Chapter 254 - An Ignoble End

"What? Lord Yredemnul, you ca—"

Staghead's indignant cry turned into choking when JJ tensed his fingers on the fey throat again. Either way, Yredemnul wasn't listening anymore. We took the hint, too—when I reached out with my hands, everyone wordlessly made a line. Then, I pulled us back to Earth, reaching through space to the place I remembered. It was easier from Under Hills, like it's easier to see through a mesh when that mesh is closer to your eyes.

We reappeared under the cloudy sky, in a place where air wasn't as fresh, but at least all shadows were right, a way away from Cornellio's mansion but not that far from where we entered Under Hills. Immediately, the tension began to drain from me. This was over, wasn't it? At least, some of my brain felt like that.

I wanted to sit down somewhere. No, better lie down.

"Tell me, you witch-hunting bastard, where did you put the fragments of the seal you already gathered?" Eve almost growled the question into Staghead's face..

"Beyond your reach," Staghead rasped with whatever air JJ gave him. "Under Hills. You will die if you walk in here again… So go, try to get them!"

"Damn! Then they really might as well had been buried in the ocean." Eve kicked an innocent stone away, clenching and unclenching her fists in frustration. "But at least you still have your piece, Diana. Yeah, Staghead, the one you have on you is just a copy!" She added to Staghead's powerless anger.

"At this point I start to feel that it would be better to destroy it entirely and prevent anyone from gathering the entire seal again." At the alarm that appeared in Eve's eyes, I hurriedly added, "After you take your look at it. I don't think Yredemnul or anyone is going to hunt for it now, but eventually someone might get a wrong idea again."

"Right. This is absolutely reasonable."

"And as such, I assume, there's no more questions anyone might want to ask our prisoner?" JJ said, looking around at everyone present.

"Is your hand tired? I thought it never does," I joked.

"I merely can't wait to wash it after touching this piece of slime," JJ gave Staghead derogatory look. "After hearing his story, I lost the last grain of respect I had for him."

"Like you can speak about—" Staghead began to choke again. When JJ relaxed his fingers a couple seconds later, I saw that Staghead was breathing with effort, like he was given just enough air to not die, but not enough to talk.

"No, I'm done here." Eve shook her head. "In fact, I'm so much done that I just want to go home at this point, but a guest room will have to do for now. I wish you all good time, but I've seen enough violence by now." She walked away from us, in the direction of the mansion.

"Am I right to think that we are killing him now?" Bob asked me. I almost forgot that he couldn't hear whatever JJ was saying… JJ didn't turn off his glamour now that we returned to Earth, and for a good reason—the calming spell was off now, and must've been ever since Eve, who controlled it, entered Under Hills.

Bob turned towards his general direction, though his eyes slipped towards Staghead despite all Bob's efforts to keep them on JJ. "Hey, why won't we drink from him first, after all? I don't know about you, Jean, but I'm dead curious about how fey blood tastes, hah! We can each take a turn."

JJ snorted and looked at me. "Ma chèrie, can you please pass to Bob that Staghead is all his?"

"He's all yours," I diligently relayed to Bob, then added, "Be careful to not get food poisoning."

After that, JJ threw the fey, who lost most of his previous poise by now and was again pale with fear (and not just lack of oxygen) to Bob like a sack of potatoes. Then he stepped up to me and gestured to the mansion. "Let's go, too, ma chèrie."

I nodded, taking JJ's hand, and let out a long breath. "Let's."

⠀⠀

It took the rest of the day to clean up the consequences of the fight in the mansion, for Cornellio to regain his power, and for us to tell him what happened Under Hills.

"To think, a plot like this! What a story it makes. No worse than the life and death of the infamous Dragon, isn't it, Jean-Jacques?" Cornellio smiled broadly.

"Oh, if there's God in Heaven, let him save me from maniacs who dream of changing the world by force." JJ shook his head with a dramatic sigh. "They just keep popping up. And the most humorous thing? Most of them end up changing, at best, their local region, while people who truly change the world had never even thought about the consequences of their actions before it was too late."

"You know, I think that the world-changing ambitions are interesting and all, but the existence of Under Hills is much more so. It was such a strange place! And these giant stags—it was like in a movie. Yredemnul is like Thranduil with brown hair, and his herald is an orc… Ugly like one, at least." I chuckled.

"Ha! Tolkien was up to something, after all. Though he didn't write about any giant stags, did he?" Eve hummed. "No, I think this was movie-makers invention. But you are right that the coincidence is almost suspicious."

JJ looked at us in alarm. "Please, don't tell me that someone already wrote a story about this… misadventure. It only just happened! Someone would have to be a seer to know about it at this point."

I laughed. "Oh, no, you can calm down, JJ! The movie was completely unrelated. But that one character, he doesn't even appear for long in it, has really a suspicious amount of similarities. I think it's all coincidence, of course, but who knows?.."