ALLORY SHOT TOWARD THE Princess, not exactly helping matters by trying to knock her out of the way as a two-legged lizard lunged at her from nowhere. The Fae spun aside from a grey snout that tried to snip her wings clean off her back, realising from the roars and snarls all about her that there had to be more of these upright-walking lizards, perhaps as many as a dozen. Where had they sprung from?

Ashueli shot away to her left with a sharp, focussed cry, only to rebound at twice the speed, her blades whirling so fast about her body they became almost invisible to the naked eye, a silver-armoured blur. She split the lizards’ advance, cutting the knees out from beneath one as it surged toward Yaarah’s flank, spitting another five times in succession in the chest and kicking a third beneath the jaw as it tried to make an early luncheon out of one of Harzune’s warriors.

The Faerie rallied with battle cries of their own, led by Harzune, whose weapon of choice was a spiked hammer. The others wielded the more common Faeswords and used lightweight oval shields in ways, frankly, she had never seen Scintillant warriors achieve. Incredible teamwork. Shields were not merely for protection, but to skate through the air upon, bolster or boost one another into an attack, or to jam a lizard-mouth in the act of trying to sever someone’s orange foot. Distraction flowed flawlessly into ambush, with teams of Chameleons combing fluidly to take out creatures far larger and stronger than they were.

Ashueli hurtled around the edges, running horizontally on rock at times, fighting upside-down, gutting a lizard with a no-look stab behind her back. Sabline thundered down a cliff face, driving three of the lizards before her. Her heavy landing crushed them into a wheezing heap. She sprayed fire left and right, combining perfectly with Yaarah as their scorching orange-white streams of Dragon fire roasted the hides of multiple luckless lizards. The Golden Purrmaine bellowed in pain as a lizard bit his left buttock deeply. Their jaw gape was incredible, nearly one hundred and sixty degrees. In a blur, Yaarah reached between his own legs to slit the beast’s throat in a move Allory recognised from Sabline’s armoury of nasty battle tricks.

Ten seconds later, Allory was still whirling about trying to figure out how to respond, when she realised that the battle was over. Right. Useful as ever. Yaarah finished a lizard writhing on the ground near his paws. Harzune applied his hammer-spike to the head of another and pulled it out with a sickening squelch.

Varzune said, “Well, that was a choice of campsite!”

His brofae said, “You were the one who –”

“I know!” He swore beneath his breath, stamping his foot in self-directed fury. “I missed that – I don’t know how – but I’m sorry, alright? Suggids!”

Sabline snarled, “Frrr-GNARR!! We all missed the enemy, there’s more than one nose around here. Everyone alright? Injured parties, give us a growl. We didn’t lose any?”

No, but their group had sustained several nasty injuries, including an arm so badly mangled, the end of the female warrior’s left biceps dangled past her elbow. White bone showed clearly in the awful wound, while her triceps had also been shredded by hungry teeth. So much blood! As Allory approached, the woman’s husfae was trying to tie off the arteries above the wound while comforting her.

“Best have the arm off,” she choked out. “Oh, my sap … oh Galzune …”

He replied tenderly, “I know, my sweetsap. I know. We’ll head back to the colony quick as a flick. You’ll be alright.”

Allory trembled so violently, she had to land to steady herself. Visions of her dead siblings, of her dead colony friends and family, flashed before her eyes. One thought played in her mind. If resurrection was possible, what did death even mean?

The woman slumped, her eyes shuttering. Natural orange had never been so pale.

Surely this Allory Fae was far too weak to even contemplate what she was – no. Just, no! Act first. Dwell upon the consequences later. She hated this cowardice that welled up so easily when all she wanted to do was the right thing, to choose to act.

Somewhere in the background, she heard the warriors discussing how the lizards must have concealed several entrances to the dell with cunningly poised, woven branches and bushes before making their ambush from those narrow defiles. Too intelligent for their own good, knowing that potential prey might stop or camp here.

She whispered, “May I?”

