Adventures of Oahron (part 7)

***A squeaky scream echoes in the distant hollow of his mind***

“Let him go, right… NOW!”

Half asleep, the kid reaches his hand towards the purple glow.

“Ma… Magenta…” he cries solemnly but then collapses. With her arms spread out behind her shoulders, wings flapping like a dragonfly, she dives head first toward the deceiving little ladies in front of the pathway to the Zenroe child. A yellow-coated sprite sways her wrist with a most graceful wave. Brightly glowing is her left hand, which is the same bright light as her sunny aura, magnificently intensified against their faces!

Sweep & swoosh!

Magenta is hurled into the ground as grass rips into the air --- balding the spot of her landing. The many sprites’ eyes glow dark and become both a draped-gray and blood-red along with the auras with them. Magenta shrieks but soars up with the wind to avoid the thick dust-cloud thrown towards her by another adversary. The dirt on the ground smokes as it burns from the intense particles of magic melting into the ground. Magenta throws her own purple glittery-powder, but these women have no difficulty dodging such a weakling's attack, like sand swept from a seashore. Side to side, they perform a ballet as they laugh at her, and she tries to hold her composure.

“You are not fairies!” Magenta screams.

“Dark fairies, maybe?” one giggles.

“Nah,” Magenta squeaks, “worse than that! Devil Imps is exactly what you are. Deceiving young children into your homes and then poisoning them with cookies to become your dirty slaves. Am I right there, broked-winged sisters?”

A young impish girl before her eyes, appearing to be their leader, grunts in disgust, “You dare call us all imps? You will pay dearly this time, not-sister!” Their skin itself turns gray and the leading ‘fairy’ conjures forward bloody-black mana flowing above her little hands as if it were a slime oozing between her fingers.

[Mana is energy to our people. It manifests in all living things and can be brought forth from the bodies of the most advanced creatures who practice intensely enough to wield it.]

Little bumps, almost like acorn-hats, appear visibly on the imp’s forehead. A narrow cocoon of dust is shot from the darkness, spinning around our little purple pixie friend, attempting to seal her away within this treacherous trap. Spinning fast, the cocoon sparks dust that shields all light from coming inside. The walls close in quickly, losing all remaining shards of brightness, while Magenta is left peeking her burning squinting eyes through the fiery wrap. She smells a scent of blood somehow, and it burns her little nostrils as it pulls its sandy hands across her drying dehydrating face.

“Argh! How can I free my little wings!? In seconds, I could be all squashed… in just seconds for real, O darn this wicked wicked thing!” the girl wails in a heart-thumping panic. As it tightens the cocoon implodes, transforming itself from a tight barrier into a shielded inescapable death-trap pushing against the organs in her body.

It gets smaller and thicker, overflowing with its own composition. From out of the painful implosion, an explosion busts the walls of itself into energy-graffiti! The ground around them is barren and shaded black as it sizzles like a flaming torch similar to Oahron’s eyes as they try to lift themselves open. The evil impling-fairy-thingies, whatever they are, grin with their pointy little teeth as sizzling-sparks fly down in abundance from the heavens.

“I suppose she is like, dead and stuff,” they all chuckle, but from within a blurry light there is a vibrating hum. A shadow from the smog reveals its presence as it sorts away the dust. Magenta hovers from out the bowels of the dust-storm with a twitching wing, and from the agitated expression on her face, I think the little-lady may have soiled herself in such anger.

Mana tingling from pixie wings is simply for trickery, but not limited to that! It is also painful against other small rivals. The devilish imps glance at each other with their little fangs exposed as our purple pixy throws on her vengeance against them with puffy cheeks and clenched hands. The dust swarming from her wings heal the injury upon her body, and the girl claims her territory with a taunting grin and determined eyes.

“We are going to do this, huh!?” she growls at them in a great swish. The burning powder from her hands quickly cover the enemies' torsos, making their little dresses smoke in painful, continuous, agonizing seconds as their wings flap into each others' faces, struggling to get away.

“OWW!” they shriek, bumping into each other. As the dust burns bright, the frowning imps have no choice but to flee into the bark’s darkness, merging into the mysterious tree like a shadow, leaving only a few to remain alone like stranded bees.

