Demus Oneshots

Goblin King

WARNING: Daggers, poison, blood, fighting

Janus would've liked to say he landed lightly. He would've liked to say he alighted on the ground like a delicate feather, like a fairy should land. Really, though, he didn't.

Janus actually went barrelling into a tree face-first as soon as he realised he was in the wrong part of the forest. He hit the tree not far off the ground and fell onto his back, crushing his wings. He sat up with his legs splayed in front of him like a toddler and rubbed his head, shaking hair and dislodged flower petals out of his eyes.

"Dad's gonna kill me." Janus muttered, stumbling up off the ground and trying to straighten his wings out as much as he could. Luckily, he hadn't broke anything and the soft moss and rot on the floor had cushioned his fall.

There was a skitter in the shadows. Janus looked up quickly and started fluttering his wings, just hovering above the ground so he could make a run for it if needed.

"Who's there?" Janus asked, his voice coming out a lot thinner than he'd hoped. The was a little cough from the shadows.

"I should be asking who you are." A voice said. Janus looked around wildly and the voice laughed. "You won't find me, fairy. Not unless I want to be found." Concealment spell. Of course. It was a staple of goblin culture. "You're in my part of the forest now."

"Please don't hurt me." Janus said quietly. "I- I know I'm in your territory and I'll never come here again. I didn't even mean to fly this far out and-"

"Hey, whoever said I was gonna hurt you?" The voice asked and the concealment spell dropped. Janus could pin-point the voice now. "I'm just giving you a warning, that's all." The voice dropped to a growl. "Get out of my kingdom and don't come back."

"Noted." Janus said quickly before flying above the trees and getting out of there as fast as possible.

Remus watched the yellow fairy go before rolling his eyes and scuttling off. He'd let the concealment spell drop. He should've known better. The stupid fairy was probably just playing him with the whole fake scared facade so he'd give away his location.

"You should've known better, Remus." He muttered to himself. "Elven mischief, you really should've known better." He winced as one of the thorns in his crown snapped off and dug into his scalp. "I'm gonna need to get Pat to fix that." He muttered. "And get Logan to strengthen the perimeter." He sighed. "Elven mischief, being king is hard."

"How Ro made it look so easy, I don't know." Remus thought. "But, then again, it wasn't easy for him, was it?" Remus blinked and winked harshly, trying not to scrub his eyes to stop the tears. That'd just hurt more.

Remus cracked his knuckles and growled. Stupid fairy with it's stupid, fake innocent 'oh, I just flew in here' stance. Stupid, stupid, stupid-

"Your Majesty, you're scheming again." A voice said behind him. Remus jumped violently before sighing.

"Logan, don't sneak up on me." He growled.

"Apologies, your Majesty." Logan said without a trace of an apologetic tone.

Remus rolled his eyes. "You're going to need to strengthen the perimeter." He said. "Invade a couple of fairy villages if you have to. Those stupid things are forgetting that we won this land fair and square."

"Your Majesty, I already have every available soldier on the-" Logan began.

"Then use a couple of the prisoners." Remus said. "I don't know, I don't care, just do what you have to do to keep those fairies out." He passed a hand over his eyes and sighed. "Understood?"