Flanz - Bringing in the entire zoo

"Intrude upon my court, my kingdom, my sanctuary? Wound my body? Befoulers of yourselves and all you touch; traitors to your respective races! Flanz-le-Flore is a just and benevolent queen, so for the sake of this world I'll, hm yes, I'll turn you into compost for this garden's flowers!"

The speech may have intimidated more if her voice wasn't phlegmatic with nose blood. Far more threatening was the sound of several snapped fingers in rapid succession.

"Bring me their heads, my very dear and beloved subjects. Do leave only the hero alive."

Out of the sky dropped objects. The objects, Jay's poorly-perspectived rat vision soon realized, were once Flanz-le-Flore's fairies and were now animals. A snarling wolf landed near the rosebushes, a bull and a unicorn in a row of topiaries. The gazebo exploded as an elephant came crashing through its roof and what remained teetered on a few stilt-sized supports. A tiger, then a lion, then a cheetah landed as a trio. A hawk swooped overhead, a hippopotamus thrashed in the creek and decimated the quaint wooden bridge, a giraffe showed up lacking any particular violent capabilities unless the idea was to instill vertigo in anyone who craned their neck to see its head rubbing the ceiling. A bear almost pathetic in appearance compared to Pluxie reared up and roared and once the whole spectrum of charismatic megafauna known to Middle Ages Europe had manifested out of thin air Flanz-le-Flore gave up on creativity and started, with hallucinatory speed, to snap her remaining followers into wasps, lots and lots and lots of wasps that filled the air with a fur-bristling buzz.

In front of Jay dropped an ordinary housecat, calico. Jade eyes with black slits for pupils stared him down.

***

Between the tall grass he sprinted, four limbs in perfect harmony like he lived his whole life in this body, back the direction he came from, where Flanz-le-Flore hovered in the sky rapid snapping more of her followers into wasps while Makepeace waved his shield wildly at the hippopotamus who for all its rotundity dared not take another step toward the gleaming metal.

***

Outside, insanity raged. Animal howls encompassing fully disparate taxonomies mingled with erratic proclamations from Flanz-le-Flore, the growing whirr of a hundred wasps, and—increasingly—odd fleshy squelches Jay couldn't fathom the origin of.

***

[9] The Same Wrong Even More Ruthlessly