***
The four of them were standing on a cliff by the castle.
Max turned to Jessica, who looked breathtakingly beautiful in the moonlight.
“So what do you say, Jess?” he said. “Will you come live with me in the Imperial Palace?”
She examined him, frowning.
He said, “What’s wrong?”
She pointed at him. “Your face. Your body. It’s all turning black.”
With a look of pure horror, Max realized that the poison was still in his system. Ariel had said that he had had only one hour before the poison killed him.
In his excitement about his victory over the Queen, he had completely forgotten that the poison was still there.
Max felt weak in the knees. He swooned. He felt like collapsing.
“Wait,” said Jessica. “I know what to do.”
She put a gentle hand on his cheeks and pulled him closer to her.
And then, she kissed him.
Max had once imagined how his first kiss with Jessica would be, but never in such circumstances. He was too weak and woozy to fully enjoy the kiss. He barely felt her lips graze his.
Soon, Jessica sucked out all the poison from him and then spat it out.
Max suddenly felt better, a lot better.
“How did you know what to do?” he asked.
A look of confusion came over her face. “I...don’t....know....I just knew I wanted to do something to save you....”
Max realized that only a person of supernatural origin would know what to do when faced with a supernatural problem.
Could it be? Like him, was Jessica originally from the Supernatural World too? Like him, had she been sent to the Natural World for her own safety and protection?
He didn’t get a chance to ask her, because at that moment, Jessica collapsed onto the ground.
Max rushed over to help.
Eddie and Ariel lingered behind them.
Max stared at Jessica.
Her eyes were closed.
“I feel so tired,” she said, breathing heavily.
“Tired?” he repeated.
If he had known how much it would have exhausted her, he would have never allowed her to suck the poison out of him.
She fell silent.
Was she dead?
Max gently nudged her shoulder. “Jessica? Are you OK?”
When she failed to answer him, he grew frightened.
“Jessica?” he said. “Jessica?”
But she didn’t answer him.
Panic gripped his heart.
“No,” he cried. “No!”
Lightning flashed and then thunder rumbled.
And then, something strange happened.
Hail began dropping onto Jessica lightly, whose body began to glow.
Max let go of her.
The hail seemed to do something to the girl.
Softly and gentle, it stuck to her body like glistening snow and then lifted her up.
Her body floated above Max and then rose higher still.
The hail continued to pelt down on him.
The scene felt oddly familiar to him.
Where had he seen it before?
And then, he remembered.
He was reminded of the picture Jessica had drawn when they first met. It was of a girl floating on a cliff with the dark sky in the background, hail raining on her.
The exact same scene was unfolding before him.
Had Jessica prophesized this?
As fog seeped in between them, as though trying to separate them, he reached out a hand helplessly, but Jessica was already out of his reach.
As the gusty wind blew on him, he yelled at Ariel, “What’s happening now?”
“I don’t know,” said Ariel. “It appears the hail has a particular affinity toward your friend there.”
“Why?” shouted Max.
He strained to be heard above the vociferous wind.
“I don’t know,” said Ariel.
Soon, Jessica rose so far into the sky that she disappeared from sight.
“Where is she going?” asked Max.
“I don’t know,” said Ariel. “But we have to get out of here. A storm is coming!”
The wind continued to blow harder still.
Hail gradually turned into rain, which pelted everything on the ground like machine-gun bullets.
“Why is a storm coming?” asked Max.
“The weather is unpredictable here in Purgatorio. Let’s get out of here!” cried Ariel.
The rain smashed onto the ground, leaving holes in the dirt.
That was when Max knew the weather meant business.
Max looked at the cat, who, to his surprise, began to transform.
From a tiny little cat, Ariel changed into a ferocious lion that was three times as tall as Max.
Ariel opened her mouth to reveal several sets of carnivorous teeth.
She roared, but it was drowned out by the screams of the storm.
The big cat looked magnificent and majestic. Her mane of orange hair made her look like dignified. Her sleek muscular body made her look regal.
“I didn’t know you could transform like Eddie,” shouted Max, amid the rushing of the wind. “Why didn’t you do that before?”
“I can’t control it,” said Ariel. “It comes and goes when it pleases. I guess that’s also my punishment for gluttony. Transforming into a fat cat, like a lion. Get it?”
Max got it, but he was too tired to laugh.
Ariel cried, “Hop on and let’s get out of here!”
So Eddie and Max hopped onto Ariel.
Ariel the lion began to race away from the cliff gracefully.
Max held onto her mane.
His mind was exhausted. So much had happened. Some of the events were still unexplained, such as Jessica’s mysterious ascension into the sky.
Soon, they entered the Haunted Forest.
When the storm had finally receded into the background, Ariel said, “Oh, I forgot to say. Congratulations, Your Imperial Majesty. You did it.”
“Yes, congratulations, Your Imperial Majesty,” Eddie chimed in.
Ariel had finally addressed Max respectfully, but now, it was meaningless to him.
“Yes, I reconquered Purgatorio. But at what cost?” he said, thinking of Jessica and wondering where she had gone.
He was happy that he was finally the Emperor but he had paid an enormous price. Jessica was now gone. And he had no idea where.
They reached the edge of the Haunted Forest and then, they passed through the force field to the other side.
The imperial griffin Damien was waiting for them nearby.
They disembarked from Ariel, who changed back into a cute little pudgy kitty.
The griffin let out a happy whinny as Max approached.
Max pet his griffin perfunctorily, all the while thinking about Jessica.
She had saved him by sucking the poison out of him. If it weren’t for her, he would have been dead by now. And he knew that only someone from the Supernatural World would know how best to handle a supernatural problem. Did Jessica have supernatural blood in her too? The fact that the hail lifted her up reinforced the possibility that she was of supernatural origin. And if she was, where had she gone?
Questions still swirling in his mind, he hopped onto the griffin.
Ariel and Eddie followed suit.
Damien rose in the air and the group prepared to return to the Imperial Capital.
***