Loki kept on chasing the carriage.
Someone pulled the curtain behind the window open. It was Carmilla, showing her fingers wrapped in rings of pearls. She stared at Loki as if she were amused that he’d made it his far. Then she bestowed an infuriating look upon him from the top of his head to the bottom of the unicorn’s legs. Like usual, she didn’t speak.
The Queen mocked Loki without saying a word. She mouthed, “Peekaboo,” as she pointed her forefinger and middle finger at her eyes and back to Loki. “I see you.”
The words sent a shiver into Loki. The Queen loved to play games. Killing her enemies abruptly seemed not to be her thing; she loved to see them suffer slowly; she loved to watch them decay as she sat and slowly devoured her precious apples.
Loki saw her gripping Snow White tightly with her other hand. Although he knew that Snow White wasn’t a damsel in distress, and that she was badass, he wondered why she didn’t fight the Queen. Was it because she was her mother and that she felt partially ashamed to resist her, or was it that the Queen’s strength was overwhelming?
“Run, Loki,” Snow White screamed as the Queen pulled her hair. “Save yourself. She won’t let go of me. I tried to get your Fleece from her, but now it’s too late. Run!”
“No, I won’t,” Loki said, gripping his Alicorn. “I won’t wake up without you! We’re going to wake up from this dream together, and then I’ll never leave you again.”
“She’s mine now, Dreamhunter,” the Queen of Sorrow yelled from behind the pearl bars. “As mother and daughter—or shall I say once-mother and daughter—she’s bonded to me. That’s why as long as I hold onto her, she is trapped in this dream and won’t be able to wake up,” she turned her head back and called for the one of the wolves pulling the carriage in the front, “Managarm!”
Loki assumed this was the wolf’s name, but he was oblivious of what she’d ordered him to do. Seconds later, the unexpected started happening. Loki tried to calm himself as he saw the carriage slowly start to rise into the air, pulled by the wolves. It was a slow lift off; they were pulling the carriage towards the moon.
“No!” Loki screamed, trying to grab the window’s bars with his hands.
“Peekaboo,” Carmilla mouthed again from a higher angle behind the bars. “Goodbye to you.”
Loki sped after them, wrapping his hands around the unicorn, wondering if it could fly. Spontaneously, he raised his Alicorn in the air and shouted, ‘Ora Pedora.’
“This should work,” he mumbled to himself. “I’ve had a long journey, and I’ve changed a lot. I do believe that I can do the impossible now. I really do. This should work,” he closed his eyes, trying to concentrate on the sincerity of his emotions. He imagined Snow White back in his arms again. He imagined he could save her. He’d spent a whole year trying to be forgiven for falling in love, and he wasn’t going to do make that mistake again. He wasn’t going to resist his feelings this time, or apologize for having them. Even if it was irrational how fast he’d fallen in love with her, even if he was forbidden from loving a demon girl, he wasn’t letting go of her. To hell with his memory, the hell with going back home, and the hell with the boundaries that chained him and prevented him from transcending and becoming what he wanted to be.
With eyes closed, he could feel the spiral surface of his Alicorn changing. It was moving, gliding as if it was becoming…alive.
Loki opened his eyes and saw the spirals around the Alicorn were circling around it like a snake. The truth was that this was a snake. He whipped it the air and it let out a scream and got thicker, spiralling higher toward the flying carriage. Loki soon discovered it would stretch as long as he needed it.
What he was holding in his hand was partially an evil weapon. He wasn’t that fond of snakes, especially after seeing the Queen’s forked tongue. But he knew this was what Charmwill repeatedly told him, that Loki had darkness inside him, darkness that had to do with whoever he’d been in the past. Only he could use this darkness and control it to use it against the likes of the Queen of Sorrow. It was like fighting fire with fire.
Loki whipped the snake one more time until it reached the carriage. He saw the Queen snarling with her fangs at the Alicorn’s snake. It was like a clash of titans, the same species eye to eye with each other.
Loki whipped his Alicorn for a third time. His snake slithered through the Queen’s hair and sprayed poison into her eyes. Carmilla screamed and backed away from the bars as Loki’s snake curled itself around them and started pulling the carriage down.
The struggle disrupted Loki’s balance on the unicorn but he gripped it harder with his free hand. Then he tightened his other hand around the Alicorn to help the snake pull the carriage back to land.