Grobach the Ogre opens his eyes and coughs out a lungful of blood.

“Uh...” he groans, wiping red drool from his lips with the back of his hand. “What...” he croaks. “What shroud of sleep did veil mine eyes…?”

He sees you and scowls. “You,” he says. “For what cause doth a plum-sucker like thee still draw breath?”

“Because, unlike some people,” you reply, giving the Ogre a glare of your own, “I have skills.”

“Skills?” Grobach says with a sneer. “What do you know about skill, you punk eel-faced liver-dabbler?” He points at himself. “I know the secret names of wind and earth and stone! I command the allegiance of trees! I could snap your neck with a twitch of my thumb!”

“And yet you’re too dumb to realize telling a wish-granting demon to kill everybody was a bad idea!” you retort.

Grobach’s craggy face flushes with anger. “Screw you.”

“Ouch.” You press your hand to your heart. “Grobach uses lame comeback on Diesel. It’s not very effective.”

Fortuna snifles a snicker.

“Graaagh!” Grobach howls, springing up and sprinting toward you on all fours.

You summon your flying daggers and surround yourself in a defensive cloud of steel. The slightest twitch of your fingers, and they’ll fly forward, turning the charging changeling into an Ogre -kabob.

The gesture is unnecessary.

Grobach collapses three meters away from you in a tangle of limbs. He coughs and pounds his chest, spitting more splashes of red onto the already filthy velvet carpet.

“Philip!” Felix blurts out, taking a step toward his changeling child.

Grobach swings at the air with his right, forcing Felix to leap back, lashing out like…

…like a wounded animal.

Felix backs away from his changeling son, a familiar pained look in his eyes.

No, you realize. Not just pain. There’s frustration shimmering in those pupils. And rage. And disgust. You see Felix close his eyes and take a deep breath. You see him move his clenched, trembling fists behind his back.

“Diesel,” Fausta says.

You turn and see her crouching over the prone Mandrake Kayne: against all odds and expectation, he’s been untouched by your brutal battle against my awesome power. Your sword, still shoved through his back, is keeping his guts from spilling out like a cork in a wine bottle.

I sense your relief…and your disappointment. You half-hoped that Kayne would be killed by a stray shot, didn’t you? Now you must figure out how to heal him, feed him, save him from the Alder’s wrath and stop him from trying to murder you all over again. Really, it would have been much easier if he died…

“I need your help stabilizing this man,” Fausta tells you, clicking her beak in distaste as she looks down at Kayne. “The spells you used yesterday for Mr. Lynn would help a lot.”

You blink. “Um,” you say. “Oh. Yes!”

You pluck one of your floating daggers out of the air. Muttering under your breath, you strip the weaves of magic from the steel. Your empty mind fills with streams of nested code, lines of command flowing in and around interlocking wire-frame graphics.

You touch Kayne’s ankle. “Pae Thit,” you whisper. “Zephyra.”

Kayne stiffens like a board and slowly rises into the air.

“I can keep this going for ten minutes or so,” you tell Fausta. “I can’t stop him from bleeding...but he should be lucky enough not to bleed out entirely.”

“Excellent,” Fausta mutters, a grudging satisfaction coming her voice. “Fortuna, sweetie,” she says, turning her owl head 90 degrees to look at her daughter. “Can you summon a spirit to keep Kayne sedated?”

“Sure, Mom!” Fortuna says. She looks down at her cracked, sparking phone. “Oh.” Her face falls. “Um...”

You slip your hand into Kayne’s coat pocket and fish around. You find and pull out your stolen phone.

“Catch,” you say, bobbing it in your hand a few times before tossing it to Fortuna.

Fortuna drops her wrecked phone and catches yours.

“I’ve got most of the first-generation Sprites in my Sprite-Quest account,” you tell her with a wink. “Plus a few of the monsters from the Bismuth edition.”

Fortuna’s eyes widen. “Oh! Cool!” She taps on your phone’s screen. “Do you have the Blossom Sandman...yes! Yes, you do! One sleep-faerie coming right up!”

Fortuna starts poking at your phone in earnest, humming under her breath.

“Um.”

You turn and see Macintosh Crate fidgeting in place. Their curly hair is caked with sawdust and flecks of drywall, and the dinosaur puppet on their hand is charred along the felt spine ridges.

“Can we help in any way?” Mac asks.

“Do you want to help?” you ask.

