No Quest For The Wicked

Something dark came out of the sky, and I dove for the nearest bush. After so many attacks by the antique zombie gargoyles, I wasn’t taking any chances. This one must have been one of ours, though, because it went for the elves. In the darkness, it was difficult to follow the fight. All I could see was a swarm of shadows. After taking down Sylvester, Owen guarded me, but at the moment, everyone was more focused on fighting each other than on going after the brooch. In fact, I wasn’t sure they’d yet figured out which one of us actually had the brooch, only that it was in the vicinity.

The sound of heavy breathing nearby jolted me out of my hiding place. “It’s here, it’s here, it’s here,” Sylvester muttered, sounding more and more unhinged. He pounced on the spot where I’d been just a second earlier. At that sound, Owen whirled away from watching the fight to pull me to my feet and away from the bush. Sylvester still came after me, his hands stretched out ahead of him and his fingers bent into claws. “It’s mine,” he rasped.

“Back off, buddy!” I ordered, on the off chance that I could use the Eye on other people even if it didn’t affect me. It didn’t work, or else Sylvester was too far gone under the power of the Eye itself to fall under the sway of the Eye’s holder. He kept advancing, and when Owen and I fled from him, we nearly bumped into Lyle.

There was a loud popping sound, and I felt magic nearby as Sylvester suddenly swayed, then collapsed. Rod stood behind him. “Sorry it took me so long,” he said. “I was trying to remember a spell that might work on an elf. Now, come on, we need to get out of here.”

We evaded Lyle, only to find ourselves facing Earl. Rod flexed his wrists, preparing to fight, but then Earl grinned and joined us, shouting over his shoulder, “Help! I’m being kidnapped!”

“Are you trying to make them come after us?” I asked him.

“Do you really think they’d come to rescue me?” he replied without breaking stride. “I was just coming up with an excuse to leave.”

We followed Rod into a rough, rocky, hilly area that felt like it was in the middle of the wilderness. I could still see the city skyline, so I knew we hadn’t somehow teleported out of the park without me noticing. We stopped in a secluded area surrounded by trees. There were some large rocks, just the right size to sit on, and I availed myself of one of them because I wasn’t sure my legs would hold me up any longer.

“I thought I said we didn’t need help,” Owen said, facing Rod.

“Yeah, but what I saw was you two with a bunch of elves on your tails. Admit it, you need us. You won’t last another five minutes without magical support, let alone an hour or more.”

“But who’s going to help us against all of you?” Owen asked, his voice soft and solemn.

“Thor’s having too much fun fighting elves to remember to come after the brooch, Earl just wants to keep it away from Sylvester, and you can tranquilize me if you have to. Remember, I came on this jaunt with that understanding.”

We went on the alert when we heard a slight crunching sound, like footsteps on the rocky ground. “I’ve set some wards that may confuse them for a moment,” Granny’s voice said as she entered our hideout.

“Good thinking,” Rod said.

Then I yelped as the end of her cane poked into my shoulder. “And as for you, young lady, I told you I wasn’t letting you out of my sight, and there you went, rushing off on your own and getting yourself into trouble.”

“What was I supposed to do?” I protested. “As soon as I got the brooch, I had to get out of there. If I’d gone back to get you I’d have been in even worse trouble.”

“And obviously you avoided all trouble by leaving on your own,” she said, and I could hear the smirk in her voice even if I couldn’t see it in the darkness.

Owen sat next to me and put his arm around my shoulders. “The guests were already arriving, and we had a close call with a couple of them,” he said. “I’m not sure what we’d have done if we’d had to face the guests, the puritans, the gargoyles, the elves, Thor, and Mimi, all at the same time. You held back some of them, so you were helping even if you weren’t with us.”

That mollified her somewhat. She still made a loud “Hmmmph” sound, but she dropped the argument and quit poking me with her cane.

After a few minutes of rest, I asked, “Will Thor be okay? It’s just him against all those elves.”

“And Sam,” Rod reminded me. “Sam won’t let him do anything too stupid, and we need Thor to keep the elves off us. They and the puritans are our biggest dangers. The power-broker types will only be strangely compelled. They won’t actively seek it.”