Who could know the Lupe's dark secrets? He must be silenced forever. The truth cannot escape. But he knows it; aye, he knows it for fact. A mystery that shrouded Hubrid Nox, his beloved Nox, but none dared approach the Castle now. None dared traipse into its honeycomb depths to find the mysterious Lupe, placed here against his will. Sitting in the dank, dark, and cold to forever reminisce and pine at what was lost. His eyes like cold sapphires glittered in the shadows as he continued his song of sorrow and bitterness.

Aye, the secret of old Nox. Locked now in the heart of his mansion -- and isn't that how it should be? A secret kept, a life bound up. This small niggling thought led him to take a stray paw off his instrument to lightly caress a small bound volume sitting beside him. The hardness and cool touch of the leather on his paw racked him with steel and nerves aflutter. Nox had said never to open it, but how could he have predicted what would happen to him not long after? The fealty he'd sworn to Nox seemed shrivelled to nothingness now. A blank empty canvas, and now a splash of paint had smeared in a crimson red all across this canvas and destroyed what peace and serenity had been left behind. And this Lupe had done it. Unwittingly, of course. And for that he was punished, sentenced to this exile, a fitting punishment he thought wryly. For what was left for him outside of these stone walls? These mounds of mortar and slate? He had sealed his fate and that was just.

The secret was safe...

And suddenly that moaning, that weary call from the ghosts prancing about the halls, grew to a fever pitch. A screech split the air, and the Lupe's paw hung suspended between book and instrument as his eyes adjusted to the sudden blossom of bright light filling the room....

The door swung open, the chains that had bound it falling to the floor, cut by a force that the Lupe now stared at in horror.

"You!" the Lupe gasped, finding his voice hoarse through years of silence.

The Wocky who stood in the doorway smiled back. It almost seemed sinister, the scar across one of his eyes doing nothing to reduce the effect. In one hand, he held the instrument of the Lupe's liberation -- a battle axe that seemed to glow green with the same energy that had filled the Lupe's chamber.

No, that wasn't right, perhaps the axe was made of the very energy.

"Me," the Wocky replied. "It's been too long, Algare."

The Lupe grasped his violin tighter, threatening to break it in his rage.

"Traitor!" he spat. "It wasn't enough to betray our master, now you return to profane his home with your taint!?"

The Wocky moved his hand, the axe of energy dissipating back into his hand.

"I wouldn't have come if I didn't need your help," the Wocky stated.

"Help!?" Algare shrieked, echoing the constant moaning of the ghosts in the castle's higher levels. "What help could I possibly give to the great and powerful MAGAX? And, more to the point, why would I ever bother? You are dead to me."

"A common theme of late," MAGAX remarked. "Believe me, if anyone else was capable then I would have gone to them. But it must be us, together. You and me. We must do it. He was so much more important than anyone realises."

"Do what?"

MAGAX smiled again. There was a hint of a maddened plan in his eyes.

"Bring back Hubrid Nox..."

The Lupe had long since given up such dreams.

"You are mad," he rasped, turning away from the scarred Wocky. "Leave me."

"Is this not what you want?" MAGAX demanded, green eyes very bright. "To see your master recover from his untimely demise?"

"Is this what you want?" was the harsh response. "Hardly. Go away and leave me to my music."

"Xandra ruined us both, Algare. She got her just desserts in the end -- so we seem to think -- but she left us almost beyond repair." The Wocky spoke in a tone that was almost soft. "Oh, don't give me that look. Are you honestly surprised?"

"No," Algare deadpanned. "I am not surprised in the least that my late master's self-proclaimed nemesis has broken into my prison with plans to resurrect his sworn enemy."

MAGAX rolled his eyes. "Touche. Listen to me. I may have turned my back on Nox's ways. I may have stood against him at every turn and plan he made. I convinced you, however unbeknownst to you it may have been, to reveal his secrets--"

The Lupe gnashed his teeth. "Something I have never forgotten."

"But," MAGAX cut him off, "factor Hubrid Nox out of the equation, and what am I then?"

Algare was silent, for the Wocky's logic hit home, as much as he wished to deny it.

A servant with no master. A hero with no villain. An instrument with broken strings...

They were all one and the same.

The melody of hope began to hum.

"I am nothing without Nox," Algare said aloud. "And so, it seems, are you." He looked up, finally staring his once-friend eye to eye. "My master was able to summon spirits from their rest en masse, but they never brought back their memories or minds with them. They were slaves to one's bidding, and nothing more. I fail to see how bringing back Nox as a ghost would accomplish anything."

