Parasitic Peony

Chapter Six

The doors opened into a hazy foyer, dark, open and airy despite a great number of fast-food containers slowly sprouting with mould. A young girl without a gas mask half-sat-half-lay against one of the pillars, smoking a blunt.

Moxie moved to approach her, cautious. The girl looked up.

"Th'ss th tronrum," she slurred lazily, and pointed over at a closed door. Her eyes were half lidded and painted with too much shimmery violet shadow. She took another hit of her blunt and fell backwards.

Fucking teenagers, Moxie thought as she walked over to the door.

It was not, in fact, "th tronrum". It was the throne room. Where the foyer had seemed airy despite the trash crowding it, the throne room had a suffocating feeling despite the lack thereof. It was lit by candelabras and walled by violet curtains.

The princess sat on a throne, probably why they named the room what they did. She wore a tee and sweatpants dressed up by a bejewelled gas mask and elaborate necklace dripping a rainbow of diamond and ammolite over her chest. Moxie dropped into a low curtsy. Honey followed hesitantly, but Plum just held back a laugh. Caromine raised an eyebrow at him.

"Plum," Moxie hissed.

"I'm sorry, I just-" he began to snicker out loud. "When you said a teenager was in charge, I thought you meant like seven to nineteen. This kid can't be more than, what? Fourteen? Fourteen at most."

"I'm fifteen," Caromine spoke up coldly, voice high like that child she was and distorted by her mask filter. "And you're speaking out of place."

"Wait, so you've been the acting government since you were eight? Yeesh, that must have been awful, Your Highness." he went on tacking on a bow and her title almost as an afterthought.

"No wonder the kingdom's in ruin," Honey muttered, quiet enough to go unheard by all but Moxie, who elbowed her even though she had thought the exact same damn thing.

Caromine eyed them all with a tired, indecipherable gaze. Finally, she asked "What do you want?"

The trio glanced awkwardly back and forth amongst themselves. It was hard to gauge her mood. How best to phrase their demand to not summon overreaction?

"Well," Moxie began, standing up and conjuring an image of Demmy in her hand. "Your Highness, what you see here is an aquatic microeldritch demigod. One of these has been terrorising the kingdom of Coral Sea, which as you undoubtedly know, borders on Garbage Sea. The only way this being could have been brought to this plane is by a witch, and we have reason to believe-"

"Are we talking about me?" crooned a raspy voice.

The girl they'd seen smoking in the foyer came into existence with a little puff of silver and plodded over to the throne, plunking herself luxuriantly over the princess's lap and pressing a gentle kiss to the back of her hand. Caromine draped an arm around her shoulders as if this was natural -it was- and cocked her head at the trio once again.

"Go on."

Moxie continued hesitantly ".....we have...reason to believe that the witch in your service.....is..responsible."

The girl let out a shrill laugh.

"What reason?" demanded Caromine.

"With all due respect, who else could it have been?" Moxie replied.

Caromine turned her eyes on the girl in her lap. "Well?"

"Probably," the witch said with a shrug. "I get up to some weird shit during my gloomwilt trances."

"You don't know for sure?"

"Does it really matter? Look, I'm sorry about the monster. Yes, I can see why you're so sure it was me, but frankly I can't see why you needed to come bug me about it. The ocean's already mad dangerous as it is."

Honey frowned. Someone with that kind of power shouldn't be so careless with it. People's lives could be on the line, and in this case, they were. Then again, she was just a kid. She probably never even asked for any of this. Was it right to hold it against her?

Moxie asked the girl her name -Lilac- and how long she had been a practitioner of magick -ten years- before another few questions about her experience as a fellow witch, trying to get a feel for her knowledge. Lilac appeared very bored through all of this and at one point conjured another joint and lighter.

Finally, she asked Lilac if she felt any sort of tug or tingle, perhaps a magickal presence other than her own aura.

"Yeah, you two." she stated, rolling her eyes as she continued to braid a practically purring Caromine's hair.

Moxie smiled cryptically. "I thought you might say that. What do I feel like?"

Lilac rolled her eyes again and then closed them, focusing intently. "Cold, I guess." she said. "Stifling. Old and angry and falling apart. If I had to put a colour to it I'd say deep green."

Plum shook his head.

"That's neither of us. Human auras, witches in particular, tend to be warm, even hot. I've been told mine is sweet and heady, and Boss here might be old," he grinned wolfishly at her glare "-but she's definitely not green."

"I understood none of that," Honey chuckled sadly. Caromine nodded.

Moxie collected herself. "Right, so you know what that means!"

"We're in luck!" Plum shouted, reaching for a high-five. He did not receive one, so he just clapped his own hand.

She turned to the duo on the throne. "It means Lilac has a connection to the demigod. She can send it back to the extraethosphere the same way she summoned it."

"But why should I?" she whined.

"Got anything better to do?" Plum asked with a shrug. Lilac pondered for half a second and got off her girlfriend's lap.

"Guess not, let's go."