Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Morning came too soon, and with it, the reality that we had less than twelve hours before Illanya returned for her answer. The smart thing would have been to create a strategic defense plan. Instead, I was standing in Baz's backyard, trying to ward the perimeter while my magic had other ideas.
“Just a simple protection ward,” I muttered, tracing symbols in the air. “Nothing fancy. Nothing weird.”
The symbols immediately turned into tiny sprites that flew away giggling.
“That's…not a ward,” Baz observed from where he was sharpening what looked like very old, very dangerous claws. Not his actual claws. These were metal and fit to his hands like the world's most terrifying brass knuckles.
Baz knelt beside me, sliding what, upon closer inspection, were bone-plated gauntlets over his hands.
The pieces clicked together like vertebrae, each segment perfectly articulated to match the curve and flex of his fingers.
As he slid his claws through them, the armor locked into place with a soft, hungry sound.
These weren’t just weapons. They were well-worn, well-used, and custom-built for maximum carnage.
I was so caught up in them that I almost missed the fact that his chest wound had completely healed. There wasn’t even so much as a hint of a scar.
“I'm aware.” I tried again, deciding not to address his magical healing abilities. This time, the ward turned into a disco ball. Because apparently, my magic thought we needed sparkly, silvery mood lighting and ’70’s dancing to win the upcoming dragon battle.
Gary slithered over, leaving a gooey, glittering snail trail behind him, “Perhaps we should try a different approach.”
“Like what?”
“Well,” he said, examining the disco ball which was now playing “Stayin' Alive” at concerning volumes, “have you considered just hexing everything and hoping for the best?”
“That's a terrible plan.”
“You’re right. All the terrible non-plans have worked so far. Maybe we should stick with that.”
He had a point. Every successful defense I'd managed had been completely accidental. The house attacking Illanya, the rhyming hex, even the mood music at the diner, all of it had been pure bedlam that somehow worked out in the end.
“Fine,” I said, throwing my hands up. “Let's just chaos our way through this.”
“That's the spirit!” Zelda's voice came from behind us. She'd arrived with what looked like half the town, all carrying various weapons that ranged from practical to absurd. One man had a pitchfork that was on fire. Another woman carried what appeared to be an angry potted plant.
“Is that a carnivorous rose?” I asked.
“Mabel,” the woman said proudly. “She bites.”
The plant snapped at me to prove the point.
“Right. Okay. We're fighting a dragon with a biting plant and a disco ball. Cool. Cool. Cool.”
Things are definitely NOT cool.
I spent the next hour trying to set up defenses, but everything I touched turned into something else. The garden hose tried to speak at length on its opinions about water distribution. And the wheelbarrow started offering unsolicited relationship advice.
“You need to communicate your feelings,” it told me in a tinny voice. “Have you considered couples therapy?”
“I'm not even dating anyone!” I protested.
The wheelbarrow, Baz, Gary, the butterflies, half the town, and even the disco ball all gave me identical skeptical looks.
“We're not dating,” I insisted. “We're just…cohabitating. With sexual tension. And a mate bond that’s forming against our will.”
“That's literally dating,” Dee Dee said, having appeared with a tray of sandwiches. “Eat. You can't fight dragons on an empty stomach.”
“How does everyone know about the dragon?”
“Small town,” everyone said in unison.
Seriously. They needed to stop doing that.
I grabbed a sandwich and immediately regretted it. My nervous energy turned the bread into worms. Actual worms that wriggled away, carrying the turkey and cheese with them.
Baz came over, still wearing those terrifying claw weapons. He looked good in them, which was a thought I immediately tried to suppress. My magic, however, had other ideas. His shirt caught fire.
Not in a destructive way. In a decorative way. Like someone had decided he needed flame decals but made them real.
“Tansy,” he said patiently, “I'm on fire.”
“I see that.”
“Could you maybe…”
“I don't know how to stop it without making it worse.”
He sighed and took the shirt off. The fire went out immediately, apparently satisfied it had achieved its goal of shirtlessness.
There were a few wolf whistles, and several women in the crowd applauded.
“Can you all please stop encouraging my horny magic?” I begged.
“No,” someone replied. I had no idea who it was, but several other women nodded in agreement. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one to want to see Baz undressed. Couldn’t blame them for having good taste.
Mrs. Henderson stepped forward, her tiny dragon-chickens perched on her shoulders. “Dear, your magic isn't horny. It's honest. There's a difference.”
