I stared at the figure in my mind, burning the image into my memory. It was effective, maybe a bit more sinister than I would have designed if left to my own devices, but Aahz was the expert and I had to trust his judgment. I opened my eyes.
“Terrific, kid!” Aahz beamed. “Now put on that black robe with the gold and red trim the Imps left, and you’ll cut a figure fit to grace any court.”
“Move along there! You’re blocking the road!”
The rude order wrenched my thoughts back to the present.
A soldier, resplendent in leather armor and brandishing an evil-looking pike, was angrily approaching our crude encampment. Behind him the gates stood slightly ajar, and I could see the heads of several other soldiers watching us curiously.
Now that the light was improving, I could see the wall better. It wasn’t much of a wall, barely ten feet high. That figured. From what we had seen since we crossed the border, it wasn’t much of a kingdom, either.
“You deaf or something?” the soldier barked drawing close. “I said move along!”
Aahz scuttled forward and planted himself in the soldier’s path.
“Skeeve the Magnificent has arrived,” he announced. “And he-“
“I don’t care who you are!” the soldier snarled, wasting no time placing his pike between himself and the figure addressing him. “You can’t-“
He broke off abruptly as his pike leaped from his grasp and floated horizontally in mid-air until it was forming a barricade between him and Aahz.
The occurrence was my doing, a simple feat of levitation. Regardless of our planned gambit, I felt I should take a direct hand in the proceedings before things got completely out of hand.