"Running now like the weak pointy heads, they are! Ha-ha, how sad,” Magenta giggles as she looks at a small tree-sprout sticking out of the ground. “You try keeping imps together in one spot, outnumbered several dozen to one, huh?” she says as the plant's few leaves wave at her in response. “Thankfully they are just a bunch of cowards!” the girl again yelps as she brushes the remaining dust from her wings with them sizzling from all the strain pushed out.

Buzzing away the silence, few again emerge with frowning eyes and chests puffed out. They refuse to give up even if their number is down. They consider teamwork is the only way to out-wing this spunky little pixie who has out-classed them all.

“We got her, girls!” one hisses, shaking her boney finger.

Magenta attacks bluntly, but they counter the dry dust-magic, manifesting mystifying gray circles of their own. The enemy, however, has become too slow to hit Magenta’s mischievously taunting grace of which she has built for herself in majestic dance. To the left she sways her body in a flash --- missing another mana launch that was coming against her! She goes elegantly defensive to purge her graceful image into their thick little heads as she taps them and slaps their backs away.

“I really get under your nails, don’t I?” Magenta laughs, looking like a little ballerina. The foes growl with their little imp-lips vibrating, increasing their speed by tenfold as their auras flare up, yet lacking the accuracy to singe off even a single hurt wing. Feeling cocky enough, Magenta converts back to offense, sparking them with concentrated mana shots just long enough to scare away a few more. Her forehead begins to drip sweat into the dirt below as she zaps them away.

“Come on now, girls. Do you really think you can take me on? You pesty pests!”

[It is not that she is incredibly more powerful than them or anything of the sort, none of them are really fighters --- it is just, she is using mind-play to make them think that she is better. They may have inner-energy, but none of them are smart enough to catch a bluff or even skilled enough to out-dance her. Now with the numbers closer to her own ballpark, her confidence soars with a gleam smile.]

Six left, only six. What a broke-wing flying joke this is!

The dueling continues as the surroundings fade to show off the wooden innards of the tree. The little lady with the tray swings it as Magenta ducks below her, and she blasts the opposing imp away with a blast of pixie dust to the belly. A tiny sprite sneaks out from a remaining house just before the entire structure disappears into nothing as if it never existed!

The girl’s back stiffens as Magenta looks her way as sweat drips off her little face. There sleeps Oahron on a small bed behind her. So peacefully the boy rests with his mouth just a tad open with a big smile on his face upon that little bed. He looks like a giant as his big body hangs off the bed onto the barky ground.

As the tree shakes the remainder of the petite dark implings soar away with shivering faces in consideration of ending up like the rest of them who Magenta had already blasted. Magenta, however, does not play that! A wave of pixie dust cripples an imp-fairy-thing in mid flight, causing her to stumble away on foot twitching in the opposite direction, “Ow, ow, ow!” she cries.

“And don’t ever return to this shrub!” Magenta shrieks as the little creature tries to hobble away with a limp. As she hunts around for a route of escape, she hears a buzzing on each side of her little ears. An audience pulls forward in aggression as their shadows emerge over her face. They come forward from the bark like wasps back into their own battlefield.

They control the mana down here; this is like their beehive. The little women are like aggressive hornets, and the lone purple little pixie wants to disassemble their stingers. Maybe though, Magenta considers, it was a mistake to attack when they were fleeing, for it is best sometimes to get away and not rouse the nest. Being grabbed tightly, she gets restrained by an adversary. The enemy’s fingernails begin to pierce into her arm. She can feel it getting under the skin like an impalement deep into her heart as she sees strange flashes of a wolf in the back of her mind.

“You dirty scratcher!” she shouts as she flicks moisture off her reddened face.

This place is little but an illusion, where the beings here are connected by mana --- the thought scurries through her head as sweat rolls past her pointed little ears. The faces before her gaze murderously with slanted glares of enragement. Their skins are shaded and eyes are so deep, dark, and red that it feels like a hoard of demons have entered inside their vessels --- having a power within bigger than even themselves.

Ignoring her own limits as well, she lunges head-forward past her restraints to tackle her body over and against these little creeplings as they latch her back with their claws. Despite her shoulder hurting from breaking free, she snaps out a sharp wand-like stick and points it back and forth at the remaining click. Spicy mana from the stick’s end burns her hand along with the cold wooden ground around her with intense power as her eyes now glow as bright-purple as her wand.

