AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The fiend whirls on me. Bright golden light swooshes by. That’s Anthony, running next to me. What Anthony and I do with our swords is not a glorious battle, it’s a back alley beating. There’s no finesse, no fancy stuff… nothing worthy of a Hollywood action movie. We go to town on this thing like it’s run afoul of a local crime boss—only we’re using swords instead of baseball bats.
Somewhere in the blur of violence, the fiend reaches its breaking point and explodes into a blast of inky darkness. Smoke. That’s it. No shell fragments, no teeth, no stray claws, no blood… not even any slime. Just smoke.
Anthony and I stare at the dissipating darkness on the backyard pavers in front of us.
“You okay?” he asks me.
“Yeah.” I rub my chest with my left hand. Feels as if I got shanked with an icicle forty times. Okay, maybe not quite that bad. I’m not bleeding, nor do I have any visible wounds. “I’m more worried about you.”
He wipes blood from his chin. “Not a big deal.”
Tammy opens the back door. She’s wearing her forest dress, the one she summons quickly when she transforms back to her human self. “That was... surreal,” she says. “We’re lucky it wasn’t at full power. It struggled to even exist here.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask.
She fidgets. “Something Pax said.”
“We should probably get inside before anyone notices us playing with swords.” Anthony’s fire blade retracts into his arm in a way that’s disturbing at best. My son can randomly produce a fire blade? He can. Additionally, he can turn into the Fire Warrior, though he hasn’t done that in some time.
We do just that. As I shut the door behind me, I say, “Does anyone know what the heck we just dealt with?”
“Definitely not a demon.” Anthony frowns. “A dark fae creature?”
Tammy shifts her jaw side to side. “I dunno. It kinda sorta felt like that, but also not really. The magic in it was twisted for sure. It sorta smelled like fey magic, but only a little.”
“It’s anti-life.” Paxton shivers. “It’s the opposite of the unicorn. Pure darkness and malice. The unicorn told me about them. They’re not supposed to exist here, just like she isn’t.”
“How nasty would that thing be at full strength?” Anthony raises an eyebrow.
“Far worse than it was.” Paxton shudders.
Okay, that has me concerned. Not only do I have no idea how powerful it might get… I also suspect there are probably more of them.
A lot more.
Chapter Nine
Extreme Gardening
To say I had trouble falling asleep would be an understatement.
Immortality comes with many perks. Freedom from anxiety is not one of them. Every so often, I do briefly miss being an undead type vampire. It didn’t matter what went on in my mind or how worried I was about anything… as soon as the sun came up, I passed out. Of course, the awful schedule, restrictive diet, and other various negatives outweigh simple freedom from long periods of nocturnal ceiling examination.
This shadow goblin problem feels like I’m on a rollercoaster that’s just started to move and then I find out the track is broken up ahead somewhere. I’ve got to figure out a way to stop the cart before disaster. Of course, there’s always the chance I’m overreacting and this won’t be a problem at all.
And maybe honest politicians exist.
Eventually, I fall asleep despite my worries. Hours later, something tickles my face, forcing me to wake up sooner than desired. For a moment in my half-awake, sleep-deprived state, I believe it’s like fifteen years ago and toddler Anthony is pestering me for breakfast. It’s not until I go to hug him that I realize there’s no longer a two-year-old boy living in the house.
I’ve got an armful of… plants.
Say what?
That gets me to open my eyes.
Leaves, vines, flowers, and berries are all over the place. I can’t even see my ceiling anymore. If not for having my actual bed under me, I’d have thought someone moved me in my sleep out into the deep woods—and shrank me to the size of a squirrel. No, I’m the same size. At least, if they made me smaller, they did the same thing to my bed.
I become aware of mild tightness around my legs and torso, as well as my left arm. Vines or some such thing have wrapped around me like snakes seeking something warm to cling to. It’s not too difficult to extricate myself from the leafy cocoon, though I am still kinda stuck on my bed under a massive explosion of foliage.
