Chronicle Worlds: Feyland

by Samuel Peralta

  “Now, Fred,” said Ragella.

  The lad turned and stabbed me in the chest with his sword, betraying me and making me a fool.

  I fell to the emerald grasses, bleeding and shouting, “Ragella returns to kill you, my king.”

  “Seize them!” the king bellowed.

  But Ragella snatched the necklace from Fred’s neck, cut his arm, and used his blood—and mine—to propel the iron sword necklace straight into the king’s heart.

  “No!” I shouted.

  An elf banished Fred’s blade from his hand and surrounded him with fire. Ragella waved her arms, manifesting a portal, but before she could teleport, a group of elves set her on fire. Her screams were silenced as she exploded in a cloud of smoke that mushroomed into the air then spewed out her ashy, flaky remains. The grey flakes rained down over the courtiers who fled in a panic leaving only the soldiers and king’s advisors. They brushed the hag’s remains out of their clothes and hair.

  The king had fallen out of his throne and was clutching at his heart on the grassy dais.

  Fred shrieked as the flames licked at his skin, yelling, “I thought it was a game. I thought it was all a game.”

  The best healers in the court stood over their king, trying to save him. His colour had turned pale and blue; death would take him soon.

  “Stand back!” I said, staggering over to him.

  Morland, the elf who’d initially cursed me, raised his hand suddenly. Invisible magic smashed against my body, sending me flying across the clearing. “I should have killed you when I had the chance.”

  “I can heal him. Let me heal him,” I said.

  The pain in my body made my lungs shudder. Using blood magic in the Bright Court was forbidden and would kill me.

  “I can heal you, Majesty. Let me prove myself to you once again.”

  I was on my knees, trying to raise my body and get to my feet, but I was weak. Bleeding so profusely that I slipped in my own blood.

  The king said to his guards, “Bring him to me.”

  “No, I will die if moved. Come to me.”

  “Very well!” the king rasped. “Take me to him.”

  An elf rushed to me and put a potion to my lips. I sipped eagerly, and as the elves brought the king to my side, I placed my hand over his heart, feeling for the iron sword. His pulse weakened, and if not for the healers keeping him alive, he’d have already been dead.

  Reaching inside myself, I strained my soul for the sparks of life that kept me alive. They were in my veins, ligaments, and muscles, and as I took them, I found I could hardly move myself. Internally, I crafted them into finger-like tools that burst from the deep incision Fred’s sword had made and burrowed into the king’s chest, making him cry out.

  “Stop him! He’s killing him,” Morland cried.

  The miniature iron sword slid out of the king’s heart and clinked against the polished floor, but his heart had stopped beating. I used every second one of my own heartbeats to keep him alive while I mended his wounds with blood magic.

  When the king’s heart sustained its own beats, and his skin warmed with life, the ancient forces that forbade the use of blood magic in the Bright Realm came to claim my life. The shadowy figures emerged from the trees, the grasses, the light itself, their wraith-like shapes, and wispy nightmarish fingers strained my body of life sparks. The sleep of death brought a final darkness, but I drifted off peacefully, smiling, knowing I had finally set things right.

  * * *

  I awoke to chocolate. Everywhere, chocolate. Stacked floor to ceiling in huge piles. Fred leaned over me, grinning wildly.

  “What happened?” I asked, feeling deflated and famished.

  “You saved the king, and you saved me.”

  An elf stood guard at my door. My door! I realized. I was home, in my old lodgings where I’d lived while in service to the king as royal healer.

  “B-but how did I survive?” I asked, trying not to cry in front of the lad.

  Fred’s eyes glowed. “Well, let’s just say I can’t go home, and you…” He picked up my arm, which was a claw again. A blood goblin claw.

  “Oh no, not this again. I can’t go back to the Dark Realm, Fred. Kill me.”

  He laughed and shook his head. “No. Using blood magic turned you back into a goblin. Consider this all a gift from the Bright King for risking your life. You’ll be the first blood goblin to live in the Bright Realm, and you’ll have endless chocolate, but… you can’t really leave the house. You know, because you’re scary-looking.”

