Take Me Away, Dark Lord!

Likewise, it was cute, in a slightly creepy, handmade sort of way.

Seraphina picked it up.

The moment her small, bare fingers brushed the purple fabric, her stomach violently lurched.

Her Spirit Sight, which had been blinded by the static of the tent, suddenly focused on the object in her hand.

The plush rabbit wasn’t just a toy; it was vibrating with a condensed, sickly, pulsating dark green mana.

It didn’t smell like fabric or stuffing.

To her magical senses, it smelled exactly like rotting meat, old copper, and the sharp, terrifying scent of an open grave.

”Ew,” Seraphina gasped, physically recoiling.

She held the plushie out by the very tip of its floppy ear, as if it were a dead rat.

”What is it, my lady?” Sir Gallahan asked, stepping closer and looking up at her on Boris’s shoulders.

”It smells bad, Sir Gally,” Seraphina complained, her nose wrinkling in disgust. ”It smells like rotten eggs. It feels gross.”

Gallahan reached up and took the plushie from her hand and held it to his own nose and sniffed it.

He didn’t possess a Supreme Dark Core; he was but a Grandmaster swordsman, attuned to physical combat and basic arcane enhancement.

To him, the toy just smelled like cheap dye and dusty canvas.

”It is merely cheap jungle dye, my lady,” Gallahan chuckled softly, brushing a speck of dust off the rabbit. ”These traveling troupes use whatever scraps they can find. The chemicals in the fabric are likely unrefined. I shall dispose of it. The Duke would undoubtedly burn it upon sight anyway.”

Gallahan didn’t throw it away immediately.

He stuffed the small purple plushie into the deep pocket of his burlap cloak, intending to toss it into a fire pit once they returned to camp.

Seraphina frowned.

Her instincts were screaming that the doll was inherently wrong.

But she was six years old, surrounded by a thousand laughing people, and protected by three invincible warriors.

If the Grandmaster knight said it was just cheap dye, maybe her untrained, easily spooked core was just overreacting to the weird atmosphere of the tent.

Down in the center ring, the Trickster took a deep, sweeping bow.

”Thank you, children of the forest!” the masked man cried, his voice echoing off the canvas walls. ”Thank you for your joy! Thank you for your light! And most importantly...”

The Trickster slowly raised his head, looking up toward the bleachers.

The empty black eyeholes of his porcelain mask seemed to lock directly onto the section where the knights were standing.

”... Many thanks for your offerings.”

The hand drum stopped beating.

The silence that followed lasted for one heartbeat.

SNAP!

The Trickster snapped his fingers a second time.

It did not rain gifts.

Every single floating, violet orb of faerie fire in the massive tent instantaneously, simultaneously shifted color.

They didn’t turn off but transitioned from a soft, pale violet into a blinding, searing shade of sickly green.

The temperature in the cavernous tent spiked from a humid warmth to a suffocating, blistering inferno in a second.

The canvas walls of the massive Illusorium did not catch fire slowly.

They detonated.

A roaring wall of emerald flames erupted from the base of the bleachers, racing up the canvas walls with unnatural, predatory speed.

It wasn’t normal fire; it didn’t consume the wood of the bleachers or the fabric of the tent.

It burned on the ambient mana in the air, creating a cage of blinding green heat that completely sealed the exits.

The joy of the crowd evaporated, replaced by a wave of terror.

A thousand people screamed in unison.

The sound was deafening, a force that battered the eardrums.

Parents grabbed their children, scrambling mindlessly over the wooden benches, shoving, trampling, and fighting like caged animals desperate to escape the roaring inferno.

”IT’S AN AMBUSH!” Sir Lucas roared, his voice cutting through the panic with the trained authority of a battlefield commander.

The overconfidence of the Vanguard vanished instantly, replaced by the cold, ruthless, terrifying efficiency of the North.

Sir Boris didn’t hesitate.

He reached up, grabbed Seraphina from his shoulders, and tucked her directly against his chest, wrapping both of his giant, muscular arms completely around her, turning his own body into a shield of meat and bone.

”Hold on to me, Mushroom!” Boris bellowed, his single eye wide with adrenaline.

”We are breached! Formation wedge! We push through the canvas!” Lucas commanded, drawing his broadsword.

They did not try to navigate the stampeding, panicking crowd toward the designated exits.

That was a death sentence in a mob.

Lucas and Gallahan stepped directly in front of Boris.

They didn’t care about their civilian disguises anymore, but channeled their Grandmaster-tier mana directly into their bodies.

Their auras flared, a brilliant, blinding white light that pushed back the sickly green flames licking at the bleachers.

”CLEAR THE PATH! RIGHT NOW!” Gallahan screamed.

The three knights charged forward.

They moved with the unstoppable force of a runaway siege engine.

Lucas and Gallahan swung their swords, not at the people, but at the structural supports of the bleachers and the roaring wall of green fire in front of them.

The shockwaves from their blades shattered the wooden benches, sending splinters flying, carving a direct path through the chaos.

Boris ran right behind them, his body absorbing the stray elbows and panicked shoves of the crowd without even flinching, keeping Seraphina locked so tightly against his chest she could hear the frantic, thundering beating of his heart.

Seraphina squeezed her eyes shut, burying her face into the rough burlap of Boris’s disguise.

The heat of the green fire was blistering, singeing the edges of her hair, and the smell of ozone and burnt ozone was suffocating.

She couldn’t breathe.

The screams of the crowd were a nightmare.

’Papa!’ her mind screamed in terror. ’Papa, help!’

SLASH!

Sir Lucas reached the outer wall of the tent.

He swung his broadsword in a two-handed arc, channeling a concentrated burst of wind magic into the blade.