"Oh, I can do better than that." The wild grin was back -- this was the Destroyer that Algare remembered, back from the old days. "I've been searching nonstop ever since his death, and I've finally found a lead. Did he ever request you to look after a book...?"

Faced with the Lupe's foolish and awkward defiance, MAGAX laughed. "Your instinct for preservation is admirable, but you're an awful liar, Algare." He stretched out his right hand, silently demanding the elusive tome. "Hand it over." And the slight curl of his outstretched hand, that almost-fist, betrayed the hidden force behind his words.

Algare was rightly awkward in his movements, bending over like an old signpost snapped by the playfulness of the wind to shield the book with his violin. And his voice was uncertain as he spoke, knowing deep down that this was a pointless rebellion but had no better alternative than to feign his confidence. "I was charged with the task of protecting this with my life; I would never just hand it over to a snake like you." His bitterness suddenly felt too strained, not belonging like the winter blues on a hot summer's day.

MAGAX noted the Lupe's nervousness and chuckled. "You forget who I am." If ever there was a creature who was a worthy companion to an Alabriss racer it was MAGAX; he was a villain, Algare knew, but even villains could stir envy, and it was his speed at that moment that impressed, and unnerved, the Lupe as the Wocky leapt across the dark prison and grabbed the bound book from him.

He fell back into his armchair and clutched his violin as a rather pathetic defence. The book was no longer in his possession; he had failed. And he had failed in the worse possible way; it was now in the possession of his most feared enemy. "W-what will you do to it?"

The Wocky was a dark blur in the shadow of his prison, but Algare saw that he now stood with his back toward him by the dusty arch of once-grand fireplace. "You know what I intend to do, my friend, you will just have to trust me with the details."

His axe was the only light and its bright green globules of energy were the only thing Algare saw as MAGAX lifted the great weapon and struck it down hard on the inner hearth. It set a fire ablaze, gave light to a place that had never been blessed with such. Algare's eyes widened, amazed by the things he now saw. In his solitude he had come to know his library prison very well, through touch; he knew the great desk by the window felt like the kitchen counter of his grandmother's home, old and worn and marked by many years of chopping vegetables, and he knew that the third book on the fourth shelf of the creaking bookcase in the east side was like a treasure map beneath his fingers. But this was the first time he had ever seen what he had only known by touch. And it was amazing.

And then MAGAX threw the book in.

"No!" The Lupe's scream was agony, for his failure and for the disruption in his admiration at his newfound sight.

He launched himself at the fire, collapsing by the grate as he watched the ancient pages disintegrate into nothing more than a tale of the past. He could have wept at its demise, but then he thought he saw the ashes stir and MAGAX chuckled again at his gasp. The dust was a black rope that wound its way around the singing flames, swerving this way and that until it almost seemed to resemble a familiar shape...

"B-but that's... how could it be?!" Algare blinked several times, but still the image of ash remained in the flames. He had never been aware of any spell cast upon the book but then, the Lupe had never fully understood the powers and the will of his master.

"I thought I told you to trust me?" MAGAX tutted and bent down beside him. "Why do you think he wanted you to protect that book? He could never let something as precious as this go missing."

Together they watched as the ashes began to settle, and in the flames the image of something familiar becoming very clear...

Algare's voice was hoarse as it caught in his throat. His eyes burned with the bright colour of the flame, but the Cybunny's familiar form was more than obvious to him.

"Cheelee?" Algare gasped.

MAGAX's brow furrowed as he gazed upon the flame-licked vision. "Well, that was not what I expected."

Algare took a step forward toward the flame, and watched as the Cybunny's eyes turned to his.

"I'm lost" Cheelee's image called out. Algare stepped back again, his hand moving to cover his mouth. He took a moment to regard the image before turning to MAGAX.

"So what is this? What happens now? And why is he Cheelee?" Algare demanded.

The Wocky shook his head, taking a moment to lose himself in his thoughts. "I'm honestly not sure. This was supposed to be the answer, that book was supposed to bring back Nox. It did, sort of."

Algare howled in fury, throwing himself toward the Wocky. "Hubrid Nox would not appreciate being trapped as a meek little Cybunny! Fix this now and stop this charade! Do you take me for a fool, MAGAX? Do you just return here to embarrass my Master and play tricks on me?"

MAGAX gingerly sidestepped the Lupe's advance. The years of imprisonment had caused the Lupe to lose his strength and speed, the atrophy of Algare's muscles slow to dissipate.

"I owe him no allegiance, Algare, nor do I owe you anything. I could have just as easily left you here forever, without giving you this hope. I have no intent to create a mockery of you or Nox; I want him back as much as you do," MAGAX explained.

