For it is ever true that resurrected fairy warriors are supernoble in their thought patterns and don’t have much in the way of a sense of humor.
“Enough of this playfulness,” he said in Gnommish, and his human tongue mangled the words so that he sounded like an animal grunting speech. “We must assemble.”
Oro looked to the skies, where his plasmic warriors sloshed about him like a host of translucent deep-sea creatures. “This is what we have waited for,” he called. “Find a body inside the circle.”
And they dispersed in a flash of ozone, scouring the Fowl Estate for vessels that would become their hosts.
The first bodies to be taken were the humans who were nearby.
It was a poor day to hunt for ciphers on the Fowl Estate. On an average weekday the manor would have been a virtual throng of humanity. And presiding over everything would be Artemis Senior and Angeline Fowl, master and mistress of the manor. But on this fateful day the manor was virtually shut down for the approaching Christmas holidays. Artemis’s parents were in London, attending an eco-conference, with one personal assistant and two maids in tow. The rest of the staff was on early leave, with only the occasional holiday visit to keep the manor ticking. The Fowl parents had planned to scoop up their offspring on the tarmac at Dublin Airport once Artemis had concluded his therapy, and then point the Green Jet’s composite nose cone toward Cap Ferrat for Christmas on the C?te d’Azur.
Today, nobody was home except for Juliet and her charges. Not a nugget of humanity left to be preyed on, much to the frustration of the circling souls who had been dreaming of this moment for a very long time. So choices were limited to various wildlife, including eight crows, two deer, a badger, a couple of English pointer hunting dogs that Artemis Senior kept in the stables, and corpses with a bit of spark in them, which were more plentiful than you might think. Corpses were far from ideal hosts, as decay and desiccation made quick thinking and fine motor movements tricky. Also, bits were liable to fall off when you needed them most.
The first corpses to go were fairly well preserved for their ages. Artemis Senior had, in his gangster days, stolen a collection of Chinese warrior mummies, which he had yet to find a safe way to repatriate and so stored in a dry-lined secret basement. The warriors were more than surprised to find their brain matter reanimated and rehydrated, and their consciousnesses being ridden shotgun by warriors even older than they were. They clanged into action in rusty armor and smashed through the glass in mounted display cases to reclaim their swords and polearm spears, steel tips polished to a deadly glitter by a loving curator. The basement door splintered quickly under their assault, and the mummies crashed through the manor’s great hall into the sunlight, pausing for a moment to feel its warm touch on their upturned brows before lumbering toward the pasture and their leader, forcing themselves to hurry in spite of their awakening senses, which longed to stop and smell any plant life. Even the compost heap.
The next corpses to be reanimated were those of a bunch of rowdy lads interred by a cave-in, in a cave, back in the eighteenth century, while burying a plundered galleon’s worth of treasure, which they had transferred from the breached hull of HMS Octagon to their own brigantine, The Cutlass. The feared pirate Captain Eusebius Fowl and ten of his only slightly less feared crew were not crushed by the falling rock but sealed in an airtight bubble that would admit not so much as a sparrow’s whistle for them to suck into their lungs.
The pirates’ bodies jittered as though electrocuted, shrugged off their blankets of kelp, and squeezed through a recently eroded hole in their tomb wall, heedless of the popped joints and sprung ribs that the journey cost.
Aside from these groups, there were sundry corpses who found themselves dragged from their resting places to become accomplices in Opal Koboi’s latest bid for power. The spirit had already moved on from some, but for those who had died violently or with unfinished business, a ghost of their very essence remained, which could do nothing but lament the rough treatment heaped upon their bodies by the Berserkers.
Opal Koboi slumped on the ancient rock, and the runes that had slithered like fiery snakes settled once more, congregating around Opal’s handprint in the center of the magical key.
The first lock has been opened, she thought, her senses returning in nauseating waves. Only I can close it now.
The gnome heretofore referred to as Pip, but whose actual name was the considerably more unwieldy Gotter Dammerung, hobbled into the crater, climbed the ancient tower steps, and wrapped a glittering shawl around Opal’s shoulders.
“Star cloak, Miss Opal,” he said. “As requested.”
Opal stroked the material and was pleased. She found that there was still enough magic in her fingertips to calculate the thread count.
“Well done, Gunter.”