As fast as I could, I threw firebolts at more gelýrs, only to protect Maeve. But I couldn’t get my aim too close to her, I couldn’t risk setting her ablaze.

Maeve stumbled close with her sword still dragging on the floor and approached the first gelýr. Some part of me hoped that she’d feel the magic coursing through her body and come to in an amazing transformation, beating down the gelýrs where they were. That was a fantasy.

She barely raised her sword in the air before the gelýr in front of her batted it away. Her mouth fell open. I stabbed another gelýr in the stomach, trying my hardest to come close to her before the gelýr in front of her leaned down and hit her stomach, rising her up in the air with his arm.

“Fuck me, fuck me!” Maeve cried out.

Finally, I got to her but what the hell could I do? If I stabbed him, she could crash to the floor, and if I set him on fire, he could drop her anyway. I tried to get his attention, waving my sword in the air and dancing close, but the big lug just took a step back, with Maeve ten feet off the ground.

The moment he shifted to slam his hoof against me, I took my shot. If Maeve fell from this distance, it’d be a sprained wrist, not a broken neck.

My sword flew from my hand. Deep into his side, I plunged and the gelýr screamed, trying to bat at me before he stumbled back, crashing to the ground.

I just hadn’t expected Maeve to go flying too.

She soared across the stone and right towards the portal. In an instant, Maeve disappeared.

It wasn’t a hard decision. If my best friend was on the other side, through the portal was where I needed to go.

“Keep the portal open!” I shouted, breaking into a run to race right through it.

Byrid screamed at me to stop and even Auror tried to bring her battles closer to join me but that couldn’t happen. I gave my orders swiftly. Byrid and Auror needed to stay behind to fight the other gelýrs and Keeose needed to keep the portal open, ready at a moment’s notice to close.

They were the kind of things we threw at each other during battle. Like it or not, they knew I was right, and I entered the portal alone.

Going through the portal was like breaking through saran wrap. For a moment, I couldn’t breathe. Air tried to shove me back to the dungeon but I pressed on, pushing forward with all my might until I broke into pure, unfiltered sunshine. The sudden light hurt my eyes and it took seconds for them to adjust.

I stood on top of a hill so high, the air seemed to whistle through my lungs. My breaths were short and harsh.

Another gelýr climbed the hill close to me, and surprise touched his eyes when he spotted me. He reared close, a strangled cry in his throat, and broke into a run to meet me. I didn’t time for this.

I rose my hands and fire shot from my palms, wild and without control. The deer screamed again and collapsed to the ground.

But where was Maeve?

There she was, crumpled to the ground where she’d hit into the rocks of the hill. Her red hair obscured her face but I’d know her anywhere. I grabbed her by the waist and hauled her up, to see the blood trickling down at the back of her head.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I muttered but relief poured into me when I saw Maeve’s eyelashes flutter.

“Wars?” she mumbled.

“You’re fucking lucky you’re alive,” I breathed out and crushed her to me. The second I wasn’t looking at her though, I was looking at the rest of the hill, covered in tall grass. More gelýrs were climbing their way up to us, towards the portal where they knew they’d find what they were looking for. The long grass, the lines of lone gelýrs, the huge rocks that stood around the field in a circle, covered in runes…and the mud pits that the gelýrs rose from in the distance. I watched as another gelýr appeared from the murky liquid, drying in their long walk towards the portal.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“What the fuck…?” I said to myself before I spotted the husks of grain in the distance, an enormous mass that slowly turned to face me. There were no eyes in its form, just emptiness where the husks and woven twigs refused to grow, but I knew exactly what that was.

It was one of the Harvest Gods. One from the twins.

They were creating an army.

“The champion of Moruun!” the husks cried out together in glee. The sound wasn’t made with any human voice, it was the collection of the twigs and husks rubbing together, a horrific noise. One that needed to be stopped. He started walking over to us, collapsing into himself with how weak his form was.

“Fuck this,” I said and hauled Maeve over my shoulder. Pulling up my sleeves, I set everything ablaze. There was no control. There was no hesitation. I didn’t have the tools to defeat the Harvest Gods and put them in their prison where they belonged. The best I could hope for was slowing their pet project down and getting the hell back in that portal.

