I started a summons, “Fairy Council Justice Lydia Gray, this is Phil the Fishmonger King of Snipsnort. I may have caught a bad disease.”

I felt her connect and disconnect.

I looked down at the dart on the floor and considered dowsing it with bleach. I didn’t want to destroy the hope of analysis, but if I was exposed, I didn’t want this to spread to anyone else.

I bleached the area around it and sat near it.

I smelled something and turned as a girl wearing what looked like a jogging suit crossed with a bee suit caught me as I passed out.

#

I woke up in a large white bed in a white chamber with mirrors far above me. Apart from the folds in the white quilt and white sheets, there were no shadows. The walls and the floor all glowed, so there were no shadows at all. I tried to transport myself to the amphitheater/kitchen but it didn’t work. I tried to transport myself to the transport world that had been exposed to the darts but nothing happened.

I sat up and started to make a gateway.

An amplified voice said, “The disease is not a strong concern. It is a very old Fairy poison. Shadow stepping cures it, and it is not airborne. Please transform into any forms that have been poisoned and try to shadow step.

I shrugged. “With what shadow?”

The glow on the floor stopped. There still wasn’t much shadow. I changed into me with a backpack filled with sausage and cheese sandwiches and arranged it to make a shadow. I turned into the drowsy rooster and shadow stepped and then fell asleep.

#

“Wow, a giant rooster fell asleep in shadow.”

“Naw, that’s one of them there dinosaur pre- bird things. Nice plumage. How did a dinosaur end up in shadow?”

“Goblins must be descended from prehistoric roosters. Must have been wild back when giant chickens roamed the earth.”

“Let’s get feathers, otherwise no one will believe us.”

“What if it wakes up?”

“How many millions of years has it slept here, do you think?”

“Do dinosaurs hibernate?”

“No idea. I didn’t even know they shadow stepped.”

I started to pull my head out from under my wing.

“It’s getting up. Run!”

I looked around. I could tell I was in a Fairyland, and the cave lit by large glowing fungus made me even more certain of my assessment. I turned into myself and walked out and into a field. A pair of small Goblins were leading a band of ten more Goblins carrying ropes with weights on the ends.

A Goblin girl looked up at me. “You a human?”

I said, “I’m a Goblin.”

She said, “Kept your ears round. Did you see a giant chicken come this way?”

Another Goblin said, “Rooster. Giant rooster.”

The Goblin girl asked, “How do you know? Looking like a rooster hardly means it’s a boy if it’s a dinosaur. Here’s the thing, most critters go through their various forms as they grow up. So young critters may look like they did ages ago. Since everyone sort of look more like a boy than a grown woman when young, it’s clear that boys are the more primitive form.”

The boy Goblin rolled his eyes. “Not this again.”

I saw another Goblin pick a leaf off a tree and start chewing it. He noticed me looking. “You got an issue with me, big guy?”

I took a leaf and chewed it. Now I was linked to the Fairyland. I returned to the amphitheater/kitchen to start cleaning up the dart and the area around it. The dart was gone. I cleaned the area anyway.

As I cleaned, I considered the Fairies that had attacked and wondered what they were doing at the aqueduct. It didn’t make sense, but then as I thought of Fairies willing to use disease as a weapon with a gateway near the aqueduct, I got concerned. I went back to the transport Fairyland, and the darts were gone. I opened the gateway I had put inside one of the blowguns in the world with the disease-using Fairies.

There was no light, and it would not open in a way that I could pass objects through it. I could open it to transmit, but I was not going in without knowing what was up.

#

At the seven-way crossroads in Snipsnort, I considered summoning folks to tell them I was okay. I didn’t quite know how to tell them I had been abducted and woke up in a strange room. As I composed in my mind various ways of interpreting events and explaining things without telling any of my wild theories, I slid through shadows beside the aqueduct in Snipsnort until I reached the place where the enemy Fairies had hidden their gateway. I didn’t want them to notice my moving and altering their gateway, and I didn’t want them popping out and attacking me. I made a steel mesh cage and moved the gateway into it.

