--The Last Unicorn
“Naked! You want me to face an evil god NAKED!”
“It’s the best way to use the vanishing oil, and you’ll have the shield. We’ll coat that with the oil as well,” Agatha said in a far too reasonable tone.
“But I’ll be naked!”
“Modesty isn’t really an issue when you’re invisible.”
Naomi shook her head. She’d always thought it was horny old puritanical men who’d made up all that sky-clad stuff about witches, but Agatha was calmly suggesting she go fight a god in her birthday suit. She didn’t know whether to laugh or run away. She could laugh hysterically while running away.
She turned to Yula, who’d been silent after Agatha explained the best way to use the oil. “What do you think about this?”
“You plan to slay a god. What does it matter if you face him naked or in armor? He’ll destroy you.”
“Yeah, but being destroyed in armor is more dignified. Can’t I wear armor?”
Mr. Squibbles tsked from Agatha’s shoulder. “You humans sure are funny about your clothes.”
“How about we shave off all your fur and see how funny you are,” she said. The mouse quickly ducked underneath Agatha’s hair.
“Naomi, this is the best way. Fabric absorbs too much of the oil. We would have to use all of it just to coat your blouse.”
She slouched in her chair. “Can I at least have some privacy to put this stuff on?”
The witch nodded. “Of course.”
She ducked behind a screen and began taking off her clothes. Once she was undressed, she looked down at herself. She’d never been an exhibitionist. In fact, she was rather body shy. She’d never worn a midriff or short shorts. She wouldn’t even go out in public without a bra on. Now, she was expected to go out stark naked for a showdown with a god. Her mouth quirked. Yula was right. Instead of freaking over the god part, she was spazzing over the nudity. She shook her head at her own illogic. She uncorked the jug and carefully poured out some of the oil.
As soon as it was in her hand, her hand disappeared. Panic lock-jawed her. For a moment, she thought she couldn’t feel her hand. Agatha had told her it might be best to close her eyes while applying the oil. She understood why now. Looking like an amputee made one very uneasy. Willing herself to calm down, she closed her eyes and moved her hand to her stomach to start applying the stuff. The oil felt gritty like there was sand suspended in it. She spread it across her skin, hyper sensitive to her own touch. Blindly, she poured more oil into her hand to apply it to the rest of her body. Once she was done, she looked down at herself and instantly felt the panic begin to set in again. She couldn’t see her body. She patted her stomach, took a few steps around the room, and wiggled her toes to assure herself that her body was still there. A clump of hair slipped over her invisible shoulder. It was the only part of her still visible. Agatha had said she would give her a cap to put on to conceal her hair rather than pour a copious amount of oil over it.
She ducked out from behind the screen, feeling very exposed and weirded out. She couldn’t see herself but that didn’t stop her irrational fear that others could. When Yula looked at her and her jaw dropped, Naomi wanted to hide behind the screen and put all her clothes back on.
Agatha came up to her and held out her hand. “Here’s the cap,” she said. It looked like she held nothing. She reached out and felt for the cap. She took it from the witch and tucked her hair up into it under Agatha’s supervision. Yula watched her with saucer eyes. Agatha turned away and picked up something very heavy. At least, Naomi assumed it was heavy by the way she struggled with it. She couldn’t see anything in her hands. “Here’s the shield.” She quickly stepped over and took it from her. She slipped her arm into the brace. “And the unicorn horn,” she said holding out her hand again. She took the now invisible horn with her other hand.
“Your eyes are still visible,” Yula stammered. She turned to the old maid and blinked at her. She cringed a little under her gaze. She turned back to Agatha.
“Close your eyes.” Naomi did as instructed. “Good, they disappear when you do that, but they will be visible when they’re open. It can’t be helped. The oil would hurt them if we applied it. The soles of your feet will likely be visible too since the oil rubs off easily. Remember that. Try not to brush up against stuff.”
“You’ll also still be detectable to animals. They can smell and hear you just as easily when you’re invisible as visible,” Mr. Squibbles added.
“Thanks, but if that’s all true, how do we know this will trick Errilol?”
“It won’t. You’ll need to use stealth for it to work. Creep up on him.”
“Creep up on a god. That sounds easy.”
Yula let out a hysterical giggle. Naomi turned to her. Her invisibility seemed to be really freaking her out. “When you speak, I can see the inside of your mouth.” Naomi couldn’t help flashing an evil smile at her. Yula shook her head. “This isn’t right, Naomi. There has to be another way.”
