Chapter Nine: Hyperactivity and Unconsciousness

"Captain Short, what exactly is going on?"

"Well, our magic is healing. It leaves people happy and energetic. This is her first time being full to the tips of her not- so-pointy ears with magic and I guess she just got a...little.... extra energy...."

Holmes decided not to say anything about the understatement Holly had just made.

The woman in question had just then turned a corner, which, as it turns out, was not one of her best moves. Standing there in front of her was a rather large monster.

Lestrade decided that now was as a good a time as ever to turn around and walk in the opposite direction. She did exactly this, only to find what the others had also just recently found: there were several more rather large monsters blocking their way.

"Err...." Was Lestrade’s only comment on the matter. Which was fine seeing as she really didn’t have time to say much else. She’d found, through personal experience, that it was not terribly useful to theorize on the sudden appearance of monsters while they were attempting to wipe you and your travelling companions out of existence.

*******

Moriarty smiled to himself. He wasn’t smiling because he was particularly happy, but because he found that if he didn’t move his mouth for a long stretch of time, it had a tendency to hurt slightly when he did. His smile was, however, completely wasted on the person in front of him. Deidre, like Wiggins and Tennyson, was unconscious and chained to a very battered piece of metal fence, which was, luckily enough, occupying the edge of a rock ledge. Below this was a rather deep and scary-looking ravine, which stretched down far below the lowest tunnel of the Underground. To sum it up, the Irregulars could, at any given moment, be sent tumbling down into a not-too-pleasant-looking crevice and mostly likely have their lives ended rather painfully.

Moriarty was rather pleased with this, because threatening to tip the Irregulars over into said ravine and most likely ending their lives was exactly what he intended to do.

There was only so much information you could suck out of drugged kids. Even when using fairy truth potion. Now there was only one use left for these children and that was as bartering items.

*******

Holly muttered untypeable things not quite under her breath as she was carried through the Underground, slung over a beastie’s shoulder. She continued doing this until the goblin whacked her upside the head. After that she opted for silent theorizing.

These creatures definitely had some goblin blood in them. What other species had that sickly mottled green skin and a disturbing tendency to lick their own eyeballs? (Ewww.) Maybe they’d been given human DNA? That would explain their size. Unconsciously wrinkling her nose, Holly drifted from beastie genealogy back to cursing her current situation.

The beastie responded in the same way as before.