*screams* Ugh, this took far too long to write and it didn't even turn out that great. Just when I thought I would have plenty of time to start writing again, other junk flares up and keeps me from it. I apologize. I'll keep trying to get back on track, though, thanks to all of your wonderful reviews. I never expected this to be so loved by so many and I'm very glad it has went beyond some expectations from some of my readers. It has evolved into more than I initially planned. When I got the idea for an evil princess/Reaver story, I really did intend for it to be more about their sexual encounters *tee hee* :P, but when I started writing Lyra, giving her the personality that she has, I realized that I wanted more for her than just Reaver-licious rendezvous. And I had fun writing the other characters too. But I promise, to those of you wanting more naughty bits, there WILL be several once our little nefarious princess becomes a nefarious queen and since I'm skipping right to her coronation after they leave Aurora, it won't be long!

Ominous, he said. Walter could not have used a better word to describe the dark, gloomy caverns he and Lyra now found themselves navigating. It was surprisingly hot and though there was air flow through the tunnels, it only carried with it more heat. It was almost as if the cave was breathing. It seemed to suck the air in only to blow it out again. Of course, despite that nearly unbearable heat, the maddening thought of being inside some giant creature's throat, and the bones of past adventurers and possibly once residents of the abandoned temple they discovered littering the path, things hadn't been so bad. That is, until they reached a second door blocked by a strange, red aura.

"Now, where have we seen that before?" Walter took out the journal he had found before their descent past the first barrier and flipped through the pages. Finding a similar passage to the first, he moved forward and cleared his throat. "Stand back. Walter the Scholar will deal with this. Hmm… with an increasing sense of trepidation, admittedly." Lyra and Boy removed themselves from the old knight's proximity, giving him room to work his 'magic'. "Luminous spirits of the sand, inhale the restless gloaming!" The aura dissipated instantly, just as it had before, and Walter turned around with a grin; he was obviously quite proud of himself.

Lyra shook her head with a grin of her own as she and Boy moved through the now opened doorway. "There you go, what can I say? I have a knack for gibberish," he chuckled as he followed. "So do I, when I'm drunk, but you don't see me brag- -" The princess' response was cut short when the red force field reappeared the moment Walter passed through the opening. They both turned to stare at it in disbelief while the collie backed away, whimpering. "Um. Do you ever get the feeling somebody's playing games with us?" Lyra nodded with a smirk. "All the time."

Walter closed the journal and returned it to his satchel. "Let's just be thankful and get through this place as quickly as we can," he said, his voice trembling just slightly. Lyra barely noticed it, but it was clear that he had only been concealing his fear so far. For a while, she actually thought he might have overcome his phobia, or at least learned to suppress it. Of course, anyone could feel uneasy in a place like that. Even Lyra felt the walls closing in around her and the shadows began to play tricks on her eyes. She only hoped that they would find a way out before her old friend became a liability and she began to suffer from his affliction as well.

They pressed on, descending yet another flight of stairs. Just as Lyra was pondering the consequences of going deeper when all of her instincts told her she should be looking for a way up, she saw what little light there was on the path ahead be devoured by impenetrable darkness. Walter's torch provided only a small circle of dull, orange light now, giving them no comfort when the very darkness seemed to speak. "The light you bring will die. The light inside you will die." The old knight seemed to try and look in every direction at once as he demanded that the unseen being show itself, but Lyra was frozen to the spot and she felt a prickling on the back of her neck. Memories of the nightmare she had back in the Mercenary Camp came flooding back and it was suddenly obvious who, or what, the voice that had called her name just before she fell unconscious earlier belonged to. "All that you are will die."

As the princess stared forward, trying to make sense of her dream and its connection to their current situation, hundreds of eyes speckled the wall of darkness. Walter's grip on the torch tightened as he took a step back. "Oh, this isn't good," he muttered. The disembodied voice chuckled wickedly, seeming to delight in their fear. "The children are here to play." A swarm of living shadows crept out of the darkness and into their small sanctuary of light. Lyra barely had time to draw her sword before the creatures were upon them, but they were surprisingly vulnerable. One swipe of her blade or one bullet from her pistol turned them into little more than wisps of smoke.