The Lupe pointed angrily toward the fire where Cheelee watched the scenario play out. "But not like this!" Algare yelled.

"I'm lost" Cheelee proclaimed again, her eyes red but full of sadness. The flame vision Cybunny seemed to shrink inside herself, as if trying to disappear.

"Wait!" Algare called out to the vision, and Cheelee stopped, watching the Lupe.

Algare stepped toward the flame, holding out his paw toward the strange green fire. "Come back to us, Master. We need you... I need you."

Algare slowly reached into the flames. The green light danced around his paw, but caused him no pain. He tried to touch the image of Cheelee, but it seemed just that, no more than a hologram of fire.

"I'm lost," Cheelee repeated louder now, but her gaze turned to MAGAX instead. Algare stepped back dejectedly, turning to the Wocky.

"You threw the book in, you brought him... her back, now figure out how we get Nox's true form," Algare pleaded gruffly.

MAGAX eyed the fiery vision, Cheelee's red eyes locking with the Wocky's. The small flame Cybunny reached her paw out toward MAGAX, and Algare scoffed audibly. The Wocky's gaze turned from Cheelee to Algare and back again before a soft huff escaped his lips. MAGAX stepped toward the fire, and, with a final glare toward Algare, reached his paw into the flames.

Cheelee's paw touched MAGAX's, and a booming cackle rang out. The Cybunny grabbed hold of MAGAX's paw and pulled him into the fire.

Algare reached out to grab MAGAX as he was pulled in, but...

And then pieces starting falling into place. Nox had berated Algare over and over for failing to keep his secrets. The ancient tome, now ashes in a mystic flame, had been his penance and his punishment... but with what MAGAX had told him, that the book could bring back Hubrid Nox... if that were so, why would Nox have trusted him with it?

And when MAGAX burned the old tome, it hadn't been Nox that had appeared. Oh no. It had not been his master who had appeared.

It had been Cheelee. In Algare's mind, the symphony in returned in full glory as his mind raced to pick up the pieces.

The alter-ego that had caught MAGAX unaware... how his lord Hubrid Nox had loved to tell that story; hiding in the graveyard, the sad little Cybunny whom MAGAX had tried to help.

Why had it been Cheelee?

The symphony soared higher as the pieces kept falling into place. To the best of his knowledge -- and his knowledge went back very, very far when it came to his master -- Nox had never taken another form.

Why Cheelee? Why a small little Cybunny? More importantly, why no others? And most importantly, why had Cheelee appeared in that fire, the one that even as his mind raced was starting to grow dimmer?

Cheelee. It hadn't been Nox in that fire, hadn't been Nox's alter-ego.

It had been Cheelee.

Around Algare, the symphony soared to a crescendo as the last revelation fell into place. Hubrid Nox would have reached out to Algare, not MAGAX, for help, but the fire's spectre had not. Cheelee had reached for the one she recognised; she had reached for MAGAX... in anger. The real Cheelee, the one whose form -- and life? -- Nox had stolen. The book must have bound her so that her form was free for Nox to use... and when burned, it had summoned her.

But if that wasn't Nox, MAGAX was still his best hope to bring back his master. And right now, MAGAX was in trouble.

Algare's eyes darted frantically around the room; he had to save MAGAX, but how? The entire revelation had taken merely seconds, but the fire was growing dimmer, and with it, his hopes of following. Faster and faster his eyes tore through everything in the room, re-examining everything he had always known was here but never touched. The scrolls, the books, artefacts, the axe...

...the axe? Eyes riveted, Algare stumbled forward as the music crashed and soared around him. A glowing green axe. MAGAX's darklight axe. An axe that, Algare knew, was never far from its master. Tentatively, breathing hard, he reached for the eerie green weapon; gripping it closely, he turned back to the flame. On instinct he reached his other hand into the flame; as before, nothing happened. Cheelee wouldn't have recognised Algare; he had served Nox long after her time, which explained why she wouldn't react when he touched the eerie fire. He felt... nothing. Nodding, he thrust the head of the axe into the dying fire, and watched as it disappeared. Pulling it back out, the axe was whole again, unharmed. As he suspected, the axe was connected to MAGAX on a deeper level than the Wocky had ever let be known. With its connection to MAGAX, the fire responded to the axe the same way it did to MAGAX -- and wanted to pull it deep into the same void it had pulled the scarred Wocky.

Satisfied that he had the key to chase after MAGAX and Cheelee, Algare bared his teeth in a defiant snarl at the dying flame. Axe thrust forward, violin clutched in his other hand, the Lupe charged forward, and was swallowed by the flame...