From vague dream-like memories and clues I was given about runes, I made wards to try and keep the gateway from being able to be moved out of the cage. I tested it until I could no longer move it out. Hopefully that would do. I had little choice. I needed to deal with these Fairies before they decided to poison a town’s water supply.

With it hopefully secure I altered the gateway so I could see through it.

The crates were gone. Through the rain and mist, tall banana trees in rows went as far as the fog allowed vision. I moved the gateway around. There were steep embankments with tall grasses growing and water in channels at the bottom. In a gazebo, there was a pair of Fairies with wings sitting at a Go board playing. I altered the gateway to allow me to hear them and slid it up into the gazebo so hopefully they wouldn’t notice.

“How much longer?”

“It’s rude to rush a person trying to figure out where to place the next stone.”

“No, not how long before you take your turn. How long before King Snipsnort comes and claims this Fairyland?”

“You didn’t hear? He’s probably never coming. He was in a level six disease ward. Something went wrong. He was there, turned into a giant rooster, and poof, he was gone.”

“He got out of a level six disease ward?”

“Yeah, they estimate that maybe six to eight of the top transport experts of Fairy could get out of a level six disease ward if they had time. Maybe two could get out of it fast. King Snipsnort pushes the limit of manifesting materials, but apart from that he isn’t anywhere near the top of anyone’s list at anything.”

“Well, he is a Fairy king of one of the oldest known Fairylands and he’s Goldilock’s apprentice.”

“When they made the level six containment areas, Goldie was one of the prime targets for making sure they could contain her. She’s one of the top transport experts, but the consensus is it would take her at least an hour to get free. No, now that King Snipsnort is gone, everyone’s planning for the end of the world.”

“I’m gonna keep my hopes up.”

A Fairy flew in and landed next to the Fairies playing Go. “Has there been any sign of Snipsnort?”

“What, King Snipsnort?”

“Yeah. He did some odd stuff with gateways. He altered a gateway he hid in a blowgun that was put in one of the museums. The Dread Lord felt someone pushing on the edge of speeding time there almost like he was testing the water. On the other side of the gateway was a series of worlds set up in stacks for transport with gateways in Snipsnort and several other Fairylands.

“From way-up sources, we were informed that King Snipsnort is about to conclude that he can’t trust anyone even remotely related to the Dread Lord.”

“That would be us. That’s crazy.”

“Yeah, well, the Efreets have their own team manipulating destiny, and they have been trying to get rid of Roland Hubert as one of their low level efforts. When Snipsnort showed up, they were still aiming for Roland, but it looks like they may have caught on that Roland is just support for their real enemy.”

“So what do we do?”

“Wait for him. Play dumb. If it gets rough, you know what you volunteered for.”

“Yeah, we defend King Snipsnort no matter the cost. If we are caught, we have glass vials with bits of iron in them, hidden in teeth. Don’t worry, we know our duty.”

I closed the gateway and hid it. Someone was passing through shadow under the aqueduct. It didn’t feel like one of the cats or Duchess Byebye. There was a Goblin or a Goblin’s Fairy here in Snipsnort. I slid slowly into shadow and waited. Whoever was there was waiting too. Minutes passed and suddenly the other Goblin took off, moving fast in shadow. I caught a ripple and rode it. I slid in the shadow of their shadow in shadow as they sped their way to the huge white throne were Snipsnort’s nobles played rough games and the gateway to Real was.

I felt Duchess Byebye enter the chase in shadow.

The Goblin fleeing reached the shadow of the throne and shifted to the shadow of one of the golden pillars holding the roof over the throne. She stepped out of shadow and moved to activate the gateway to Real.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Duchess Byebye grabbed onto her leg. “No one gets away from Dutchess Byebye without answering three questions. Be sure to tell the truth, ‘cause I can tell and I eat people who tell me lies. Why are you here?”

The Goblin girl looked down at Byebye and her jaw went stiff. She collapsed and Byebye touched her throat, pushed her over, and sat on her chest. Sitting, she bounced on the girls chest. “Wake up, Goblin girl.”

The girl opened her eyes.

