Happily Ever Awkward (The H.E.A. Files, #1)(40)
“Details,” Seeboth said. “But take heart! Once I sacrifice you, I shall be transformed into a god, and once I remake the universe, I promise I’ll resurrect you immediately! First thing!”
Princess Luscious turned up her nose and turned aside.
And that’s when Seeboth finally realized the truth. “Wait… how could I have been so blind? This isn’t about us at all — you’re waiting for a Prince Charming!”
“What did you expect?” she asked. “I mean, you may be rich and powerful… and marginally handsome for an evil sorcerer… but you’re old enough to be my father! And you want to kill me!”
Seeboth didn’t hear a word she said. He was too busy shaking his head in disbelief. “You’ve been using me this whole time… this whole time. Gods, if anyone is the victim here, it’s me!”
“You want sympathy? You’re pathetic!”
“Careful, princess,” Seeboth growled, his rage boiling up, barely held in check. “Perhaps you don’t realize I can kill you! Sooner, I mean!”
Irrevocable faux pas, that.
Off in the shadows, Demog shook his head.
Seeboth rose, chalice of wine in hand. “But I forgive you. We will drink a toast. To you, Princess Luscious.”
He elevated the glass, but she made no response.
“I would have you drink with me!” Seeboth said. “Drink!”
Princess Luscious leveled her gaze at him, radiant in her defiance. “Not until my charming prince arrives shall I drink, and then it shall be a toast to your death, fiend!”
That took Seeboth back a bit. “Oh… is that so?” He was at a loss for anything else to say.
“Yes, it is,” she said. “And what are you going to do about it?”
“Don’t make me transmute you,” he warned.
“You don’t have the masculine organs to transmute me,” she said.
“Is that so!”
Seeboth’s rage took over and his hands flared. Lightning arced the length of the table and instantly transformed Princess Luscious into a steaming mound of manure.
A glop of Princess Luscious spattered the floor.
“I think she’s warming up to you,” Demog said as he approached the table.
With a juicy POP, a huge bubble of methane broke the surface of the princess pile.
“She rattled me!” Seeboth cried. “I was rattled!”
“So you turned her into a pile of manure. The operative word here might be ‘overcompensate.’”
“The spell will wear off!” Seeboth barked.
Jeremy entered with a wheelbarrow and began to shovel Princess Luscious into it.
Defeated, Seeboth sank into his chair. “Gods, it’s not easy being charming.”
28
THE BAD PART OF THE FOREST
After traveling for some time on the back of the giant inchworm, Paul noticed a change in the island. They had entered a stretch of forest where the giant mushrooms and flowers had become more stunted, gnarled, and dirty. The trees were covered with strange, glowing graffiti, and the few functioning fountains belched dirty water. The neighborhood seemed to be dark and completely deserted.
“Where are we?” he asked nervously.
“The bad part of the forest.” Levondyth shivered as he spoke. “Get not off the caterpillar.”
Night had fallen and the full moon literally scowled down on them.
I said “literally”, and I meant “literally”.
“Is this still Saraan-Vishta?” Paul asked. He couldn’t believe how different it looked from the magical place he had just left.
“Yes, though darker magic here prevails, the angry magic of the slums,” Levondyth said, reining the inchworm to a halt. “So you see, though trackers here there may be, you’ll not wish to seek them out in such a place.”
Paul looked, and with his stomach sliding up his throat, he slid down the side of the inchworm.
“Shivers descending, perhaps I made not clear the doom impeding,” Levondyth said. He reached for Paul, trying to pull him back up. “The Flitterlings here are no lovers of Man — nor other Flitterlings, for that matter, sire.”
“I have to find a tracker,” Paul said. His mouth had never felt so dry before.
“Have you no companions? Perhaps it would be wiser—”
“Believe me, I’m better off without them.”
Unable to persuade the prince, Levondyth inched the worm around. “Then fare thee well, Man-Prince. Think not less of me. A coward I may seem, yet I will live to frolic another day. Yes. And I live to frolic.”
He waved goodbye and spurred the inchworm away. As it disappeared around the corner, Paul hesitantly surveyed the darkened street.
His Singing Sword began to hum something dark and menacing, an eerie whisper with deep bass pulses of horrible intent that populated every shadow with a potential attacker.
“Would you relax?” Paul said uneasily. “They’re only Flitterlings. How bad could they be?”
A trio of diamond-bright Poxies were about to show him.
Shuttling from cover, they crisscrossed above him, weaving a net from their trailing tails of flitter dust. It fell on Paul with surprising weight and dropped him to his knees.