Ion Cáel May 22th,20XX

I stood to the side as I supervised Aies going through his exercises for the day. He had only been with me one day. A single day, but he had already picked up most of my techniques.

This little monster. It was terrifying to imagine what he would be like when he did have his magic.

“Hey, quit it for a second, I got something to ask you.”

Aies stopped mid-movement and pushed himself to his feet. He blurred over to me even though the distance was more than short enough to walk. The brat was showing off.

I resisted the urge to smack him up the head and held my hand close to my body. Annoying as he was, he was still the most direct heir to the throne. I had to uphold some modicum of respect toward him.

“What is it?”

He bounced around with nervous energy, clearly unsatisfied with being interrupted. If he hadn’t wanted to then he was more than within his right to keep going and ignore me.

I didn’t know how to deal with him. He was higher ranked than I was but listened to my every order like a puppy. The most he would give me was playful resistance.

With goblins, one's rank was more important than life itself. I didn’t know about him but if a lower-ranked goblin tried to order me around I would have ripped their heads off faster than they could grovel an apology.

“Ion! You wanted to ask me something?”

I was snapped back to attention and saw him giving me a slight frown. It wasn’t an annoyed one like I would have expected but he looked concerned.

“Is it the spell they cast on you? I know you can suppress it but it must be pretty uncomfortable to have something that’s supposed to mind control you in place.”

Ai. Now that he reminded me it was uncomfortable. But it wasn’t so bad that I was willing to let the little pixie screw around with my brain.

My and my crew had managed to get a few witches on our side to fake the mind control spells that they cast on us. I hadn’t managed to get all of us freed but there were enough free agents that I had confidence we could forcibly kidnap the others back to the empire. Our operative here was to gather information and if possible assassinate Rubella, but it had been hard to find a gap in her defences to do so.

She had just caved on having a goblin to serve her when the Sparrow chick had come in. Then I had been passed over as a gift.

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Speaking of which.

“You said you came here for Sparrow right? What business do you have with her?”

I was confused about why the prince of a whole queendom would have to personally come to hostile territory to meet anyone, never mind the head witches’ main apprentice.

I’d also heard that he already had a fiancée lined up so I doubted it was for romantic purposes. I didn’t know how much influence his fairy side had on him but we goblins tended to stay loyal forever.

And why was the only protection he’d had with him a human and two unranked soldiers. They had been good fighters but they had let the prince slip out of their sight so easily. It was ridiculous.

The human perked up his head at this. I had been prepared to continuously knock the human unconscious if it had kept being annoying but so far it had been helpful in restraining Aies and even better, was a gifted cook. As long as he stayed in his corner then I didn’t mind letting it be.

The human cut into the conversation, saving me from Aies’s disjointed version of events.

“Ah, we knew Sparrow from the human world. As for her being a witch… well, she’ll have to explain all that, but her brother was concerned about her and asked Aies, well he was Cai at the time to find her. She and Will, that's her brother, sort of adopted Finn, who is Cai and also Aies when he was still in the human world. I don’t know the exact timeline though.”

Apart from him stumbling over the names and constantly reminding himself that those three personalities that he knew were the same people, he gave me as detailed of an explanation as I wanted.

In another way, I wondered if I should allow him to talk to someone else from the pixie. It seemed like he was picking up its annoying speech tendencies of thinking as it spoke.

Aies nodded along with the human's explanation and gave me all the confirmation that I needed that he was telling the truth.

“So, you want to get her back to the human world?”

I directed the question at the human since he seemed like he knew what he was talking about.

“That was the plan. But since Sparrow betrayed us I think our priority is getting back to the fairylands so we can get back to the human world.”

“Ah, I made a deal that I’d bring her back though so maybe I'll knock her unconscious and take her with us.”

Aies cut in, violent as usual.

“As fun as that sounds, you do know she’s been brainwashed right? I’m not sure how deep it goes but she was cursed by Rubella.”

I chuckled to myself as I remembered her trying to defend my rights as an individual. It had been a novel opinion to hear from a witch. Of course, I knew that not all witches were completely evil and wretched, but the vast majority of those I had met fit the bill.

“Cursed? Oh yeah, she did respond pretty badly to that antidote I gave her.”

He fell into thought for exactly two seconds before he shrugged and drifted back over to his corner.

“Well, that just means my knock out and kidnap plan is the best one, isn’t it? We’ll get her over to the fairylands and sort it all out there. Even if I can't do it when I get my magic back I'm sure there's someone that can. Now-“

He suddenly cut himself off and launched himself at me, eager to fight.

I caught the connection between him wanting his magic back and wanting to fight me but it was still somewhat unexpected.

His nails had lengthened to twice their initial length and his hair now reached his shoulders. A few golden strands had started to emerge on his head, but he didn’t seem to have noticed yet. Sure enough, it was impossible to remove all the magic from a royal.

We had done as much as we could but if he didn’t manage to come to some sort of balance soon, I feared the worst.