Zodiac Academy 8: Sorrow and Starlight

“Gaaaaabe!” I called into the wind. “Gaaaaaaabe!”

A storm was crackling in the air as Dante fought to keep a tether on his powers, and my long, thick mane of blonde hair was starting to stand up on end from the static.

The battlefield was a churned-up land of mud and death, and the quiet that hung over us made me shudder. Fear was a tangled knot in my chest, and I couldn’t let my mind drift to the worst-case scenario that Gabriel was lying dead among the bodies somewhere. We’d been searching for him day and night, scouring the bodies one after the other, but there were so many of them to check that it was an endless task.

Rosalie was leading the Oscura Wolves back and forth across the ground in shifted form, their noses to the ground as they tried to scent some trace of him. The rest of our family were digging, using earth and air magic, to shift as much soil as they could and hunt the ground beneath us, searching the ruins of The Burrows in desperation.

Dante and I had scoured the land up here three times over, and I was starting to think we should head underground too. I turned to him, finding him standing with his back to me, his eyes on the horizon and tension in the set of his broad shoulders. He carved a hand over his dark hair and sparks of electricity tumbled off of him, a Dragon’s rage rising in his skin.

“If he was here, he’d see us. He’d call for us, or leave some sign,” Dante said as I moved up behind him, my heart as heavy as a lump of lead.

I rested my hand on his shoulder and electricity flowed freely into my body, making me growl, but I pushed through it even as all my hair stood fully on end, reaching for the sky.

“He could be trapped. Maybe he can’t get to us because he’s out of magic. Maybe we should start tunnelling like the others are. We can’t give up,” I insisted.

He spun towards me, forcing my hand off of him, his eyes flashing like a sea storm. “I would never give up on him, fratello. A morte e ritorno. Even if he is dead, we shall return him to us and give him the greatest burial a Fae has ever known.”

Pain struck me in the heart at him even voicing that thought. “He’s not dead,” I growled, my Lion raising its head in my chest. There was no way I was giving that possibility airtime. It could fuck right off and bury itself up a duck’s ass.

I fell to my knees, shoving my hands into the dirt and starting to dig. I only had a fire Element, but I didn’t need earth to get underground. I’d dig my way to the other side of the world for Gabriel.

“Gaaaabe!” I cried into the hole I was opening up. My fingers dragged over something hard, and black hair peeked through the mud around it. I gasped, trying to dig deeper into the earth in case it was him. “Gabe? Gabe hold on!”

I cleared the mud, and a charred skull came loose in my hand, black hair still sticking up from the top of it, the rest of it all burnt away by fire.

“Gabriel?!” I looked into the empty eye sockets of the skull, then to that black tuft of hair on its head, stroking it as grief welled in me. “What if this is Gabe?” I cried and Dante dropped down in the mud beside me, reaching for the skull.

I didn’t let him touch it, hugging it to my chest and cradling it softly as I sobbed.

“Shh, shh, I’ve got you Gabe. We can fix this. We can put you back together dude,” I promised.

Dante pressed his air Element into the soil, carving out the ground and digging up the rest of the body. In seconds, we’d know the truth, we’d see a piece of his clothes, his sword still valiantly in his hand. Oh man, I just knew he died valiantly.

“Ga-hay-hay-be,” I cried, rubbing my face on the skull as tears ran down my cheeks. I couldn’t say goodbye. He was one of the best Fae I knew. My winged friend, my angel man.

Dante eased Gabe’s body from the ground, laying down the pile of bones which still had tattered, burnt clothes clinging to its shoulders. He tugged off a scrap of red material which was branded with the crest of the Dragon Guild and my sobs immediately died in my throat.

“It’s not Gabriel,” Dante confirmed with a sigh of relief before I realised I was hugging some gross, dead creep.

“Ergh!” I slammed the skull down on a rock, then again and again and again, pieces of bone shattering beneath the force. “Double, triple, quadruple die, you devil dick,” I snarled through my teeth.

