“Ow, stop poking me with a stick!” Skittles shouted.

“I don’t want to,” Nuecus replied, jabbing the red fairy again.

Melly watched the old man play with the prisoner on top of the dining room table. The cage that held the magical spy was humming with energy as it prevented each escape attempt. Beside them sat the rest of the party, excluding Clemiticus who was still outside talking to the overgrown tree.

A flash of movement caught Melly’s attention. Winston was rushing around the kitchen preparing another pot of tea and humming a familiar tune. Dog was following the butler's every move in fascination while Madam Maim who sat beside Melly was focused intently on the whale.

“Ow!” Skittles cried out again.

“C’mon Nuecus that’s enough,” Melly said disapprovingly.

“Yeah, Nuecus, that’s enough,” repeated Skittles in a cheeky high pitch voice, imitating her perfectly.

Melly’s jaw tightened as she snatched Nuecuses’ stick and poked the fairy, hard.

“Ow!” Skittles cried, then burst into a cloud of feathers, revealing its parrot form. “Step off B…”

“Step off what?” Melly interrupted.

“Um, nice lady,” the parrot finished.

Melly threw the stick to the floor and gave the prisoner a warning look.

“That’s better!”

“Hey everyone!” Clemiticus shouted, bursting into the room. “Check this big boy out!”

“What the heck is that?” Thea asked.

In his arms was a gigantic pod. The outer shell looked old and wooden while the centre was soft and bright green.

“Mr Tree said he couldn’t help us. Except, to give us a little present!”

“What is it?” Maim asked.

“He called it a world seed.”

“He did?” Thea looked amazed.

Clemiticus nodded.

Derrick's eyebrows went up as he asked, “What are we going to do with it? Plant the seed in the Queen's garden and have a party?”

Clemiticus looked to give the idea some real thought before shaking his head. “Nah that won’t work.”

Clemiticus thumped the seed down in the middle of the table and collapsed into a nearby chair.

“Plan time?” Thea asked.

Clemiticus flicked up a single thumb.

“I have an idea, but it’s probably a stupid one.” he said cautiously.

Melly laughed. “Clem, when have any of your plans been anything, other than stupid?”

He brightened at her words and sat up in his chair. “You’re right!”

Derrick sighed.

“I don’t think you get it, lad.”

Clemiticus waved away the dwarf’s concern and performed his well-honed scheming grin.

“First!” Clemiticus said while grabbing the red fairy's cage, “Let’s get some of the Queen's weaknesses from this one!”

“Please! Like I would help you,” the parrot replied. “Come on, I’m used to being eaten.”

“And about that,” Thea said. “How does that work exactly?”

The feathers of the parrot fell away, revealing the red fairy once more. The cynical apparition wiggled spirit fingers towards her.

“Magic!”

“Talk!” Clemiticus interrupted. “Or I will give you over to Melly, permanently!”

For the first time, fear flickered within the pupils of the red fairy.

“F, Fine! The Queen is an enchantress. That means she can enchant objects or people. She had a great stone army controlled by gemstones somewhere on their body.”

“Let me guess,” Melly said, “destroy the gem destroy the magic?”

The red fairy nodded.

“Can she cast normal magic like fireballs and stuff?” Clemiticus asked.

Skittles shook its head.

“Well, that makes the plan all the better!” Clemiticus said, then gave Melly a wicked grin. She poked her tongue out at him.

Derrick cleared his throat. “If you two could stop giving each other googly eyes for now and get to the plan.”

“Hey!” Melly said, “I was not googling anything.”

Thea snickered.

“The plan?” Derrick asked.

Melly bit back a scouring retort and leaned back in her chair.

“Okay how is this?” Clemiticus began, “Skittles here will tell us where there’s a weakness in the Queen's walls. So, we can go in two ways.”

He pointed towards Maim.

“One group will fly with Big Bird and our floaty ship to distract the main force of the city. While a grounded sneak attack kidnaps the iron lady!”

Melly flinched. “Wait that’s not a bad plan.”

“Who’s Big Bird?” Maim asked.

“That’s a good idea.” Added Thea.

Clemiticus looked very pleased with himself.

Derrick grinned at the bard.

“So, who will the teams be?” Thea asked.

“Melly, Dog, Maim, Brian, Nuecus and the bandits are team floaty make big boom, boom.”

“I’m not calling our team that.” Melly replied quickly.

“Ooh I want to be on team floaty make big boom, boom!” Dog said, floating towards the dining table.

“I vote Dog is the leader of the team!” Clemiticus added.

“Denied!” Melly said quickly.

“It should be the eldest!” Nuecus said.

“Denied!” Melly repeated.

Skittles snickered.

Melly shot the fairy another murderous glare, causing the apparition to fall into a fetal position.

Thea fought against a fit of giggles as Clemiticus continued with his explanation.

“Alright, I will go with Thea and Derrick and together team two will use gadgets and gismos to rend the Queen defenceless and capture her.”

“Team sneaky, sneaky?” asked Dog.

Clemiticus gave the overly optimistic whale a thumbs up. “You betcha!”

Melly rubbed her forehead gently and closed her eyes. This had better be worth it, She thought.

“Ooh, what’s that?” Dog asked, nudging the world seed on the table.

The whale nudged it a little too hard, causing the magical object to roll off the table and crash onto the floor.

“Whoops!” Clemiticus said.

They all bent down to see the wooden shell that had cracked open, revealing the entire green seed within. The whale moved closer to the fallen object and in one fluid motion gulped the entire thing down his impossibly abnormal mouth.

“Um, okay that just happened.” Thea said.

They all watched the whale in silence, half expecting a giant tree to burst out of its head at any moment, yet nothing happened.

“Well, what a massive load of useless, that was.” Melly commented.

Her sentiments were echoed around the table as they kept watch over the floating whale just in case.

After their meeting, they all split up and moved to various part of the magical vessel. Rupert was steering them ever closer to Ashenstone City, and they needed every available moment to prepare.

Thea went with Derrick to the supply room. Their objective was to resupply Thea’s turret arsenal. Her new gizmos needed to be perfect for a stealthy sneak and grab mission.

Dog followed Nuecus into the dark and mysterious study. Apparently, Nuecus wanted to study the strange origins of the whale to find any secret hidden abilities he had. Melly and Maim followed the mad Thaumaturge.

There was no way they would trust the madman with the innocent whale.