Artemis Fowl 08 - The Last Guardian by Eoin Colfer Page B

stake pits, and waves of humanity rolled across the meadow, blackening the grass with their passage.
    It all happened just the way my father told me, Holly realized.
    The soul howled in frustration as it lost purchase and was repelled, flapping into the air.
    Two Berserker souls fought for entry into Artemis and Butler but were repulsed. Butler had keeled over like a felled redwood when Holly’s shot hit him, and Artemis clasped his hand, stunned that their friend Holly would burn their bare skin with her Neutrino beams.
    Artemis had quickly and mistakenly concluded that Holly had been possessed by one of the Danu, something he now knew all about from the soul who had tried to occupy him.
    He sank to his knees and watched through pain-slitted eyes as the Berserker warriors advanced. Was Holly an enemy or friend now? He could not be sure. She seemed herself and had swung her weapon at the horde.
    Opal’s voice came from beyond the throng, shielded by its mass.
    “They have protected themselves. Kill them now, my soldiers. Bring their heads to me.”
    Artemis coughed. Bring their heads to me? Opal used to be a little more subtle. It’s true what they say: Prison does not rehabilitate people. Not pixies, at any rate.
    His own baby brothers advanced toward him with murder in their eyes. Two four-year-olds moving with increasing grace and speed.
    Are they stronger now? Could Myles and Beckett actually succeed in killing us?
    And if they didn’t, perhaps those pirates would, with their rusting cutlasses.
    “Butler,” Artemis rasped. “Retreat and evaluate.”
    It was their only option.
    There is no proactive move open to us.
    This realization irritated Artemis, even though he was in mortal danger.
    “Retreat and try not to injure anybody except those pirates. The Chinese warrior mummies and I will not be overly upset if a few animals are harmed. After all, it is us or them.”
    But Butler was not listening to Artemis’s uncharacteristically nervous diatribe, because Holly’s shot had pulsed his vagus nerve and knocked him out cold. A shot in a million.
    It was up to Holly to defend the group. It should be fine. All Captain Short had to do was set her custom Neutrino on a wide burst to buy them some time.
    Then a pirate’s blackjack twirled from the fingers of a pirate’s skeletal hand and cracked Holly’s nose, sending her tumbling backward on top of Butler’s frame.
    Artemis watched the possessed creatures advance the final steps toward him and was dismayed that at the end it all came down to the physical.
    I always thought my intellect would keep me alive, but now I shall be killed by my own baby brother with a rock. The ultimate sibling rivalry.
    Then the ground opened beneath his feet and swallowed the group whole.
    Opal Koboi elbowed through her acolytes to the edge of the chasm that had suddenly appeared to suck her nemeses from their fate.
    “No!” she squealed, tiny fists pounding the air. “I wanted their heads. On spikes. You people do that all the time, right?”
    “We do,” admitted Oro, through the mouth of Beckett. “Limbs too, betimes.”
    Opal could have sworn that, underneath her stamping feet, the ground burped.

The Fowl Estate, Several Feet Belowground
    Artemis tumbled down and down, striking knees and elbows against the crooks of roots and sharp limestone corners that protruded from the earth like half-buried books. Clumps of dirt crumbled around him, and stones rattled down his shirt and up his pant legs. His view was obstructed by the twirl of tumble and layers of earth, but there was a glowing above. And below too? Was that possible?
    Artemis was confused by the thump of wood behind one ear and the luminous glow from below. It was below, wasn’t it?
    I feel like Alice falling into Wonderland.
    A line came to him:
    It would be so nice if something made sense for a change.
    No fall can last forever when gravity is involved, and Artemis’s descent was mercifully gradual as the crater