Pushing past all the questions she wanted to ask the barely conscious Jonah, Kalyah went into full damage control. She treated this tragic scene for what it was, the site of battle. The smoldering trees, burst open, half burning, and mostly reduced to ash, threw their foul stench into the air. The black smoke mixed with the mists, whose prayers sounded so mournful, and she only heard the dirges within their scattered words. She had been to the sites of tragedies, where lives were lost to some conflict or another. Words weren't enough and men were sent to die instead. She hoped the two lovers and their haggard bodies would never see an actual battle ground. Compared to those of the great war, the Great Loss as the older Corpine faithful called it, she had seen nothing but squabbles and minor riots.

When the Ash Makers came in force with their rolling machines and their red light weapons, the bodies had filled the land for miles. There were few for the white cloaked clergy of Corpine to heal, their bells jangling over a burnout land. It was said the bells made hearts beat hard enough to detect, but even tuned to corpus sounds, they heard little.

Her lover and the molder of her present body, Primvene would occasionally space out and break into tears remembering the hellscape. The god of death, Scepaltine, had His followers as well, dressed in raven black vestments. The Crow Clerics they called themselves, as their god was the raven king, had cloaks that caught the wind, snapping like grave scythe’s swinging. They would often collect more corpses than the goddess of living bodies. Their inky bird masks dipped low, saving the dead from the birds they revered. The shimmering black birds would listen to their prayers of thanks, preserving the bodies, wrapping them up to place gently on carts. Though she knew it was an equally holy act, Primvene would weep like the Goddess remembering the black ones.

In this battle, only the trees had died, and though the Druid would mourn them, Kalyah couldn’t care less about the pyres on the white gold grass. She set the lovers inside the house on their little camp, having the hardest time with the stiff Diana. Jonah held onto her, explaining tiredly that she should wake. Her eyes were closed, forcibly, so they wouldn’t dry out, staff slid out of her hand. They were both exhausted, showing the early signs of infection from their labor in the frigid land. What silly children, to be traveling so long in such a harsh environment, Kalyah thought.

Removing their grimey clothing, she tossed them and Diana’s armor aside. Dear Goddess did they both smell foul, but at least they had no serious wounds. There were a good collection of bruises and scuffs. She figured they would have quite damaged prides as well, when they woke from their resting. Turning on the faucet, she got it warm, keeping the water level low. Jonah, who was awake enough to attempt explaining what happened, went in first.

He had been mumbling about ten minutes when she first came up to him, and was periodically counting down the time. In between, he filled the air with apologies, to her, to Diana, even to Aiko, who was still stiff outside. Kalyah wasn’t about to lift the tiger on her own.

“I’m sorry you were gone helping us so long,” Jonah murmured, his nose stuffed up. “I ruined it, I should have closed the door…”

“It doesn’t matter, baby, just hold Diana up, okay?” Kalyah said, setting the locked up and bare Diana atop him.

“Okay, three minutes…”

She kissed his head and left.

The Pixie elf took a moment to regard the nearly destroyed door, the holes punched through it. There were signs of molten material going cold on the wood, a dusty and porous metal having burned through the reinforced elvish door. She had seen these things survive direct fire and bullets, but this force was something else. She wondered if it had anything to do with Jonah’s one arm now being gray.

Priorities, she told herself, and rushed off to the Van.

Awkwardly she drove it forward, struggling with the adjustments. The vehicle lurched forward to the house and the front yard battleground. She cursed her lack of driving skills, it wasn’t worth training the smallest member of a Trio to pilot the large car. Even among humans, the Van was too large and she had to climb up and adjust it constantly.

The strange timer ran out and made Niae snap awake on the front seat. Kalyah was in the back of the Van, noting the time on her pocket watch. The five others writhed, groaning, working out the stiffness of their bodies. The Pixie kept digging for blankets and other supplies, the five scanning their surroundings as she moved around them.

Still working out the experiments and the rush of adrenaline that Kalyah had given her, Niae pushed out of the Van, walking around. Her pearl skin was blushed bright pink and she heaved up on the sidewalk. Apparently all the tweaking to her body had spun her stomach around in knots. She unzipped her jacket farther, baring her manipulated maternal body to the chill to cool it. The others in the back tried to rush to their mother’s aid, but she held them off, turning away her nudity from them.

Leaning against the hood, Niae caught her breath. Niae’s children were all dizzy and moved like fawns, unable to find their feet. Covering herself, the Arch Priestess, whose feet barely faltered, checked over them. The freezing had been a ten minute stiffness and they remembered nothing of the time. A blessing, Kalyah and Niae both noted.

Arms full of blankets and heaters, Kalyah rushed inside. Turning the heat up in the Van, and closing the doors, Niae followed her. The Pixie had explained her knowledge and her escape from it as quickly as she could to the High elf.