I didn’t stop until the skull was in fifty pieces and there was nothing left of it to destroy, but then I realised a piece of its hair was stuck on my finger and I shook my hand with a scream.

It flicked from my hand, slapping Dante in the face and he fell back onto his ass with a curse. The hair landed on his knee, and he kicked out his leg to send it fluttering down onto the mud. I burned it with a flash of fire and breathed out a sigh of relief, subtly wiping my hands off on Dante’s sleeve.

“Let’s start digging,” Dante said darkly, moving to stand and splitting the dirt apart with his air Element. I used the power of fire to harden the walls of the muddy tunnel he was creating, and although we definitely weren’t as efficient as an earth Elemental would be, we made steady progress, descending into the dark.

When we were ten feet deep and tunnelling along nicely, I cast Faelights around us, wanting to conserve my fire Element in case we came under attack. What if Lionel came back with an even bigger army? What if the first battle had been the pre-battle to a bigger battle? A battle of doom.

“Let’s hurry,” I whispered.

“Wait, did you hear that?” Dante said, pressing his ear to the muddy wall ahead of us.

My stomach growled loudly, and I pressed a hand to it. “That’s just me, bro.”

“No, it’s not that.”

My stomach growled louder. “Pretty sure it is. I could hardly eat breakfast this morning, I was so worried about Gabe. I only had three dry bagels with butter and jelly on top and two Poptarts. Not even the good kind of Poptarts. They were unbranded, Dante. And I didn’t have any cereal – you know how I love cereal.”

“Get over here, Leone,” he barked, and I hurried forward, pressing my ear to the wall too and gazing at my best friend with hope chasing my heart around my chest.

There was a musical whistling noise coming from somewhere beyond it and I gasped.

“Do you think it’s Gabriel? Maybe he got hit on the head and he’s lost all memory of who he was, and now he identifies as a bird, and we’ll find him in there with his wings out and his eyes all cuckoo as he tries to communicate to us in bird language.”

“Your imagination scares me sometimes,” Dante murmured, then pressed his hand to the wall.

“We’re coming, Gabe!” I called then formed my lips into an O, whistling to him in case that was all he understood now.

Dante cut a hole through the wall, and I blasted a swirl of fire around it to harden it, but the tremor that ran through the ceiling told me this place was not stable at all. I sent my Faelights ahead of us and we stepped into a small section of the rebels’ passages, all the ways on now collapsed and rubble lying everywhere.

The whistling was coming from a large pile of rocks, and I gasped as I spotted a thin, metal pipe sticking out of it. I hurried forward, dropping to my knees and throwing bricks and huge stones aside as I dug Gabe free.

“I’m coming, I’m here, I got you dude.” I cleared the area around the pipe, the wind from the frantic whistling puffing against my face, and I wrinkled my nose at the strange scent coming from it. “What the-”

“Dalle stelle,” Dante cursed as he moved closer and I gazed at what I’d unveiled in shock, my mind not able to decipher the leathery, orange-toned skin.

It was definitely part of a body, some spandex torn open around it and the silver pipe clutched between what looked like-

“Is that a bare ass?” Dante whispered, confirming my worst fears as the pipe continued to whistle and the air expelled from it puffed into my mouth.

“Ah!” I reared backwards, spitting on the ground and wiping my tongue over and over against my sleeve. “Why is there a whistling ass in that pile of rocks?!”

I picked up a stone, lunging at it in a bid to kill it for the ass-flavoured air which I would never forget the taste of. Dante knocked me back, wielding his air Element and unveiling the man within the rocks.

He was on his knees, ass up and pretty much naked apart from the slip of spandex that was wrapped around his cock and balls.

“I’ll kill you, you ass whistling monster!” I dove forward, but Dante knocked me back again, looking me in the eye.

“He’s on our side, fratello. That’s Brian Washer.”

“I don’t care who he is, his ass whistled in my mouth,” I snapped.

