-=Elizabeth POV=-

‘I really don’t want to do this.’

Right now I’m heading towards room 203, the room right next to mine, in order to talk to our new fr… F…. Frie.... Ally, Barry Greymoon.

‘Really that guy, even after all these fucking years I still can’t make myself call him a friend.’

Standing in front of door 203 I take a deep breath before opening it and entering.

Obviously I was in my human form, if I show up as a sprite I would never hear the end of it.

It would be like walking into a business meeting while wearing pyjamas.

*creak*

I open the door and walk inside, however as soon as I take my first step I stop.

‘Right… I forgot this was how he had it.’

The inside if Barry’s room was messy, as though a small tornado had come through, with the sofa having a large chunk missing from the side.

And there were scorch marks everywhere, so a small fire tornado.

But there was also a bunch of water damage, so a fire and water tornado.

Somehow.

*inhale*

“BARRY!” I shout, refusing to enter this place to search for him myself.

In response I see one of the blankets laying on the sofa start shuffling about.

“Yes?” Responds a confused man as he erupts from a hole in the sofa which had been hidden by the blanket.

“Barry, we need to talk.”

“Over some tea I hope. I know it doesn’t look very nice in here but come on in.”

“No, I’m not taking another step.”

For a moment I could see Barry’s chin twitch.

“Oh come on Elizabeth, I’ve changed. It’s been, what,-” He looks over to a calendar attached to one of the walls. “Five hundred years? Wow, really?”

“Ba-”

“Elizabeth, I’ve had five hundred years to think, I’ve changed.”

“Ba-”

“I’ve also had five hundred years to learn how to make better tea

“Ba-”

“Ple-”

“Shut the fuck up Barry!”

“..:”

“Barry, I know how this book works, it may have been five hundred years for me but it hasn’t even been a second for you, the only thing that’s changed about you is apparently the quality of your slights.”

Barry’s chin twitches once more before he erupts.

“God fucking damnit woman!”

The angry man (Barry) Walked up to me while breathing heavily.

“Ba-”

“You see this!?” Interrupts Barry, pointing right in front of my feet.

Straining my eyes I saw a thin wire going across from wall to wall.

“All you needed to do was walk one more step!”

He then uses a finger the pull the wire, when he does a bucket which was standing on the hat shelf fell and spilled a yellow liquid on the floor.

*ssssss*

And started melting the floor.

“Fuck! I really thought I had you this time!”

‘Oh yeah, I never told him that killing people in the book doesn’t work. Though that just makes each of his attempts at my life even more serious.’

“I was this close-” He holds his two hands close to each other, so close even a piece of paper would have a hard time falling through. “-to finally getting control of the book!”

“Barry you know I’m smart enough to not walk into your room.”

“Tch.”

He then crosses his arms and sits down on the part of his sofa that’s still intact.

“So? Whaddya want? You’ve gotta have a helluva reason to wanna bring me back of all people.”

“Before that I have a question.”

“Go on then, aint got all day.” Responds Barry as he crosses his arms and impatiently starts tapping the floor with his foot

*tap tap tap*

“Yeah well before the book put locked you up we didn’t have these little apartments right?”

“Yeah, so?”

*tap tap tap*

“So you’ve only been here, in this apartment, for the few seconds it took me to get up here from the control panel.”

*tap tap tap*

“Yeah?”

*tap tap tap*

“How the fuck did you mess up your room this much in a matter of seconds!?”

“HA! Any wizard worth his salt needs to live in a bit of chaos and take pride in his battered home! T’is the medal of my honour!”

‘So kinda like how battle junkies take pride in their scars?”

[AN: I almost typo’d ‘scars’ into ‘cars’ and now I really want to make a battle junky character who’s a car fanatic.]

“Anyways, I believe you remember Cy?”

“...Who?”

“The behemoth spider.”

“...”

“The spider you tricked into making gadgets to use in your death traps.”

He claps his hands together.

“Oh yeah! That lil feller! And?”

“Well right now she’s the only other one here, as much as it pains me to say this, she can’t leave the book yet.”