The man’s eyes touched hers, ravaged with grief. “She – we only just married – three weeks ago.”

“I’ll be fine,” the girlfae whispered.

Her husfae said, “She’s lost too much blood –anything you can do, Allory Fae. Anything. Please, I beg you.”

She nodded timidly. “I’ll try … I’ll do my best.”

Not exactly brimming with confidence. Focussing inward, Allory said to herself, Ariavanae be mine. Please, please change the flow of this Fae’s destiny.

As ethereal as pollen drifting upon a breeze, a yearning Allory song rippled through reality, seeking a new path. A shiver of time’s reversal, a change, a chance. For the first time, she actively watched the patterning upon her arms and fingers come alive with a halo of otherworldly azure, a tiny reflection of Middlesun’s own glory that caused a fractal tracery of cosmic power to pulse beneath her skin, infinite echoes of a greater, as-yet-incomprehensible truth. The azure sparkles quivered playfully before lifting free, creating shimmering haloes of light about her limbs and wings and antennae.

Stolen novel; please report.

My music is my own. I dance differently …

She gazed first at her own hand in astonishment, wreathed as it was in perfect enchantment. Why did the sparkles not seek the wounded? It seemed that impetus was needed. Only when will and desire united, could she evoke the essence of ariavanae. How had this ability never manifested in her before, when other Scintillants demonstrated their magical gifts around the age of puberty?

“Let wholeness be reborn,” Allory murmured, gesturing toward her patient.

As the woman’s flesh, ripped and ruined, stirred before wondering eyes, Galzune could only wheeze like leaky bellows.

Gasps all around! Yaarah hushed the audience.

Leaning over her work with the utmost concentration, the Faerie healer took strips of muscle and sinew, blood vessels and tissue in her tiny hands and knit them back together, stroking the veins and arteries with her fingertips to encourage them to grow back was they ought; rejoicing in her labour, in the weaving of what was meant to be.

Time passed, meaningless.

At last, she lifted her blurred, tear-stained eyes to where Middlesun would be. Thank you. I … I only wish I knew more.

Galzune and his wife wept.

She heard Harzune whisper in awe, “Who is she?”

“A Scintillant,” Ashueli said.

“The Dryad of Durhelm Castle called her Allory Life-Weaver,” Yaarah offered. “This is what she does, mrrr-frrr.”

Allory smiled at her own toes, curling upon fresh grass. She would never look at life the same way again. Never. It was infinitely precious. Celebrated with tears born in her brokenness, yet somehow woven into a new tapestry.

Words came. She whispered, “Who I am is your servant. Friends, who’s next?”

Awed silence.

* * * *

“Oh! Chameleons!” Allory yelped. “I get it now.”

Harzune took possession of her left elbow as if he were made of magical glue. “What is it, lady most fair?”

When did I become ‘lady’ and not ‘that wimp?’

She said, “Er, well, this is probably going to sound a touch ridiculous, but I had been wondering how a group of colourful Fae, two Felidragons and a fugitive Elf –” Ash’s eyebrows shot skyward “– were planning to travel across that open area stuck to some friendly animals with which we don’t entirely blend in. But you’re called Chameleon Fae for a reason, right?”

Gravely, he said, “O beauteous one, even as the Scintillant Fae doth scintillate with spells of scintillating scintillation, we Chameleon Fae may be accused of a certain leaning toward – ah well, I fear I’ve run short of parts of speech in this poorly-chosen monologue, but it started on a fine flight path, right? Notable skills in chameleoning? A proclivity toward chameleonivity?”

Allory smiled at him with her eyes. “Is that so?”

Yaarah purred in amusement, raising a paw to lick it delicately as he stared over at Harzune with a fiery gaze agleam.

The Chameleon wriggled his antennae, left and then right.

Allory giggled on cue. When he was not being a complete stuffed shirt or tying random girls up in a misplaced prelude to trying to charm them into agreeing to marry him, Harzune really was quite the catch. Not her catch, sadly, but she had discovered a funny, sensitive and caring side to him, quite besides the heroic qualities that appeared to command the complete respect of his warriors. He had just now been checking up on each of the wounded whom she had treated earlier. He was … genuine.