She felt a twinge of guilt for causing her distress. “I’m sorry, Yula, but this is our only option.”
“Do you even know where to find the god?” she demanded.
She nodded and sighed when she’d realized what she had done. “There’s a temple that he resides in.”
“I thought all of Errilol’s temples were destroyed.”
“This one’s secret.”
“You’ll use the horn to get there?” Mr. Squibbles asked.
“Yes.”
“So what, you’ll just teleport directly into his inner sanctum, run him through with the horn, and be done?” he asked.
She sighed. “Unfortunately, no. Like I said, the unicorns can’t enter the house of a god; therefore they can’t just show it to me so I could teleport there. I’ll teleport to the entrance, sneak in, find the god’s sanctum, kill him, and then call it a day.”
“There will be guards.”
Agatha chuckled. It wasn’t a nice chuckle. She got a sinking feeling. “I can slip right by the guards. It won’t be a problem.”
“That’s right because we’ll distract them.”
“You aren’t coming along,” she said. She was determined on this. She wasn’t going to put her friends in jeopardy again.
“You need our help,” Agatha said.
Naomi closed her eyes. She angled the horn to stab herself in the thigh.
“Oh no, you don’t, young lady.” She stumbled back as Yula slammed into her and grabbed hold. She staggered back. Her aim slipped, and the horn glanced off her thigh without puncturing.
“OW! I’m doing this on my own! You two don’t need to be involved!”
Yula held onto the arm holding the horn. She tried to shove her off, but Yula merely grunted and held on tighter.
“Naomi, how badly do you want to save Tavik?” Agatha asked.
She stopped her struggling to blink at the witch. “I’m standing here naked on my way to kill a god. I’d say I want it pretty damn badly.”
“Don’t you think we want to help Tavik too?” grumbled Yula.
Naomi looked at the scrunched up face of her friend. She had her eyes closed tight as she held onto her invisible arm. Her resolve softened. She knew they cared about Tavik too, even Agatha in her own strange way, but she didn’t want them to put themselves in danger.
“I can’t ask you to do this,” she said.
“That’s fine, you don’t have to. We’re going to help either way,” Agatha told her.
Naomi sighed, releasing her ill ease. “What do you have planned?”
Agatha’s face twisted into a sinister smile. “You’ll see.” Naomi’s ill ease slammed back into her.
She crouched behind a bush outside the entrance to Errilol’s temple and waited with Mr. Squibbles for Agatha and Yula to begin the distraction. The witch had refused to tell her what she planned, and she didn’t have anything to bribe Mr. Squibbles with to get the information out of him.
They were in a warmer climate than where the cottage was. The surrounding trees were thick with vines and big, colorful butterflies. Mr. Squibbles warned her that they stung. The news hadn’t surprised her.
The temple was a step pyramid, but the entrance was at the foot of the building rather than the top. Two guards stood at the entrance. They had tattoos like Tavik’s on their foreheads. Naomi wondered if Agatha had a tattoo removing spell. She felt sure Tavik would want to get rid of his once this was over. If he didn’t, she’d demand it as an anniversary gift.
The guards were large, muscular men in full chain mail with large, heavy swords hanging from their belts. She wondered how Agatha would distract them. They looked as unflappable as the guards at Buckingham Palace.
“Yoohoo, could you help us, please?” The guards’ heads swiveled to the source of the voice as well as Naomi’s, but unlike them, her jaw dropped. Standing on the edge of the forest was a woman to make men drool, chest heaving in a straining bodice, flaxen hair floating down to her waist, eyes that caught the sunlight and sparkled, and legs that went all the way up to her neck. She was Pamela Anderson in a renfest dress. She clasped her hands and batted her eyelashes. “I am ever so sorry to disturb two important men like yourselves, but you see my wagon has lost a wheel, and I’m afraid my sister and I can’t manage to fix it.”
“Your sister?” one of the guards asked.
The Playboy Barbie looked around, and her brow scrunched in irritation. She reached behind her and jerked another woman up beside her. If breast size was any indicator, they were related. The other sister hid behind the first, though by the way she was dressed, one wouldn’t think she would want to hide. Flaunt seemed to be what her wardrobe was about. “Yula, tell these nice men we need they’re help.”
