“Can’t really hurt,” Faelix said. “The surface is a lot more stable than it looks. Giant mushrooms like this, while not common, have thicker skins and are very resilient.

I got it. The surface looked like I’d fall through it, but I’d be fine.

“Really no idea what is over there?” I asked.

“Nope. It’s not good and the sprites tell me it’s dangerous.”

“For you or for everyone?” I asked.

He shrugged in the same way I would’ve shrugged had I not cared about other people’s safety. Which I didn’t. Taking a short breath I stepped onto the surface of the mushroom and finding it both soft and solid, I walked across it. And, as I walked across is I kid you not, I could feel my magic and powers growing exponentially stronger. Part of me wanted to try them out, to see what I could do, but I decided to hold off. There would be time later to experiment.

When I got to the center of the mushroom, feel almost like I was in the center of a huge tornado (been there), I looked and sure enough sitting just off center, where the vortex of power, which I could feel, seemed to build it’s own wall of power, I could see something square and black with flashing red and green and blue lights.

“What’s there?” Faelix asked, he’d enhanced his voice so I could hear it.

“It’s another one of those machines,” I said.

“A computer,” he said.

“Sure. It’s some blinking lights and is sitting right in the path of the power vortex,” I said.

“That sounds bad,” he said.

“It sounds like something,” I said. “What do you think we should do?”

“I’m not doing anything,” Faelix said. “One of the sprites just told me that thing is bad mojomagumbo.”

Whatever that was.

“Should I use the sword? Is there another button to push to blow it up?”

Faelix didn’t respond and I turned to look at him and he was gone. Flying down the side of the crater, though, was Moment and a small group of faeries. Bal had returned to the where we’d separated and it looked like Clippings was heading back as well.

When Moment appeared, Bal had to quickly look away from my satchel, flipping it closed before Moment could see inside. I was beginning to like Bal and for the briefest of moments considered helping her with the apprenticeship problem. But then I was back to focusing on the black square.

“What do you see?” Moment asked, also using magic to send her voice.

“It’s a black square with flashing lights. I think it’s some kind of machine,” I said.

“Can you see what it’s doing?”

“It looks like it’s in the path of a power vortex,” I said. “Other than that, no.”

Moment turned to one of her companions, a faerie guard, and pointed to me.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” I said. “I can’t guarantee anyone’s safety out here.”

“Knowing the stories about you,” Moment said, “and having seen you in action before you were trapped, I wouldn’t think you’d care about someone’s safety.”

“Put a god in a trap for several thousand years and see how they change,” I said. “Plus, we’re working together and right now I don’t think it’s in my interests to screw you all over.”

It didn’t matter what I said or was going to say, Moment had already decided what she was going to do and the faerie guard was on her way out. When she got about halfway, the guard came up short and started to peal off the very bright looking armor she’d been wearing.

I looked at Moment who just shrugged and then back at the faerie guard who was not a hot mess of naked faerie flesh once again flying toward me.

She made it another few feet before she stopped and took out whatever had been holding her hair back and up and I watched as the hot mess now added wild hair and a mystical glow to her being.

Once again, she started to fly and made it almost to the barrier when the glow turned into a bright light and as the faerie guard flew through it, she seemed to grow several inches before reaching me and landing next to me.

“Hello,” I said.

“Flora Rose,” the faerie said, her voice melodious and very sexy. She didn’t introduce herself, instead looking toward the black box and turning back to Moment, “It looks like one of those computer systems,” she said.

“We need to destroy it,” Moment said.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because that’s how the monsters get here,” Moment said.

It kind of felt like Moment was scolding me for being dumb and for a moment I considered saying something back, and pushing a bit of my power toward her, but decided against it mostly realizing that computers and technology and machines like I’d been introduced to and now experienced, hadn’t existed in any way before I was trapped.

“How do we destroy it?” I asked. “If the bombs didn’t do it, what power do we have?”

The guard looked from me to Moment and back again. She didn’t need instructions and, instead, walked straight toward the machine, clearly with intent.

I wanted to reach out and stop her, but at the moment I didn’t know what or how to go about doing anything, especially since the guard was changing again.

Now, don’t judge me and if this was anywhere else, I’d explain it away as important to the plot, but I’m not anywhere else and the plot be damned there didn’t need to be an explanation. The faerie’s boobs started to grow, her hair changed, I could see that she was glowing and shining in different colors, and the world was suddenly different for her.

What I do think was happening was the machine taking its cues from me because, of course, me. I’m hot and powerful and people do what I want whether they feel like it or not and the world is my oyster, which meant the machine was my bitch and I’d have to take extra special attention in the now metamorphosing faerie. Whether or not I wanted to be surprised, I was absolutely taken aback by what I was seeing. The changes were more than magical, they were literally making the faerie guard into something else entirely. Maybe even someone else entirely.

It didn’t take very long for her to finish making her way to the machine and then pick it up. There was another flash of light, the light seemed to be strobing as it responded both to me and her, and then she’d stepped out of the power vortex and started back toward me.

I was gobsmacked.

Unlike the faerie and the elves, the guard was now a different species entirely and I didn’t really have words to describe the changes. She was still human-like, as were most of us, but there was also something different about her I couldn’t quite identify.

When she got back to me and set the machine down, Moment said, “Turn it off.”

I looked from moment to the guard and then back to Moment again.

Everything I’d done, up to this point, with Faelix was suddenly coming to a head. When Faelix did the things he did with the computers and monitors, the self-destruct buttons and whatnots, I wasn’t really paying attention to the specific details. Now, however, I was expected to have a knowledge and skill set I didn’t possess and shouldn’t be expected to know.

Looking closer at the black box, I started to explore the surface looking for anything that might indicate a way to turn it off as opposed to on. It took me a few minutes of looking, desperately searching, before I found a slightly recessed button with an orange-red light shining through it and pressed it down, waiting for something to happen. Just as I was about to lift my finger, there was an almost inaudible click and everything shut down, the lights and noises and everything, including the vortex of power which had been spinning all around us.