by RyFT Brand
face peered at me above the cross point of the X as if she were looking over a fence. “Jazz, are you here to get me?”
“Yes,” I said as Mananama said, “No.”
I met stares with my trusty sidekick and gave her the subtlest of smiles to let her know that I had a plan in place. At least I hoped I had.
“You see her, fine, well, and good, Monster Collector, as is our way. Now you will tell us,” Mananama said.
I took off my short helmet and wiped sweat from my forehead onto my sleeve. “We’re being played, all of us, me especially. The attacks on the deferred species, they’re all part of a plot to stir your types into moving against me, knowing full well that that would stir me into attacking you.”
“Bunk,” Mananama said. “We’ve been attacked by our own; there exists no magic capable of controlling magic species in this forest.”
I was saving this as a last resort. I looked over at DJ, who watched me intently, waiting for a sign from me to move. Of all on my team she was the most reliable, the most dedicated, she was the one being on all of Mirth that I could count on come hell or invading dimension. And I feared I’d loose her trust before this was over.
I took two objects from my rucksack’s side pouch and held them out in my hand.
Mananama leaned down and I was a little worried he might tumble off and crush me in a flesh avalanche. “What is these? We feel no magic here.”
“That’s because there isn’t any,” I said and held them closer to his face. “The flat one is a circuit board, the disc is a battery.”
Curiosity flavored all the faces around me except for the king’s. Mananama sat back in the throne and I heard the tree creak with his weight. “We haven’t heard these words in many seasons, girl. No one has need of such useless things on Mirth.”
I closed my fist around them. “Someone does, someone who doesn’t want to be detected by wizards, dragons, and you lot.”
“These sciences are lost and antiquated, none still remembers them because they are without purpose here,” Mananama said.
“Someone’s using them to control monsters, to make them do things you’d thought undoable, like attacking their custodians.”
Mananama leaned both hands on the throne, one on the existing armrest; the tree twisted another branch into a new shape to form a second one. “To what end?”
“To start a war.”
About half of the elves in the room gasped, the rest grumbled disbelief. Mananama held up his flabby hand. “A war with you?”
I was still watching the elves all around me. As I did one of the warrior elves smacked something on his neck, then he looked at his palm. The warrior posted beside him looked utterly confused by his comrade’s action.
It had begun. Just a little longer.
“A war between humans and monster—deferred species,” I said being politically correct.” Truvinn and a few of his warriors laughed behind me. Mananama did not laugh, he continued glaring. “Again we asks, to what bloody end?”
A warrior smacked something on his forearm, and then the elf beside him tried to reach something that seemed to be biting his back.
“I don’t know,” I said again, pressing my mind for an answer. “Maybe it’s a group of humans who long for the old days, or maybe a new player wants us to wipe each other out. I don’t know why, I just know that’s what’s going on.”
“Ha!” Mananama laughed at last, then again, harder, leaning back in his throne, “Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! First off, you’re the only human left who pines for that wreck of a world you called home. Secondly, humans wouldn’t stand a chance against the, deferred species; we barely broke a sweat defeating you in the last war.”
“Inter-dimensional hostile takeover!” DJ shouted, her china-white skin turned bright red.
Mananama’s eyes fell on Truvinn just as the warrior elf slapped a hand against his leg. Truvinn opened his empty palm then looked around the room.
“Truvinn, what’s going on over there?” Mananama asked.
Truvinn snapped to attention while the elf beside him batted frantically at his own posterior. “Something bit me, sire,” Truvinn said.
Mananama’s beach-ball sized head reeled back. “Bit you? Nothing in these woods would bite an elf. We are one with everything here, tree, rock, bird and bug.” Then Mananama’s massive face bunched into many flabby wrinkles, as if he were struggling to accept something impossible. The elves all around us were swatting the air and smacking various body parts. I slid my helmet on and ever-so subtly raised a single finger, signaling DJ to get ready to move. In a surprising show of speed for one so fat, Mananama smacked his shoulder and clasped his hand. He brought the hand to his eyes and opened it. A tiny, glowing dot flew out and straight at the king’s face. Mananama swatted it away.