"What are they!" Walter's question was swallowed up by the screeching of the shadows as Lyra disposed of them, but she wouldn't have had an answer even if she had heard. She only knew that for the first time since leaving the castle, she was afraid of her enemy. There were no such creatures in all of Albion, not in books, tall tales, or otherwise. Perhaps balverines were more vicious and banshees harder to kill, but they were things she knew of before having to fight them herself. Her mother had fought them, as had Walter, but these shadows and their invisible puppeteer were foreign indeed.

The old knight frantically swatted at the strange things with his torch, the light seeming to cause them more pain than the princess' weapons, but no matter how many they killed, more flooded from the surrounding darkness. "There's too many of them," Walter cried, standing back to back with Lyra. Though she heard his words this time, she was still unable to form any of her own. The dream was as fresh on her mind as it was the moment she awoke from it and she wondered if perhaps the situation wouldn't be quite as frightening if she hadn't suffered that damnable premonition. The very fact that this thing was worthy of such a forewarning gave her reason to be fearful.

"Do you feel the darkness swarming around you? Do you feel it creep its torturous path though your mouth, your eyes, until it eats away inside you? Tell me how it feels," said the voice behind the veil of shadows. Lyra couldn't help but believe the monster was speaking directly to her. Did it know all of her secrets, all of her sins and transgressions? Was that the darkness it was referring to? Had she brought this creature upon herself and Walter, attracting it with her own inner darkness? For a moment, her willingness to fight was drained away by those thoughts and the snickering shadow imps pummeled her mercilessly, but she seemed oblivious to their blows as she sank to her knees. "Keep fighting! We have to keep fighting," the old knight yelled, his eyes widening when he saw the woman nearly consumed by the mass of thrashing creatures.

Somehow, Walter's voice got through and Lyra tensed, realizing that this was not her fight alone. One of the only people to ever stick by her side was fighting for his life right there next to her and he would surely perish if she could not clear her head. In her moment of weakness, she could have embraced her own death freely, but nothing in the world, she realized, could make her willingly embrace his. Lyra would not allow fear and doubt to be her downfall, which she now realized was the monster's primary weapons. She raised her fist as the shadows continued to beat her and then slammed it against the stony floor. Force Push rippled out from her gauntlet and knocked everything, including Walter and Boy, off their feet. "Stay down!" The old knight was confused, but followed her command as the imps struggled to stand again.

Walter held his torch across his chest like a shield as the creatures surrounded him. Their prey had chosen to remain in a vulnerable position and it seemed to confuse them for they did not descend upon him as he believed they would. Instead, they seemed wary of his decision to stay prone and crept towards him slowly. Meanwhile, Lyra had wasted no time. After forcing the enemy to the floor, thus giving herself room to work, she began concentrating enough Will into her gauntlets for a more intense push. With Walter and Boy lying flat, the princess was free to release the fully charged weave without fear of harming her allies.

With a single clap, a wave of energy laced with shards of ice erupted outwards from her body, ripping through the shadows and reducing them to little more than puffs of harmless smoke. Their small sanctuary of light now clear, Walter scrambled to his feet and returned to Lyra's side followed by Boy. They expected the darkness to spawn more of the monster's children and they were ready for them, but none came forth; only familiar words that chilled the princess to the bone. "You are tainted. The stain will never wash out. The sun will never shine upon you again. Tainted… broken little toys." A small amount of light then returned to the cavern, signaling the monster's retreat; it was gone for now.

Once it had departed, Lyra's body stopped shaking and the fear she experienced seemed to subside. She now understood the creature's power. It wasn't that it was some terrifying thing that she could not defeat, but it certainly made her think it was. It crept beneath her skin and into her soul, planting seeds of uncertainty and fear until she believed fighting it was futile. She knew without a doubt that had she made this journey on her own, she would have died. Only her refusal to allow Walter's death saved her. He, however, did not seem to recover even as the darkness retreated. The old knight continued to cringe at every flicker of his torch and every displaced pebble sent skittering across the cavern floor by their footsteps.