The enemies shuffle away once more, or perhaps, it is another trick… The place begins to shake again in an unsettling rattle. The little wooden bed where the kid rested disappears not long after the sudden commotion.

Instead of falling, he floats down gently… because he… was never elevated in the first place? Thick oncoming wooden walls form afar off down the pathway-lane and are destroying the far off floating roads, forcing the roads to disappear. The world is crashing apart and there is a door barely visible in the distance at the end of the stretched-out road.

Magenta flutters to Oahron in a scurry, “Quick! Quick! Wake up, big boy! We must leave this place in a scurry hurry,” Magenta whines, but Oahron does not answer with a sound. She yanks his fingers with all of her strength, but no budge in the least. Looking out, she sees the tree’s walls closing in on them --- transforming back to how a tree is supposed to stand.

The walls are plowing everything away like a bulldozer, moving way too fast, one good reason to never even mess with magic! Hitting low under the child’s chin, he crinkles his nose as drool creeps down onto her back and across her shoulders like gunk. She looks up, but only a few snores follow as she nearly drowns in his thick, slimy spit.

“Ah, this is grossly ridiculous. I should just leave the big lug!” Using both arms to hold this big boy up under his arm, the young pixie uses full power to place him onto his feet.

“Darn! Darn! Darn it! This kid is so, so heavy, and sweaty, and smelly, and stinky, and all the other things!!” She pushes as her smooth hair tickles under his arm like a feathered bar of deodorant. She uses full strength to keep him on his feet. “Why does the great Creator make human boys so darn darn darned heavy, and wet, and smelly?” she whines and complains with a whimpering squeal like a teased puppy with a hand on its face. His profuse sweat drenches her fingers, making her grip all warm and slippery as her eyes burn.

Oh great, stinky sweat all in my hair, down my back, and seeping into my face, burning my little pretty eyes. You owe me big time, mister... She growls as she gasps for a pocket of air, but manages to get his feet on the move, plopping one over the other. Both sides of this place are narrowing in fast against their stride.

How did we fit inside of a cruel tree anyway? Stupid imp-magic and sternly built illusions and all! It’s kind of funny in a way, but ridiculously so stupid! Who would have even come up with such a lame idea, even for a story... well… wait… never mind, anyway, let's figure out what we are going to do before we are crushed, the pixie-girl concludes in her waving mind. It is foolish to let yourself get distracted when needing to save your own rear-end as well as your friend’s sweaty butt, saving Oahron is the right thing to do after all... I guess so then... Oh I don't know!

Oahron, thank mercy, pulls partial effort by moving his feet now on his own, but not steady enough for them to get home free. Is he starting to really wake up? On and off he jerks his legs while being carried partially asleep by something twelve times smaller than he is. This duo together make tracks upward upon the floating road, far right, towards the small white glow as a little white orbs zips through the goal. They stagger as Magenta huffs and puffs aloud, trying to keep her slippery grip upon the Zenroe, piercing her nails into his tough skin like little clamps and occasionally bites him in anger with her sharp teeth.

“I see the door at hand!” Magenta squeaks. “The walls are coming at us, and the only exit will be destroyed in mere pixie time! Come on! Come on!” she again yells, trying to move faster with her candy-apple colored cheeks. “The walls are hoarding in towards us, little-big man! Move it, move it, little-big child boy thing, move it you big ol’ big creature, you!” The kid’s eyes open slightly, but he still does not hear her past the sounds of sad tortured howling in his fading dream.

“Hum?” he mumbles before he begins that annoying snoring sound again.

“Stupid, stupid boy!” she moans like a ferocious little animal. “The door is almost gone, and we are perhaps miles away on this uncertain moving path of potential death.” The child falls down half way on the high-floating road. She cannot hold him any longer as she shakes her arms dry. Her reddened face shows the drain pressed on her energy, even the white of her eyes are mostly red now.

“It is over, all over now!” she wails against the inward wind. As her eyes close, she covers them with her little hands and starts to cry, finally giving up for good, trying to cleanse her face clean with her tears as she rubs her hands all over her cheeks. “It was a long life of hundreds of years, but one short lived, to die inside a tree! More cursed are we than even those who hang on them,” she weeps aloud as sad memories of the past enter her mind.