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“Ooooh, I get it! You’re feeling lonely and you want another companion is it? Don’t tell me you fell in love with me? Don’t worry, I’ll take good care of y- Woah!?”

While Barry was in the middle of his sentence I used magic to pick up a glob of the acid he tried to use on me and threw it at him.

Which he evaded by jumping to the side and falling to the floor with a thud.

‘As annoying as I knew Barry would be if I told him I need him, it’s much better than how much he would pester me about letting Cy out of the book if he knew I could.’

“Geesh, I’ve heard about tough love but this I can do without!” He says while picking himself back up from the floor.

“Shut it Barry.”

“Yes ma’am.” He responds while saluting, though for some reason it doesn’t feel very respectful when it’s coming from him.

*sigh*

“The demons are getting stronger, as much as I wish it wasn’t so I’m going to need your help in the future.”

“The demons? Oh yeah, there was something like that in the contract, wasn’t there…” He says while scratching his bearded chin.

“Hang on, since when did you get a beard?”

“This? Oh I’ve always had it.”

“No, you really haven’t.”

He stops scratching his chin.

“Tch.”

He clicks his tongue, pulls of his fake beard and throws it at me.

Using magic I make the faux beard change directions and fly back to Barry.

“Oh no.”

*BOOM*

When the beard hit Barry it exploded into a multitude of various coloured flames.

Once the smoke and flames clear Barry once more picks himself up from the ground, now with noticeably fresher scorch marks on his already pitch black robe.

“It’s always amazed me how that robe of yours hasn’t been burnt to cinders already.”

“Like it? Made from genuine fire dragon dro- sheddings.” He says while wiping some black stains off of his face.

‘Was he just about to say droppings? I shouldn’t have asked.’

Barry then walks over to a desk and start mixing some liquids from different beakers.

“Okay, you want me to help you fight the demons, but what do I have to gain for it?”

“I dunno, how about I don’t kick you out of here into the outside world permanen-”

*poof*

While Barry was mixing his beakers a large bright green cloud of gas blasts out, straight into his face.

“Tch, you bring a hard bargain.”

*sniff sniff*

“Yeah this smells about right.” Barry says after taking a whiff of the green cloud.

He then plugs up all the beakers except for the one the gas came out of, that one he covers the opening with his thumb and starts shaking it.

“Fine, I’ll come along and play with the big bad demons, hell, they might even make some good research subjects.”

He then turns towards me and removes his thumb from the beaker, his shaking having caused the liquid inside to shoot out of the beaker towards me.

‘Really now.’

I wave my staff and cause the bright green liquid to fly back around and hit Barry’s head from the side.

*crash*

This made him fall over to the other side.

The side with the desk with all his beakers.

*fwoosh*

Safe to say, the contents of the beakers weren’t very safe.

*bang*

“Ha!-” Laughed Barry before being interrupted by a loud crackle.

“The robe-” *boom* “-Insulated with authentic-” *rrrrr* “-acid sacks!”

Hardly half of what he said could actually be heard.

“Okay, have fun. Oh, and I’m still not letting you leave the book yet. God knows what you’d do if you met Plush..” I say before leaving his room and walking back to mine, leaving him and his love for self caused danger to himself.

*click*

Oh, and also I made the book completely lock his door.

Just to be on the safe side you know?

* * * * *

-=A few hours later, 3rd POV=-

(Fucking chapter 81 and it’s my first time trying 3rd person. May it be a gentle first time.)

Apartment 201.

Sounds of cooking were coming from the kitchen.

*click*

*slide*

Suddenly the window in the livingroom was opened from the outside

“Pst, y’all want some health potions?”

In through the opened window stepped a gangly old man wearing a soot black robe which covered his entire body, from neck to toe, and a very pointy cone hat which stood stiffly on end without drooping in the slightest, almost as if it was made of metal rather than cloth.

This shouldn’t need to be said, however the man’s hat was just as sooty as his robe.

“I got the best health potions in the land, look at it.” The man picked out a red vial from somewhere in his robes and held it in his hand.

“Oh, and by potions I mean potion, I only got one. Oh hang on, that adds exclusivity… Okay, change in price, now a hundred gold instead of seventy!”

