▌│█║▌║▌║Chapter 15║▌║▌║█│▌
The little man stood there with a huge, gleeful grin on his face, and he let out a hardy laugh when we finally saw him. Was he the cause of the boom that rang out through the forest? He spoke out with a deep Irish accent saying, “Sorry ‘bout the boom. I just wanted to see what yeh do hehehe. You should have seen your expressions! They were priceless!”
I looked over at Garen, and his expression seemed to be more annoyed than scared. Sasha walked over and whispered to me, “That there’s a leprechaun. They aren’t really a threat, but they are really annoying. They have really powerful magic, but they never really use it to harm people really bad, just cause a lot of inconviences for them. Let’s hope that this one doesn’t get attached to us.”
Garen looked at the leprechaun with disdain in his eyes as he asked in an exasperated tone, “What do you want?”
The little man suddenly disappeared from the tree he was leaning on, and he reappeared on Garen’s shoulder. He leaned up against Garen’s head, and asked him, “Awww, not even going to ask for me name first?”
“I don’t really care to.”
“Well, me name’s Conor, and I just want to have some fun with yeh. I heard about a griffin over here, and I was bursting with excitement to see what it would do in the forest. Do yeh know where it is?”
Garen moved his arm to shrug him off of his shoulder, but the leprechaun moved to the ground below him before he could touch him. Garen sighed and told him, “Sorry to burst your bubble, but the griffin is dead. It died last night. You just missed it.”
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Garen turned around to start walking again, but Conor teleported quickly in front of him, and asked him, “What do you mean he is dead? You don’t just killa griffin. I don’t think it could have gotten far enough in the forest to meet with the Fairy leader either, so what in the devil happened eh?”
Garen shrugged his shoulders, and he pointed his thumb behind him. He told Conor, “I don’t know. You will have to ask the human back there. He is one of Lord Zeus’s kids, and we are taking him to Mount Olympus. We walked up and found him standing over the ashes of the griffin’s corpse. As you can see though, we are very busy, so can you please leave us alone.”
Conor’s eyes lit up when he heard that John killed the griffin. He teleported onto my shoulder though, and he said, “I bet this one had something to do with the griffin too eh? That lady vampire seemed like she did too. Are you sure they weren’t the ones to kill the griffin. The power emitting from them is immense.”
I shrugged and told him, “You are probably just sensing the power we got from bathing in the tree sap. We were unconscious when the griffin died. We both got our ass handed to us.”
Sasha retorted back, “At least I did something to stave off the griffin.”
Conor let out another loud and boisterous laugh and said, “This is so interesting. I think I’m going to follow yeh guys for a little bit just to see what is going to happen. Oh, I hope there will be so many funny and interesting things that will happen.”
Garen’s face turned pale when he heard that Conor will be travelling with us for a little bit. He turned quickly to him and told him, “Oh, you don’t have to stay here with us. I’m sure there are a lot more interesting things and people out there besides us. We just have a boring walk ahead, so you can move on.”
Conor put his hand up though to stop Garen, and he told him, “Now now, I insist that I travel with yeh. I will go back there and talk to that human you were talking about being the son of Zeus. I bet he will be so much fun to play with hehehe.”
And just like that, Conor disappeared again. I turned to Garen and asked him, “Leprechauns can’t be thatbad, can they? I mean, he just made a loud boom sound earlier to scare us. It wasn’t thatbad.”
Garen shook his head and told me, “You have no idea what they are capable of. I wouldn’t want one of those people within a two-hundred-mile radius of me. They cause nothing but trouble, and nothing but trouble follows them. Mark my words, that leprechaun is a bad omen to our trip.”
“Well, it can’t make it worse for me. I mean, I already almost died once on this trip.” I retorted to him.
Garen with a thousand-mile gaze told me, “Oh it can.”
Sonya chimed in, “Come on Garen, maybe Cody is right? It doesn’t hurt to look at things positively once in a while. My Grandad knew a leprechaun once, and he said that it wasn’t that bad.”
Garen didn’t respond to this. He just continued his walk forward through the woods. I wonder if he has had any experiences with leprechauns before? It sure seems like it. I wonder what happened to make him so wary of leprechauns now? I mean, they can’t be worse than a griffin can they?
▌│█║▌║▌║To be Continued║▌║▌║█│▌