“Hell no,” Mac blurts out. They look down at their hand puppet. “Well,” they admit, “Theo wants to. I figured I should ask.”

“Mac,” Sarah says, stepping up and leaning on their shoulder. “We should call some medics from the Commune. Do you have a phone nearby?”

Mac twitches like a startled rabbit. “Oh!” They say. “Um, yes! The box office! There’s one in the box office, I think. Yes, I put it beneath the counter…” They start hyperventilating.

“How about you show me, just to be safe?” Sarah suggests, slowly pulling Mac away.

“Sure,” Mac says, turning their eyes away from the wounded Kayne with a visible relief. “Sure.”

The two head to the theater’s emergency exit, the tap, tap of Macintosh’s loafers and Sarah’s hooves receding into the distance.

“Diesel,” Fausta says.

“Right, right.” You reach out and grasp the bronze sword embedded in Mandrake Kayne’s back.

Your triage duties mainly consist of holding Kayne still while Fausta cauterizes his wounds with small bursts of hellfire deployed from her fingertip.

It’s not a mentally strenuous task…so you’re able to listen closely to the conversation between Felix Lynn and his ‘son’.

“Son,” Felix says, crouching down by Grobach. “We need to talk.”

“Get stuffed, thou liver-lacked spine-cracker,” Grobach hisses, scowling at his ‘father’ as he tries to stand.

“Those aren’t productive words, son,” Felix says, clenching his jaw. “I can’t help you unless you tell me what’s wrong.”

“As if thou carest a lick for such baubles,” Grobach snarls.

“I care,” Felix insists. “Because you’re my son.”

“I,” Grobach rasps, “am not your son.”

“Are you saying that because we aren’t related?” Felix says.

Grobach’s nose wrinkles up in disgust. “Sooth: thou needst not these Hallmark lines to gull mine heart,” he tells Felix.

Felix blinks. “Son, I’m not…” he says.

“Dumb the others say, but eyes I have,” Grobach says. “Wimp and meek thou art, with child not. ‘Tis clear thou clings to what you’ve got.” Grobach’s brows rise. “Now if thy true son came to thee, how quickly thou wouldst cast out me.”

Felix clenches his teeth. He runs his hand through his gray, receding hair and sighs the sigh of a weary traveler.

“Son, I...” he whispers with exasperation. “I would never!”

“Cut the bull,” Grobach says, gesturing to himself. “What need for thou this delinquent freak?” An empty bleakness fills his voice. “To light an empty hearth, tend you in your dotage, earn thee coin for cheap beer…what reason doth it be? Why, why would you want a changeling like me?”

“Because I raised you,” Felix says. “I cared for you. I placed all my hopes in you. And that makes you my responsibility.”

Grobach stares at Felix with cold, judging eyes.

“Son,” Felix says, pinching the bridge of his thin, angular nose. “I’m not angry with you for being a changeling. Yes,” he admits, “it hurt to realize that the Faeries took Philip—your brother—”

Grobach sneers silently at the mention of the word ‘brother’.

“—and left you in your place,” Felix says. “But none of that’s your fault. You had no say in what happened.” He smiles sadly. “That’s not why I’m angry with you.”

“That’s not why...” Grobach narrows his eyes. “Well I’ll be,” he says, chuckling under his breath. “Finally grown thyself a backbone?”

“You’ve been lashing out like a child,” Felix says, his smile fading. “You’ve hurt me, hurting others and hurt yourself for no good reason.”

“Yup,” Grobach said with a sarcastic drawl. “Truly thou hast captured me. A rebel teenager cast adrift on a sea of hormones!”

“Son...” Felix says wearily.

“Over and over I say my piece,” Grobach groans with a shake of his head. “If hearts were hearths, this flame is cold and dead. Nay, even the bricks are clean, unstained by soot.” He taps his chest. “No love lives here for thee.”

Felix flinches.

Grobach’s eyes glow with a sadistic glee. “Thou art an old man, yet like a whimpering puppy,  you followed in my footstep. I told thee to scram, but listened thou not…so I taught you a lesson.”

Bile rises at the back of your throat. Without realizing it, you growl under your breath. 

Grobach looks away from Mr. Lynn and gives you a hateful glare. “You and your band of freaks just wouldn’t take the hint,” he tells you both. “You just kept on butting into my business!”

Felix exhales slowly; the liquid metal etched across his skin ripples slightly in response.

“What business are you talking about, boy?” he asks Grobach. “The time you were chained up in a slaughterhouse? The time you were held hostage by a monster slayer? Or maybe you’re talking about the time you accidentally ordered a demon to kill you?”