“He might have seen Gabriel,” Dante hissed, and I clenched my teeth, fighting back the fire in me and nodding stiffly as I gave in. But if he didn’t think I was going to hold a grudge for the rest of time for this, he didn’t know me at all.

“Help,” Washer whimpered, still in the same awkward position on his knees, cuts and bruises lining his body, ass pointed at us like it wanted to catch my eye.

Dante took pity on him, leaning down and pressing a hand to his shoulder to heal him.

Washer started flexing his hips, rocking back and forth, making the ass whistle go off sporadically.

“What the hell is that?” I pointed at the pipe and Washer peeled himself off the ground at last, reaching back to pluck it from his ass crack. “I ran out of magic, you see? But I found this teeny weenie pipe among the debris, and I couldn’t reach my mouth to make a noise with it to hail attention this way. So I did what any desperate fellow would do and-”

“Why didn’t you just shout for help?” I demanded.

“That’s far less efficient. I am well trained in survival one-oh-one. Now.” He held out his hand to Dante. “I must shake the hands of my saviours. Goodness, you are a strapping man…oh – I know who you are.”

“Dante Oscura,” Dante said anyway, briefly shaking his hand. “We need to know what you’ve seen down here. We’re looking for someone.”

“Of course,” Washer said, holding his hand out to me and I hissed at him like a cat in refusal.

He placed his hands on his hips, rocking side to side as he limbered up. My gaze slipped down to his Speedos and I inhaled sharply as I spotted a smooth, waxed ball hanging out one side of it.

“So, did you see anyone else down here?” Dante pushed.

I tugged on his sleeve, trying to get his attention and draw it to the ball that was looking me right in the eye.

“Dante,” I whispered subtly.

“Ohhh, yes,” Washer said in a warbling tone. “I saw the man himself. The big, puffed-up Dragon Lord, that false king. I was here among the rubble already, knocked out by all those naughty rocks that had fallen on my head. But as I woke, I heard a terrible, terrible voice.”

“What did he say?” Dante asked while I tried to give the tanned, leathery dude in front of me the heads up that his shiny nut was hanging out with us.

Washer didn’t seem to pick up my expressive eye movements though, instead barrelling on with his story.

“He said, ‘The dead queen’s bastard son, and it looks like he’s all out of magic’,” Washer relayed ominously, and my gaze finally snapped up from his ball to his face.

“Gabe,” I gasped, sharing a look of fear with Dante. “What happened next?”

“Well, my boy, he said something about needing a new Seer, then there was a bit of a kafuffle, a twinkle of stardust and I believe the king took whoever the poor fellow was prisoner.”

“It was our Gabriel,” I said in despair.

“No,” Dante growled, electricity exploding from his body, and I stepped back instinctively while Washer got a blast to the chest, sending him flying onto his ass, his legs spread wide and twitching under the onslaught of his power.

“Gabriel? As in Gabriel Nox?” Washer balked. “Are you saying he was Merissa’s son? That he is the half-brother of the Vega twins?”

“Yeah, duh,” I said, and Dante rounded on me

“That was a secret, Leone.”

“Ohhh,” I said in guilty realisation. “Well, it’s still a secret, right bro?” I looked to Washer. “Or I’ll smash your nuts in with a hammer. Nuts that might be more accessible than you even realise.”

“Of course. I shall solemnly vow that I will never utter the truth,” Washer promised, holding out a hand to strike the deal, but I grimaced at it. Dante took the bullet, moving forward and making the star promise with him.

“Come on, Dante, we have to tell the others.” I lunged at my Dragon friend, dragging him nose to nose with me by the shirt. “We have to go after Gabe. We have to rescue him.”

Dante’s face paled with terror. “Let’s gather everyone and get back to the rebels.”

I nodded, fury falling over me and making the beast in me stand to attention. No one took a member of our family and got away with it. I’d grown up in the roughest city in Solaria, I’d survived gang fights, psychotic, power-hungry Fae trying to rule my life and everyone else’s, and I was not going to let a small-dicked Dragon steal away my Gabe and live to tell the tale.