Walter seemed to sense Lyra's concerned gaze and he turned to her, putting on his most convincing smile. "It's alright. We're alright. We… we just have to keep going, that's all. We're all alright," he said, his trembling voice betraying his attempt to prove he wasn't afraid. The princess nodded with a frown and continued on without comment. It was just as she feared when they passed the second barrier. Walter's stability was deteriorating by the second and if he could not pull himself together he would likely doom them both. Even Boy appeared to sense how dire things would be should the old knight lose his mind completely and nudged his hand affectionately. The man was momentarily comforted by that small show of concern and even stopped quaking long enough to ruffle the dog's ears, but something appeared ahead in a narrow hallway that sent him right back into a shaking mess.

Eyes winked open in the darkness ahead, resembling the monster's children enough to convince Walter, but Lyra knew better. She did not feel the crushing depression it brought with it before, nor the icy fingers prickling on her neck. "More of those things!" The old knight cringed as he flailed the torch at the passing bats, until the princess reached out and gripped his arm firmly. "Bats, Walter. Bats," she said, shaking him gently. He blinked and turned to watch them disappear down the hallway before breathing a sigh of relief. "Come on, Walter," he told himself, pulling away from Lyra, "Just hold it together." As he proceeded to mumble to himself about the book he had found and the creature, his protégé began to think that the barriers they had crossed had not been placed to keep people out, but to keep the monster in.

"It won't stop," Walter said as they reached the bottom of a short staircase, "It won't stop until it kills us." The princess shook her head, deciding that talking about it would only provoke it to return. She also felt that trying to discuss it with her companion would only increase his fear, even if she tried to explain that what he was feeling was merely the lingering effects of the creature's power. He wasn't in a state to listen to reason, but she was at least thankful to be moving up again. She hoped it would ease his mind as well. "Wait. I think we must be close to an exit. There's a cold breeze. Can you feel it?" She didn't. And Walter's voice was far too hopeful and desperate, but she followed swiftly when he began to run towards what he believed was a way out.

Stopping abruptly, Walter nearly caused Lyra to bump into him. She watched him with a quirked brow as he listened carefully for nearly a minute before speaking. "There's that sound again," he said, swallowing hard, "It's almost like- -" His words trailed off as a gust of hot air ripped from the doorway and extinguished their only source of light. "No! Not the light! Not the bloody light!" The princess tensed again as Walter tried desperately to ignite the torch with his bit of flint, her sword already drawn. Though her instincts instructed her to lash out blindly, common sense reminded her that doing so could see her cutting down Walter or Boy and she would not take the risk.

"Come on, work, damn it. Those things are all around us! Come on, come on, come on!" With one final, desperate strike, the old knight managed to relight his torch. Lyra relaxed as light flooded the area and revealed that the three of them were still the only occupants. Walter got to his feet, his wide eyes scouting for any danger that might have slipped up on them in the darkness. Satisfied that they were safe, he turned to apologize to Lyra for his irrational behavior and instead came face to face with a living nightmare. He was frozen to the spot and only his quick intake of breath caught the princess' attention in time for her to behold the creature as well. It was the same monster from her dream, just as she suspected, but this time it seemed more interested in Walter. However, it vanished in an instant once he regained enough of himself to move his arms and swat at it with his torch. In a flicker, it was gone.

Well, there you have it. Not very good, I know, but like I usually say, it moves things along. Even though I don't feel particularly motivated to write some of these chapters, I also feel that some of them do need to be included anyway for character development reasons. However, I'll be skipping some here and moving right along to when Ben locates the princess 'napping'. hehe So, I'm predicting (hoping) that Chapter 19 will get all of the Aurora stuff out of the way and then I can skippity skip again and Chapter 20 will take place back in Albion with the coronation and whatnot. THEN, at last, we will see more Reaver than he can shake his stick at. And by that, I mean his cane, of course. Yes, that's what I mean. :P