“I’m sorry about everything that I did to you,” Kalyah added.

The Arch Priestess smiled down at her, the natural hue having returned to her skin. “I do not need an apology, your treatment of my body was in service of good. I only wish that I could have been shaken from that awful state,” she said as she ducked under the door. “Thus all of my children and the princess would have been saved as well.”

“I do too,” Kalyah sighed.

They found the couple in the bathtub, the water running hot again. Diana was whimpering in pain as Jonah held her to him. He had to release her as she started to sneeze, head violently whipping about. She stared out, confused and flushed, looking at nothing. There were body aches all over her, and her mind was struggling to comprehend matters.

The water was up to her chest before she spoke. “Why am I sick? I'm a Druid, I don’t get sick like this…” she said, nose stuffed, head wavering around.

“You haven't been applying your jars, Diana, your magical defenses are low,” Kalyah explained. Niae moved about, setting up the various heaters and blankets against the walls to keep the place warmer.

“Ohh…” Diana groaned. She took in her surroundings. Her familiar was laying on its side by the tub snoring. All the tragedy came rushing back to her and she looked at Kalyah, beginning to sob. Jonah sloshed forward through the water, holding her tightly. “I’ve ruined everything!” the princess cried. “Kalyah, it’s all ruined!”

The Pixie switched off the water, leaning towards her, inches from her face. “I don’t care a single bit about what you did, I am only thanking the Goddess you two are not harmed. A little cold from the weather is nothing compared to what could have happened. If whatever hit the door hit you, then you’d be dead. Relax, I’ll help you rinse off, then we’re gonna get you two to sleep.” She grabbed Diana’s head and kissed the top of it.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” Jonah went on mumbling. “Why are we sick from the cold? I thought that couldn’t happen…”

Kalyah smiled, kissing his head as well. “Sweet boy, maybe in your world, but there’s nothing Virran loves more than a stressed and cold body to infect,” she said, patting both their heads affectionately. "Even my wards broke on you."

“Okay,” he nodded.

Rising up, Kalyah craned her neck to the Arch Priestess, whose round face was lined with worry.

“I should not have said anything,” she remarked. “I should have kept a Dove by them, oh Goddess they could have perished. I thought they would only find traces of Ash Makers. I thought the princess’s tiger would sniff them out if they were still present and watch from afar, nothing more. We were so close to tragedy. Goddess forgive me.” From her sweet blues came tears, and she looked to the tiger and the young ones.

Holding her hands up, Kalyah drew Niae down, kissing her on the mouth and embracing her. The Arch Priestess dropped to her knees, allowing herself to be held by the much smaller woman. She wept openly and loudly, as the Goddess would at the untimely death of any of her creations. Kalyah whispered prayers of thanks that no tragedy had occurred. As Niae held her back, she eventually slowed her sobbing and joined in on the prayer.

“It’s Aiko’s fault!” Diana spat, the water splashing onto the ground as she looked over the side of the tub. The tiger chuffed up at her, pointing its whiskers at her. She sprinkled water at it, but it didn’t care, settling back against the stone.

Gathering themselves, Kalyah asked what Diana meant.

The princess was barely awake, eyes heavy as she leaned back on Jonah’s collarbone. “She bloody roared at them, she herded them here…” she said, speaking slowly.

Niae blinked, wiping away tears from her plump cheeks. “The Goddess has worked through the sources, there must be some part of this meant to happen,” she said quietly.

“I hate fate, it, it only makes things worse,” Diana stammered, jaw opening wide in a yawn.

“Providence doesn’t matter,” Kalyah said, moving to them. “You’re safe now, we will take care of you. You’ll be nice and warm in this house. The heaters will work a lot better in this small place, compared to your big room at the Twinklings.”

“We didn’t have heaters there,” Jonah answered, looking at the machines on the floor.

“What!?” Niae said, rising to her full height. She shadowed the two from the single light on the ceiling. “I told the owners to offer them to you.”

“They never did,” Diana said flatly.

The Arch Priestess scoffed in disbelief. “The nerve of Mekay and Payene… To not offer their only tenants heaters in the midst of a mist front this cold!” Her teeth grit, eyes narrowed in rage. “Those two, why would they do such a thing?”

Kalyah gestured her hands calmingly. “Hey, Niae, it’s alright, I think I know why,” she said.

“Why?” the giant asked with equal frustration, taking deep breaths to try and calm herself.

“The smugglers don’t want to work with them while a royal is staying there,” the Pixie explained. “All the shit they have stored in the hotel, people don’t pay them, they bought it. It’s a big investment for them, but they can’t get it to sell with them there.”