Byebye put her head closer to the Goblin’s face. “You poisoned yourself to escape my questions. But I can tell if something is poisoned and I can cure it. No escaping questions, not with Byebye here.”

Lady Anteater walked up. “Is this King Snipsnort’s girlfriend? Oh, you’re in so much trouble. Duchess Byebye is not going to let you steal her boyfriend.”

Byebye said, “No, he’s my brother now, so him being my boyfriend is just weird. Okay, get the gang. We tickle her ‘til she talks. If she’s my brother’s girlfriend, and she was ready to die to not admit she is desperately in love with him, there must be some terrible secret. Are you his sister, too? ‘Cause if you are, ewwww. That’s just creepy.”

I felt a gateway sliding up. I was in shadow, and it seemed like as it moved the light was now less blue and darker. I shifted through the gateway.

#

I was in shadow under a desk in a Fairyland where Goblin girls were watching displays. Various views around the throne were displayed.

In an open area right beside me was the gateway to Snipsnort that I had just passed through. Byebye and the Goblin girl were shifted into an intermediary Fairyland. They were in a slower Fairyland so they appeared frozen in time, and the light looked dim.

I heard a man’s voice, but I dared not shift and look to see him.

“Don’t hurt Byebye. Not joking around girls. We hurt Duchess Byebye and everything falls apart. None of you ever get boyfriends. Seriously, Phil adopted her. She’s his Goblin family.”

A girl’s voice asked, “Which of them was that?”

Another voice said, “Not Bell, he stays older looking. Not that we are going to hurt her, but how would Phil know if we did?”

“Phil has the swamp witch, and Roland is about to become a prognosticator again. He may end up knowing everything.”

A voice near me said, “We have induced sleep state on Duchess Byebye and Petra. Someone extract Petra and we can put Duchess Byebye back in Snipsnort.”

I watched as a pair of Goblin girls carefully moved Duchess Byebye off of the Goblin girl and took the Goblin girl out of the area.

She immediately got up and looked back. “I saw Phil. He’s alive. I took the poison, but Duchess Byebye negated it. I should probably be taken off this project before my karmic links to Phil get any stronger. Fortunately, he never saw me.”

“Good, as long as you avoid eye contact with him, we don’t think the Efreets will be able to link you. That was the latest assessment. We won’t have to move you to another universe like we did Nia.”

In the area beside me, the gateway got brighter, and I saw Duchess Byebye get up.

Lady Anteater asked, “How’d she get away? No one ever gets away from Byebye.”

Duchess Byebye said, “We’re in the middle of a secret gateway. Call the team. We have a Fairyland to invade!”

The view went blank as the gateway closed and then dissipated.

“Do we keep looking for Phil?”

“We should confirm that he is safe. Everyone back to monitoring stations. Roll call on stations and status.”

“Phil’s Banana Farm is clear.”

“Snipsnort cleanup crew has reached the site, and they are removing the wards.”

“All the gateway to areas frequented by Olivia and Goldilocks have been put into deep hiding and set to dissipate on detection.”

“Good, now lock down those stations. Goldilocks and Olivia have both been here before.”

“Twenty years ago, maybe.”

“Do you want to risk it?”

“Phil’s medical center has the framework set up. Shall we move the gateway in Fairy Dynamics so it can be discovered?”

“Wait for it. The probable invasion will be tomorrow around 14:00 Greenwich. Shift the gateway right after that gets resolved.”

“While we are being active, can we just take care of the invasion for Phil?”

“We can’t solve all his problems, and we don’t want to show our hand.”

“So we just root for him?”

“It’s all we can do. We can try to be a safety net, but we have fumbled so much, we don’t dare try to help him directly. The Efreets prognosticators have destiny snarled in knots. Half our attempts to help have put him in danger.”

The Goblin girls were regularly sliding in and out of shadow and moving during all of this. I was right by an area they used for opening gateways, so if they used it, I would have a good way out and they might not notice me. If I moved in shadow here, they would certainly detect me and probably identify me. I was stuck.

If I just took myself to another Fairyland, I might not be identified, but I didn’t trust going to another Fairyland like that while still in shadow. Fortunately, this world was sped up or someone might summon me and that would give me away.

