The Monsters Chapter 3
By Serena Elisa
Ozzie’s Fort - 600 A.D.
Auree saw him coming from a long distance. She was crossing a hall full of busy Imps and he appeared at the other side. She gasped, suddenly out of breath, and stopped, making another slave bump into her.
Flea was walking amidst the people rather nonchalantly and his bodyguard was nowhere to be seen. He went toward one or the six passages that departed from that huge room.
Auree looked frantically around for a suggestion. She found one in a laundry trolley which had been apparently abandoned in a corner. She grabbed it and started to push it toward the direction taken by the Mystic, at first nearly running, then, when she could see him again, slower.
She was following him for no particular reason. Except for the fact that recently she had grown more and more obsessed by that strange...uhm...person. She too was feeling strange. In those days she was thinking strange thoughts and doing strange things. Like following unknown -and probably dangerous- people in dark corridors.
“I just love looking at him”, she thought, pushing the trolley with a dreaming smile on her pale lips, “He seems such a...a kind person!”
That little accident with the glasses in the banquet hall had changed something. It had given her courage, and a new hope.
Nobody noticed her. She saw Flea entering a big oaken door and she cautiously approached it. The door had been left ajar. She peeped carefully inside, trying not to make any sound.
***
“Where is the other failure?” Ozzie growled.
“Don’t know. Perhaps seeking medical advice. He was delirious, and a bit of gender confused.”
“Shut up! Shut up!” the green Mystic leader yelled, a hand over his eyes, as if he was suffering from a big headache, “Flea, did you never learn to stay quiet?”
“No, not really. After all, you’ve asked and...”
“What a musical voice he has”, Auree told herself.
Actually, Flea’s drawling voice was as ambiguous as his appearance; a pleasant, warm voice, however.
“Exactly what I suspected!” Ozzie snarled in a shrilly, exasperated tone.
“Uhm...happy to see you can remember your own actions, boss”
Ozzie pointed a finger -a green sausage- at the Magician.
“You’re not prepared! I call for you...and you don’t come quickly enough! You think of your business first! What if we had been in a real emergency?”
“I am here, boss,” Flea sighed wearily, “This remembers me of school days...when almost everybody had taken an unauthorised holiday and teachers complained with the few pupils who had stayed! Really absurd...”
Auree smiled. That had happened to her, too.
“Never known you’ve been to a school, Flea,” Slash’s sarcastic voice said, “I thought your wonderful “blow-up-everything” mother of yours had taught you all by herself”
The Swordsman was approaching Ozzie’s throne with a fast and secure gait. He bowed to the General and then turned to Flea with a sardonic smile.
“All except her last spell, luckily for us,” he added cruelly.
Flea had turn a bit pale. He set his lips and took a deep breath before replying.
“I’ve been into a class, indeed. In that hideous place Sir Ozzie had found me,” he said politely.
Auree didn’t like at all the way Slash was looking at Flea. There was something...something lewd in his stare. The servant girl felt a surge of anger, the sudden desire to hit the Swordsman and cancel that expression from his ugly, fishy blue face.
It felt like...she gasped...jealousy?
“In the place Sir Ozzie should have left you...for the joy of your elder schoolmates.”
Flea hissed a very bad word, a homicidal glimpse in his stare. Auree was rather shocked by the force of that insult, but she could understand the Magician’s exasperation.
“It must be horrible being harassed that way.”
“Enough!” Ozzie shouted, unheeded.
Slash’s lips curled in derision.
“So you’re the one who never uses bad words, eh?”
“Not in cold blood, not in normal conversation among polite people. Only when a son of a bitch like you provokes me too much!”
“enough!!!”
The two lieutenants remembered to be at Ozzie’s presence and held their tongue at last.
“No wonder our enemies have defeated us so easily! You’re a DISASTER! But now things will change. From today, you...we will train everyday...together!”
Both Slash and Flea sighed mournfully.
“Don’t protest! You remember our shameful defeat, don’t you?”
The two nodded.
“It happened because we were overconfident, we underestimated those humans and faced them divided. We won’t do the same mistake again!”
“Let’s do a new one,” Flea murmured, and even Slash snickered.
“Have you said something?” Ozzie barked.
“No,” the Magician sighed, lowering his gaze.
“I’ll be waiting for you...both of you...this afternoon at three, for ---”
Auree never learned what for. A thick, green hand grasped her arm, wrenching her away form the door.
“What are you doing here, uh?” a big Hench’s grating voice asked, booming into her ears.
She couldn’t speak, full of terror, sure that the monster was about to hit or perhaps even kill her. But the Hench just pushed her away.
“Go to work! Away! Understood?”
Auree didn’t wait. She run at her maximum speed, leaving trolley and laundry behind.