Genuinely silly, but the more endearing for it.

He murmured, “We’re reputed to be respectable at disguise. Demonstration?”

“Please?”

Rising into the air, he clapped his hands sharply. “Warriors! Chameleon drill! In five … four, three, two, one … go!”

They scattered.

And changed. Each Faerie found a place and then promptly changed colour and texture to blend into their background. Flowers. Rocks. Petals. Water. Tree trunk. Within ten seconds, Allory found herself struggling to pick out any detail of the rascals, despite that fifty of them hid in plain sight.

This was how she had been ambushed, clearly. Sneaky-plus!

Ashueli chuckled richly, turning on her heel to survey the area, while Sabline gave a brief purr one could only interpret as approval.

Allory clapped her hands in delight. “How magical!”

Yaarah’s head next to her said in Harzune’s voice, “Not bad. Chammazune, wrong type of moss for this region.”

“Eep!” Allory yelped.

“Sorry, boss,” said the patch of moss. “I’ll get it right next time.”

“If you weren’t such an airhead, maybe,” said the tuffet of grass beside him.

“Uh, Yaarah – Harzune? I’m confused.”

“The real me is over here, frrr-hssst! I do not appreciate this mimicry one bit. I am one hundred percent original, I am,” the Felidragon said frostily, but grinned at the imposter. “You’re good!”

“Thanks,” said his head.

Ashueli said, “I’m not sure which is handsomer, however.”

“The real him is hot stuff,” Allory chuckled.

“Excuse me, frrr-prrrt! That’s rather spicy talk among Felidragons,” the scholar protested.

“Oh,” Sabline purred, stalking over to him with a lithe flexion of her body, “I can always tell the real you. Watch this.” She flicked him with her tail. “Spicy and –”

Kerack!

He leaped to his paws, howling, “Mrrwll!”

The Sabrefang puffed her fire lightly along his flank, making him gleam like molten gold. “Hot stuff, as rightly claimed. So prrr-etty.”

Yaarah smoothed his fur scrupulously. “Pretty? Gnarr-frrr!”

“That’s certainly one way to deal with the fleas,” the Princess suggested.

He fixed her with a filthy glare. “I’ll give you a free royal hairstyling, mrrr-grrr! Customers say I deliver cracking results.”

“Time for this Elf to make like lightning and bolt,” she shot back, never one to shy from any form of verbal or physical combat. “Alright, Varzune, you can stop trying to sneak up on me now. I’m never playing hide-and-seek with any of you jolly Chameleons, mind.”

“Sneaky Elf,” he complained, materialising a foot from her right leg.

“Handsome boyfae,” she flirted.

“Mmm, the view from down here is a whole world full of elegant Elven legs,” he flirted straight back. Ash mimed a coy sidelong glance. Darting up into the air, he frolicked about her, chuckling, “Then again, spectacular view from here too … and here … picturesque … wing-buzzingly splendid … I say!” He fanned his face as if he had been attacked by a million gnats. “Attack of the vapours – how terrible. I do believe I’ve just turned into Harzune!”

His audience fell over laughing.

“Vapours are what you’re spouting over there, brofae,” the hero snorted, turning a rather darker shade of orange at all the sniggering at his expense. “Now, Allory Fae is right. We do need to work out how to bet to conceal our larger companions. Should we succeed, this technique would be more than useful on the Gasheni Road, the Bridge of Dreams and most certainly, the Gate itself.”

Turning one of his devastating smiles upon Ashueli, he said, “One should e’er baulk from hiding such splendour beneath the beneficent gaze of our Middlesun, o peerless Princess. Prithee forgive a poor soul such crass contemplations.”

Colouring noticeably, especially since Sabline gave a sardonic chuckle, the Elf snorted, “Alright, Your Most Excellent Handsomeness, stop monopolising all the good oxygen around here. Let’s get to work.”