Naomi’s brain popped with the name drop. “P-Please sirs, help us,” she stuttered. Her voice was so low that they could barely hear her. The guards moved closer to talk to them. Naomi saw her chance and slipped behind the guards and into the temple. She paused for a moment to let her eyes adjust to the darkness. A passage way stretched out straight before her with hallways bisecting in. At the end of the passage was Errilol, she was sure of it. She hugged the horn and magic shield tight as she crept forward.
Torches burned low and cast more shadows than light. She had no idea what she would find at the end of the passage. She ducked to the side twice when she heard the low rumble of male voices headed in her direction. When she finally reached the end of the passage, two huge doors and two equally large guards blocked her way. Naomi looked down at the mouse.
“My turn,” he whispered. She moved closer to the guards, staying as deep in the shadows as she could. She closed her eyes to slits to make herself more invisible. She almost opened them wide though when Mr. Squibbles opened his mouth. As loud as he could, he shouted, “Errilol is so dumb that if he spoke his mind, he’d be speechless!” The guards’ jumped at the sudden insult.
“Errilol is so stupid, he wouldn’t know up from down even if you gave him three guesses!” The guards drew their swords as they looked around for the owner of the voice taunting them.
“Errilol is so dumb, he’d try to drown a fish and throw a bird off a cliff.” The guards stepped from the doors to search for the voice in earnest.
“Ha, and his followers are just as stupid! You have to open your pants to count to twenty-one.” The guards were getting madder with each insult. They poked the shadows with their swords looking for the voice. Mr. Squibbles scurried back down the passage to lead them away. “You all are so stupid; you tell everyone that you’re ‘illegitimate’ because you can’t read.” The guards began slashing the shadows hoping to hit the voice. Mr. Squibbles kept leading them further away. Naomi crept along the wall to the doors. “You guys are so stupid; you need twice as much sense to be a half-wit.” The guards disappeared around a corner following the mouse. She took a deep breath and prayed the doors were well oiled. She had a feeling that the guards would notice a loud creak no matter how badly Mr. Squibbles insulted them. She pushed open the door. It didn’t make a sound. She opened it wide enough to slip inside and then carefully closed it. She stood pressed to the door for a few seconds listening for an outcry from the guards, but she didn’t hear any. She barely heard Mr. Squibbles’ taunts anymore. He’d moved on to the size of the guards’ members.
“Who’s there?” asked a raspy voice. Naomi whirled around and stared into the chamber. The room was circular with more of the sputtering torches, only these burned green. At the center of the room was a large sarcophagus. She couldn’t see the source of the voice. “Answer me!” demanded the voice. She suddenly had a touch of sympathy for the guards chasing Mr. Squibbles. Being spoken to by a disembodied voice wasn’t nice. She clutched the horn as she crept further into the room. Nothing moved or changed. The only thing of note was the sarcophagus. The voice began to chuckle. “Naomi, I am impressed. I didn’t think you’d make it this far at all.” She stiffened at the god using her name. She wondered if he could tell it was her by the beating of her heart because it was pounding loudly in her ears. The torches flared and lit the room brightly giving everything a sick green hue.
“It was very clever to get a draught of water from Calax, but you probably didn’t think of that. The unicorns are meddling, and after I made it very clear that I would not hold with any of their interference. Why don’t you come out, Naomi. I’m sure we could work something out.” She ignored the offer. She had to find Errilol and stab him. The unicorns said that he would be in an earthly vessel. The only likely spot for this earthly vessel was the sarcophagus. She crept quickly up to it. It didn’t have a lid. She peered over the edge and found a mummified body lying inside. This was it she knew. She leaned over and raised the horn. She was going to stab him in the heart. She brought the horn down with all of her strength. A crumbling hand shot out and stopped her invisible arm. The eyes in the shriveled head popped open. Green light burned inside them.
“I see you,” Errilol chuckled. She wrenched her arm back, but the desiccated corpse came with her. Errilol continued to chuckle. “I see quite a lot of you. Have you come to offer yourself to me?”
The idea made her sick, and puking directly onto the decayed corpse hanging off her arm might actually improve its looks. She didn’t know if this body were once Errilol’s, suggesting he was once mortal or if the corpse were of a favored follower, and at the moment, she didn’t much care. She wanted to be free of the abomination and to kill the entity that animated it. She continued to pull away, but Errilol just came with her. He wasn’t exerting any effort to keep her still but passively holding on like a rag doll with a claw like grasp on her arm. She whacked the dead arm with the shield, but at the odd angle, she couldn’t get any strength behind the blow.
