Free Kethril by John H. Carroll

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afternoon for food and you said we needed to get out of the forest
. . .”
    Liselle’s mouth was too full to answer so
she nodded and gestured with the chicken leg for him to
continue.
    “Vevin carried you all that night and the
next day. He used a lot of magic to keep us all going and we made
good time. The next evening we stopped to rest when you began
talking in your sleep about flowers and dark skies.” There was a
concerned frown on Tathan’s face. “You were whimpering and moaning
until we woke you up. You said the flowers were keeping you safe
and fell back asleep.”
    “I remember that. I think the dark sky was
the entity controlling the ghosts of Sir Danth’s people.” She took
another bite.
    “I don’t like that dark entity thing.”
Tathan looked back at the knight who shook his head in accord. “I
noticed you were sweating and when I felt your forehead, you were
running a fever. We camped awhile in the early morning hours before
sunrise and you were tossing and wailing in your sleep. I made you
some broth that I knew was good for fevers and made you drink some.
We kept waking you up to take more.”
    “I remember waking up once,” Liselle said
around half-eaten food.
    “Sir Danth told us that the spirits were
getting closer and closer,” Tathan said. Liselle nodded in
agreement. “He thinks they were making you sick and causing your
fever.” Liselle nodded again. Vevin narrowed his eyes at the
knight, obviously blaming Sir Danth for the whole thing . . .
especially the part where the knight was swinging his sword at
Liselle. “We had to sleep, so Vevin stood watch, not trusting Sir
Danth to do so,” Tathan said. “We traveled all the next day and
reached the edge of the Willden after sunset. That’s when things
went bad.”
    “The evil attacked,” Liselle said. “I
remember Vevin being above me in dragon form and her highness
begging me to wake up.”
    Princess Anilyia stood and waved her arms.
“Well yeah! We could actually see the ghosts coming from the forest
leaking black ooze out of their eyes. Then your boyfriend went
dragon and was going to eat me!”
    Vevin protested. “I was not going to eat
you, I promise!”
    “You were too! I know you were even if you
have everyone else fooled, you evil dragon!” She spat out
the word evil.
    “I am not evil!” Vevin protested.
“I’m not! You quit being mean to me!”
    “You are too evil!”
    “ENOUGH!” Tathan yelled in a booming voice
that surprised everyone and battered Liselle’s skull causing her to
cringe and cover her ears with her arms. “Nobody’s eating anybody,
nobody’s killing anybody, nobody’s attacking anybody and nobody’s
hurting anybody. Is that clear?” He glared at them.
    “Nobody does a lot of bad stuff to anybody.
Nobody’s a real jerk. I don’t like the guy named Nobody,” Vevin
said. Tathan’s glare snapped onto the dragon who looked innocently
up at the ceiling. Liselle tried to repress a giggle, but failed.
Soon the room filled with laughter, easing the tense
atmosphere.
    A few minutes later, Tathan finished with
the basics of the story. “Sir Danth and I protected Vevin’s flanks
while he defended the front. We were able to hurt the phantoms, but
not enough to make them go away. While you were lying underneath
Vevin, your body caught fire and it spread out to the phantoms,
burning them.”
    “I thought you were going to burn me, but it
didn’t hurt at all,” Anilyia told her.
    Tathan nodded, “It didn’t hurt any of us.
“It did make the phantoms scream and caused the black
tendrils to shrink back. Then all the flowers in the forest caught
fire as near as we could tell.”
    “Oh yes!” Vevin exclaimed. “It was like that
time in the caves where all the plants used you, only this time it
was different because you were working with the flowers and they
weren’t using you and it wasn’t against the sstejj, it was against
phantoms and the dark misty thing, and you weren’t