The man’s common sense was obviously as bad as his ability to stay clean, even his first price of ‘just seventy gold’ was already incredibly overpriced.

Also when the man went in through the window you could see his bare feet and hairy legs, leading any and all who saw him to believe he wore nothing underneath.

He had short gray curly and disheveled hair, though the gray colour was covered by layer upon layers of more soot and various other residues from his… explosive experiments.

“Or maybe you want a mana potion? Cuz I got a mana potion too. Premium quality y’all.” The man then took out another vial, this one glowing blue rather than red.

“Wanna be a wizard? Well wha’d’y’all need to a wizard? Mana! How do you get mana? A mana potion! Buy shit from me and become like me, an old wizard! Or maybe you should wait a bit with the old part actually...”

The The man whose seemingly only magical aspect was his horrible sales pitch started walking towards the kitchen.

“To be a wizard a fuck ton of mana is a need, and I can deliver! Oh, and maybe also some weed… Which I can also deliver by the way! Huh… Need weed, that rhymes...”

The man kept mumbling to himself as he started shuffling towards the kitchen while caressing his chin with one of his hands.

*sniff sniff*

“Man, I don’t know what’s cooking but I bet it would smell great if I hadn’t insulated my nose for all those trial and error sessions…”

The man in question did still have a sense of smell, it was just very weak in order to not get overstimulated by all the noxious fumes from his experiments.

“What? Someone there? Sorry, I’m trying to deep fry some octopus and the oil is very loud so I can’t hear you,”

Indeed, the closer the man, Barry Greymoon, got to the kitchen, the more he could hear the sizzling sound of oil, a sound he was surprisingly used to from his potion making days.

“Haaah… A perfect sales pitch for all my produce… Gone completely to waste because some twat decided to make fried octopus… Wait, why the fuck would you fry octopus?”

Barry walked into the kitchen and saw a small purple and black creature standing on a chair in front of the fancy white stove tending to a cast iron pot.

“Who the f-” *CRACK*

Barry was about to ask the small purple creature who he was but was oh so rudely interrupted by an extra loud crackle of the oil.

“Fuck, I can never get used how much faster everything cooks in here.”

The small purple creature’s arm started to glow green as he put it into the pot of sizzling oil and took out a vaguely octopoid shaped piece of charcoal.

*CRUNCH*

He then bit into it.

*munch munch*

“Well, there’s a bit of octopus taste left, so I can at least use it as a quick snack if I ever need to.”

The creature then took another octopus out of a large wooden bucket next to him and started to cover it in some dough looking substance before putting it down into the pot once more.

“Hello? You there, purple thing.”

“Just a mo’, I need to pay attention to this.”

Barry, not really sure how to initiate a conversation with people who didn't absolutely hate him, sat down at the nearby table and started eating from a basket that was on the table.

*munch munch*

“Is this… Chicken?” Said Barry as he held a bread covered, deep fried piece of chicken in his hand.

“Nugget.”

“What?”

“Nugget, it’s a chicken nugget.”

“Oh.”

Barry felt like he’d been swallowed up in the pace of the purple creature, and he didn’t like it one bit.

‘Oh, I know how to fix this!’

Having had a not-so-brilliant idea Barry snuck up behind the creature and tried to think of a way to cause a ruckus and, possibly, fourth degree burns.

It was then that Barry saw that where the creatures black tail came out of his purple clothes the cloth looked like it had been ripped apart from the inside with broken strings dangling here and there.

“Hey, your clothes look like they’ve seen better days.” Said Barry, once more assuming the nice-guy act he’d tried to trick Elizabeth with.

“What?”

The creature turned its head and looked at its back, using this opportunity Barry snatched the cast iron pot and threw its boiling oily contents at the creature before it had even seen what Barry looked like.

“Ack!” *thud*

Only for the sizzling oil to once more come flying back at him and push him to the floor, though luckily for him pain was another sense he had artificially dulled for the sake of science.

“How the fu-”

Barry looked up at the creature only to see that it had now been replaced by a very angry looking woman in a black hat and cape with her staff pointed at Barry.

“Oh fuck.”

“Oh fuck indeed.” Responded Lizz.