The golden portal swirled shut for the final time, plunging my lobby back into its familiar, blessed silence. The roar of more than fifty thousand screaming fans was gone, replaced by the gentle trickle of the enchanted fountain and the soft hum of my own core.
My team stood in the center of the room, blinking in the dim light, looking as though they had just returned from a very strange and very loud war.
For a long moment, no one spoke.
But, a slow, proud smile spread across Gilda's face. Pip let out a whoop of his own, and Clank waved his banner.
And then, with a brilliant shimmer of pink light, FaeLina suddenly appeared in the middle of them all.
She was so caught up in the victory that she had completely forgotten to stay invisible.
"WE DID IT!" she shrieked, doing a series of ecstatic, sparkling loop-the-loops in the air.
