FOR THE FIRST TIME since I had landed in this world, Nasilain lay in bed with me when I woke up, although the glowing screen of her tablet never changed. But damn, her ass pushing into my crotch was a hell of a way to torture my morning wood.

I nuzzled her neck and brushed my fingers through her hair that turned copper in this lighting. “What are you reading, beautiful?”

“Radiation therapy for cancer,” she answered and pressed closer to me. “You were right; even when it’s controlled, it still can cause much damage.”

She turned the tablet off and gave me her full attention, including her hands that rested on my chest. The fairy situation needed to get resolved soon. My zipper couldn’t handle all the pressure. I could probably bend her over that bean bag and fuck the hell out of her right now.

No, I couldn't. She deserved better than that.

“I realized something while I was reading this,” she said. “The radioactive atoms I found on some of the fairies were like dust they picked up somewhere. Maybe if we can track it back to the source, we’ll find them in larger numbers.”

I could think of another reason we needed to find the source of the dust. “If it’s near a populated area, then even if we kill all the fairies, that dust can still hurt the people living near it. Especially if it’s picked up by the wind and inhaled.”

“I guess we better get going then.” She didn’t move to get up.

“I guess we better.” I pulled her flush to my chest and took those delicious lips of hers.

Nasilain moaned into my mouth, making it way too hard to pull away. We did need to get going, and I needed to figure out something about a suntan lotion. I hadn’t thought the day before what driving in the fields all day would do to me.

“What do you people do here not to turn into lobsters in the summer?” I asked.

Nasilain looked at the red line on my neck and cringed. “Jill brought a few cases of lotion from your world. There should still be some left, but we’ll have to dig through the storage crates.”

Turned out, we didn’t have to. The elves had been organizing wooden shelves they had built. The hardworking bastards were even scrubbing all of the walls in the castle and the towers in order to paint it later.

As soon as we finished breakfast, the power tools started screeching all over the castle grounds, drilling holes in the walls to get the ventilation in place. If we could get air conditioning in here, it’d be perfect.

“Jill isn’t around today?” I asked when Vinsor and Ricci joined us in the makeshift garage.

“She’s working.” Vinsor sighed as he put the extra gasoline for the flamethrowers on the back seat of the car. “I’ll be killing time with you for the next week.”

Ricci set the Geiger counter on the dashboard as if it was a GPS. Nasi had marked the places where we had run into fairies before. Hopefully, it would help us find the rest of them.

“Still don’t know what you two are going to do about the wedding?” Nasilain asked.

I hadn’t realized there was anything that serious between Vinsor and Jill. They acted pretty tame in public. At most, they showed little sparks, but never anything else.

“No idea. We can’t get married in her world because I don’t exist there, and we can’t get married here because she wants her parents at our wedding.”

“That’s tough.” I jumped into the car.

Nasilain took a seat in the front, next to Ricci. How would I explain her to my family? With the time difference, no one would even understand how I ended up with Nasilain after knowing her for less than a day. How would I introduce her? And what would it take to invite her to my aunt’s for Christmas? Something so brief would probably end up being a month-long vacation in this world.

Even going to work would suck since we’d be apart for a week in this world. Maybe I could have Nasi do something in mine for the hours I was on the clock in order to shorten the time for her, but what could she do without a driver’s licence and an ID?

“We need to look for radiation patterns in the area. Fairies are coming from somewhere with radioactive chemicals.” Nasilain inspected the map. “Let’s go to the areas we checked yesterday and see if we can pick up a trail.”

Ricci revved up the engine, as much as an electric engine could get revved up, and pulled out of the tent. It took a lot less time to get to the charred piles than it did yesterday. Soon enough, we were following the road to what we hoped would take us to another swarm.

“Here they come,” Ricci said as the first notes of the song filled the air.

Nasilain lifted her hands to cast an invisible shield and waited. Before the swarm reached us, their heads turned to the side in unison, as if directed by a hive mind.

A woman and two children stood in horror as some of the fairies broke off and headed for them. Nasilain gasped then extended her hand toward the family.

“Get closer to us,” she shouted. “We can protect you.”

They didn’t move.

Ricci turned the car back on and sped forward, fairies following us every inch of the way, but the shield held.

