Jake Addams May 20th,20xx

Cai- No Finn flinched at the goblin’s words but restrained his anger and even went as far as to force a smile onto his face. He was still dazed, and his words would trail off every few seconds as he struggled to keep his consciousness but he didn’t stop talking and even kept that same arrogant tone that I had a hard time relating to the kid I knew in the human world. Or thought I knew.

“Look, we can bicker all night if you want but you could also grab that stone-“

He indicated to my right breast-pocket where the gem he had given us to use as a mirror laid.

“And touch it at the same time as me, it should tell you everything you need to know.”

Tyus, who laid in the left pocket, stirred with anxiety as he fought against the instinct to get closer to Cai, or Finn, or whatever he wanted to be called. I could feel his tiny limbs hitting against my chest as he squirmed but he stayed hidden.

I didn't know why he stayed hidden but I guessed it either had something to do with the goblin or those nasty looking vines.

I was still thrown by my discovery that Finn, the apathetic but generally good-hearted guy and Cai, the cocky fairy that had still come to save me instead of running away on his own were the same people.

The goblin didn’t do as he asked, but instead came to a standstill in front of him, as opposed to standing to his side, and leaned in close.

He took a deep sniff in Cai's direction and his frown deepened.

“I smell royal blood on you so I’ll trust you once.”

He put such an emphasis on the ‘once’ that a shiver ran down my spine. It was clear what would happen if he thought Cai had tricked him.

The goblin moved like water toward me. It was weird and I struggled to explain it but each section of his body was in perfect sync with the other. There was no hesitation in his steps and even his head bobbed naturally in time to the swing of each arm. With so many parts of him moving, even to just walk across a small room it should have looked disorganized and messy but it was somehow entrancing.

He retrieved the jewel from my pocket faster than my eyes could track him reaching for it and tossed it between each hand as he walked back to Cai.

I was scared and my breath caught with every intake. I didn’t know anything about the gem, never mind its likelihood of it doing whatever Cai had promised it would, but I knew that if it failed, it wouldn’t take the goblin more than two seconds to finish me off.

Maybe I was being selfish, no. I was being selfish. But I didn’t care.

I wanted to go back home, I wanted my biggest immediate problem to be how to avoid a bunch of high schoolers planning a school event. I wanted my weekends to be filled with finding ways to entertain my two half-siblings.

It wouldn’t be fair of me to blame Finn for bringing me to this world since I had grabbed onto him in the middle of transport. I also couldn’t blame him for taking me along on this ‘rescue mission’ even though we had turned out to be the ones that needed rescuing.

The fact was that I had put myself in this situation, but I somehow couldn’t stop feeling resentful.

The goblin shoved the gem into Cai’s cheek and used his palm to hold it in place, ignoring the annoyed look on Cai’s face as he did so.

The Gem began to glow incredibly brightly, overpowering the light sucking effect of the shackles and the dimly glowing vines. I winced and looked away as my eyeballs were assaulted but the goblin stayed perfectly still, glaring at the stone and the information I assumed it possessed.

The goblins amber eyes snapped open and he looked at the half-conscious Cai with new eyes. Not to say that they were any softer, in fact, I would rate them as being even more annoyed than he had been before he had used the Gem.

The light dimmed and the room was back to its dull and depressing ambience.

He grabbed Cai by the back of his hair and pulled back until he was making proper eye contact. From where I was I could see that his eyes were completely dazed and his body spasmed as much as the restrictive shackles and vines on him would allow.

He was completely out and his condition was deteriorating at a visible rate. Something very wrong was going on.

“How the hell did you get that nasty old man to order me to help you out? No, before that how did you get your old man to come back to the empire? Hey! Are you okay? Surely you can’t be so weak that this stuff knocked you out.”

The goblin indicated toward the vines and shackles that held him captive but received no response. He shook Cai around a bit more before ripping the vines apart with a single motion and laying him out on the ground. He took case of his messed up forehead and then did something completely weird.

He dipped a finger into the bloody mess that was his forehead and gathered a layer of blood onto the skin of his finger and then stuck it into his mouth without the slightest hint of hesitation. In fact, he did it so casually that I almost didn’t see anything wrong with it.

A nasty expression blossomed on his face as he pondered the ‘taste’ of Cai’s blood and he cast a judgemental look on the unconscious guy.

“The hells wrong with you?”

Now freed from the bindings Finn began to tremble on the floor, curling and uncurling himself on the floor and flexing each finger in painfully tensed motions. He was still unconscious but his eyes flickered open and closed and he quietly mumbled gibberish. He was very clearly not okay. His wings were in tatters but still flexed in and out on the floor with him.

My throat had clammed up. From fear, from worry, from stress. I wanted to yell at the goblin and ask him what was going on. I wanted to say something. to say anything. But I couldn’t. I felt ashamed of myself.

