“Damn, you’re heavy.” He dragged the unconscious teen across the floor, causing him to rouse. “Here’s something fun for you to think about while you’re locked away. I know where you live and I know your little vampire friend is. Think on that. It’s what you get for harboring a bloodsucking menace.”
“No, please don’t!” Micah cried out but the door slammed shut.
“Oh Ivan, please wake up.”
“Micah, is that you?” The fairy could barely lift his head. “The shaman… he….”
“Foster? How did you get here? Dammit, whatever you did to Ivan you have to undo it. Now!”
“It was the shaman. I was framed. They knew you’d be busy looking for me instead of investigating the real culprit.”
“Abe did this?” Micah’s eyes widened. “I can’t believe he’d do such a thing.”
“Trusting fool,” Foster coughed. “You’re really something. You’ll be friends with anyone won’t you.”
“Ssh, you need to rest,” Micah said as Foster’s eyes fluttered closed. The prison guards of Trifecta’s Head Office withheld sweets and placed Foster in magic-blocking restraints. The fairy asked for food. “I have a pocket mint,” Micah said. “Sorry I don’t have more.”
“It’s better than nothing,” the fairy offered a weak laugh. “I really screwed things up, didn’t I? I should have known the shaman was up to something but when I saw him playing the war board with Ivan I’d assumed they were friends. I was wrong. They call themselves vampire hunters but they’ll hunt and eradicate anything they deem dangerous. They think they’re the saviours of mankind, a bit misguided if you ask me. I wasn’t hurting anyone.”
Micah said, “Well, one of ‘em is out for Ivan right now and he’s immobilized by some … I don’t know, spell I guess. Can you fix it?”
“The only way is to break the totems. They’ll be inconspicuous items around the apartment. Even I didn’t notice and I’m usually attuned to such things, so they could surround the entire apartment complex.” Foster closed his eyes. “He made me believe I could be something more. He called me his friend.”
“I have one spell left in me. Remove these cuffs… I can get us out of here. We might make it in time.”
“This might work…”
“Listen to me. This is very important. It will take all my life essence to open a portal and the only kind I can open are between worlds, so we must gate to Eolande then back home. When we arrive, place my body near a tree. Preferably a willow, we get along best so I know they’ll look after me. I want you to find a fairy named Gelfrey… if you whisper to the willows they’ll get the message to him and he’ll come.”
“Wait, what?”
“Find Gelfrey… understand?” Micah protested the fairy’s decision but Foster interrupted him. “Hush boy. Let me do something selfless and heroic for once in my life, won’t you?” Foster let out a weak but still suitably maniacal laugh. “When I come to the rescue that undead fiend will really be steamed!”
“We can save Ivan in time?”
“Yes. Passing through the portals tends to eat time. Who will you seek and how?”
“Gelfrey. By whispering to the willow.”
“Excellent. Hold on tight.”
TBC... weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Go Go Gadget Fairy!
EDIT: Ok, rats. Looks like I have a bunch of broken links and the pictures needed to fill in the IMAGE blanks are gone!! I'll try to reload them. Man, that's really annoying. Looks like a LOT of my pictures in Flickr are all of a sudden gone. How odd.
Edit Edit: They appear to have fixed themselves overnight. It is the Broken Link Fairy to the rescue. XD
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