I might have another way out. Going to sleep while in shadow had taken me to another Fairyland, but that was an unexplored and unknown possibility and full of risks. If I went to sleep and fell out of shadow, I would be worse than just revealed.

A Goblin girl’s voice said, “Feile Griff has been contacted by an Efreet possessed oligarch. Can we launch an interdiction?”

“If this incursion to Snipsnort had not happened, we suspect he would have already contacted Feile. We can launch an observation team and send this up to see if the Heads want to risk interaction with the Efreet, but none of us are Phil or Avery. We will need any volunteers to die before the Efreet extracts memories from them. Only volunteers go though the gateway and only if you are rigged and you speak Russian, Ukrainian, and Crimean Tatar.”

The gateway opened to a wooded area. I didn’t speak any of those languages, but I gently went through anyway. I barely shifted and after passing through the gateway, I took off as fast as I could for just a moment, blazing through shadow not even knowing where I was going or seeing anything but the shadows ahead. I stopped short by a stream.

I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t know anything about Russia or Ukraine or Crimean taters.

I felt the ripples from shadow stepping. I wasn’t near and didn’t want to disturb the shadows so I took to the air as an owl. A Goblin girl was sitting in a tree mostly concealed by the leaves and aiming a listening device at a house on top of a hill.

I didn’t fly anywhere near her. I stayed low but she was at the edge of the wooded area and between her and the house there was only a bit of scrub and grass. I flew low and found a small gully up to the wall around the house. Fearing wards, I flew into the canopy of a small tree and perched on a limb. I could make out several conversations. One was in German, and I could mostly make out what was being said. The rest of the conversations sounded like Russian.

The German conversation ended sharply as I started to listen.

Feile Griff said, “You want me in America? I don’t think the North American Deaths like me.”

Another voice said, “Shhh. Someone is listening to us.”

After a minute of waiting, I started sliding a gateway to find a way to see inside. I felt something dark enter me. An Efreet had possessed me.

#

I went to my Fairyland of Death, bound him to it, and turned him into a Fairy. I did it in one quick instinctive move. Then I turned into myself and was immediately hit in the face with a bit of gravel. The little thing was picking through the rough dirt to find something else to fling at me.

#

I went to a transport Fairyland, turned back into an owl and went through the gateway I had just slid half-way down a tree. Another foul spirit entered me. I went to the Fairyland of Death and dodged a thrown bit of gravel as I turned into myself, bound the spirit to the Fairyland, made him into a Fairy.

Another bit of gravel hit me near my ear. I needed to get body armor and a face shield.

I went back to the transport Fairyland, turned into an owl again, and stopped. I sped time and linked up with an overlay gateway to Snipsnort.

I moved around gateways so I could examine the six-legged, armored excavator. I sat on it and closed my eyes to examine the windows. I examined the armored body of it, then made sheets and bars of the materials in gossamer, and started testing them with gossamer hammers and pickaxes. It was all tough stuff so with gossamer mirrors, illusions to feed imagination, and a few practice attempts at making armor, I could move in comfortably and still see. I made real armor that I could keep in a form. Since I had just left a backpack in a shadowless white room, I chose that form to wear the armor.

#

As an owl, I went through the gateway by the house where I had twice been possessed. I landed on the ground and hopped to the wall.

From inside, I heard Feile, “Don’t try it, my wards will kill us both if you possess me. Where the hell are you going?”

I turned my head and saw the dark shape. Again, I was possessed.

#

In the Death Fairyland, I made the invading presence a Fairy, turned into me in armor, bound him to the world, and heard more than felt the impact of two bits of gravel hitting my face shield.

I went to a transport Fairyland, sped time in the Fairyland of Death, and felt for changes in mass. When it felt like three small bundles of mass had been given to the Fairyland, I went back and waited. Oddest thing. This horrible, desolate, broken Fairyland gave me a strong sense of it being happy with me.

#

Ready for an evil spirit to invade me, again I hopped out of the gateway as an owl.

