“This is Frondsday,” proclaimed Kolin Ozkopy, chin jutting. “I could be doing without all this bleeping nonsense on a Frondsday. First I lose reception on my phone so I have no idea who is winning the crunchball match, and now a golden pixie is floating in my chamber. So pray tell me, pixie lady, what is going on? And where are your nails?”
Opal was amazed to find that she felt compelled to answer. “Nails are difficult, dwarf. I was prepared to forgo nails to save time.”
“Yep, that makes a lot of sense,” said Ozkopy, displaying far too much lack of awe for Opal’s taste. “You want to know what’s difficult? Standing here getting blasted by your aura, that’s what. I should be covered in SPF one thousand.”
In fairness to Ozkopy, he was not being psychotically blasé about this whole affair. He was actually in shock and had a pretty good idea who Opal was and that he was probably about to die, and he was trying to brazen it out.
Opal’s golden brow creased with a frown like rippling lava. “You, dwarf, should be honored that the final image seared into your worthless retinas is one of my glorious…glory.”
Opal was not entirely happy with how that sentence had ended; but the dwarf would be dead momentarily, and the poor sentence construction forgotten. Ozkopy was not entirely happy with Opal insulting his retinas.
“Worthless retinas?!” he spluttered. “My dad gave me these retinas…not that he directly plucked ’em out of his own head, you understand, but he passed ’em down.” To his eternal cosmic credit, Ozkopy decided to go out with some flair. “And, seeing as we’re insulting each other, I always thought you’d be taller. Plus, your hips are wobbly.”
Opal bristled angrily, which resulted in her radioactive corona expanding by a radius of three yards, totally atomizing anything within the sphere, including Kolin Ozkopy. But, even though the dwarf was gone, the sting of his parting comments would live on in Opal’s mind-drawer of unfinished business for the rest of her life. If Opal had one flaw that she would admit to, it was a tendency to rashly dispose of those who had offended her, letting them off the hook, as it were.
I mustn’t let that dwarf get me down, she told herself, ascending with blinding speed toward the surface. My hips are most definitely not wobbly.
Opal’s ascent was blinding and divine in appearance, like a supernova that shot toward the ocean’s surface, the fierce heat of her black magic repelling the walls of Atlantis and the crushing ocean with equal offhandedness, reorganizing the atomic structure of anything that stood in her way.
She rode her corona of black magic onward and upward toward the Fowl Estate. She did not need to think about her destination, as the lock called to her. The lock called, and she was the key.
ériú, a.k.a. The Fowl Estate
Buried in a descending spiral around the lock, the Berserkers grew agitated as magic was let loose in the world above.
Something is coming, Oro, captain of the Berserkers, realized. Soon we will be free and our swords will taste human blood once more. We will bake their hearts in clay jars and call forth the ancient dark forces. We will infiltrate what forms we must to hold the humans back. They cannot kill us, for we are already dead, held together by a skein of magic.
Our time will be short. No more than a single night after all this time; but we will cover ourselves in glory and blood before we join Danu in the afterlife.
Can you feel the shift? Oro called down to the spirits of his warriors. Be prepared to push forward when the gate is opened.
We are ready, replied his warriors. When the light falls upon us, we will seize the bodies of dogs, badgers, and humans and subvert them to our wills.
Oro could not help thinking: I would rather inhabit a human than a badger.
For he was proud, and this pride had cost him his life ten thousand years ago.
Gobdaw, who lay to his left, sent out a shuddering thought that could almost be a chuckle.
Yes, he said. But better a badger than a rat.
If Oro’s heart had been flesh and blood, it would have burst with a new pride, but this time for his warriors.
My soldiers are ready for war. They will fight until their stolen bodies drop, then finally be free to embrace the light.
Our time is at hand.
Juliet Butler was holding the fort, and not just in the sense of looking after things while Artemis’s parents were away at an eco-conference in London—she was actually holding a fort.
The fort in question was an old Martello tower that stood sentry on a hill overlooking Dublin Bay. The fort had been worn down to a nub by the elements, and strange black ivy had thrown tendrils along the walls as though trying to reclaim the stone for the earth. The would-be conquerors were Artemis Fowl’s brothers: four-year-old Myles and his twin, Beckett. The boys had rushed the tower several times with wooden swords but were rebuffed by Juliet and sent gently tumbling into the long grass. Beckett squealed with laughter, but Juliet could see that Myles was growing more and more frustrated at the failure of his assaults.