More and more elves flailed arms and cried out. Truvinn ripped something from the air with two fingers. He marched up to Mananama and I took my opportunity to fade closer to DJ, who’d been abandoned by her guards as they were busy defending their assaulted body parts.
Mananama stared at the tiny glowing speck pinched in Truvinn’s fingers, then stood up in the throne and, he was wearing shorts, thank goodness, glared down at me. “What have you done?”
Go time. “DJ, open the gates,” I said as quietly as I was able and drew my macdaddy revolver and the glow-bolt gun I’d taken from Boss Geeter. “I’ve kept my promise, your great lardness.”
All the hate and fury that Truvinn had been holding in check broke loose. With a shout he raised his sword and charged me. I leveled the glow bolt gun and fired. “Oww!” he shouted and wrung his hand. Glow bolt guns fire mallow charged rods; once fired they’re pretty much pure energy in the high magical spectrum. Elves, being very nearly pure magic, wouldn’t suffer more than a minor burn from the weapon. Fairies however, are one hundred percent living magic, and the one Truvinn had been holding absorbed the weapon’s full charge. The speck of light became a shining orb. The orb flew straight through Truvinn’s chest, leaving a bowling-ball-sized hole. Truvinn fell.
Something, a mastodon maybe, trumpeted in my ear. I spun just in time to catch the back of Mananama’s hand across the side of my head. I grunted, twisted violently around, and went airborne. If not for my helmet I would have certainly died. The fat elf could hit hard, harder than Mickey the sasquatch even. I crashed onto the pine needle floor and tumbled end over end through the brush until I hit a tree. When the spots cleared from my eyes and I was breathing again, I looked up to see the elves swatting, stamping, and crying out. Mananama shoved one of his subjects out of his way. His great head searched back and forth until his eyes fell on me. I was still too stunned and sore to make a break for it, and if he’d caught me I’m sure he would have torn me to pieces. I fumbled for one of the chili-pepper bombs on my bandoleer but I’d never get if off and primed in time.
“Jazz!” Mananama bellowed and charged.
“Jazz!” somewhere, not far off, I heard DJ shout. “They’re coming!”
A great buzzing set a vibration in the ground. It was powerful enough to stop Mananama in his tracks. He looked toward the gates as the buzzing grew louder. It sounded like a swarm of a billion angry bees, and the analogy wasn’t far off from the truth.
“How?” Mananama turned back to me. His face was beet red and his fists balled up tight. “How could you?” Then, raising his mighty arms in defense and screaming, he disappeared in a cloud of very angry fairies.
The intense buzzing overpowered all the terrible screaming. I collapsed back on the ground and closed my eyes. Every inch of me ached.
I may have drifted off, or maybe even blacked out for a bit. I came to when I felt something hit my side.
“Jazz, Jazz!” DJ was shouting and shaking me. “Jazz, you have to do something, you have to stop it!”
I managed to prop myself up on my elbows and peered thought the broad leaves that hung all around us. The buzzing had decreased to a prevalent hum. There was some moaning and the occa
sional groan, but no movement.
“Jazz, please,” DJ pointed back toward the room. Her eyes were wet with tears and full of desperation. I huffed. DJ was calm in a fight and ruthless when she needed to be. But she could sometimes be overly sentimental.
“Help me up,” I said extending a hand. DJ was petite to say the least, but she was strong for her size. She stood and dragged me to my feet. I got my helmet back on and passed though the curtain of leaves. The throne room looked exactly the same except for the bodies strewn about it; fairies would never bring harm to any plants or trees. I stepped over two fallen warriors.
“Oh no, no, this is terrible,” DJ said following.
I managed my way to the middle of the room and looked at the carnage that surrounded me. Little glowing fairies flitted and zoomed about. DJ came up and handed me my revolver. Her almond-shaped eyes were wide with worry and wet with tears. “I don’t understand. Jazz, what did you do?”
I holstered the macdaddy as I spotted a great mound of flesh in the middle of the room and carefully worked my way over to it, leaving DJ standing where she was. Every step was agony, I had a few broken ribs at least, and my left eye was swollen partially closed.
Mananama’s skin was stretched so tight it had become semi-transparent. Blue and red veins traced across it like lines on a globe and lay so close to the surface that I could see every beat of his heart. His arms and legs were little