Armageddon Rules by J. C. Nelson

was Queen Mihail, of the Second Royal Family. The backseat of her convertible was empty. Normally her sons and daughters would ride with her. Of course, I’d sort of made sure that wasn’t possible.
    See, her son took up with an older woman. Sort of a Mrs. Robinson situation. The son was thoroughly repulsive, completely disgusting, and completely typical for a prince. Incidentally, Ari was supposed to have married him. That didn’t exactly work out. Prince Mihail got the bad end of a magic apple, and when last I saw him, he looked like the thing from the black lagoon.
    I chanced a look up at the queen as she passed, and froze. It wasn’t possible. In a crowd of thousands, her eyes couldn’t possibly be fixed on me. But they were. She kept that icy stare fixed on me until the procession carried her out of view. I let out a sigh and realized that somewhere in the process I’d clenched my fists until my nails left marks in my palm.
    Queen Mihail had promised me wrath, if anything happened to her son. Not only had something happened, I was directly responsible for that something. So keeping clear of her was on my to-do list.
    The third car came into view, and I immediately stood up, a lone figure in a crowd of kneeling drunks. I had a hunch who was in the third car, and I wanted to make something clear: I had no respect for her. The third car belonged to Queen Thromson, queen of the Third Royal Family. Ari’s stepmother. The Mrs. Robinson who Prince Mihail had taken up with.
    Queen Thromson has also tried to kill me. In fact, the list of people who have tried to kill me was disturbingly long. Some days, it seemed like every new face I met was either going to be my new best friend or my new best enemy. I had enough enemies.
    Queen Thromson had gray hair where it wasn’t white (courtesy of me), wrinkles like an old leather bag (courtesy of me), and a clutch of red-haired princesses in the car with her. For the record, I had nothing to do with the princesses.
    The wrinkles and the hair were because when she tried to kill me, she used magic, and at some point it starts taking quite the toll on you. Also, I might have fired a spell shaped like a bullet at her. Twice.
    Unlike Queen Mihail, Queen Thromson found everyone else interesting to look at. She avoided me like I had eye chicken pox. I spent the better part of a year trying to get her arrested for taking up with an evil fairy and nearly killing Ari and myself. Too late I found I’d filed charges in the wrong court.
    After four more convertibles passed, the rest of the parade contained nothing but princesses and lesser royal families. Like cockroaches, princesses tended to show up everywhere and proved impossible to get rid of.
    I made my way out of Upper Kingdom, delighted to finally be free of the crowds. Middle Kingdom looked like something from a storybook. Thatched roofs, quaint stone chimneys, and the smell of open sewers. Every once in a while I’d get a call from some parent desperate for help with their son or daughter.
    It was always the same story. An obsession with role-playing. A closet full of costumes that would look silly on a superhero. Attempting to play the lute. Renaissance fair attendance constituted the final step in this addiction. The idea that somehow, if we went back eight hundred years, everything would be better.
    I had a cottage down here for such cases. Drop them in Middle Kingdom for a week and let the wee lad or lass discover that kinder, gentler times didn’t have running water. Or toilet paper. Or grocery stores. “I’m sorry. You’ve failed your saving throw against lice,” was usually the point at which they came home, bought smartphones, dressed in denim, and never looked back.
    I finally found the place I was looking for, on a narrow cobblestone road way down in Middle Kingdom. The building looked odd for Middle Kingdom. Huge arched roofs, and what I’d almost have sworn was a steel roof. I knocked on the door, walked in, and