I heard a voice say, “Feile, my rider has left me. Am I going to die now?”

Feile asked, “Do you want a ward so you can be safe?”

He said, “I’m not used to making decisions. Tell me what to do.”

Feilie said, “I’m just drawing a simple ward. Just stay there. If a guard comes, tell him to leave.”

I decided I needed to get in fast. The grating at the bottom of the gully where the fence passed over it had a gap that I thought I could fit through. I scrapped my chest up pretty good and was bleeding a little after quickly forcing my way through the grating. A guard was walking over, so I tested shadow and moved into the house.

From the shadow on a beam in the ceiling I saw Feile carefully drawing a rune that would ignite and incinerate the paper it was written on after the transport rune she had already drawn was used. I hid in a shadow on her large handbag.

#

She finished the rune and then we were in a workshop in a large stone and timber barn in a much colder place. I shifted between shadows and found myself sealed by ward inside the barn. I went to the shadows behind a booth set up for spray painting in and turned into me.

I hid a gateway on the other side of a cobweb-covered pegboard with tools that looked like they hadn’t been used in thirty years. I hid another gateway in a seam on Feile’s bag. Then I went back into shadow to explore and find the equipment and computer that Feile had used to nearly kill Hubert.

I found the computer in a room in a building connected to the barn. It was hooked to a router. Keeping watch for Feile, I brought out a laptop and a router and set the router up to just pass data and listen. That gave me the IP addresses I needed.

I sent a message to Caerwyn. “Here’s Feile Griffs router’s IP.”

I was working on breaking the security on the router when Caerwyn sent me a message back, “Phil, you gave me a present, and it’s not even my birthday.”

I replied, “I need to make fakes of the connected equipment and take the ones she has. Should I take anything else?”

Caerwyn sent back, “I’ll let you know. She’s a Dwarf and sadly, that means she knows how to make it all again. They have great memories. But that might slow her down.”

I shadow stepped back out to the barn. She was putting runes on everything flammable. She was planning to burn the place down.

I shadow stepped to the top of the paint booth and asked, “Gonna run for it?”

She spun around. It took her a moment to find me. “Phil, first they told me I had killed Hubert and needed to run from you. Then I was told you were dead. Phil, these are Efreets. You need to run, too. Cover your tracks. They can take you over, then they’ll go after everyone you know with the knowledge they have taken from you. You can’t fight these things. They are ancient and horrible. They tricked me into using resonances that killed the Giants on Hubert.”

I asked, “How many of them were in the house with you?”

She said, “Four of them. One would be more than enough to take you, me, and everyone we know to oblivion.”

Just before returning to the transport world, I said, “Then I missed one of them. I should go back and deal with it.”

#

Once more I hopped out of the gateway as an owl. This time I tested for wards. No wards. I should have guessed that an evil spirit that wants to keep its options open and possess people would prefer a place without wards. I slid in shadows to listen to the guards talk.

When they spoke, it sounded like Russian. I slid in shadow and found where three men were talking. One was the man who spoke German to Feile, but their group was speaking yet another language that I didn’t speak.

So much for being a spy. I explored. I found a lot of guns. I don’t think it counts as stealing when you take things from someone who tried to possess you. Arguing it in court probably wouldn’t work, but Goblins tend to avoid jail.

There was a man sleeping in an expensive bed. He had a guard outside the door. I guessed that he was an Efreet or at least had one inside him.

He woke up as I watched and looked up at the shadow I was hiding in. I shifted around to the floor as he closed his eyes and a dark shape came out. I turned into me as it entered me.

#

In a well-worn pattern with just a touch of variation, I went to the Fairyland of Death, made him a Fairy, turned into me in armor ,and bound him to the world. I expected gravel to hit me. Then I remembered that I’d let time pass and the others were gone.

The Fairy glared up at me. “You will watch as the world ends. There will be no escape for you.”

I said, “You will watch as this world ends you. There will be no escape for you.”

He said, “I am eternal. I have survived time more distant than the evolution of your kind.”

#

I left him there, sped time on the world he was in, and felt his substantial mass get added to the Fairyland of Death.