Eyes snapped shut, as jets of fire licked at his eyelids. Algare kept both the violin and the axe in his hands, ensuring that they didn't escape from his grasp in the fall...

He landed, face down, on a patch of prickly grass.

Was it grass?

Pulling himself up, Algare wrenched open his eyes and glanced around, his vision still hazy and unclear; a glowing green shape to his left told him the axe had survived the fall. The violin was to his right.

He blinked a few times to clear his vision and, once the mist in his eyes was sufficiently cleared, took another look at his surroundings.

A clearing, surrounded by trees, with dying grass, rotting leaves, and, standing out most prominently, a tombstone sticking out from the dirt. Words might have been carved into the stone at one point, but had been worn and weathered with the passing of a few short months.

Had it only been a few months? It seemed like so much longer.

For a few seconds, all Algare was able to do was stare at the grave, the mound of soft dirt covering his master. He felt that it was hardly right to sit and stare, but what else was he to do?

Inexplicably, he found himself reaching for the violin. Bow in one hand, instrument in other, he balanced it on a shoulder and slid the bow across the strings.

Serenading Hubrid Nox. It was the least he could do for his master, after failing him, allowing MAGAX to burn the book.

And for some strange reason, he was almost willing to let his master stay where he was, buried, shielded by soil and leaves.

Nevertheless, Algare set down the violin and picked up the axe, knowing that MAGAX was almost certainly nearby. The axe had pulled Algare through the fire, to the same place as MAGAX...

But he had to admit that when MAGAX didn't come, it was hardly a surprise. Algare set down the glowing green axe and hugged his knees to his chest, sighing, acknowledging the fact that MAGAX wasn't there. He was stuck with an axe and a violin in a clearing, next to his master's grave.

"It's you," someone said from behind him.

Algare didn't need to wonder who was talking to him. The soft, lilting, melodious, voice. Cheelee.

"Answer me a question," he said, not bothering to face the Cybunny. "Where is MAGAX...?"

Algare still didn't look at her. "I don't believe you."

"That's not my fault," she said angrily. "Do you see him here?"

"Oh, I believe he's gone," Algare said. "I just don't believe he's 'nowhere'. What have you done with him?"

"I'm just a child." She sounded nearly in tears now, but Algare felt no pity. "What could I have done?"

"I don't know," he said. Just a child, indeed. Just a child that he had to deal with instead of his master. "You were in the fire--"

"I was never in a fire!" Cheelee sounded terrified. "I'd burn!"

"You were in the book," Algare said relentlessly, "where Hubrid Nox put you. You were in the fire when it burned." He played a slow rising note. "You seized MAGAX, and when I used his weapon to follow him... he wasn't here. Who are you really, Cheelee? Why did Hubrid Nox choose you?"

"He chose me because I was there," she said, and her sweet girlish voice was hard now and bitter. "He chose me because I was at hand, and I was weak and helpless and vulnerable. He trapped me." Her voice rose. "He trapped you, and you love him! MAGAX left him and didn't save me and he still wants him back!"

"He is Hubrid Nox," Algare breathed, still playing, making the violin wail and mourn. "He is the master. He is forever. They say Dr. Sloth was on Neopia before the beginning, before there were Neopets or even faeries, but they lie. Hubrid Nox was always here."

"I have been trapped by his spells," Cheelee said, her high voice quiet and trembling. "I have been bound by his magic, in his pages, I don't know how long. Now I'm free, but I'm not really free, am I? I'm still here where he brought me, I'm still here at his grave."

Algare sighed and smiled. "Aren't we all?"

"I won't be," she hissed. "I won't stay trapped." Her voice rose to a shriek. "I won't be like YOU!!"

The rising note of her voice mingled with a rising note on the violin, and a green flash made Algare start and turn, playing a discordant screech as the bow slipped on the strings.

Cheelee had seized MAGAX's darklight axe, and raised it high...

If she smashes the tombstone, all is lost! he thought in desperation, though he had no idea how or why he knew that.

Algare was not a fighter. He never had been. He was a servant; he was loyal. He was a musician, an artist. He enjoyed poetry and novels and reading archaic texts to find things for his master. He didn't fight; he simply wasn't physically inclined.

But in that moment, he simply knew he had to stop her, whatever the cost. The knowledge of what he had to do ran deep, as deep as his loyalty to the master who shunned him, berated him, punished him, but to whom he was still faithful to with every fibre of his being. Hubrid Nox was everything, and conversely, Algare was nothing without his master. Even if it cost him his life, he had to protect his master... in death and beyond.

