Diaz Plan Chapter 20

Star, Janna and Mrs. Diaz marched slowly up the stairs to the Necromancer's tower.

The stairs were worn, crumbling and littered with signs of recent battle. Broken, torn pieces of armor, skeletons still wearing the armor of the Castle Guard, large rust-colored blood stains revealed the fate of all the guards Star's mother had sent after Mr. Diaz. Eventually they came across a large arch with a humongous pile of ash beneath it. Mrs. Diaz held up a hand and threw a rock through the arch. Green runes flashed to life, and in a blast of light, the rock was incinerated.

Mrs. Diaz smiled and put her hand on the glowing runes. With a small bell chime, they turned blue, and winked off. "It should be safe now," she said. "My husband always makes spells that can recognize me."

Past that arch, there were no longer any signs of battle. As they neared the top, the shadows lengthened, then became true darkness. It was almost noon, but the light grew dim, the sun hidden behind the burning eye, whose sickly orange light fell on everything, casting odd shadows. When they reached the foot of the tower, they had lost all sense of what time it was.

The tower itself was a towering edifice of dark stone, bristling with skulls and gargoyles. The front door was a huge stone slab surrounded by a massive, yawning skull. Mrs. Diaz knocked on it as Janna and Star stood back, intimidated. "Dear?" she called.

Immediately, the doors, which must have weighed a ton each, flew inward. Inside was a humongous, dark shadow in the shape of a man, furious whirlpools of golden light swirling where the eyes should be, with two humongous horns extending from it. Janna gasped and stumbled. Star, who had seen this before, stood her ground.

"Love," said the shadow, with a voice like a thousand echoing screams, reaching out a dark hand to caress Mrs. Diaz's face, tenderly stroking the bruise on her eye. "Did they hurt you?"

"No, no, dear, I'm fine," said Mrs. Diaz, holding the shadow's hand to her face.

In an instant, the shadows wrapped around Mr. Diaz fled. He was a normal man again, if looking a little tired and ragged. He swept Mrs. Diaz up in a humongous hug, kissing her passionately. "Star! You're here too. Are you the one who bought my wife back to me? And...Janna?" Mr. Diaz looked puzzled.

"We have some bad news," Mrs. Diaz said as they all entered the tower. As Mr. Diaz led them up the central staircase, Mrs. Diaz explained to him how Marco, Janna and Ferguson had come to Mewni, with Janna filling in a few details along the way.

"It's okay, Mr. Diaz," Star said, as he paused at the top steps and frowned. "You can trade me back to my mother for Marco. And then you guys can go home."

"I would prefer to solve this without violence," said Mr. Diaz. "You know, Star, your mother should be more careful." He lowered his voice. "Before you bought my wife back, I figured I was going to have to storm the castle to rescue her. You know the peasants here are on the edge of revolt, right? I was cooperating with them. They were planning on helping me storm the castle so they could overthrow the King and Queen."

"Oh, the peasants are always revolting," said Star. "They never even make it past our castle guard."

"Well, they're going to be plenty disappointed when they hear I'm not helping them anymore." Mr. Diaz put a finger to his lips. They had reached the top of the tower, where, apparently, Mr. Diaz made his lair. "I have an informant from the revolting peasants here. Don't tell him anything you just told me, okay? I can still use him to get updates on how Marco is doing in the castle. He doesn't need to know we're not helping them anymore." With that, he pushed open a dark iron door at the end of the stairs.

Past it was a bare stone room, lined with windows opening out to the night sky. In the center of the room was a well full of a sickly green, glowing light. At one of the windows stood a rat-faced, tiny little man, next to a table and a caged pigeon.

"Finnegan!" cried Mr. Diaz. "How goes the revolution?"

Finnegan blinked at Mr. Diaz, and then gasped in shock at the sight of Star. "Princess?" he said, incredulously.

"Yes, yes, the princess," said Mr. Diaz. "We can talk about that later. I wanted to ask you for a favor. Apparently, my son has been captured by-"

"Oh, yes, my lord," said Finnegan, with downcast eyes. "Yes, I wanted to tell you, I just received a message about that." He unrolled a piece of parchment. "This morning, Guard Captain TickTock presented the King and Queen with a young boy that he claimed was the warlock's son."

"Oh, well, there we go," said Mr. Diaz.

But Finnegan wasn't done. "The Queen immediately sentenced the boy to execution by beheading."

Mrs. Diaz gasped, and the room got deathly silent. Star could feel her heart hammering in her chest. Her mother wouldn't do that. Why would she do that? "Th...there's still time," said Mr. Diaz. "We have to hurry, we can go there and rescue him before the execution takes place-"

Finnegan sadly dropped his hands to his sides. "My lord, the execution took place this afternoon. Your son is already dead."

Star retreated into her own head. She was vaguely aware of Mrs. Diaz screaming, the most awful screams she had ever heard. She was vaguely aware of Janna shaking her, hitting her, crying that her stupid family had killed Marco. Mr. Diaz just stood there, a vacant expression on his face. Star couldn't move, couldn't even think, even when Janna slammed her head against one of the stone walls. Marco wasn't dead. He couldn't be dead. She simply couldn't wrap her mind around it.

Suddenly, Mr. Diaz was holding his wand, and the room erupted into shadows that converged on him, swarmed over him, until he was buried in darkness. From the depths, the two swirling golden whirlpools reappeared. Mr. Diaz continued to drink in the darkness. It was as if every shadow in the world was drawn to him. He grew larger, larger, larger, until with a crash and a roar, the stone walls and ceiling fell away, revealing the dark sky and the burning eye, which was now glowing white-hot.

He reached out with two shadowy claws, raising them high into the night sky, and suddenly the entire landscape was roaring flame. It seemed like the whole world was dancing flame and shadow. In a voice that seemed to drain life out of the very air, a voice so loud it could crack mountains, he intoned, "THIS WORLD WILL BURN!"

Almost gently, Mr. Diaz, now a humongous ever-growing shadow, took off into the air, flying towards the royal castle in the distance.  Beneath him, a sea of flame spread, engulfing everything in his path.