Elisa Button and the Nightwalker

Chapter 8

Philbert woke up to the sound of croaking. He got up to see Pogo hopping angrily at the mouth of the cave. Philbert raced to the mouth in time to see Elisa hopping onto her broom with the light sword and flying away.

Philbert felt as though he was stabbed in the heart by his best friend. She left me, Philbert realized to his great dismay.

The ogre turned to Pogo. She stared back at him, her messy brown hair fell over her big blue eyes.

"She left us," Philbert told her.

Pogo burped her reply.

Philbert refused to believe that Elisa just got up and left. There must have been a good reason for her sudden departure. Maybe she realized that Philbert was much too big for her broom and she went out to get a bigger broom. Yes, that must be it. She must not know how fast ogres can run and he would have no trouble keeping up with her broom.

"Pogo, we're going after Elisa," he said to the former frog.

Pogo burped.

Philbert lifted Pogo onto his back, then tore out of his cave. He moved with the swiftness of a  steer and the agility of a mountain goat, leaping over rocks and fallen trees. Every now and then he would take one giant leap that would take him a good twenty feet. It was not long before he could see Elisa. She looked like a small dot in the sky,

"Hold on tight," Philbert instructed Pogo.

Pogo tightly wrapped her arms around Philbert's thick neck as he ran and leaped, following the small figure in the sky. They passed dying plants and dead animals laying on the side of the path.

Then he saw Elisa descending her broom. There was no sign of the nightwalker and they were in the middle of nowhere, so why she picked this time to land her broom was a mystery.

Philbert quickly raced toward where she had descended.  He and Pogo peered from behind the only bush which still had a little life in it. He saw Elisa talking to another young witch with long black hair.

Suddenly the new witch snatched the light sword from Elisa, then her skin melted off and turned into some kind of shadow creature and the other witch was a different witch. She still had long black hair, but she was taller and older.

The two witches exchanged words, then the shadow shot at Elisa and wrapped around her, trapping her in a cocoon of darkness.

The bad witch said something Philbert could not make out, but it sounded cold. He hated to resort to violence which was also the reason he was an outcast to the ogre community and made him his father's least favorite of his three boys. His father was always telling him,  Garbage Face, why can't you be mean and nasty like your brothers? Now Philbert must break his vow in never harming another living thing to save Elisa.

Philbert let out his most ferocious roar and charged out of his hiding place.

~

A beast was the way Elisa could describe seeing Philbert tore his way out of the brush. Philbert had always seemed so gentle to her, but this was a Philbert she had never seen before. She had no idea how he managed to follow her. When she had left him she was sure he was sound asleep.

Dart pointed at him and shot a beam of black energy from her fingertip and hit Phibert directly in the chest. Philbert stagger backward, then continue his attack.

Dart gestured to her living shadow. The shadow released Elisa and she dropped to her knees. Then the shadow attacked Philbert. Philbert threw a large meaty fist at the shadow which passed through it as though it was not there. Philbert threw more punches as he tried to fight off the attacking shadow.