How I Stole the Princess's White Knight and Turned Him to Villainy: Miracle 5: How I Stole the Princess's White Knight and Turned Him to Villainy, #5

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Acknowledgement

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Thank you for reading the fifth installment of Villainy!

Books by AJ Sherwood

Author

This book is a work of fiction, so please treat it like a work of fiction. Seriously. References to real people, dead people, good guys, bad guys, stupid politicians, companies, restaurants, events, products, locations, pop culture references, or wacky historical events are intended to provide a sense of authenticity and are used fictitiously. Or because I wanted it in the story. Characters, names, story, location, dialogue, weird humor, and strange incidents all come from the author’s very fertile imagination and are not to be construed as real. No, I don’t believe in killing off main characters. Villains are a totally different story.

HOW I STOLE THE PRINCESS’S WHITE KNIGHT AND TURNED HIM TO VILLAINY

Miracle 5

Copyright © 2022 by AJ Sherwood

Cover by Katie Griffin

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. NO AI/NO BOT. We do not consent to any Artificial Intelligence (AI), generative AI, large language model, machine learning, chatbot, or other automated analysis, generative process, or replication program to reproduce, mimic, remix, summarize, or otherwise replicate any part of this creative work, via any means: print, graphic, sculpture, multimedia, audio, or other medium. We support the right of humans to control their artistic works. (All typos are left on purpose to prove it's not AI written.)

Purchase only authorized editions.

www.ajsherwood.com

One

Tan

Tan had a solution!

Well, maybe. In theory.

It was a work in progress, okay?

He surveyed the area in question, namely the base of the Gruimont Mountains, just north of Siset. It was pretty here, the trees in full foliage, wildflowers growing in clumps in the sunny patches. It had taken a bit of hiking until he found a clearing, the meadow clearly untouched by humans with its shin-high grass, a few decaying logs on the outskirts. Did Tan feel bad that he might destroy this area shortly?

Eh, maybe.

He’d chosen the area for a few reasons. One, his lovely allies were nearby, so if this experiment went sideways on him, he could always drag himself there for help. Not that he expected trouble, per se, but sometimes things went fucky. Explosions happened. Best to be prepared. Second reason for this location was that it was technically in barbarian lands, so no one from Glane could legally get mad at him for creating another hole in the ground.

He did try to look out for Devan. Tan was a sweetheart that way.

Anyway, this time he wasn’t going to create anything as massive as The Void. No, no, he wasn’t that crazy. This would be a fraction of the size.

Well, hopefully. If all went as planned.

Tan had spent years now on this problem, trying to find some way to retrieve the earth that had been consumed in The Void’s pocket space. Somewhere. It had proved futile to even try and trace it all down, put the land back in its original spot. No matter how he tried to retrace how the pocket spaces had collided into each other, chunks of earth had just been sucked into madness. Or at least, Tan had felt half-mad every time he turned his attention to it.

Finally, he given up on the search-and-retrieve approach entirely and started from scratch. What Tan had come up with instead was a reversal spell. When he marked out the dimensions of a space that had gone wrong, he could reverse the effects within just that area. Tan called it the undo spell.

Yes, the name needed work. He was getting to it.

Anyway, he’d tested the undo spell on a small explosion, just to see if it would work. It had, beautifully. Now it was time to test it on a larger scale.

Tan had learned that some spells were like soup recipes, for lack of a better metaphor. Sometimes, they couldn’t be doubled or scaled up. One of his mother’s soup recipes was like this. Try to double the batch, it didn’t taste right. It was okay, it just didn’t have that same flavor. There were spells like that, too. They did wonders on a certain level, but try to increase the range of it, and things went gnarly.

He couldn’t assume his new undo spell would work on the larger thing just because it had on a smaller scale. Hence, experimentation.

No, he had not run the idea of blowing a second Void into barbarian territory by Devan, why do you ask? He was being considerate. Devan had been busy the past month and a half training his replacements. If all went well, he’d never know Tan was even up here deliberately exploding things to begin with.

Tan shook the thoughts off and got to work. Alright, five bags of holding tethered by lasso spells, check. Ward around the area, check. Reinforced shield around the bags just in case it went more kablooey than Tan expected, check. Personal shield for him as a triple precaution, check. Undo spell tied into chalk wheel, check.

Right, time to get cracking.

Tan activated both shields first, then when he was sure they were anchored properly, he deliberately targeted the bags of holding and undid the lasso spells.

The result was immediate. In a chain reaction, a bag exploded into the one next to it, setting it off, which in turn set off the one next to it. One pocket space collided with another and it all went to hell so fast Tan could barely track it with his eyes. If an abyss could rise up and swallow things whole, that’s what this looked like, and the sound of it was unlike anything else. If rocks could scream, they would make this sound, as they were sheared out of place and consumed into space. It was entirely unnerving and made a shudder race up Tan’s spine.

Blink.

Oh, it was over. Wow, was that what The Void had looked like when it was happening? Damn shame Tan hadn’t been able to stick around and watch the first Void in action. Problem was, he was pro-life. As in he preferred to be upright and breathing.

Anyway, this explosion happened as planned, yay! It only left a little hole behind. Maybe half a mile in diameter. It was fine. His shields had also held up perfectly. Tan had maybe been a tad worried about his protections, as exploding bags of holding was hard to quantify, which made the math tricky, but this had gone swimmingly well even if he did say so himself.

Good, next part.

Tan grabbed his chalk wheel and set to work, walking steadily