Inside Goods, Greats & Galore, there were spotless silver-tin shelves that were lined with a vast variety of items. There were artisan tools and gadgets down one aisle, with gleaming metal handles too stiff and rigid for practical use. Other aisles had foods in gold cans with a lacey white logo. Margo ran her fingers across the rounded surfaces of each one as she passed. “Morning Marrow”, “Calistian Breezes,” and “Lucky Paws” were printed on some of the labels.
“It’s all from the animals they kill,” Treeg said darkly. “They bring back pieces and parts from the other territories, then sell it to the merchants here.”
“Are these the kinds of supplies you steal from the dump?” Margo whispered.
Treeg hesitated, turning his face away and hiding his mouth in the folds of green tied around his neck. “Agriculture magic is temperamental, even if you’re part elk. Granny Ophelia used to say there’s no easy way to keep one stomach full, much less a cave full of starving ones.”
“No easy way,” Margo echoed.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’ll show you,” Margo announced, and walked up to the counter. An older man stood behind the register with a well-kept graying mustache and a quizzical glint in his dark eyes.
“Can I help you kids find something?” he asked flatly. Treeg kept his face lowered towards the ground, fidgeting with his hands. Margo cleared his throat and stared defiantly up at the man’s face.
“Hello, good sir,” she said, loud enough for Treeg and the man to wince. “I am here to ask for a humble donation for the poor.”
The man quirked a bushy eyebrow at that. “We don’t normally give donations here.”
“Well, you should,” Margo banged her fists on the table. “Some people are so hungry, they’re going through your dumpsters just for your canned junk!”
“Really now,” the man replied indifferently. “I didn’t realize anyone here in town was that desperate.”
His bony fingers wrapped around the counter as he leaned forward, examining the duo very carefully. Treeg shifted uncomfortably. Through gritted teeth, he said, “Margo, if this is your plan--”
“It’s true sir,” Margo interrupted, shooting Treeg a withering glance. He didn’t argue, just took a step back and looked towards the exit desperately as Margo continued to banter. “Many men, and women, and-- and children. Children younger and far more troubled than us, even.”
“From here?”
“From here,” Margo affirmed with her bottom lip jutted out. His hand dipped under the counter, rapping against the wood before pulling out a cardboard box. He slid it across to Margo with a syrupy sweet smile.
“Well, if that’s true, who would I be to let my fellow people down? You and your friend here should take as much from my shelves as you need. In fact, I’ll go get a few more boxes from the back while you decide.”
“Thank you so much, sir,” Margo beamed, hugging the box close to her chest as she whirled around and skipped down the nearest aisle. As the man disappeared into the back, Treeg grabbed Margo’s shoulder and hissed, “That was your plan?”
“No,” Margo replied, dropping the box and dusting off her hands. Through the windowed doors, she could see a pack of figures moving in precise formation. “I just needed him to call for help.”
“Why?!” Treeg asked in disbelief. Margo ignored him as the entrance to the shop swung open, and the five figures swiftly poured in. They all bore the same silver and navy blue uniform, with short brim caps casting stern shadows over their eyes. As soon as the first one saw the two, he shouted, “There! Capture the Blems!”
Margo reacted instantly. Her body rippled and contorted, Xireal’s emerald scaled tale rippling out from her back while his menacing clawed limbs shot out from her waist. She grabbed the shelf and dragged it across the floor with a deafening screech and tossed it into the approaching soldiers. The force of the toss was more than she had intended, and the shelf flew into her enemies and out the glass doors, shattering the entrance of Goods, Greats and Galore.
Treeg watched with wide-eyed bewilderment as she grabbed another shelf and sent it hurtling towards the register. It rang as it crashed into the floor. The old man poked his head out of the back door just in time for Margo to pick up a heavy crate labeled “Bargain Imports” and toss it towards him. There was a violent slam as it broke through the wall and pinned the man to the ground with the scattered wooden planks.
“Margo we can’t just--” Treeg started exasperatedly, staring towards the direction of the rallying soldiers. “We can’t just start a huge fight, they’ll send more people.”