Grobach’s gray face flushes a faint purple. “That’s—” he growls.

“Stop acting like a brat and think!” Felix Lynn shouts. “You’d be dead three times over without the people in this room! People who helped you survive all your stupid mistakes! People who helped you, even when you tried to hurt them over and over!”

“I never asked you for help!” Grobach shouts, his rough, gravely voice turned whiny and petulant.

“Without our help you wouldn’t have lived to complain about it!” Felix replies, eyes narrowing. “Is that what you wanted?”

Grobach presses his mouth shut and doesn’t respond.

Felix goes pale. “God,” he whispers.

Grobach grips a theater chair armrest and leans on it as he rises up. “I’m going home to Faerieland,” he says. “If any of your bastards try to stop me, I’ll open your throat with my fingers.”

Grobach starts limping toward the theater exit.

Felix rubs at his temples with silver-clad fingers and sighs. He starts walking after his Ogre changeling child.

Grobach spins around and whips his clawed hand at Felix. “I told you—”

Felix raises his hand and catches Grobach’s arm mid-swing, stopping the blow dead in its tracks.

You blink. Nanomachine infusions or not, Felix Lynn is still a skinny twig of a man well past middle age. Grobach’s mass alone should have knocked him off his feet.

You look down. You see silver struts protruding from the back of Felix’s legs, running from the back of his knees to the base of his ankles. They sink into the base of the velvet carpet, supporting Felix and keeping him upright.

An almost childlike look of confusion crosses Grobach’s face. He tries to push Felix over and fails. He tries to yank his arm free from Felix’s chrome fingers and fails.

“What are you going to do in Faerieland?” Felix asks Grobach, voice deceptively calm.

“Let me go!” Grobach shouts, an edge of panic in his voice.

“I’ll let you go once you tell me what you’re going to do in Faerieland,” Felix replies.

Grobach holds his free hand out to the side. Orange sparks gather around his fingers as he starts to summon his flaming sword.

“Ahem,” you say.

Grobach glances toward you. You shake your head.

Fausta looks up from her medical procedure and stares at Grobach with round, dark owl eyes.

Grobach clenches his teeth and hisses under his breath.

“Grobach,” Felix says softly. “What are you planning to do in Faerieland?”

Grobach’s shoulders slump.

“I thought to seek my parents,” he says, “the bearers of my blood, who traded me in for a human whelp, who swapped me out like a used car.”

“And then?” Felix asked, tightening his grip on Grobach’s hand.

Grobach mumbles inaudibly

“Speak louder,” Felix says.

“And then I seek to kiss them,” Grobach says. “A kiss on their jaws, tenderly offered by mine fist.”

Felix lets go of the Ogre’s hand. “Okay.”

Grobach yanks his hand back and stare skeptically at Felix. “Okay?”

“I’ve got my own grudges against your biological parents,” Felix says frankly. “If you want to kick their butt, I don’t mind.” He folds his silver arms across his chest. “But,” he adds.

Grobach squints and takes a step away from his surrogate dad. “But?”

“But you’ve been hurting a lot of people,” Felix points out. “People who didn’t deserve it. That’s going to stop.”

“What?” Grobach says with a snort. “Are you going to babysit me through Faerieland?”

Felix does not reply.

Grobach tenses up. “No,” he whispers. “No, no, no.”

“I’ve got my own reasons to go to Faerieland,” Felix says with a shrug. “I want to punch your biological father in the face myself.” His voice softens. “And I want to bring my second son— your brother—back.”

Grobach relaxes suddenly, the tension seeping out of his body.

“Ah,” he says. “I see.” He chuckles. “Good. Good.” He sighs. “If thou shalt claim your true child anew, thou shalt finally get out of my grill.”

“If—” Felix hesitates and continues. “—When I bring him home, there’ll still be a place for you. If you want it.” He cracks a weak smile. “I think he would like a younger brother.”

Grobach freezes for a moment. His charred lips peel back to reveal sharp, jagged tusks.

“Again you squeeze this venom upon mine ears,” Grobach snarls.

“Son?” Felix says, blinking.

“STOP IT!” Grobach snarls, bringing his hand back. “Stop pretending!”

He swings his arm, a roundhouse punch that flies toward Felix Lynn’s face.

You raise your hand, beckoning your flying daggers to fall upon the Ogre.