  “Why did you betray me?” I asked.

  “I did a terrible thing, but I have a good reason. It’s going to sound weird, but humans have this virtual game called Feyland…”

  The lad relayed his story of how he was convinced the world was make-believe, a quest, and he’d thought that Ragella and I were not real. He likened it to a dream. A seemingly real dream that was a game, and Fred had stabbed me in an attempt to try to wake up.

  “I won’t forgive you,” I said.

  Fred’s face fell, and he lowered his gaze. “It’s okay.”

  And then I let go of roaring laughter. “Unless you feed me chocolate right now!”

  The lad’s dopey smile returned, touching his eyes and crinkling his forehead. He showed me a piece of chocolate and put it to my mouth. I savoured that first taste, the first in a thousand years. How I’d missed it. It melted on my tongue, waxed my mouth, and I let it sit there, capturing me in an eternal euphoria.

  When I finally swallowed, I said, “Ahh, my old friend.”

  Fred laughed at me and dabbed at the blood on my chin with a handkerchief. I’d scratched myself with my ridiculous fangs, but I didn’t care. “Don’t you want to go home?”

  “I can’t. I ate the food, remember?”

  He was lying to me. The Bright King had the power to send him home if he wished, but the lad didn’t want to go, and I wasn’t about to talk him out of it. There were few creatures I enjoyed the company of, and to my surprise, Fred had become one of them.

  There’d been a monster inside me, a selfish, greedy monster that I’d slain. Now when the lad regarded me, I saw only kinship, and that brought a satisfying peace to my soul.

  “Will you do me one more favour?” I asked him.

  “Sure.”

  “Never ever let me eat chocolate again.”

  A Word from K. J. Colt

  As soon as I finished reading Anthea Sharp’s extensive notes on the world of Feyland, out poured the story I wanted to write—“The Glitchy Goblin”. Often, the easier and more comfortable the writing process, the more I adore the story, and Anthea’s world is perfectly set up for myself and other authors to make a compelling contribution.

  Anyone who’s familiar with my writing knows that I prefer to write complex characters who can’t be pigeonholed into categories of good and bad. They’re usually morally neutral beings who learn better ways to treat others by making mistakes.

  Hergnab-Hob-Hobble from Hobbleton is a somewhat grouchy and pessimistic character, but despite his unfavourable social qualities, he comes to redeem himself through the adoration he has for Fred, a lost, youthful, quest-seeking knight from the human world.

  This is a story dear to my heart, as is “Tasty Dragon Meat” which can be read as part of Samuel Peralta’s The Dragon Chronicles or purchased at my personal Amazon store.

  The Healers of Meligna series is my main series which is a complex, brave, and rich fantasy set in a unique and somewhat poignant world.

  Lastly, you can subscribe to my mailing list here to receive book news.

  On Guard

  by Deb Logan

  WALLACE PADDED SOFTLY across the wooden floor, following his boy. He faltered slightly as they passed a puddle of golden sunlight streaming through a low window onto the flagstone entryway. His old bones creaked and he longed to rest in that sunny patch, allowing the warmth to soak into stiff muscles. But he followed the boy, mindful of his duty.

  In
his prime, Wallace had been a mighty hunter. The terror of small rodents. Field mice and rabbits still avoided his domain, though he was far from his kitten days. Old age stalked him as once he had stalked prey in the greenbelt behind his humans’ dwelling.

  But despite his advancing age and loss of fluid grace, he held to his duty. The female of his pair of bonded humans had given Wallace charge of the boy when he had been nothing more than a squirming bundle wrapped in blankets.

  “Watch over him, Wallace,” his female had said. “Guard him, always.”

  And Wallace had. No harm had ever befallen the boy while Wallace was on guard. He would not shirk his duty now for the physical relief of sun-warmed stone.

  The boy continued downstairs, as Wallace had known he would, to the windowless cave the humans referred to as The Game Room. Wallace glanced toward the ceiling, thinking of that glorious pool of sunlight. Perhaps later, when the boy tired of sitting in that chair. Perhaps there would still be warm sun to bask in then.