“Then let them,” Margo said pointedly in Xireal’s voice. She liked how her teacher’s wise and sagely tone made her words sound even more dignified than they did in her head. “Look at how they’re scrambling now, Treeg. And all I had to do was--”
A blazing, blue fireball whizzed through the air and hit Margo directly in the mouth. Her face stung violently, the flames eating away at the weak cartilage of her human nostrils. She tried to pat it out with her palms, and through the spaces between her fingers she could see the triumphant soldier sprinting across the fallen shelves with her hand glowing bright with another disc of fire.
She sent it hurtling through the air towards Margo, this time the flames slicing and searing through her shoulder. Margo cried out, hunching over and clapping her hand across to put pressure on the newly formed wound. The soldier flicked her wrist out, three more discs spinning around her outstretched hand as she looked viciously at the vulnerable Margo.
In an instant, the ground surged upwards, dirt flying everywhere as a dark wooded trunk erupted and slammed into the female soldier. Her body made a sickening crack as it hit the stone wall. She fell to the floor, blood beginning to pool underneath.
“We have to get out of here,” Treeg said, panting for air with a bright red face. “We can’t fight them all.”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
“A hero could,” Margo argued, waddling over the debris and facing the other four soldiers. Three were aiming long, white-metal rifles up at her, while the last stood in the center with a silver staff that ended in a crescent hook at the top. This one, Margo presumed, was most likely the leader, because he stepped forward and raised the hook towards her neck.
“Stop!!” he shouted. “By the blade, I order you to--”
Margo rushed forward, heaving herself off the ground and swiping at him with her front claws. The man staggered backwards from the blow, Margo’s attack leaving him with a brutal, bleeding series of gashes across his chest. He growled, “I order you to stand down or die!”
Margo leaned in for another attack, but a flurry of bullets from the other three stopped her. They shot off in sparks of yellow, green and blue. Margo instinctively flinched from the impact, but after the smoke had cleared and the soldiers stopped their fire, she realized she hadn’t felt a single one. Looking down at Xireal’s body, she realized her skin was rippling with a veil of red light. She looked back to see Treeg, hiding in the ruined doorway and looking out. She gave him a bold, brazen grin.
“I think I just figured out what Xireal’s true magic is,” she announced.
“That’s great, but now’s not really the--”
Margo whirled back, using one arm to sweep the three gunned soldiers and knock them against one another. She commanded more of Xireal’s borrowed form, the enhancement magic pulsating through her muscles as she pounded her fists into the closest enemy. He made a short, guttural sound as she sent his head spinning with such force, it twisted and snapped backwards. The other two tried to escape but Margo was faster now. She wrapped her human hands around an ankle from each, hoisting them up in the air and slamming their helpless, flailing bodies into each other with all the power she could muster. When the corpses came falling back down, their arms and legs were braided together in such a gruesome, vicious way, Margo was sure they couldn’t be peeled off of one another.
Before she could celebrate her victory over them, however, the leader rammed the hooked end of his weapon through her stomach. It lodged it deep inside of her, and as he twisted the staff end with a malevolent smirk, Margo felt the blood and bile soaring up through her throat. She vomited the fluids with terrified eyes. Xireal’s body was beginning to shrink around her now that she was losing her focus. She could feel her legs receding back into herself, her form reverting around the hook. The pain was excruciating.
Treeg rushed forward, a tangle of roots growing at the feet of the soldier. But he simply kept one, bloodied hand on the hilt of the staff and pointed to Treeg, sending a blinding bolt of lightning in his direction. Treeg yelped as the impact of the blast sent him to the ground. His limbs crackled with electricity, paralyzed with a defiant growl.
Margo’s vision flickered, images of the Doctor’s soft hands hovering over her shoulders. The words echoed in that same, loving tone in Margo’s mind. “Just be patient, Margo. It’ll come to you.”
Margo tried to focus on the soldier holding the other end of the staff. If her true magic was going to reveal itself, it had to be now. Maybe it would be something simple like fire, and she could burn him to ashes like her sister Terra. Or maybe she’d be like Treeg, and she could summon a mana-sapping tree that would encase the soldier whole. Whatever it was, she just needed him to die.