I’d always considered myself a decent person, even if I wasn’t a particularly good one. I always made sure to protect the people I found important to me and Finn qualified for that list. What was wrong with me?

I suddenly felt a stirring in my right breast pocket and thought it was a physical manifestation of my worry for him, but it was just Tyus. The pixie flew out of my pocket and to Cai’s side hovering anxiously over his unconscious figure.

My throat finally loosened up and I finally managed to choke out a few words.

“What are you doing. What’s wrong with him?”

The goblin scoffed and shot a curious look at the pixie as he spoke. My question and my existence were ignored.

“Well, if it isn’t a pixie. Haven’t seen one of you since I was a kid. Can you tell me what possessed his old man to give him a royal’s awakening before a proper one?”

The Pixie was too wired to respond properly and flitted around the room saying a million things at once.

“He, he’ll be okay, right? No there's no way he won't be okay since you’re here. Hurry up and awaken him why don’t you? But he shouldn't be like this just because he wasn’t awakened. Is it because of the crushed horn? Oh no, is that fixable by an awakening? I can't support the type of magic needed to heal a royal fairy though. And as a half-goblin, he’s resistant enough to outside magic. Ah! The flowers! But no, that’d be like giving himself a blood transfusion, it wouldn’t work.”

“Hey shut up for a second.”

The goblin swatted the pixie away with the back of his hand, effectively stopping the rant. He took up the jewel again and peered deeply into it with a burdened expression.

“Well, I suppose the old man described it all. I just wanted to know if there was anything else I needed to know before I awakened the kid. Jeez, he’s barely eighteen.”

He scowled deeply for a moment as he sank into his memory and then muttered a few words to himself. Most of it was in a language that I didn’t understand, even with the translating device Finn had given me but a few phrases came through.

“It should go fine. He’s a little old but he’s already gone through the monarch’s awakening. This should be nothing in comparison.”

He slashed his thumb with his horn and bright silver blood began to drip out of the wound. I thought I was used to oddly coloured blood, after seeing the bright gold of Finn’s and the deep purples and blues of the witches that attacked us but somehow the colour still threw me off.

Cai let out a soft moan as the bloody thumb made contact with his mangled forehead and went abnormally still for a moment before starting to writhe and scream with pain. A shock wave exploded out of him and knocked me back harshly into the wall. It hurt, but it couldn’t compare to how agonized he sounded as he screamed.

It was painful to listen too and even more painful to watch as he thrashed around on the floor. His wing retracted into his back and his golden hair began to lighten into a startling silver. His forehead began to heal at a rate that was visible to the naked eye, but every time the skin reached the center of his forehead a bright metal horn would break through it.

The goblin looked on with worry at things progressed and he eventually resorted to restraining him with his own body. Cai’s screams deafened the room’s natural noises and echoed around me. It was like a sonic attack and made it harder to think, never mind speak. The goblin focused on restraining him and roared out.

“Hey, pixie! What's going on? Why is he reacting so badly?”

Tyus flew down to Cai’s side and screamed a response, looking anxiously at the boy while it did.

“It’s the fairy blood and the monarch's awakening! They were already conflicting so much, your blood just tipped the scale in the other direction and the fairy blood is fighting back! Oh. Oh. What do I do? Umm.”

His little face scrunched up as he sank into thought and he tried to come up with conclusions. The goblin sank into thought as well but came up with a conclusion much quicker.

“Pixie, I'm going to need your help sealing his fairy side for a bit. Can you do that?”

The pixie began to shake its head at a supersonic pace.

“If I still had the locket it would be possible, but this vessel couldn’t take in that burden. No way. I’d explode.”

“What about the earring on him? It’s a goblin artifact but its empty. Don’t tell me its riskier than letting the kid fight through this on his own cause I can tell you now that he can’t.”

Tyus flew back and forth in an anxious pattern and finally descended to Finn’s ear. He pulled back the rapidly lightning golden hair and revealed a pure diamond earring, so pure that it blended into his skin and was hard to make out with the naked eye.

“Can you open a small wound for me? His skin was the first to be awakened and the easiest way to open a goblin’s skin is-“

“Another goblin. Yeah, yeah. Where do you want it?”

“Right here if you could.”

He pointed to the nape of Cai’s neck, right under the flesh of his earlobe. The goblin leaned over him and opened his mouth wide, bright fangs finally freed from the barriers of his lips. He descended onto Finn’s neck when I finally found the strength to speak up once again.

“Hey. What are you guys doing? Will Cai be okay? What's going on!”

The goblin straightened his back and looked at me oddly like he just realized I was here. It was only after a moment of hesitation that he suddenly blurred toward me and flicked at my forehead.

I didn’t remember anything after that and fell unconscious to the sound of Cai’s screams and Tyus’s anxious babble.