“My magic keeps trying to undress him!”
“Because that's what you want,” she said simply. “Your magic seems to just do what you're thinking without the filter of social propriety.”
“That's worse!”
“That's beautiful,” Randy said. “Your magic is forcing everyone to be truthful. Do you know how rare that is?”
“It's going to get everyone killed!”
“Maybe,” Zelda said cheerfully. “But at least we'll die honest.”
I looked around at the assembled town residents. They were all smiling. All ready to fight a dragon with kitchen utensils and carnivorous plants and whatever the hell my magic decided to create. They were all completely batshit crazy.
Which meant they were perfect.
“Okay,” I said, taking a deep breath. “If we're doing this, we're doing it full chaos mode. No plans. No strategy. Just…”
“Magic and mayhem?” Baz supplied, and his grin was feral.
“Absolute pandemonium,” I agreed.
The house rumbled in approval so hard that several windows cracked, the butterflies formed battle formations, and that damnedable disco ball started playing “Eye of the Tiger.”
* * *
She came at sunset, because of course she did. Dragons were nothing if not dramatic.
But she didn't come alone.
Three figures emerged from the tree line, all masked and featureless, wearing the kind of black, dusty leather that said, We're mercenaries and we want you to know it. They flanked Illanya like the world's most unnecessary security detail.
“You brought backup?” I called from the porch. “That's cheating!”
“That's insurance,” Illanya replied, her voice carrying easily across the yard. “I know you, Tansy. You never fight fair.”
She wasn’t wrong.
“I don't fight at all! I just accidentally magic things into submission!”
The mercenaries spread out, forming a triangle around the property. One of them was a witch by the feel of her magic, and her triple G tatas, which breasted most boobily as she moved her arms around wildly and chanted something that made my teeth ache.
“Boundary spell,” Zelda muttered from beside me. “They're trying to contain your magic.”
“Can they do that?”
“Normally, yes. But your magic isn't exactly normal.”
As if to prove her point, my magic reached out and touched the boundary spell. The witch's chanting turned into chicken noises. Literal chicken noises. She looked horrified but couldn't stop clucking.
“Did you just turn her into a chicken?” Zelda asked.
“Turn her into a chicken? No. Turn her language into chicken? Apparently.”
The witch tried to cast another spell, but all that came out was increasingly angry clucking. The other mercenaries looked concerned.
“Fix her!” Illanya demanded.
“I don't know how! I don't even know what I did!”
The witch stomped her foot and let out what was clearly meant to be a threatening squawk. It wasn't very effective.
That's when Gary made his move.
I'd never seen him slither that fast. He zipped across the yard, leaving a trail of silver slime that immediately started glowing. Before anyone had time to react, he'd drawn a complete circle around all three mercenaries.
“Shame spiral, bitches!” he announced.
The mercenaries tried to step out of the circle and immediately froze. Their faces ran through a series of expressions ranging from confusion to recognition, then landing on soul-crushing mortification.
“I wet the bed until I was fifteen,” one of them announced, looking horrified at his own words.
“I can’t cum unless I wear a pony tail butt plug,” another added.
The chicken-speaking witch clucked something that sounded deeply personal and embarrassing.
“Gary,” I said, “what did you do?”
“Weaponized their deepest embarrassments,” he said proudly. “They can't leave the circle until they've confessed everything they're ashamed of.”
“That's pure evil.”
“That's pure genius,” Baz corrected.
The mercenaries were now in full confession mode. Stories about failed relationships, embarrassing medical conditions, and one particularly detailed account of a man's secret collection of exotic pocket pussies spilled out.
Illanya looked furious. “This is ridiculous! You can't fight me with embarrassment and poultry sounds!”
“Watch me!” I shouted back, though I had no idea what I was going to do.
That's when the townspeople made their move.
They came from everywhere—behind trees, inside bushes, one guy, or should I say fox, since he’d shifted, literally rose up from what I'm pretty sure was a hole he'd dug in the ground all of twenty minutes ago. They were armed tooth and claw. Those who hadn’t shifted carried weapons ranging from flaming pitchforks to Mrs. Henderson's dino-chickens, which were now the size of actual T.
rexes. Well, small T. rexes. They were insanely cute with their tiny little arms.
“Hi, Illanya,” Dee Dee said pleasantly, wielding what looked like a commercial restaurant spatula that had been sharpened to a worrying degree. “You're not welcome here.”
“This doesn't concern you,” Illanya snarled.