“Let go!” she shouted, not really expecting him to do it, but she really, really, REALLY wanted him to let go of her arm. She was going to catch something from him, she knew it. Rotted corpses were not hygienic.
“But I could do so much for you. Just let me in.”
The way he said it made it sound dirty and coming from the mouth of a corpse made it just all sorts of wrong. She dropped the shield to pry at his fingers. He laughed at her futile efforts. It was infuriating. If she could just get him off of her, she’d be able to do what she came to do.
In a flash of clarity, she realized how stupid she was being. Her mission wasn’t to get away from Errilol but to destroy him. She had a free arm. She should use it. She switched the horn to her free hand and stabbed the corpse in the chest. Bones cracked under the force of the blow, and the horn wedged into the chest cavity. Nothing happened.
Errilol chuckled. The horn bobbed as his chest shook. “This is why women are not warriors,” he said. She, suddenly, found herself airborne as the god tossed her aside. She skidded across the ground in shock. The horn hadn’t worked. The unicorns had assured her it would. What had she done wrong? Errilol climbed out of the sarcophagus.
She shakily picked herself up as she kept a wary eye on the god. She was now defenseless. The horn was still stuck in his chest, and the shield rested somewhere on the ground. She realized with unhappy irony that by making her weapons invisible she couldn’t find them. Errilol grasped the horn to pull it from his chest, but searing light erupted from the object, and the god howled in pain.
She crept around the god as she tried to pinpoint where she had dropped the shield. It had to still be close to the sarcophagus. He tried to remove the horn again. The light erupted again. The god let out another enraged howl. She scurried up behind him and felt around for the shield. Her hand grazed it. As she picked it up, Errilol turned around and grabbed her by the back of her neck. He jerked her up to his face. She brought the shield up between them. “Remove the horn, girl.” This close to the god, she noticed fine cracks had formed in the bones. The horn was harming him.
“Having a little trouble?” The god shook her by the scruff of her neck. She felt like the rag doll now, but even so, she saw more small cracks form in his bones, spider-webbing out. The horn was working, but maybe she could speed up the process.
“My priests are on their way. They have killed your friends. Tavik is dead too. He was no longer any use to me. Give up.”
She didn’t believe him, but all he said could be true. She shook as she answered, “No.”
“Why would I lie? They’re dead. How could you think you could destroy me? I am a god. You’re only a puny woman, not even a virgin.”
She knew he was doing something to her. He was in her head, making her feel his words, influencing her. She had to fight him. She reached out, and her finger grazed the horn. “Pull it out, Naomi. It’s the only thing you can do. Your death will be quick,” he urged. He brought her closer.
“Go to hell,” she said and struck the horn with the heel of her hand. The horn shot through the rest of his body till the point broke through to the other side.
Errilol screamed and threw her away again as the bright light erupted. She hit the wall and slid down it. She woozily held the shield in front of her to block out the light. Errilol continued to scream. She thought the sound would make her ears bleed. The light was blinding her. She couldn’t see Errilol or the room at all. She huddled behind the shield. She squeezed her eyes shut and threw her free arm across her face to block out as much of the light as possible, but searing whiteness still stabbed into her brain.
Finally, there was an explosion, and debris pinged off the shield. The light vanished. She peeked over the shield and saw a small blast crater had formed in the center of the room. There was no sign of Errilol or green fire.
She crept toward the crater and looked into it. In the center, a broken unicorn horn rested. “Well, great. What the hell am I supposed to do now?” she asked looking down at the broken horn. She’d used it to transport everyone there. Yula, Agatha, Mr. Squibbles and she were now stranded. That was if the others were alive. What if Errilol hadn’t been lying? The dim room began to fill with a golden glow. She turned around and found herself once again surrounded by unicorns.
“I thought you weren’t allowed in the homes of gods.”
They weren’t, but it was no longer a home of a god. She had succeeded. Errilol was slain.
“Naomi!” She turned to the doorway in relief at the sound of Agatha’s voice. She couldn’t help giggling at how the two women bounced as they ran into the room. They didn’t look hurt in any way. They skidded to a stop at the sight of all the unicorns.
“Who wants to go home?” she asked.
Continue to Chapter 20.
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