The anger of the mother cooled to an icy resolve. “Mekay and Payene do not deserve to sit amongst the other Twinkling owners, they are wretches. I will have them removed from the premises and replaced by competent owners. All of their useless trash will be removed and we will retake the location with decent people.” She turned to Jonah, Diana was trying to sleep. “I apologize for your suffering, I did not know they would be so selfish, my darlings. I cannot imagine the suffering they put you through, I wish you would have told me.”

“I’m sorry, we got by,” Jonah said.

“No, I am sorry I did not do something about those two sooner,” she said, hand to her chest. “You will not have to worry about them and their imitation goods any longer, they will be removed from the place as soon as I can get them out. Until then, you will stay here, where we can make you as comfortable as possible.”

“Okay,” he mumbled.

Several hours later, the sickly but clean Diana and Jonah were sleeping on a plush bed together in the little house’s bathroom. The couple could barely move, the hiking through the streets having taken it out of them. They were comfortable, alone, and as warm as they could be in their plush clothes. The new addition to Jonah’s arm, “a plasma gun” made his limbs closer to body temp, especially the gray blue limb itself. Kalyah smiled at the closed door, the faint shushing of the noise machine and snoring. Their heart beats were higher, fighting the virus, but calm than they had been all day.

The Pixie sat on a stool in the kitchen, examining a coin. All the walls were covered in blankets and the heaters blazed in here as well. Where the old oven and sink used to be, there were now portable replacements. She had finished off her food, a double portion for the long day. This morning she had woken up in the bed of a sailor/smuggler, planning on spending the rest of the day there. So much had changed in so little time. Even though it had been rough gathering the information, she didn’t care if the maps all burned to ash now, the couple’s safety was all that mattered to her.

Those poor children that ran off with that Ash Maker, she needed to save them, somehow. Through Jonah’s mumblings and Diana’s fevered shame, she had put a majority of the story together. Scanning the battle scene, she thought she had most of it together.

Niae entered the room and Kalyah's thoughts, the Arch Priestess removed her jacket to a sleeveless blouse. Her children had all left, replaced by one of her High Priests, who watched over the clearing of the fight by trusted clergy of Corpine. They had sworn to clean up the mess and keep quiet. The likelihood of a Grand discovering the destruction was low, but if they did, it would be pandemonium. Across the city Clerics, the actual police, were actually cracking down on the smuggling of the Twinklings hotel owners, soon to be former.

The High elf took a seat beside Kalyah on the floor. “What have you got there, sweet girl?” she asked.

Kalyah turned around the coin in her fingers. “The failed bribe of the Ash Makers,” she said, flicking it over in many rotations to the woman’s hand.

“Hmmm… a hundred mark coin, we hardly see them here,” she said, inspecting it. “The Grands have made it so everything must be barter.” She prayed for detection over it. “It is not made through alchemy, so the princess could spend it somewhere. Was there only one?”

“No, there were six that I found,” Kalyah said, then grinned. “They’re all counterfeit though…”

Niae blinked quickly, looking it over once more. “Why do you think that?” she asked.

“It’s off weight by a gram,” she explained. “The elvish minters would never allow that.”

The coin on her flattened hand, the High elf focused her blessed senses, ones meant only to weigh infants and doses. “I feel it now. Why did you think to weigh it?”

The Pixie sighed. “It was one of the ways I impressed my mother’s people,” she said, holding her bare shins to her chest. “I do it to every coin I see, an old habit.”

“Why would the Ash Makers have counterfeit currency?” Niae wondered, looking over the faces of long dead rulers. “Such finely made fakes as well, the silver is not easy to mix correctly.”

“I have no idea.” Kalyah shrugged. “They must have some machine that does it. But I’m more worried about a machine that can freeze people in place.”

Nodding, Niae removed her fur lined thick pants and ran her hands over her smooth and powerful lilly white thighs. “My darlings were so terribly shaken by the experience. I do not know if my age or my power lightened the load of that magic. A sound that can make us lock up on a magical level. If it were based on our leylines, then why was dear Jonah not affected?” She wiped at her face. “Oh Goddess, it is too much to bear. The Order of Ash would be bad enough if they returned with the machines of the last war. We are not as unaware as the last time, but I fear we are not as ready as we think. Guns that shoot molten metal, paralyzing sounds, and counterfeit coins, all centered around my home of the last two centuries.” She held her cheeks.

Kalyah settled down beside the High elf, embracing her around her soft belly. “We’ll figure it all out, we know more than any of those Heroes, thanks to you.”

Niae brought her closer, setting her head on her bosom. “Yes, I will not allow them to tear apart my city and the surrounding land to get to those poor misguided bodies. The afflicted are in so much constant stress, I will not allow the Heroes to interfere.”