Decision made, he dropped his violin and leapt, fearing not for his life or himself, but merely hoping he would be in time to stop her. For if he wasn't, his master was lost forever...

Time resumed its normal speed and then sped faster, much too fast; before he could even breathe, he found himself crashing into Cheelee, her scream of rage mingling with the horrific clang of axe meeting stone. Together they fell to the ground, tumbling in the grass as he struggled to subdue her, as she kicked and scratched and screamed. In the melee, the axe was lost, but neither noticed as they wrestled, the old tired Lupe with the weight of loyalty pressing him on against the young Cybunny fueled with a rage beyond her years. It was unclear who had the upper hand, but it seemed to Algare the struggle would go on for eternity...

...or would have, had an epic crack of noise not filled the air, shaking the Lupe to his core as the horrific sound reverberated throughout the clearing, so loud he felt it in his belly. He and Cheelee froze in their struggle, looking up at the source of the horror, the presence of the other forgotten in the after-shock of the gut-wrenching sound.

It was the tombstone; he had thrown Cheelee's aim off enough that the blow from the axe hadn't struck head on, so she hadn't succeeded in smashing his master's headstone to rubble, but the glancing blow she struck had cracked the tombstone.

No... no, he wailed inside his own mind, watching as the crack widened down the side, time slowing down again so that every breath seemed to take an eternity.

In horror, Algare watched as the crack crawled down to the bottom of the stone...

Beside him, Algare heard the soft gasp of Cheelee as she saw the dust gather into a form, hovering a few inches above the stone.

The Chia was pale, his ghostly features now merely an echo of the imposing force he once had been. His eyes no longer twinkled with the malice and glee that had defined Algare's master; now they were curiously sad and almost hollow.

"Master!" Algare fell to his knees.

The ghost of Hubrid Nox nodded calmly in response.

"You have freed me."

"You have been trapped here?" Algare questioned.

If he had known, he would have found a way sooner, he knew it.

"A part of me," the spectre replied.

It almost didn't sound like Hubrid. There was no cackle, no maddened spiel. Only his monotonous, almost relaxed voice.

"The last fragment of my soul," the ghost continued. "Bound here, stopped from moving on by the servant's vessel in which it was trapped."

The ghost's eyes drifted downward to the Darklight Axe. The green glow was gone now, and if Algare had not seen its previous form, he would have thought it no different from any other battleaxe.

Now he understood. The axe, MAGAX's weapon, was powered by a fragment of Nox -- the perfect way to ensure that even if the servant had turned against the master, the servant could never triumph. Nox merely hadn't factored in his fate at the hands of Xandra.

"You have released me," the spectre said. "You have released us both."

The ghost's eyes drifted to Cheelee, whose eyes went wide in horror as a strange chill spread throughout her body.

"With the liberation of my soul comes the liberation of yours," Hubrid told her. "You have been trapped since time immemorial. It is time for us both to move on."

Cheelee's form began to fade before Algare's eyes, dissipating into dust. Above the grave, the same was happening to Nox's ghost.

"But, master!" Algare protested.

Nox shook his head. "I am your master no longer. You have released me. For your service, I return the favour."

The ghost disappeared from view, the dust joining the leaves on the wind. Algare was left alone in the clearing.

Algare stood in the doorway of the mansion, violin in hand. Looters would be there soon, he imagined. A grim smile spread across his face as he thought of the horrors they would find.

But that was a song for another time. Algare wouldn't linger to meet them. He had come for one thing.

He took the violin and began to play. It was a strained melody, full of sadness and betrayal. It echoed through the trees to the furthest edges of the Haunted Woods. Not a soul that night would sit in silence. They would hear it. And all would remember. One final night, one final memory. A chance to say goodbye.

It was the song of Nox.

Algare found himself crying as the final note escaped his violin. He wiped the tears from his eyes and took one last look at the mansion, his former prison.

"Goodbye, master," he whispered.

He turned, the servant no longer, and disappeared into the woods. It was time to find his own path.

MAGAX listened to the final strains echoing from the mansion and then moved into the clearing to behold the grave once more. He reclaimed his axe, no longer the magical thing it once was, but still a formidable weapon.

That night, he had his revenge. The last part of Hubrid Nox had been purged from Neopia. MAGAX had won. But there was something else.

A debt, a burden, finally repaid -- Cheelee was free. Nox no longer held her soul. MAGAX had helped her, at last.

"Goodbye," he whispered to the wind.

He turned. One last night to remember.

But now, it was over. It was time to forget. Time to move on. There was no need to define himself by his opposition to Hubrid.

He disappeared into the woods.

It was time to make his own path.

The End