The Stray

The Voltcage, Pt. 1

Timothy slowly, painfully hauled himself to his feet. The air smelled oily and charged, and burned with the smell of fairy. It was a hard smell to describe. Horribly sweet, like a poisonous flower, mixed with honey somehow rotting. Fairies were dreadful, wretched creatures, and worse; this one knew him. Timothy gulped.

Its foul blue light stained the trail and far beyond, making Timothy glad for his dark shield. The Voltcage floated with affected laziness, right where they'd been trying to go. It had been waiting for them. The fairy was massive, bigger even than the Queens of the Wood and certainly bigger than him. He couldn't tell what kind of fairy it had been before the Queens had twisted it. It barely even looked like a fairy anymore; now it looked like a bulbous cross between a balloon of skin drifting over the ground, and a rotting onion. It was transparent, with its light coming from a pulsing, grabbling knot of lightning that pulsed within it like hands attacking it from within. It wore a mockery of a witch's hat atop its head, woven from dead branches.Its arms were long like a dead tree's, and each ended in claws instead of fingers. Instead of legs, tentacles of the same rotten skin of its form grabbed and clawed from beneath it. It held a long staff with a crystalline head the size of a watermelon. Every now and then, faces formed in the light within, frozen in pain. Fairies, captured on the brink of death, and absorbed into it. And its face... it looked like it had been gashed in with a knife, with too-wide, triangular eyes and a grin that stretched far too far across its face. And then its mouth opened, and out cracked, "HELLO... FRIEND."

There was a pregnant pause, as smoke from burning trees began to fill the air. He could feel Meri's eyes on the back of his head, but it was washed away in his sheer horror. Static seemed to fill his head.

"We don't have to do this." Timothy managed. "I have a child with me." Even so, he put his hands up in a ready stance, and let darkness burn in them in warning. "There's no sport here."

The horrid thing's smile seemed to spread like cracks in a tree, forking and splitting all over. "SHE CAN PLAY TOO! AFTER ALL, YOU TWO KNOW HOW TO MAKE SOME NOISE."

"What IS that?" Meri's voice squeaked. Before Timothy could answer, the twisted fairy cackled.

"I'M TIMOTHY'S BEST FRIEND!" It drifted towards them, and Timothy shot a warning burst of darkness in front of it. It didn't slow down. "HE'S PROBABLY BEEN EXPECTING ME EVER SINCE YOU STARTED PARTYING." Crap, crap, crap! Timothy swallowed hard. There was no way he could take the Voltcage on in a fight, especially not right now. The witch let more darkness bubble and swirl im his hands.

"Alright, then you asked for it." He said, making himself keep his voice even. The Voltcage just grinned wider.

"YEAH! LET'S PLAY—"

Timothy slammed his palms together, and a wave of dense black smoke blew out all around him. He yanked his own shadow off his back and sent it sprinting off to the east. The fairy turned and snapped off a flurry of thin thunderbolts, blowing apart tree after tree in showers of burning splinters. That was the opening he needed. Shadow spiderlegs burst from his body once more and he took off in the opposite direction, hoping to veer south as soon as he was past the 'cage.

"HAHAHA, YES! TAG'S MY SECOND FAVORITE!"

Meri threw her arms around his neck as he veered off left like his non-existent tail was on fire. After another flash and crack, A horrible cackle rose behind him like a dark cloud.

"Figured that wouldn't fool him long." Timothy gasped.

Meri's claws dug into his chest. "What is that thing!?"

"Voltcage! Evil fairy!"

"Why is it after us!?"

The witch felt the hairs on the back of his neck lift up. Gathering as much force into his tired limbs as he could, he threw himself and Meri hard sideways, narrowly dodging another blaze of blue lightning. The trees weren't so lucky as a torrent of fairy lightning blazed through them. The lucky ones just got scorched and died instantly. The unlucky ones got scorched, and began to burn with flames that were already spreading. He landed clumsily in a shower of dirt, but he didn't let that stop him from running.