Chapter Eleven

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CHAPTER ELEVEN: THE CECAELIA

It is up to you to fill the blank pages of this fairytale. Sometimes with darkness, rarely with light.
-Meredith T Taylor

A week later, now trained, the Ghosts were back on their mission path -all nine now in a single room in an inn.

At this point, it was normal.

The warrior would shift and curl up in front of the door so someone couldn't barge in, Little Red would sleep on him with her arms loose around his neck and often, a hand on her thigh over a dagger.

As the only couple, Snow and Doc shared a hammock she would make from vines that was often hanging above the window -her drawing strength from the ground outside. 

Locks, Archer and the huntsmen would sleep on the bed. The hunter would be in the middle, him and his now best friend sharing the blankets while the leader used her large wings for warmth.

Due to them simply not caring at all, the warlock would use their magic to steal so many pillows to make as a bed that rose two feet in the corner of the room that their team was too afraid to ask where they took them from.

On the same chaotic note, Charm simply wrapped a blanket around herself, took the leader's pillow and floated asleep in the air -often bumping into the nymph's horns or Wolf's head if she floated low enough. Beside her, as a gentle soft song, her lute would play.

Without it now, none of them were sure how well they'd be able to sleep.

In the morning, the routine was simply.

Little Red would wake up first, followed by the warlock. Magician would make tea for everyone with teacups they didn't have the night before and wake everyone else up. Locks and Huntsman were the heaviest sleepers but if someone pronounced a word wrong, she would correct them sleepily and wake up. All you had to do to get the huntsman up was touch his axe. Shifting back, Wolf would go with Charm to pay the fee- -they would check in as a couple- -as their team would sneak out the window.

Now they were at a local bar, the bard's lute already threatened to be smashed if she started singing, and the mercenary was telling them how they were really going to start their mission to kill the queen.

"The first step in our mission is to deal with the killer of the Wicked Queen's handbag. She is a nymph, not very powerful but very manipulative and smart. Unlike Snow, who's a nature nymph, this woman is a water nymph. They call her Cecaelia, because she stays in an underground fortress she calls Dark Atlantis. The only encounter I have of someone who made it out was a bit odd in his quotes but he wrote," Little Red, trying to get through this because she knows the uproar that these things have on her more...amused members of her team, doesn't pause to prepare her more professional members for her words. "'We passed the water wall, thence it was a straight drop to Atlantis' floor. Only I, of my ten men, survived.'"

Even that got a small snicker from the bard, who whispered out "Shit luck." to her best friend.

The mercenary continued, "'Whence there after, we tried desperately to get to Cecaelia and capture her, but by the time we took out her plethora of guards-"

"Plethora." The warlock snickered. "Big word."

"-she was ready to face us and took off my right hand man's head with a movement I could not see nor my mind could comprehend. His body crumpled but his head flew down the side of the sleek tower, whence it began bouncing between the two walls. Thence it hit a window and disappeared from my sight. Probably, alas, scaring a maiden to death.'"

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