“WHY is there a log cabin in a place like this…?”
Everyone, including myself, is staring in disbelief. I’d expected the Dark Djinn to be waiting on the other side of the dispersed fog, so now I feel like someone just pulled a fast one on me.
“Each and every one of you is an annoying pest.”
The cabin door opens with a loud creak, and out steps a woman. She appears to be in her forties and has a pretty homely, rustic look going on. Her black hair, long enough to touch the ground, is dull and splitting, and her clothes are not only tattered and in shreds but yellowed from age. In a sense…she almost looks like what would happen if Iris fell even further into the dark side.
“Say, Iris?” I ask over my shoulder. “Is that your mom?”
“She is not!” Iris frantically denies.
“So you’re the little brat who keeps getting in my way.” The woman shoots me a barbed glare.
“Getting in your way? Are you the one behind the zombies…?” I venture.
“Yes, it is I. I am the one who dyed this world in darkness with Lord Diallo’s powers!” she proclaims, throwing her arms wide. She’s boasting rather than denying it.
“Pino, who’s Diallo?”
“That’s the Dark Djinn’s name.”
By her own account, this woman is definitely connected to the Dark Djinn, and judging by what she’s admitted to, she’s the perpetrator of this curse. At any rate, we might be able to put an end to this chaos if we capture her.
Meanwhile, Sir Oden is scrunching up his face behind Pino for some reason. “I feel like I’ve seen her face before…” he mutters while stroking his beard, and then his eyes fly wide open. “I remember now! She’s the woman who used to stalk His Majesty! I think her name was Jela!”
“What lies are you spouting, old goat?!” Jela bites back less than a second later.
“O-Old goat?!”
She speaks over Sir Oden’s consternation. “Stalked? I did no such thing. I was merely trying to inform His Regalness of the truth.”
I assume His Regalness refers to Cia’s dad—the king.
“The truth?” Sir Oden repeats. Jela nods.
“Yes. The truth about how that Lia woman was deceiving him. That wench approached him for money. She’s a devil who wormed her way into His Regalness’s magnanimous heart.”
“You’re the one deceiving yourself, lady. His Majesty is the one who fell for Her Majesty first and set up their meeting.”
“Lies! If he was going to pick a commoner as queen, he would’ve picked me! I mean, I’m far, far more beautiful than she is!”
Keeping one eye on Jela as she goes into hysterics, I quietly confirm the situation with Lex. “Sooo, she was just jealous?”
“So it seems.”
“Holy smokes…”
To involve the Dark Djinn and the world in her jealousy—Jela’s a woman to be feared. She whirls on me with a vengeful look.
“It’s not JEALOUSY, I say!” she shrieks in an ear-piercing voice. My ears are painfully ringing. “Forget you pestilences! Nuisances! Nuisances!” She’s raking her hands through her hair and pulling at it from the roots. “I’m in the middle of enjoying my life with His Regalness too! Your presence here has caused me to waste minutes of my precious time with him!”
“Does that mean His Majesty is here?!”
Jela answers Sir Oden’s question with her lips curled. “Yes, he is. His Regalness is living with me. You could say this is our love nest.”
Who would have thought the king was quarantined here all this time? No wonder we never found him among the city zombies.
“Cia’s dad is in there… Lex!”
“Yes, m’lady!” Lex pulls on the reins, drawing an eager neigh from Vianta. Sir Oden and the rest of the troops fall into battle readiness.
“You look all hot and ready to see some action, but have your flea brains already forgotten I have Lord Diallo’s powers?!” Jela drops on all fours and lets a wad of spit roll down her tongue.
After seeing that, Lex cries out, “Sh-She does the same act as Lady Mizuha?!”
“I don’t do that!”
I seriously wish he wouldn’t lump me in with her… Though I do spit on the ground.
Before we finish conversing, the saliva rolls off Jela’s tongue and hits the ground. Black fog surges up and blankets the land.
“Now go, my lovely! Protect our love nest!”
No sooner do bulges protrude from the ground than something bursts from it like an explosion. A fraction of a second later, darkness befalls the area, but not because of black fog. That SOMETHING is just so friggin’ big it’s blocking out the sun.
“BWOOOOHHHHH!”
A ginormous zombie stands in front of us.