I nodded, my confidence shaken as well. "Maybe." Arine rubbed the back of his head with his palm turning to walk away. "Ugh, I wish we could just happen upon where Lothor hid Cienar instead of checking this whole freaking city!" As soon as he said that, he stepped on a stone that immediately caved in the path around both of us. "Ahhh!"
We fell along with the stones into the deep hole below us. Me and Arine gained control of our wings right before we hit the ground. I caught my breath from fright and looked up at the hole we fell down and then around at the darkness around us. "It's... The island, it's hollow." Arine looked around and his confidence returned. "Why else would it be hollow other than to hide something?! Maybe Cienar's down here! ...Wow, that was lucky." I gave him an uncertain look. "Let's not get our hopes up, Lothor might've not have known this was hollow either."
Arine turned back to me. "Well we better look around to see." Arine and I then started to look around barely seeing through the darkness with the small beams of light peeking through some stones of the streets above us. A couple minutes later we were almost at the end of the cave when Arine called me over to him. "Hey Silvera, check this out!" I turned around and flew over to him. "What is it?"
Arine then landed and pointed to a crack in the rock below us. "This looks like an opening. See? The crack makes a perfect rectangle." We shared a look then we both went to each side of the rectangle and worked our fingers into the crack. We both lifted as hard as we could and the block of stone came out easily.
We quickly put it down and saw that there was a large wooden box under it. Arine lifted the lid to peek inside and gasped, taking the whole thing off in the next second. As soon as he did I saw Cienar passed out inside the box with a cloth around his mouth and chains around his body. "Cienar!" Me and Arine yelled in unison causing Cienar's eyes to squint open then widen as soon as he saw us.
I then put my hands behind his back to help him sit up and took off the cloth wrapped around his mouth. He gasped. "Arine! Silvera! How on earth did you find me?!"
Arine looked away nervously. "Lucky guess?" I then grabbed the lock that held Cienar's chains and Cienar answered me before I spoke. "I doubt you can get them off, Lothor has the key with him." I didn't know what to do until Arine smiled with confidence. "No problem! I'll pick the lock myself!"
I looked at him blankly. "You can do that?" He nodded. "Yep." All of a sudden, yellow light surrounded him and Arine disappeared. At least I thought he did until I noticed a small glowing dot head into the lock that held Cienar's chains. The lock glowed and unlocked instantly. The chains then fell off of Cienar and we looked at each other in shock.
The dot flew out of the lock and grew bright again, and Arine transformed back to his normal size. He laughed at our surprise. "It's called being a fairy. We can change our size however we want." Cienar raised an eyebrow. "How come we're only finding about this now?"
I remembered that back on Devil's island Harper did that once, but it slipped my mind that Arine could do it too. Nevertheless, I was still surprised since I never saw Arine do that before. "You're saying that you could do this the whole time?! Do you have any idea how many instances there were where that could've been very useful??!!" Arine froze for a second then looked away awkwardly. "I forget okay?!" I shook my head then stood up helping Cienar out of the box and onto his feet. "Anyway, we need to get out of here before Lothor finds out we found you."
Cienar then looked at me surprised as I raised my wings getting ready to fly again. I paused. "Right. I um, got wings." He shrugged. "Not the weirdest thing I've seen today." We then flew back to the hole we fell through and came back up to the streets of the city. We let Cienar down back on the ground landing next to him and Arine turned to me raising an eyebrow. "What do we do now?"
I was about to answer him when I heard a huge smash on the other side of the buildings next to us. "What was that?" Me Arine and Cienar then ran towards the sound through an alley and I stopped dead in my tracks seeing Ikko and Dagger having an all out battle with immeasurable amounts of their magic. Arine and Cienar were surprised as well and I couldn't do anything but watch them continue to fight in the air.
Ikko's shoulder was burned and it looked like Dagger had taken some hits as well. I also noticed that a girl I've never seen before was kneeling on the ground next to their fight holding a knife to her chest. 'I have so many questions. Is that Crucifix?' I thought still watching intently.
Dagger then stopped attacking suddenly, and smiled evilly. "Time's up." Ikko stopped as well horrified and turned to the girl. She then started to push the knife slowly into her chest, letting out a scream as she did so. Ikko turned to Dagger again filled with anger. "No!!" A flash of light surrounded his hand and was replaced by a long sword in the blink of an eye. Without hesitation Ikko dived the sword straight through Daggers chest, and out his back. It all happened so fast, but now it was like time had stopped.
Even Dagger couldn't have a reaction other than fear on his face as blood seeped through his clothes. The sword disappeared and Dagger's eyes stayed open as he started to fall. Ikko was frozen as well as we saw Dagger's body fall to the ground below him. When Dagger hit the ground I cringed and looked away, but looked back after.
Ikko gained control of his actions again and flew back down, landing in front of Dagger's body that was now pooling with blood. He waited a moment in silence then turned to the girl. She quickly pulled the knife that had only gone a centimeter into her chest and dropped it putting her hands over the wound in pain breathing heavily.
Ikko then ran to her as quick as he could, immediately wrapping his arms around her as soon as he got close enough. Me Arine and Cienar had no idea what we had just seen and started to walk towards them. After I processed everything for a moment, I started to run towards Ikko waving crazily. "Ikko! What happened?!" He noticed me and looked back to the girl in his arms.
"I just freed my friend from a nine hundred year curse." From up close I noticed that the girl had similar features to Crucifix and realized I was right. But a second later, the faded half of her skin became bright again, and the dark grey half of her hair became white matching the other side.
I also noticed the bandage around her eyes and that her wings were gone even though her other wounds had begun to heal. I kept silent as sadness entered my expression realizing what happened to her. The girl then wrapped her arms around Ikko, holding him tightly finally accepting his hug as she began to sob. "T-Thank you..."