Puntuli's Chronicles: Part Three

by Asrman1

The Strange Event

Soon enough we were right outside a great castle. The method of transportation had made me dizzy, and I could make out a limping Asrman1.

As I started to walk in, I heard a slight noise of something zooming overhead. It didn’t go away, as something flying horizontally would, but instead it just kept getting louder, as if it were falling. And it was getting hotter. Humid. Burning. Flaming. BAM!!!

***

I felt weary and tired. I saw a familiar face…and a tiny one…and a newer one.

“He’s waking up!” I heard Asrman1 say.

“Yes, he is,” I heard the voice of Tiya repeat.

“You know, I did say sorry…heh…please may I leave?” This was a new voice. And it was coming from my right, where the new face was. But there was no body.

“Huh?” I managed. “Wh-what happened?”

“Oh…” said the strange voice. “I’m Boil, and I conked you on the head. I’m a Baby Fireball. The Sun God just sent me forth to help the Faerie Queen defeat the Evil Faerie…but in apology, I offered to help you rebels or whatever you are defeat her instead. I mean, I’m still on the same side, right?”

“Guh…” I said meaninglessly. “Right…”

Eventually, I recovered from my…whatever-you-want-to-call-it…and we set off with our new companion, Boil the Baby Fireball, who had also offered to become my PetPet, after hearing my sad story. We were just walking behind a nearby Cloudpine Tree when we heard an explosion from inside the nearby building sitting with us on this little cloud in the middle of nowhere. Suddenly, the building collapsed, from bottom up, and almost a million different NeoPets shot up out of it, including a tiny, just visible, purple flying figure. I realised that she could only be the Darkness Faerie, despite her size, and also noticed the rest of the NeoPet’s names: Shadowed Lupes, Shadowed Korbats, Shadowed Skeiths, and even a clump (actually a thousand almost) Shadowed Gelerts…all following the Darkness Faerie, almost two hundred feet high in the air.

It was while I was running away to hide in the nearby cloud-pit that I noticed a brush on the ground. Specifically a Paint Brush. And even more specifically, a Glass Paint Brush. I handed it to my owner, who was at my side, and we winked at Tiya. Suddenly, we were no longer bigger than her – she was bigger than us again. But so was Boil, who was panicking and running around, mixing himself between the cloud puffs and flaming fumes.

“It’s all right,” Asrman1 pointed out. “She’s still on our side.”

It was when he had finished saying “still” when I noticed the giant, black, figure lunging toward us. A figure I recognised as one of the Shadowed Skeiths But he was speeding toward one target in particular – Tiya. I jumped next to her and pushed her out of the way. Now she and the others had noticed, and Tiya shrieked. I knew why. I hadn’t moved out of the way! Suddenly, I felt a tearing pain at my left shoulder, and I was hanging now above the rest, going higher, higher, higher. I couldn’t bear it. The pain. Red liquid was dripping around the shoulder, landing on my paws. Soon I could see no more light. Only white, sharp pillars going up and down, along with me, and a hanging, shaking stalactite, and a lunging, slippery slime-of-a-thing trying to push me through the back of the…cave. Was this a dream? Where was I? After a sharp crunch, I realised. I was in the Skeiths mouth. The pillars were teeth. The slimy thing was a tongue. The “back of the cave” was the throat opening. The hanging stalactite was the uvula. The sharp pain was still in my shoulder. I was being devoured. Swallowed alive. Whole.

“Help!” I screamed. I was tossed by the tongue over to the throat, and I grabbed the uvula. A piercing shrill filled the area. The uvula started to shake, the throat clenched, the tongue shot straight, and the teeth pierced themselves. I knew what was next – the squeezing of the throat. It was a sneeze, but the Skeith was stopping himself from doing it. He was “swallowing his sneeze”. My foot got caught in between his tonsil and the back of his tongue. Obviously, I had tickled it, and now he couldn’t help to cough…but the sudden movement jerked me down, down…down. But instead of getting darker, it got brighter. And instead of falling, I was standing still, hovering in midair. Suddenly, all of the pain in my body disappeared and I burst out of the no-longer there Shadowed Skeith

Although none of us had heard it, Tiya muttered to herself. “Could it be? Is he really…no, he can’t be…he can’t.”

When I was somehow back safely on the ground, we returned to normal size. Well, we, not including Tiya. Tiya rested on my shoulder, healing the wound, but it looked like she was there for something different, as if to be my personal guardian. For the rest of the exploration she seemed to respect me more than I respected her. She kept muttering something, although no one could ever understand her. We looked like this: Me piggybacking on Asrman1’s back; Tiya resting on my shoulder; Boil nestling between my two wings. We had all bonded, just met or not. It was actually only a full day since Asrman1 and I had met, three quarters of a day since we met Tiya, and just about from a half two a quarter of a day since we met Boil – but we were all getting along as if we had been friends forever. It was thinking about this that I noticed the strange pedestal in the middle of the ruins…

***

We rushed Tiya to the Healing Springs after the affair. There was no other place – the Neopian Pharmacy and Hospital only served Neopets, plus most of the treatments, operations, and cures were not yet tested on Faeries. The Uber-Water Faerie was sleeping on a rock in the middle of the lake. I silently and gently hovered over the pond with Tiya in my hand, heading for her sister. I let her down beside the sleeping Mytri, as Tiya had called her.

“M-Mytri…I-it’s me, T-Tiya…please…h-help…” she muttered in what was temporarily her loudest voice possible.

“Hunh?” Mytri the Uber-Water Faerie said half-sleeping, half-awake. “Tiya?” She began to fully wake. “Tiya?! Oh what’s wrong? What happened?”

“Uh…” I began. Mytri’s small head lifted itself up to face me, and away from her dying sister. All I could do was mutter “Hi” and shyly look back. Finally courage overtook me and I saw that since Asrman1 could not cross the water and Boil was to scared of being extinguished, I began explaining myself…

“It was something we found…in the Darkness Faerie’s ruins…”

“The Uber-Darkness Faerie?”

“Y-yes,” I answered. “We thought it could help us and Tiya flew away to investigate…but something happened and she can’t seem to tell us something she needs to…she seems desperate.”

Mytri suddenly changed her expression to one of recognition. “Are you…” she started. “Oh, never mind. I’ll take care of Tiya, but you may need some help on the rest of your journey. I grant your owner the power of great courage, your friend the Baby Fireball the power of Snow Flame, to protect him from water-related elements, and you a great destiny…”

Next Week: The destiny is revealed...