Oahron, still dazed, but sitting up now tries to see what is going on around them. It seems that there is nowhere at all to go. Nowhere in this realm... The boy’s eyelids are so heavy that they fall like heavy sacks. He does not even have the strength to open them with his fingers as he tilts over, arched on the ground as death seems to embrace them both.

“Where can I traverse from here when I can barely move anymore?” the little pixie questions into the blank void around her.

Wiping the tears accumulating beneath her eyelids, she is suddenly covered by darkness, perhaps she has met the demise? No, she is moving fast, but how so? Feeling boxed in, she places her tiny palms through a small opening of light within the big structure of which she is now trapped inside dearly.

Where have I been teleported to? What kind of vessel has overtaken me? Is this what it’s like to be inside of a lamp? This shifting gap is far too tough to push open by her sweaty arms as she sweats like a man trying. She was scared before, but now is trapped in this claustrophobic enlacement all alone, again by herself, probably another companion in her company now dead and gone. She clutches her eyes and fingers as she pulls her hands apart even harder. Even she, a pixie of magic, is baffled about this never-before-heard-of predicament that she has ended up in a place where she doesn't even have any magical knowledge of.

There is no way Oahron could have survived the binding walls of that dreadful structure, and it was... all my fault. As a pixie, magic can usually save me, but a Zenroe child left so lonely and innocent, has nothing to protect himself but his petite hands and big sharp teeth and rutty claws. He was such a good kid to me. Why didn't I just keep him at the pond like a good girl? I always do this!

She desired to not let anything happen to her new pet while playing games with him, but it was so stressful and heart-hurting to have no way to make him listen and escape for safety when he was so tired like a lump, and Magenta must live with another burden of heartache, wondering if she could have done anything more for this one, perhaps forced all her magic out in some sort of spell and gotten him out of that dreadful place, risking herself --- or possibly something epic like that!

A large light shines down on her from above shortly before a larger shadow looks down onto her fetal body like some gigantic deity. "It must be the great Ah’dohn," she questions in a whisper to herself. It is a face with two large white saucers gazing at her as her vision adjusts, and she bows down with one arm over her head and the other reaching up.

“WHOA… What is this magnificent thing?” she gasps as she places her hand on her forehead with her drenched body laying upon the curvature of the fleshy ground.

“M...magenta, are you okay?” the behemoth asks her with a soft kiddy-like voice.

Oh wow… it is just Oahron… he has... somehow lived though!

“Thank goodness it is you, Oahron! Oh thank the great Creator, thank our deity that it is you! Umm… and how did we get out of that tree and everything, though!?” the cheeky girl questions him curiously.

“Uhh…” the boy looks up with a glance of disappointment. “It seems… we have not done that just yet, Miss Magenta.”

“Ah shoot,” she murmurs beneath her breath, beginning to breathe in haste again. She was inside of his hands the whole time, and now the big boy is rushing with all of his strength and adrenaline to get them out of this place. In all of this panic, the few seconds of extreme emotion felt like minutes on end. All kinds of thoughts stir up in them as they see their whole world shake around them and disappear --- literally.

[There is just way too much anxiety for a little fairy… I mean, pixie! Pixie of course (as she likes to be called.) Better remember that, or else a person will get their head snapped off by a very violent, angry, yet so innocent, little woman.]

But still! Try telling this girl here that the fairies and pixies fall into the same genus and possibly the same species. Yikes, anyway, it is very much time to leave this horrid place. The door! All this inner blabbing and no focus on that stupid door!

“Come on, big child-boy. We have got to get this moving!” she asserts as the kid begins to slow down with his droopy, tired, dreary feet from all the running. That tea too is still giving off an effect despite his initial burst of energy. His body cannot fight it much more as he tilts side to side as he runs like a wobbly penguin.

The exit is so close that we can almost feel the great warmth of the outside springs, alas!

“Keep jogging, Oahron, to the wonderful place of normality ahead! Well, at least semi-normality, come on now! Come on! We are on Zein, but hey, come on, just come on, boy, come on! Okay, just come on now, you big, big, big bad big boy!”

