"I will not be ignored!" he squeaked, his voice reaching frequencies that Leo was fairly certain only dogs should be able to hear.
"I will follow you to the ends of this world, giant! I will be the buzzing in your ear, the pebble in your shoe, the persistent itch you cannot scratch! I will make your life a symphony of minor inconveniences until you agree to assist me in my noble quest!"
Leo stared at the tiny knight, weighing his options. On one hand, he had a homicidal golem to avoid and a carefully planned life of obscurity to maintain. On the other hand, he was being threatened by a creature that he could defeat by closing a window too quickly.
But there was something in Sir Reginald's tiny eyes: a desperate pride, a stubborn determination that reminded Leo uncomfortably of himself during his darkest moments as a struggling writer. The pixie wasn't just asking for help; he was clinging to the last shreds of his dignity in a world that had cast him aside.
"Alright, alright!" Leo snapped, his patience wearing thin under the combined pressure of impending doom and pixie-related harassment. "Fine! I'll help you. Just... stop talking for five minutes so I can think."
Sir Reginald sheathed his sword with a triumphant smirk that was visible even at his minuscule size. "An excellent choice, giant. You will not regret this decision. Now, to the courtyard! We must find you a suitable steed for our journey!"
"No!" Leo yelped, his panic returning with the force of a tidal wave. "Not the courtyard. Anywhere but the courtyard. The courtyard is where people go to die horribly."
But it was too late.
Sir Reginald, with the single-minded determination of a very small creature with a very large ego and an even larger sense of entitlement, was already flying toward the door. His tiny wings beat with the fury of someone who had been denied his rightful place in the world for far too long.
Leo had a choice. He could stay in the room, safe from golems, but condemned to an eternity of pixie-related pranks that would make his life a living hell. Or he could follow the tiny knight into the path of a rampaging magical construct and almost certain death.
He sighed, a sound that seemed to come from the very depths of his soul.
It was, he reflected, a perfect metaphor for his entire existence, both as an author and as a reincarnated background character. Damned if he did, and damned if he didn't.
With a sense of grim resignation that would have made his therapist proud, he followed Sir Reginald out of the room and into the hallway. His mind raced as he tried to figure out how to survive the next few hours without becoming a footnote in someone else's heroic journey.
The hallway was bustling with students heading to their morning classes, their voices creating a cheerful cacophony that seemed to mock Leo's growing sense of doom.
They were all so young, so optimistic, so blissfully unaware that one of them was about to be turned into a cautionary tale about the dangers of admiring architecture during magical demonstrations.
"Excuse me," Leo called out to a passing student, a girl with bright red hair and an armload of textbooks. "You wouldn't happen to know if there are any alternative routes to the library that don't involve going through the main courtyard, would you?"
The girl looked at him strangely. "The courtyard? Why would you want to avoid the courtyard? Professor Aldric is doing a demonstration of the new training golems this morning. It's supposed to be quite spectacular."
Leo's blood ran cold. "Spectacular" was not the word he would have used to describe what was about to happen. "Catastrophic" would have been more accurate. "Traumatizing" would have been better still.
"Right," he said weakly. "Spectacular. That's... that's exactly what I'm afraid of."
Sir Reginald, who had been hovering near Leo's shoulder like the world's smallest and most judgmental conscience, chose that moment to pipe up. "Fear not, giant! With Sir Reginald Fitzwilliam Thornberry the Third at your side, no mere construct of stone and magic can stand against us! We shall face this golem together, and I shall prove my worth as a knight!"
The red-haired girl blinked in confusion, looking around for the source of the tiny voice. "Did you hear something?"
"Just... just my conscience," Leo said, shooting a warning glare at Sir Reginald. "It's very small and very loud."
As they made their way through the academy's corridors, Leo couldn't help but notice the architectural details that his younger self had spent so much time describing in his novel.
The soaring arches, the intricate stonework, the stained glass windows that cast rainbow patterns across the polished floors; it was all exactly as he had imagined it, but somehow more real, more substantial than words on a page could ever convey.
It was also, he realized with growing horror, exactly the kind of beautiful, distracting architecture that would cause an unnamed student to stop and stare at precisely the wrong moment.
They reached the edge of the courtyard, and Leo peered around the corner like a spy in a bad thriller novel.
The scene was exactly as he had written it, down to the smallest detail. Professor Aldric, a tall, thin man with a beard that had clearly been styled to convey wisdom and authority, stood before a crowd of eager students. Behind him, three massive training golems waited in perfect stillness, their stone faces blank and expressionless.
And there, in the front row of spectators, stood a familiar figure with unruly brown hair and a look of rapt attention as he stared at the intricate carvings on the fountain.
Leo was looking at himself. Or rather, at the original version of the character he now inhabited. The student who was about to become the golem's first victim.
"This is it," he whispered to Sir Reginald. "This is where it happens."
"Where what happens?" the pixie asked, his tiny voice filled with curiosity.
"Where I die," Leo said simply. "Or where I was supposed to die. Or where someone who looks exactly like me is about to die. The temporal mechanics are still confusing."
Professor Aldric raised his staff, and Leo could see the magical energy beginning to build around the golems. In approximately thirty seconds, one of the control runes would misfire, sending the middle golem into a berserker rage.
In forty-five seconds, it would take its first swing at the crowd. In fifty seconds, an unnamed student would be crushed while admiring the craftsmanship of a decorative fountain.
Leo had a choice to make. He could turn around, walk away, and let events play out as he had written them. The student would die, but Leo would live, free to pursue his dream of a quiet, comfortable life in the background of someone else's story.
Or he could do something about it.
"Damn it," he muttered, and then he heard the screaming begin.