The Forgotten Zodiac

"Mrow," Lilith said, then giggled more. "Do you want to play something else? I have chess and checkers and cards in there," She pointed at the closet, still smiling. "It's not very often I get real playmates, either."

Sylas scrambled to get an arrow on his bow, but it took a split second before the spider was off of L'arc and pinned to the floor by its head, not moving anymore. "Yuck," Sylas made a face, then realized that Verolen was on the floor. He walked over, rolling the demon over with his foot. Verolen let out a very quiet groan, temporarily unable to move.

Gabe smiled. "I like card games! I know a lot of those!" he said.

L'arc shuddered. He looked to Sylas. "I'll get Bermuda over here for Verolen. Then I'm going to go see if Eve's okay," he said, hurrying off. "Stay with Verolen!"

"Really? Great!" Lilith slid off the rocking chair, going over to the closet and grabbing the several decks of playing cards that were up there. "Let's play!"

"Got it," Sylas nodded quickly, notching another arrow just in case. He looked down at Verolen as the demon groaned again. "Are you trying to talk?" Sylas blinked, not expecting a response. He didn't get one other than a twitch from Verolen's foot, then he was still again.

Gabe giggled. "Goodie! What game?" he asked.

L'arc found Eve outside, hiding behind a pillar. He reported to her that the spider-thing was dead, which seemed to calm her a great deal. He then scurried off to find Bermuda.

"Hm...Slapjack?" Lilith suggested, smiling. "It's easy. We both have equal halves of the deck and we take turns flipping cards face up. When a jack gets flipped up, you have to slap it and you'll get all the cards on the pile. You want to get all the cards. Easy!" She sat down and opened one of the decks, shuffling messily before starting to deal them out.

Sylas waited patiently, but it was hard to keep watch properly. He had, after all, only one eye now. He kept having to spin on the spot to get a full view of his surroundings, just to make sure no more spider-things were coming. It seemed like that had been the only one, though.

((Oh, yeah. Eyeball.))

Gabe nodded happily. "I'll try it!" he said, picking up the cards.

Bermuda came around the corner. "Sy? L'arc said to come over here? Oh, Verolen! What happened? Do you know?" Bermuda hurried over to the demon, hold his staff in the air above him.

((Yes. You need to draw Sylas with his eyepatch.))

"Alright, great!" Lilith giggled, starting the game.

"Oh, Bermuda." Sylas turned to face his Naiad friend, nodding. "There was an odd spider thing that bit him. I'm not sure what happened after that, he just collapsed. It was this thing," He prodded the dead spider with one of his arrows, frowning some. "Then it went after L'arc, so I killed it."

Gabe slapped the deck whenever a face card came up.

Bermuda glanced over at the spider. "Oh. I don't know what that is," he said, reaching over and checking Verolen's vitals. "Hm. Just immoble, I think. Hang on," he said, picking up his staff. It glowed briefly, and Verolen was bathed in pale blue light. "This should work."

Lilith just giggled and played along, even though Gabe was playing totally wrong.

Verolen sat up suddenly, gasping. "That HURT!" He shrieked, grabbing the spider in his hand and squishing it quite thoroughly. Well, if it had just been playing dead before, it was definitely dead now. "Gah! I hate spiders!"

"Well, I was going to ask Rush if he knew what it was, but...I guess not." Sylas blinked.

"Who cares what it was, it had to have been from him! There's no doubt about it!"

"Him?"

"The Phantom, you idiot."

"Oh. Hey, I'm not an idiot!" Sylas frowned.

Bermuda grimaced as Verolen squashed the bug, but said nothing of it. He looked up. "Your dad? He was here?" he asked worriedly.

"It's either that or our witches have taken up inventing new creatures to come and cause problems for us," Verolen scoffed. Which was highly unlikely; although they were wanted by pretty much all of Halberd Hall, the witches had more than just them as targets. They were hardly important to them, unlike the Phantom, who was after them personally. All the time.

"Okay. What do we do?" Sylas asked, frowning.

"We go after him. He couldn't have come here for no real reason. He must have taken Manny again..." Verolen groaned, climbing to his feet.

Bermuda offered him a hand up. "Okay, can youg et us there?" Bermuda asked.

"Of course I can," Verolen nodded. "Now? I don't think we should leave Eve and Aries, I...I have a bad feeling about all this..."

"And you can't forget about me," Rush said, stepping out of the infirmary. "I want to help."

"I'll go find them, and L'arc," Bermuda said, running off. Quay peered around the corner at the group. "What's going on?" he asked.

"The Phantom took Manny. You'd be wise to stay behind, kid." Verolen grumbled. "I wouldn't be surprised if Gabe got taken, too..."

"I thought I felt an energy disruption...but I couldn't tell what it was." Rush frowned unhappily. No matter, what's done is done. They just had to go save Manny and Gabe.

"But I can help!" Quay said, smiling. "I can!"

"By doing what, kid? Throwing oranges at people, or calling them names? Or did you plan to take an arrow for one of us?" Verolen sneered. "Relax. You can go home in a few hours, when we get back. Stay here."

Sylas and Rush fell quiet, not sure if they should object or not. Verolen was being a bit harsh, but he was right...Quay was just a kid.

Quay frowned. "I'm strong! I can help!" he said. "I'm an archer, don't you know? I can shoot down three sirens a minute!" he said proudly.

"We already have an archer," Verolen jabbed a thumb at Sylas. "Even without one eye, he never misses. He can probably shoot down over five sirens a minute, not that we'll be shooting at sirens or anything." Sylas blinked, looking from Veroen to Quay. The kid wanted to go, clearly...

"Oh? Well, I bet I can shoot TWENTY demons a minute!" Quay challenged, starting to get irritated.