The gelýrs burned to death, screaming, but I paid the price for the lack of control. The fire licked up the landscape, catching with the grass, and the smoke overwhelmed everything else.

“Champion!” the husks cried after me, a cackle in their voice. “Champion, become our new form!”

I’d return for blood the minute I knew I could put them in their place permanently. In the meantime, with Maeve over my shoulder, I made a running start through the portal, bursting into the other side with ease.

Gulping in mouthfuls of air, I hit the ground and the portal closed behind me in golden sparks. I couldn’t get enough of the clean air, easy to breathe. Everything I’d seen flashed behind my eyes.

They were making an army. The Harvest Gods were getting stronger.

“Warrick!” three different women shouted on me and threw their hands on me. Byrid, Keeose, and Auror made their presence known in an instance, helping me to bring Maeve to the ground and throwing their arms around me. Byrid kissed my cheek and Auror gave me a hard hug before backing off and crossing her arms over her chest.

“She put you in danger, Warrick,” Auror reminded me, her lips curled in a permanent frown.

But was she fine? I put my hand on the back of Maeve’s hair and propped her up. Maeve’s eyelashes fluttered again and she came to with a weak smile.

She tried to lean up but groaned, reaching up to touch her head.

“You hit a rock pretty hard,” I told her, my voice soft.

“We won, right?” she asked with a wince.

“Did we?” Byrid muttered under her breath. “Who is we?”

I ignored her and Keeose, giving a nod of agreement. “The portal’s closed, they’re not getting back in here.”

“No origin story for me,” Maeve mumbled, giving me a long look more defeated than the gelýrs.

The realization stunned me. Bringing Maeve to our world was a mistake.

Yes, she’d been the goddess Moruun at one point but that was a long time ago. When I’d come into their fantasy world, I’d adapted pretty easily given the circumstances. But now we were on the cusp of a worldwide war against the gods and I couldn’t say that Maeve was ready for it. I couldn’t even say that Maeve fit in well with my war party.

It’d been a mistake to take her home. She needed to return to where she’d found a new life.

“Your majesty?” a voice called from the door of the dungeon. All five of us glanced up to see Xalap, poking her head in with a disapproving look about her. She pressed her lips together. “I told them that you needed more time, battling demons and such. I told them! But Commander Polvi has insisted that you need to know the elder council is here to see you. I can lock them out, if you’d like!”

The world didn’t stop just because we had scary deer dudes in the basement. Yet, looking down at Maeve’s pale face, trying not to wince in pain, the responsibility rested on my shoulders to know what we needed to do for this. For all of this.

“We’ll take breakfast in the great hall,” I decided, helping Maeve up to her feet. Maeve stumbled over herself and grabbed my arm. She gave me a weak smile and I propped her up again. “Maeve needs to go to the infirmary.”

“I want breakfast.” Maeve tried to grin.

“If they give you a once-over and say you’re fine, you can, but otherwise you have to stay there,” I replied, keeping my true thoughts to myself.

Before I send you back to Earth.

“And I should send the elder council back home?” Xalap asked, a little too hopeful.”

“No. They’ll have breakfast with us.”

The head servant gasped. “Dining with the elder council? Oh, your majesty. That’s simply considered, if you don’t mind me saying so, beneath your stature. To dine with them…simply unimaginable.”

“Dining?” Byrid repeated, stunned. “With the elder council?”

“This isn’t your father’s house anymore,” I reminded Byrid and Xalap both.

The elder council wasn’t just the higher-up aristocrats Byrid’s father liked surrounding himself with. I’d personally asked Commander Polvi to appoint some commoner leaders and past rebel leaders who’d been eager to support my rule after such cruelty. If I couldn’t dine with them, I couldn’t call myself their king.

“Xalap,” I called after her before she disappeared up the stairs. “I expect this to be the kind of breakfast to impress all of our guests.”

Keose snuck me a smile and the head house servant perked up immediately. If there was anything Xalap enjoyed, it was showing off the bounty of the castle. And if I was going to rely the events to the elder council properly, along with the bones of a plan forming in my mind, I needed everyone well-fed and in good spirits.