“Okay, jeesh there, Magenta! I'm trying,” he gasps for breath.

Just feet from the exit door now, the wall crashes forward, breaking apart their only place of departure! The door is smacked by the wall with a plip-plop, and the glow of freedom is now gone. The remains of the wooden door are left being drugged along like a pile of trash! “We were so close!” In panic Oahron begins running the opposite way as a wave of debris chases them like a plow.

What is there left to do?

“Open it anyway!” she screams at her big friend, banging upon his back.

“Urgh! Okay!” The child leaps like a cat towards the moving wall after a sharp turn with nowhere else to go. Sweat from his forehead drenches the road in a splatter. He yanks the metal handle but nothing except wood from the inner-tree waits for them on the other side of the surfing doorway.

The door swings side to side throwing them back with the jagged moving surface only inches from crushing their faces ten times over, as time slows down with their heartbeats. They scurry their best in fast hops to move away from the plowing wall. Their drenched faces together continue to paint the road in a trail like the slime of a snail as if it were being leached out of them with each move.

Pulling out her shaky little stick, she taps the center of the moving death-wall as it slams her around, cracking the end of her wand as a ripple forms in the wood! She leaps opposite as fast as she can with her wings already broken, trying not to be crushed as the boy begins to ride the wall on wood like a surfboard with his feet firmly balanced and arms outbound. A vivid white light shines between the frames of the moving door-panel, jerking the two into the light.

It starts with Magenta, and then Oahron into the brightness as their eyes go blank. The pixie is pulled from the side of the moving wall into the glow with only a few scrapes upon her body as she feels sore and swollen. With a wooden door now behind her, attached to the outside of the tree-bark, she gently floats up and around the bright forest as her flustered wings twitch around in confusion.

“They're all flapped up,” she complains while circling the tree. Turning her head from left to right, she searches, refusing to shield her bloodshot-eyes despite the shine of the sun following the harsh darkness for what seemed to be many hours upon end.

“Where now is Oahron? Where did my chubby-butt kid go? I know he jumped beside me!” She pulls the now stationary wood door back open, but the portal has already dissipated into nothing.

“Perhaps my stupid wand will finally do something!” she panics, tapping the tree two times as a rock splits in the background, and then a third time, and nothing happens as all is empty and silent. At a fourth swing the wooden door-frame explodes into hot blazing wood-chips and then into dust. Yet another laugh of a woman echoes through the branches of the forest as Magenta gazes toward the tree-tops.

Some of the tree’s thick bark is now burnt, leaving black rings into the hollow, but there is no passage back into a solid tree. Even the hole from before, atop the upper portion of the great wood from which they entered… it has been sealed closed as if it had never existed in the first place.

What type of sorcery is this is beyond me? Could this have killed the little animal boy? Are his smashed guts now part of the innards of my tree!? Her chest pounds as she panics outside of the mysterious dwelling. She does not feel any better being outside now. A child-creature might be dead… She thought he was dead before, but he wasn't, maybe he did live somehow! If he is alive, where is he though? Not knowing is the worst thing of all...

“Somehow the portal rejected the clumsy child from coming along with me. Why though, there tree? Is it because his bottom that sat on you stank like the sour flower of Eindor? That is not fair to me, you stupid bully-bully tree! It's because you're bigger than me now, huh, isn't it!?” Magenta hisses, scratching at the bark of the tree like a savage cat herself.

Perhaps he was not fast enough, or maybe Magenta lacked the power to pull the little guy through the erupting gateway with her frail energy after all the brutality. Maybe he is trapped in an in-between dimension out there somewhere? It had to have exploded on the inside too? Right...? Crushed or dead, she just wants to know what could have happened! A piece of her desires to forget about everything and go swim a tad while, but the rest of her feels responsible for the mishap with another lost child in the forest.

Leaves drip down from atop the treetops as the echoes continue with increasing sound. Those creatures of the wand find this shrewd scenario way too funny as they laugh with shrills in the distance, but the enemies are unseen behind a veil. Again on her search, with swiftness, the little pixie seeks high up within the branches, hoping that he is only playing a joke himself, but she finds him not within all of her lost wanderings in the lonely forest of her despair...