  He glanced around the room looking for the most comfortable spot to maintain his guard. In the center of the room two tiered rows of dark blue cushioned chairs faced a blank white screen. Off to one side sat a low stool surrounded by sparkly red metallic cylinders. The male of Wallace’s bonded pair liked to sit on that stool and beat on those cylinders. Wallace could appreciate his human’s need to express aggression, but just the thought of that noise made his head ache.

  On the other side of the room was the object of the boy’s attention. A massive black leather chair surrounded by boxes full of mechanical whirrs and whistles. The boy sat on the edge of the chair pulling on skin-tight gloves that sparkled in the room’s low light. He touched one of the boxes and high frequency noise assaulted Wallace’s sensitive ears. The boy pulled a sleek black helmet over his head, covering his eyes with a darkened visor and completely occluding his ears.

  Wallace closed his eyes in a slow blink. Why would any intelligent creature choose to blind himself in the middle of the day? The boy spent hours in that chair, completely oblivious to the world around him. He saw nothing, heard nothing. Wallace knew. He’d tested the boy, cavorting around the room leaping lightly onto surfaces where he had no right to be, even sitting at the boy’s feet and yowling until the female had raced down the stairs to see what was wrong. All for nothing. The boy had not emerged from his helmeted stupor.

  With resignation, Wallace leapt onto the padded chair closest to his boy, circled three times and sat, tail curled around his paws. He watched the boy’s hands twitch on the arms of the big black chair. Sometimes he spoke, nonsense words and phrases that had no bearing on reality. Quest and Feyland and Thank you, kind sir were uttered with some regularity, but Wallace had long since learned to ignore anything his boy said while wearing the helmet and gloves.

  More disturbing were the moments when the boy thrashed in the chair, grunting and jabbing with gloved fists. At these times Wallace prowled around the chair, on guard against the foe his boy obviously fought. But nothing ever manifested, nothing a fierce Norwegian Forest cat could sink his claws and teeth into, and soon the boy would subside once more into twitchy somnolence.

  Wallace’s head drooped, and his eyes closed, his nose nearly touching the chair’s pillow-soft fabric. A frisson of warning jerked him awake and he gathered his legs beneath him, ready to spring.

  A dazzling light appeared over the boy’s right shoulder. A lightning-shaped tear in the fabric of the world. A delicate, pale green hand appeared in the rent, then another, fingers scrabbling to widen the opening.

  Wallace watched with narrowed eyes, crouched and ready.

  A small head pushed through the tear, followed by a shoulder and one long arm. Another moment and wings appeared, followed by a female torso.

  Wallace waited, confused. His previous experience hadn’t prepared him for a winged creature to emerge from a crack in thin air. His duty was to protect his boy, his totally oblivious boy. But was this small winged female a danger? How could she be? She was hardly bigger than a squirrel, and Wallace subdued squirrels with ease.

  The creature, fully emerged now, dropped lightly to the back of the boy’s chair and knelt there, resting. What manner of being was she? Her skin was palest green, like the tender shoots of grass in the spring, her tunic the darker green of oak leaves, her hair petal pink and her wings merely an iridescent shimmer. She blinked solemnly at Wallace with large, liquid eyes the color of molten emeralds.

  “Well met, friend cat,” she said, her voice as soft as a mother’s purr.

  Wallace blinked and eyed her warily, casting his memory back, searching. Images and sensations whirled past his mind’s eye. His tail twitched in agitation, powerful leg muscles ready for a predatory spring. He remembered the touch of his mother’s rough tongue as she licked him at birth, encouraging his lungs into action. He remembered the peace of floating in a fluid-filled sac safe in his mother’s womb.

  Further back.

  He entered the racial memories of his clan, the fierce northern forest cats of ancient days. He remembered creatures not seen by his clan in many lives of cats: gentle tomtens, deadly ogres, fierce trolls, and tricksy ice faeries.

