With a dumbfounded sense of expression and slightly agape mouth, Steven couldn't help but admire how ballsy the whole ordeal was, and he couldn't help but admire the woman who was walking by him. But before they would even reach the entrance, people started crowding the area, forming a chained guard.

"Do you know what this is?" Arthur's voice bellowed as he pulled onto the purple flexed cane by his side. This caused the duo to turn their body and look at the man.

"I don't know. A cane, maybe?" Nina answered with a heightened sarcasm as her voice squeaked and deepened weirdly when saying a cane.

"This is..." he forwarded the duo, "Ammit's gift to her first avatar"

Steven's eyes circled the room and noticed how everyone was so suddenly walking backward and away from the cult leader. Instinctively he pulled Nina, who was standing by his side behind his back as his hands went to the curve of her hip, pushing her back ever so lightly and at the same time making sure by the grasp that she stayed behind him.

"A tiny sliver of her power. I don't want to use it"

"Then don't" Steven answered in a weird tone as he kept backing Nina away. His grasp on her only tightened when Arthur neared, fervently Steven pleaded "I can't help you"

"Yes, you can" he chided, "Where is the scarab?"

Nina bunched onto the side of Steven's jumper, as the older man before her, threateningly brought the glistening cane forward and towards them chanting ferociously with the same question, "Where is the scarab?"

"I have it."

The duo's heads soon snapped in the direction of the new voice. And just like that Nina's breath hitched. It was her, the woman she had seen just a few hours prior.