As soon as that final thought occurred to her, something clicked in her hazy, agonized mind. It was as though she had suddenly found the final piece to the puzzle. She looked the soldier directly in the eyes, mirroring his hateful, infuriated glare.
“Fester,” she spat, blood trickling between her lips. “Fester and rot.”
The soldier opened his mouth to speak, but what came out wasn’t a response at all. Instead, he began to cough and choke, his face turning from red, to blue, to violet. Saliva started dribbling, and he let go of the staff to reach for his throat, rubbing at it to dislodge whatever was stuck. He fell to his knees. He spat a wad of viscous, yellow mucus on the ground. Margo watched as dark boils began spotting on his flesh, breaking out in a filmy white pus as they popped. The soldier moaned, looking up at Margo one last time before falling over and choking to his death.
Treeg twitched as he approached her. Wordlessly, Margo raised the staff, wincing as she slowly removed it from her insides. She could feel it sever through her intestines on the way out, but the pain was dulled by an overwhelming numbness. Treeg looked at the removed hook in horror.
“I don’t think you were supposed to take it out,” he said in shock.
“But if I left it in, the staff part would drag everywhere,” Margo replied, surprising herself with how matter-of-fact she sounded. The Doctor would be proud, she thought idly, before adding, “I think it just makes more sense this way. It’s more convenient. Optimal. You know.”
Treeg grimaced. “If you say so. We should get you to a healer…”
He trailed off, and Margo quickly realized why as she followed his far-off gaze. All around them, a crowd of terrified civilians had gathered around them. They looked on with dread at the decimated soldiers, whispering and murmuring in unified horror at the spectacle.
“That’s the pink girl,” a familiar voice said, and Margo recognized the pudgy boy from the river clinging to the skirts of an older woman in silver and blue. Her mouth was open, quivering slightly.
“My name is Margo,” Margo shouted. The crowd bristled in the tense pause after. She held her head high as she continued. “And I am a hero.”
“What kind of hero kills our protectors?!” a voice protested angrily from the crowd.
“She’s not a hero for you,” Treeg argued, standing by Margo’s side. “She’s ours. The ones you scorn and sentence to death without a second thought. She represents us, the Blems!!”
“Does she now?” another voice purred. This time, the crowd separated, and a man stepped before the bloodied, crowded street. He wore a silver and blue hat, with a great feather that sprung from the side and rustled with the wind. On his fine robes was a metal pin, a sharp, glistening blade. The light bounced off of it as he spoke. “And what is it that your hero has to say to our humble town?”
“I’ve come to take this place from you.”
For a moment, the world seemed to stop. Even Treeg turned to gawk at her. Then, the man chuckled and shook his head.
“How arrogant. Speaking as the Duke of Guina, I feel that it is my duty to let you know that you simply don’t stand a chance…”
The man rambled on condescendingly. Margo tried to keep up, but his monotone voice and boring nature made the task increasingly difficult. She leaned over in the middle of his monologue and whispered to Treeg, “What’s a Guina?”
“That’s what they call the town, I think,” Treeg whispered back.
“That’s a terrible name,” Margo replied.
“Excuse me!” the Duke interrupted. His face grew red with frustration. “I am speaking now!”
“I just took down all of your soldiers,” Margo countered, gesturing to the fallen corpses all around her. “What makes you think I’m going to listen to you?”
“I will have you know that I have called for proper protection from your-- your--”
The Duke began to cough violently. “Excuse me, I-- I just need water perhaps. Can someone fetch me water?”
But the crowd around him started to move away, as black boils bloomed up his neck and clustered around his cheek. He wobbled, reaching out and catching a diseased the skirts of the pudgy boy’s mother. She backed away in horror, screaming, “No please!! Don’t let me catch his--”
It was too late. She held her arms out away from her body, watching in real time as the boils spiraled around her wrists and traveled up her shoulders. The crowd grew panicked, with people shoving one another desperately away only to be infected by Margo’s magic. They tripped over each other and trampled the ones doubling over in the streets.
Over the commotion, Margo shouted triumphantly, “Send your strongest, people of Fable!! This town is ours!”