  He licked his lips in triumph. The creature was a faerie. Not an ice faerie of the far north, blue-skinned and adorned in ice crystals, but a faerie none the less.

  “Why are you here, faerie?” he asked, allowing only a hint of a growl to color his words.

  “I’m no threat to you, friend cat,” she said. “I am in search of sustenance, but my food is not your food. I am not your competition.”

  She glanced hungrily at the back of his boy’s neck and smiled, showing needle-sharp teeth.

  Wallace rose to full height, arching his back, his fur spiking. He hissed a warning. “Not the boy,” he said, his voice deadly calm. “My boy shall not be your prey.”

  “Your boy?” she asked, turning to face him once more. “What allegiance have cats to human boys?”

  “This one is under my protection. Seek your sustenance elsewhere.”

  She swaggered along the back of the boy’s chair—his oblivious boy’s chair!—and surveyed the room.

  “I see no other prey, friend cat, and my options are limited. I can only enter this realm where the walls are thin, and the walls only thin where a human willingly enters our realm through the game, Feyland.” She gestured at the helmeted boy. “This human has self-selected. I need the sustenance of his hopes and dreams and vibrant emotions. I need his essence. Faerie needs his essence.”

  Wallace stepped closer to the faerie, placing his front paws on the arm of the cushioned chair. He judged the distance to the faerie on the back of his boy’s chair to be less than six feet. An easy jump in his prime; more challenging now. But he could do it. He would do it. That creature would not harm his boy. Not while Wallace lived.

  “Find other hunting grounds, faerie. This human and his parents are mine. I will not give them up.” This time, Wallace allowed his growl full voice. The creature had been warned.

  “Come now, cat,” the faerie wheedled, her voice sweet as cream. “What’s the difference between one human and another? This one is small and puny and fails to show you proper respect. You can do better. Besides, cats and faeries are natural allies. Our clans have always been friends. Give me this scrawny human. You can do better.”

  Wallace’s determination lagged, eased by the sweetness of her words. Tension flowed from his body and his eyes lost their focus and drifted closed.

  A memory stirred in the deep recesses of his mind. Mesmer. Faerie mesmer. The clever green creature was hypnotizing him!

  He shook himself free of her guile and sprang to his boy’s defense, knocking against the back of the boy’s helmet in the process and pinning the faerie to the leather with unsheathed claws. “He is mine!” he yowled. “You shall not harm my boy!”

  The faerie shrieked and squirmed, but could not escape.

  The boy yelled and scooted forward, turning a vis
or-blinded face to the struggle on the back of his chair.

  Wallace lowered his muzzle to within a breath of the faerie’s face and whispered, “Tell your clan and court. Warn them. Do not return to this dwelling. Wallace the Fierce guards these humans. They. Are. Not. Your. Prey.”

  Before his warning could die on the air, Wallace grabbed the faerie in careful jaws and tossed her back through the rent between the realms. As she vanished, so did the tear.

  The boy, having finally managed to yank his helmet from his head, glared at Wallace. “What is wrong with you, cat?” he yelled. “Get off my chair! I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but you’ve ruined my game. Now I’ll have to start that level all over again.”

  He shoved Wallace off his chair, jammed the helmet on his head and settled back into his game.

  Wallace stalked around his boy’s chair, head high, tail waving like a battle standard. Not only had he defeated the faerie and protected his boy, he’d held old age at bay. He still had it. He was still Wallace the Fierce!

  After another circuit of the room, he leapt back up to his perch on the cushioned chair, kneaded the seat and then circled his bulk into a comfortable position. The faerie had said one true thing, his boy didn’t show him proper respect. He yawned and rested his chin on his front paws. But what could he expect? His boy was only human, after all, and obviously in need of a Norwegian Forest cat’s protection.

  Fortunately for him, Wallace was on guard.

  A Word from Deb Logan

  I’m a huge fan of Anthea Sharp’s Feyland novels, and was thrilled when Samuel Peralta’s Chronicle World’s: Feyland gave me the opportunity to play in her world!