LITMIR.BIZ

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no, Charlie thought. What’s she going to do?

      But before anything further could happen, there was a sound. Small at first - a low, dull whine - it soon sharpened and became the bright roar of a fighter jet screaming overhead. As it passed, two long, silver tubes launched from its wings and arrowed down towards Central Park far below, leaving twin trails of smoke.

      Missiles! Charlie realised. They’re going to shoot her with—

      WHAM! The explosion was so immense that Charlie and his friends were thrown to the ground as a wave of heat blasted them. A ball of fire blossomed out from the front of the enormous nautilus shell and plumed upwards, revealing a scorched crater beneath. As Charlie scrambled to his feet, he saw that the shell itself was untouched - the massive explosion hadn’t seemed to damage or harm it in any way.

      “Well, I’m no chef,” Theodore said, shakily standing, “but I’m guessing that four-armed chick’s goose is cooked.” He turned to help Violet and Brooke up, while Charlie peered into the thick black smoke that blanketed the front of the shell, desperately looking for any signs of movement.

      Nothing. And then he heard a sound.

      Laughter. A female voice - rich and throaty and full of mockery.

      As the smoke cleared, he saw the Queen of Nightmares standing exactly where she had been when the missiles first slammed into her: untouched and unharmed. Her purple cat-eyes glittered with dark delight.

      “Charming,” she said, and her casual tone of voice chilled Charlie to the core. “What’s next? Poison? Lightning bolts? Asteroids? Please, send me your worst…as long as I get to do the same.” With that, she raised all four arms to the sky. Her silver hair flashed in the sun. “Wonderful people of Earth, it’s time to introduce you to my newest babies…my dark darlings…my Elemental Golems. Say hello to…Fire!”

      With a flick of her top right hand, two circles of glowing cinder on the scorched earth beside her erupted into brilliant flames. The fiery pillars raged upwards, growing and expanding, licking at the sky with orange tongues until forming themselves into creatures. They were blazing, brutish things, five storeys high and made entirely of fire. Every step of their thick legs left behind bubbling pools of lava and every touch of their fingers summoned an inferno.

      Violet shook her head. “This is bad…”

      Then, with a flick of her lower left hand, the Queen of Nightmares made the ground shudder violently. Two huge slabs of rock exploded from the still smoking dirt and then crashed back down with earthquake-like force. Deep cracks spider-webbed across them, causing huge boulders to fall as if chiselled away by some insane, invisible sculptor. Giant stone creatures emerged. They were horrible, blocky things with wide foreheads and fists the size of tanks. Their dull, empty eyes made them look stupid and slow, but Charlie guessed that they were deadly.

      “Ladies and gentlemen,” the Queen of Nightmares said pleasantly. “Meet Earth.”

      The two Elemental Earth Golems walked to stand beside the two Elemental Fire Golems. With every step they took, the world shook with thunder.

      “Um, wow,” Theodore said. Charlie and the others nodded in agreement.

      The Queen of Nightmares continued. “As all good schoolchildren know, there are not just two elements - there are four. I’d now like to introduce you to Air.”

      With a flick of her bottom right hand, the air on either side of her began to spin violently.

      “And Water.”

      With the slightest of gestures from her top left hand, the water in the Pulitzer Fountain at the southern end of Central Park shot upwards, twisting and churning, until it split to create two gigantic spouts, each thirty metres high. The enormous columns of water and air expanded and reshaped themselves until they formed entirely new Golems, huge and terrible. Their existence was impossible, and yet, there they were.

      The two violently spinning Water Golems sailed back to the shell on a giant wave that would have doomed even the most experienced surfer, while the two Air Golems - looking for all the world like living tornadoes - settled down on either side of their fellows to create a line of eight Golems, two of each kind.

      Brooke stared at them in dismay. “Even if we destroyed all the regular monsters of the Nether, the Fifth could just create more of these things!”

      Charlie nodded. “Yeah. And we don’t even know if she can be killed. I mean, not even a missile strike could take her out.”

      “Oh, you’ll kill her,” Theodore said, arms crossed. “Definitely.”

      “How?”

      “Well, how am I supposed to know? I’m sure you’ll figure something out. I mean, that’s what you do, isn’t it? You’re good like that.” He clapped Charlie on the back.

      Before Charlie could reply, the Queen of Nightmares lowered her arms and said, “Delicious people of Earth, the time for talking is over. Now is the time for dying.” She turned to the Elemental Golems. “Attack, my beautiful babies.”

      As if turned on by a switch, the eight horrific creatures headed out of Central Park and into the city beyond. The military personnel that ringed the park held their ground and fired upon the rampaging monsters, but their bullets passed right through the Air, Water and Fire Golems and bounced off the Earth Golems like grains of sand off steel.

      One of the Earth Golems shattered the large glass cube above the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue with a gigantic stone fist, followed instantly by a Water Golem that flooded down into the exposed complex beneath. A Fire Golem breathed lava on the nearby FAO Schwartz Toy Store, while an Air Golem rocketed high into the air and crashed down into Times Square, sucking soldiers into its deadly, whirling funnel.

      As the Golems wreaked their destruction, Nethercreatures swarmed up from the sewers and down from the skies to attack the fleeing, panicked people. Dangeroos stuffed some of them into their stinking pouches while Hags descended, cackling, from the smoke-darkened sky to carry off others in a swirl of filthy hair and tattered ballgowns.

      “What do we do?” Brooke screamed as they watched the devastation from their vantage point atop the Plaza Hotel.

      Charlie shook his head. “Nothing.”

      “Nothing!” Theodore shouted. “What kind of an answer is that? Come on - let’s go spank these bad boys! Use some of those sweet Double-Threat moves you’ve been working on!”

      Charlie pointed towards a purple flash far below. It was a portal created by a Nethermancer, who leaped through, followed by a mace-wielding Banisher. “They don’t need us. The Nightmare Division is already sending in the troops. In fact, there’s your dad—”

      Charlie nodded down the street to a black-clad Banisher swinging a two-handed sword at a Silvertongue.

      “OK, great!” Theodore shouted. “My dad’s here! The cavalry has arrived! Woo-hoo! Now let’s go and help out!”

      “We don’t have time. There’s something much more important that we have to do first. We’ve got to—”

      “CHARLIE BENJAMIN.”

      Charlie looked down to see the Queen of Nightmares standing in front of the giant nautilus shell. She smiled as her voice boomed across the city. “People are dying around you by the hundreds. Will you save them? Or are you afraid?”

      “I’m not afraid,” Charlie replied. “But getting rid of your ‘babies’,” he gestured to a Fire Golem that was climbing the Empire State Building, turning everything it touched into molten slag, “isn’t going to solve anything. I don’t need to stop them, I need to stop you - or you’ll just keep making more of them.”

      “Very true. There’s a whole world out there to destroy - a monster’s playground - and my beautiful babies will soon rule it all.”

      “Every

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