But by the time you think to react, you’re too late. Grobach’s hand collides with Felix Lynn’s jaw. You hear a loud crack.

Grobach screams and stumbles back, wrist crooked at an alarming angle. The skin on the back of his hand sizzles loudly with a sickly green hue. You smell the sour-sweet stench of cooking flesh.

“Fie!” Grobach groans, frantically shaking his moldering hand about. “Fie! You pox-rascally swine-leech!”

You see the surprise and hurt in Felix’s eyes. You see the shift in his balance as he instinctively moves forward to comfort his changeling son.

You see him take a deep breath and channel his sentimentality more constructively.

“You should be careful around me, son,” Felix says, holding up his chrome hand. “I still don’t know how to control these nanobots. I think they react to my feelings?”

“You hurt me...” Grobach rasps, taking a single step back.

“You tried to hurt me and just wound up hurting yourself,” Felix replies with a sigh. “That’s nothing new. The only difference now is that you can’t hurt me.” Felix blinks, then repeats himself with a growing confidence. “You can’t do a thing to hurt me.”

Well.

That’s not quite true. The Ogre could use his wild magic to call forth a bunch of trees to clobber Felix. Or he could turn into a cloud of leaves and run away like he did before.

Grobach has no shortage of ways to cause trouble for Felix…but he hasn’t realized that yet. You’re sure as hell not going to give him any hints.

“You can’t hurt me,” Felix says thoughtfully. “But I could hurt you. I could break you apart piece by piece, and you wouldn’t be able to do a thing.” He looks down at the ground. His next words are coarse and rough: “I could make you shut up.”

You shiver.

Every voice you’ve heard over the past few days—the rasp of Kayne, the hiss of Morgaeous, the deep boom of mine own voice—nothing has made you shiver quite as much as the voice of Felix Lynn.

Grobach may be an idiot, but he senses the same things you do. His eyes flicker from side to side like a craven rodent, searching for a way to escape.

Felix covers his eyes with one of his silver hands. The sudden feeling of darkness vanishes.

“Part of me wants to do that to you,” he admits to Grobach, “but I won’t.” He locks eyes with Grobach. “Do you know why I’m not going to hurt you?”

“Because thou art a wuss,” Grobach says. But you can see the doubt in his eyes as he says that.

“No,” Felix says, shaking his head.

“Because it would be wrong,” Grobach says.

“Not quite,” Felix says.

“Why?” Grobach asks.

Felix runs a trembling, silver-stained hand through his gray, wispy hair. “Because I refuse to be like him,” he says hoarsely.

Grobach opens his mouth to say something, then closes it without making any noise. He slumps down onto one of the bullet-riddled theater chairs, staring down at his bony knees.

“Yeah,” Felix says with a sigh, sitting down next to Grobach. “It’s like that.”

Well then.

Looks like everything worked out. You think.

You look away from the giant Ogre and his father, turning your attention back to the slapdash surgical operation.

Your bronze sword is out and clutched in your hand. Your spells of flight and fortune are straining but holding steady.

All that’s left to do is watch as Fausta Orobas draws her burning finger across Kayne’s bare skin. You looked closely and see the last layer of his flesh bubble and flow together like wax.

“It’s done,” Fausta says, wiping her hands off on Kayne’s leather coat.

You touch the slumbering Mandrake Kayne and lower him back down to the ground. A moment’s concentration, and you strip the spells from his garment, returning them to the depths of your mind.

“You can stop now,” Fausta tells her daughter.

“Mmm!” Fortuna says with a nod, turning to the little Sandman spirit floating over Kayne’s head. “You can go,” she tells him. “Thanks for helping!”

The Sandman, a slender sylph with delicate dragonfly wings and a curved proboscis, nods to Fortuna. He cinches his drawstring bag closed, cutting off the flow of sand streaming down to Kayne’s eyelids. The sandman dissolves into a cloud of blue sparkles.

“We’re done?” Fortuna asks her mother, voice soft but nervous.

“Yeah,” Fausta says.

“Good,” Fortuna groans, eyes fluttering as she starts to sway backwards.

Fausta catches and cradles her daughter in the curves of her blackened wings. They stare across the room at Felix and Grobach, who speak softly to each other while carefully avoiding any eye contact.

“They’re not like us, are they?” Fausta says sadly.

“No,” Fausta says, ruffling Fortuna’s long, curly hair. “They aren’t.”

Next Chapter: Episode Thirty: Season Finale (Revised)