Phyllis’ Mini-Mall Mania Two: Lich House Let Down

Phyllis snapped her fingers, and the door to the nearest empty shop flung open. There, a portal momentarily appeared, spitting Ishara out at terminal velocity. The bullet of a boy skidded across the floor, screaming before entering the food court and plowing through tables and chairs alike.

With a loud crash, he collided into one of the chest-high divider walls with a comedic cloud of debris. The plastic plants atop this fixture shook under the impact, some even going so far as to tumble into the heap of bones resting in the messy meat puddle beneath them.

Phyllis cackled some more as the triop witnessed this, screamed, and raced to the obviously dead boy's side. She let the scene play out for a few minutes, even going so far as to take beratement from Rionriv and allowing Aesandoral to offer her soul for his life.

And while Phyllis truly considered the offer from the elf, she begrudgingly passed since they were technically already in an informal contract with Ishara. So, once she was content with her fill of misery, she explained that no one ever truly died in her domain until she said so.

With a snap of Phyllis’ fingers, Ishara opened his eyes and screamed as though he had just woken from a nightmare. This caused the girls to scream equally at his sudden resurrection.

“Zombie!” Rionriv yelped and instinctively punched him in the face.

“Ahg!” Ishara groaned, now grabbing his bleeding nose; the only part of his body currently damaged. “What the hell, Ri?”

“You were dead.”

“So, you punched me in the face?! How does that make sense? Owwww-uhh! Uhhhg. That really hurt. Is it broken? Aes, is this broken?”

“No, you look fine,” Aesandoral spoke up. She leaned in close, lifting one of her sleeves to wipe the blood from his nose. “You can hardly tell.”

“Now kiss.” Phyllis directed as she casually floated up to the pair.

Aesandoral and Ishara paused their interaction to turn to Phyllis slowly. The three of them now shared a very tight bubble with each other.

Soaking in the awkward energy with a devious smirk, Phyllis wiggled her eyebrows.

“No. Can we go now?” Ishara grumbled, standing to his feet.

“No! Pips Pizza!” Phyllis shouted as she began her slow walk toward a small pizza stall.

Sharzin was already there, sitting on the counter with a bowl in her hands.

“What you got there, Zin?” Ishara asked as he approached.

“Something called…poutine?” She replied, poking the fries, cheese curds and gravy with a fork.

“Oh, nice. Can I have some?”

Phyllis watched as the small groundling stabbed the little ruby with a fork. He cursed, grabbing at his hand before the two exchanged heated words. A loud grumble eventually came from Ishara’s stomach as he narrowed his gaze and looked up at the menu.

“You know what? Pizza and studying go hand in hand like peanut butter and jelly. Phyllis, can I get a large everything and a large Hawaiian to go?”

“Hawaiian?” Phyllis scoffed. “Those poor girls. Sadist.”

Ishara’s pizzas appeared instantly in the boxes as Phyllis arrived at the counter and began pondering what she wanted to eat.

“Phyllis, can you send us back to my room now? We’d really like not to die on our next mission.”

“Can’t you just put it off? That loot isn’t going anywhere after all! And I’m bored. And hungry. And I don’t want to eat alone.”

“Why don’t you just ask one of the Lich House kids?” Ishara paused as his face twitched with the look of a boy doing mental math. “Phyllis…tonight’s Samhain, right?”

“Yeah, what about it?” She replied. “Oooh, I think I’ll do the meat lover. Love me some meat.”

“Phyllis, did you remind the students to stay in their rooms with their doors locked while your home does its yearly Samhain Shuffle?”

Phyllis’ face dropped as she looked towards the ceiling.

“The children!” She screamed out and began her slow, methodical pace back towards the Dwindlefyre shoppe door, abandoning Ishara and his triop.

Phyllis eventually made it back to her shoppe and up the spiral stairwell to the attic, where she had installed the twenty-four-person dormitory. Moving up the slippery stairs, she began to realize something was amiss. After all, she didn’t remember so much blood when she made the place.

Reaching the top, Phyllis rounded the corner where she froze before the two-dozen bodies that lay eviscerated.

Everyone was dead.

Correction. Everyone except for a small, shy tortan boy named Giovanni Galilei, a towering, kind ruminantfolk girl named Maren Highland, and a little disgruntled faerie girl named Lemon Poppy Seed. The heroes that Tahvin had written about to save the world.

“Children?” She asked.

“Phyllis!” Giovanni and Maren cried out with tears racing down their faces.

They ran over to the lich and hugged her. Crying uncontrollably, they smeared blood and some sort of ooze against her robes.

“There, there.” She reassured them as she examined the carnage.

“It’s okay, sweet children—Aunty Phyllis will fix this. It’ll be like a bad dream that no one will ever forget or really talk about again, okay? And here, you get coupons to the shoppe for accidentally killing your friends. Fifty percent off! Wow, what a deal, Phyllis! I know—and look, here’s some money too, enough for half a magical weapon. Wow, you’re so generous, Phyllis. Yes, I know!”

She paused, taking a quick breath before looking at the three as she stressed the final bit, “Children, please don’t tell the school about this. They’ll close the dorm.”

With that, Phyllis snapped her fingers once more. Broken doors and furniture were repaired as exsanguinated blood withdrew back into its respective corpses. And, with little effort, life and soul were once more returned to the bodies of the remaining children.

Phyllis even ensured that every Lich House student was given coupons to smooth things over. It was going to cut into her short-term profits, but in the long run, she believed it would pay off.

“Phyllis?” Giovanni asked, tugging at her robes.

“Yes, dear—What?” Phyllis snipped, caught off guard as she wondered if Pips Pizza would still be open when she returned.

“Who’s Navec?”

“Navec?”

“He was this scary guy who was controlling the monsters and saying he wanted to kill us to show up his mommy—you.”

“Oh, you mean Stewart? Mwahahaha—he’s just a failed experiment. Is he still kicking around? What a little rascal.”

Phyllis laughed some more as she thought briefly about her estranged creation and then became solemn.

What if the Pips created my meat lover pizza and is now closed? Does that mean it's getting cold? I should know this answer, damn it! Ugh, I hate getting old.

“Children, I must go. Don’t worry, you’ll be safe now.”

And, with that, Phyllis made her slow escape back to the pizza place.