The Fire Under the Stars: Chapter 8

With Cepheus safely inside the castle walls, his primary goal is to rescue Stardust and bring her back to Mobius. Little does he know that his plans for a rescue mission will have to be postponed...
==Included Characters==
Cepheus the Cat
Starshine Guards and Inhabitants
Castle Thieves
==Story==
Cepheus glanced at the large double doors that were just around the corner. He was quick enough to see that there were two guards keeping watch over the small area near the door. It would be impossible to get in without being noticed. His only hope would be some sort of a distraction, but that only happened in fairytales and cliche movies. 
Really, it was funny. The fire-bearing cat never thought that he would be in this situation; rescuing his friend, a princess, from her own kingdom. It really was like thos cliche movies, except he wasn't rescuing her from the clutches of a dragon or saving her from marrying some jerkish king from a neighboring kingdom. He shook his head; he couldn't afford to lose concentration in a time and place like this. 
Scanning the area for another possible route into the castle, he saw a door nearby that seemed to be unguarded. He quietly made his way over to the door, and almost sighed in annoyance; the door had a lock on it, and he didn't have a key. Placing his hands onto the lock, he put all his focus into heating the lock up as much as possible while keeping deathly silent. The metal on the lock began to turn a deep red from the heat, and finally, it snapped off of the door. Before anyone could register what the sound was, he dashed inside and closed the door silently and swiftly. 
Once inside, he looked around and realized that he was in some sort of storage room inside of the castle. He walked over to a second door, and placed his ear on it to listen for voices on the other side. Hearing nothing, he opened the door and stepped out into a grand hallway. It was completely empty of people; instead, pictures and long, thin tables lined the pure white walls. Making his way down the hall, he stopped when he saw a picture of a familar-looking cat. It was Stardust, although much younger. She was standing next to a woman and a man, whom he assumed were her parents. He gulped when he saw how beautifully Stardust was dressed. The picture was beautiful, except for the fact that Stardust looked miserable. Her smile was clearly there, but her eyes betrayed her, for they held all the misery and sadness of a forlorn princess trapped in a castle that was on fire and she was tied to it. 
He lightly gasped when he heard voices bouncing off of the walls. Someone was coming. He made a mad dash for a nearby door, and, praying it was open, turned the knob. To his relief, it was unlocked. Slipping inside, he prayed once again that whoever was coming wasn't going to enter the room he was in. He heard them pass, and wiped some sweat from his brow. Of course, that was when a loud crash eminated throughout the castle, almost knocking him off of his feet. He heard the distant sound of people screaming, and then another crash. The bookshelf nearby crashed to the ground from the quakes, and he had to jump out of the way to avoid being crushed. 
He felt his flames begin to grow from inside of him, and had to fight to keep them from coming out. He dashed over to the door, and growled in fustration to find the door was jammed. He stepped back, and ran full force at the door, kicking it down. He saw someone rush past him, screaming something to someone far off, failing to realize that Cepheus was not from the castle. He ran out to where the woman had just come from, and stopped dead in his tracks when he saw a terrible sight.
A pack of thieves, or worse yet, kidnappers, were pointing guns and arrows at multiple people on the ground. The innocent were shaking in fear, pleading to the thieves to let them go. They simply pointed their weapons closer to their heads, demanding to know where the king and queen were. A female duck was almost in tears, pleading helplessly.
"Please! I have a daughter! She's only four!"
A thief with a rather large gun smirked in sadistic glee.
"Well, I guess she'll be heading off to the orphanage soon, won't she?"
He looked back at everyone else in the room while still holding the gun to the duck's head.
"And so will everyone else's kids in this room if you don't tell me where the hell the royals are!"
The room was suddenly filled with gasps of fear and screams.
"And this lucky little lady gets to be the first to send her kid off running home to her daddy cryin' that her momma's dead."
He cocked the gun, and was aimed it very close to her head. The woman could only as the gun neared her face, frozen in fear. Suddenly, he screamed in pain and dropped the gun as a blast of fire hit his hands. 
"Shit! What the hell was that?!"
He turned to see a very peeved Cepheus glaring at him angrily.
"Let. Them. Go."
The thief was about to respond when a cry of fear and relief could be heard from upstairs. 
"Cepheus!"
Next: Chapter Nine 
Category:Fanfiction
Category:Cats
Category:Kingdoms
Category:Future Kings
Category:Characters