Chapter Text
I knew I could never trust you.
Nope, you could have trusted me. Goodbye!
What could possibly be her last conversation with Cleo rang in Lizzie’s head over and over again. There was so much that happened, and yet her mind was occupied by one thing, replaying everything that had happened over the past few weeks over and over again.
Is— is this a threat? Are you going to set my tree fort on fire?
Oh no, no. You haven’t done anything to me, Cleo had said, nonchalant, but with an underlying sneer nonetheless.
Okay, well I do live in the shadow of your very lovely castle.
So it would be really easy to pour lava down.
That is true, the lava would cascade down the mountain, and then… all the way to my tree fort.
And your dogs wouldn’t blame me at all.
Well yes— they would just sit here and do nothing at all.
“It didn’t take long for Cleo to leave us, very quickly actually— it’s almost as if she was looking for an excuse to leave the alliance.” she told Ren as they plodded through the underground tunnel up to the castle. There’s a certain ruthlessness to the statement, one that feels thick like bile rising to her throat. It’s incredulous, even as she says it out loud.
But Ren, ever so loyal, holds up her reasoning anyways. “There— there might have been plans already made, maybe she was on the way out anyways.”
A splash of text on their communicators, and a soft buzz. ZombieCleo fell from a high place.
The cold stone walls of the tunnel seem to become even more airless than before. Neither she nor Ren said anything at first, but the gravity of their predicament sunk even deeper, even more urgent. It’s like there were alarm bells in her head, loud and overpowering, all danger with no time to think.
“She’s a red name, Ren, she’s a red name—“ Lizzie stuttered, panic rising in her chest. Ren was speechless all the same, disbelief evident as the glass-shadowed eyes met the blue.
“Do you think she did it on purpose?” he asks, turning to her. Lizzie doesn’t think that she could give him an answer, much less a correct one. Maybe she didn’t want to know.
The next few minutes are a blur. Cleo’s inside the castle— run, go back, run back, seal the tunnel. Should they trust BigB? The boogeyman curse, after all, is something both of them, queen and knight, know better than most.
Lizzie runs as fast as she can from spawn, unwilling to face a red, much less two. She hears Cleo yell “Traitor!” from the other side of the field. Lizzie doubts that Cleo has any proper armor or weapons right now, but the word hits like an arrow to the chest nonetheless
What did she ever do? Nothing. Nothing .
And maybe, just maybe, it was the problem this whole time.