“We need them in the car, so we can fire at the fairies without worrying about burning the civilians.” I’d drag them in by force if I had to.

One of the kids screamed and ran to the forest.

“No,” Nasilain shouted, and the boy’s feet froze. “We have to get everyone in one place. I can’t cast this many shields at the same time.”

The mother stared at her son through the flapping wings of the fairies while her daughter crouched on the ground crying. Ricci drove right up to them so they could be included in our shield.

“Nasi, shield me. I’ll get the boy.” I jumped out before she even answered and ran to the giant ball of wings.

The space he had to protect him shrunk. Damn it. Nasi couldn’t keep going like this. Almost there.

I stuck my hand out. My shield expanded forward and fused with the boy’s, then widened. I grabbed the kid, tossed him over my shoulder, and dashed back. Nasilain’s face blinked in and out of existence between fairies’ wings. A few more steps, and I put the boy down next to his mother.

“Nasi, make sure they don’t move. Vinsor, let’s barbeque.”

We turned the fire all the way up and cut through hundreds of fairies with ease as they shrieked and tried to fly away. It took minutes, but by the end of it, Nasilain’s hands shook with exhaustion.

“What were those things?” The mother asked.

“Fairies.” I pulled jerky, bread and water out and offered it to Nasilain. “Lord Dralik brought them. He thought he could hide in his castle while these suckers killed everyone around him.”

The little girl burst into another fit of tears. I couldn’t exactly blame her. She couldn’t be more than five, and to see something like this must’ve shaken her pretty badly. Maybe if I could offer her something sweet, she’d feel a little better. Sweets had solved all of my problems when I was a kid.

I kept a few candy bars in my bag, so I pulled one out for Nasi. This should give her a fast burst of energy. Then three more chocolates for the woman and her children.

“I heard Lord Dralik was killed,” the boy mumbled.

The mother hugged her kids protectively as I got down from the car with the chocolate.

“Yeah, he was. When we’re done cleaning up the fairy mess he made, we can have us a nice, big celebration. What are you three doing out on the road on foot?”

The mother hesitated for a second before answering. “King Sulphiu’s men burned our village down. We were trying to find shelter.”

Son of a three-headed hell dog. They might as well call themselves fairy food and not worry about funeral expenses. “We got enough space in the castle, right?” How many more families like that wandered around the area?

“We’ll find room. At the very least, we got a few tents. But a whole fucking village got burned down?” Ricci let out a frustrated sigh as he leaned back.

“Was the king there?” Nasilain asked the woman.

“No, only the elves. They said we burned too much wood in the winter and smoked up the sky.”

That didn’t sound like the elves we had, although Misavan had been a lot nastier until I splattered his lord’s brains.

“And this is why we need to brainwash these assholes,” Ricci said, then added, “Let’s get back to the castle. I’ll get them to start writing the book of Jill’s bullshit, then the rest of us can get a rescue party together and see who else we can find from that village.”

“What's your name?” I asked the mother.

“Malisana.” She gestured at her two kids. “My son is Harigan, and my daughter Siliria.”

“Seth.” I offered Malisana my hand, but she stared at it like she’d never seen one before. “No handshakes in this world?”

“Weird, huh?” Ricci hopped out of the car to help clear the corpses. “This place only looks like our kind of medieval. They are their own kind of crazy, though.”

I turned back to Malisana. “We can't leave you out here alone. The castle can handle three more people, and then we'll see what else we can do for you.”

“Thank you. I don't know where else to go.”

I nodded and helped the family squeeze into the car with us. Luckily, they were thin as twigs. We needed to find some good living accommodations for a hell of a lot of people.

“You know, I bet we could buy a whole bunch of used trailers in cash. A lot of those might not have proper registration, but if we transport them here, no one is gonna give a damn.” How did I end up thinking of ways to smuggle vehicles into a fantasy world? Maybe I did need therapy.

Ricci nodded. “You’re right. It’ll be harder for the fairies to get through than tents if we have to set up a small town outside the castle walls. Then, instead of building housing, we can get the elves to build a wall around the trailer park.”

We’d need to be careful not to attract too much attention to ourselves while we did it, but yeah, it would be a good solution, especially since we could fill those trailers with building supplies, which we could also pay for in cash.