ALLORY CAME TO PERHAPS a few seconds later to find herself lying in darkness lit mostly by the Scintillant glow of her natural patterning. Harzune knelt beside her, slapping her cheek with laughably tender care.
“Allory. Allory Fae, wake up. You just saved my life.”
“Huh? Ooh, my head …”
“Never mind your granite cranium, you overstuffed clod of moss,” Ashueli snarled in full belligerent-warrior mode, “we all know exactly what you did – you nearly killed our Allory! And yourself. No more stupid rushes of blood to the head or I swear I will boil you in your own ancestors’ sap! We’ve a cart to catch and – unholy suggids, that’s cold!”
The Elven Princess snatched her hand away from that second layer of glass still encasing the white girlfae’s body. Ha, double-suggids with nectar on top! The girlfae appeared to be wearing a knee-length garment made of pure, opaque ice. White clearly being the theme, but in how many variations? Meantime, whipping off one of her forearm vambraces, the Elf employed it to gingerly gain a grip on the steaming bottle – steaming with extreme cold, Allory concluded belatedly, remembering how her breath had billowed out as white clouds at the Pixie volcano.
Best not to touch her exposed skin. That might end badly.
She warned Ash at once.
Another snarl nearby assured her that Sabline was also present, dealing with a couple of other prisoners who had been hidden inside the inmost tent. Elves, she heard, probably drugged up to the eyeballs. Had they succeeded in capturing all the prisoners?
Excellent result. Just in time to see if they could stay alive while executing their exceedingly cunning escape plan, which, even the wickedest Princess in the land had admitted, required oodles of luck plus lashings of extra luck slathered on top.
Plenty of choleric Dragons outside. Would they care about another squabble in the camp?
“Careful.” Harzune kicked away a ten-inch shard of glass before she could trip over it. “I had that embedded in my chest. It evidently helped that I happened to be sitting on a Scintillant Fae at the time. Thanks again for the rescue –”
“Our resident hero pulled it out all by himself,” Varzune said sarcastically. “Hurry up. We’ve a cart to catch. The others will be there already.”
“The others –”
“Seven Fae rescued,” he said, “plus this one here. Two Elves. Quick – Allory!”
Only eight? “Sorry. Exhausted.”
“Winning a battle singlehanded is a tough ask even for the doughtiest warrior,” Harzune said proudly, sweeping her off her feet despite a squeak of protest. “Remind me to ask you at a better time how you unerringly targeted every single one of our enemies, even over in the next tent room. Let us away!”
“Eep?”
Absolutely. No. Clue.
The Elf swapped hands with a hiss. “Meantime, this one is frostier than a tall mountain peak. Are you alright, girl?”
The girlfae shook her head.
Not much of a communicator, was she?
“Hurt?”
Headshake. Could it be the gag preventing her from making the slightest sound? Or, more likely, having deep-frozen vocal cords?
Varzune yelled, “Princess, go!”
Ashueli coiled and sprang upward in an astounding vertical leap as at least a dozen Faroon warriors swept into the tent from what seemed like every direction save the one that mattered, straight up. They chanted magic that sounded like the ‘stop to listen and you’ll suffer a horrible, lingering fate’ variety. Oh. Someone had slit a tidy hole in the tent fabric. Sabline burst free, using her fangs and hind legs to balance herself briefly before taking off, as she had a cloth-wrapped bundle tucked up beneath each of her fore-armpits. The Elf landed with a butterfly’s grace and ran nimbly along the tent roof before leaping out to the next. Between breaths, she vanished from sight as the Chameleons caught up with her. The Sable Sabrefang led them on a short, breakneck flight through the tents and almost slap into the side of a lizard-drawn cart with a Marakusian driver.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Oh! It’s Yaarah.
She would never have known. Great disguise.
“Down. Under the tarpaulin,” he hissed, tapping the lizards with a prod to keep them moving. “Keep it quiet, alright?”
They ducked beneath the musty, mildew-spotted brown cloth, finding spaces between the haphazardly piled sacks and crates of goods. Ashueli set the icy Fae down with a startled shake of her fingers. Following the interaction, Allory noticed that a tear extruded from the corners of the girlfae’s large, slanted Fae eyes, but they froze before reaching her cheeks. While the others spread out to find places to settle down, she approached the bottle. The mysterious prisoner was remarkably tall for a female Faerie, perhaps closing in on Harzune’s height, with that pure white hair braided back from her forehead in an unfamiliar, fetching style and a curvaceous build hinted at by the ice dress.
Allory swallowed a pang of jealousy. This white girlfae was magnificent, probably royalty among her kind. She felt so small beside her. So inadequate. So slender and runty and … less. A whole heap of suggid spit less.
Her hero would fall for this one and fall hard.
Sigh.
Yet the sombreness, the clouded grief of those dark eyes, no heart of hers could deny. Allory reached out. For the first time, the girl reacted not just with a headshake, but with a muffled cry and a violent attempt to avoid the touch – she jerked backward so hard, the bottle swayed and almost toppled.
Instinct drove her hands forward to essay a steadying catch.
Cold deeper than death speared into her body. For a second, pure white obscured Allory’s vision, a side-effect of frost that rimed her being from the sap of her bones to the chambers of her heart, but then her scintillance flared, causing the pain to abate and her vision to clear. The burst of radiance refracted briefly through into the girlfae, igniting patterns beneath her skin that reminded Allory of snowflakes, or perhaps sharply pointed fractals etched in gorgeous, infinitely recursive designs.
The terror occluding those black-in-black eyes faded into wonder, then puzzlement.
“You’re so cold,” Allory whispered.
The chin bobbed slightly. “Mmm-huh.”
First definite noise she had made. Crystal tears plinked off the bottle entrapping her body. Clearly, this one touch had undone her. Allory could imagine why.
“Lethally cold?”
Another nod.
“That’s a cruel fate.” Stupid, suggid-sucking jealousy! What was the matter with her? Furious with herself, Allory dusted the frosted tears off that pure white cheek. Her fingers stung, yet not enough to make her snatch them away. “I can’t imagine how dreadful this must be for you. I’m Allory, a Scintillant Fae. I –”
“Allory? Allory, is that you?”
She whirled in the air, her fluttering wingtips smacking the white girlfae’s face by accident. “Who’s – what – I know that voice … Izrimy! Oh my sap, it can’t be!” Shock imploded in her belly, causing her wingbeat to seize up. Allory skinned her bent knees in landing badly on the rough wooden base of the cart. She bounced up again. “I – Izrimy! Oh! How … what are you doing here?”
My sisfae! Oh, my sap’s going to explode! I must be dreaming …
Hurtling across a sack of grain, she threw herself upon her pupa-sisfae’s neck and hugged the breath out of her. “Izrimy!”
“Allory, oh my sweetsap, it really is you! Where did you spring from?”
A hand patted her shoulder absently.
“Izrimy, you’re alive! Well, I wanted to rescue you, and everyone else of course, so I left the Russet Jungles and I’ve just crossed the Giants’ Maze and made some friends along the way, as you can see.” She kissed her sisfae’s cheek repeatedly, hardly able to believe the scent of her, the actuality of her presence. “You look well.”
“Liar. I’m a wreck,” Izrimy sobbed for joy, hugging her back as hard as she could. Allory winced more for old time’s sake than for the actual level of pain. “I can’t tell you what an ordeal I’ve been through, but oh, what joy fizzes my sap to see you alive and well – you are well? You look wonderful! And so strong! You practically bent my ribs like Faesilk there. What happened to that sweet little Allory I left behind in the jungles?”
“I’m still your little sisfae.”
The battered face, grimy and haggard with untold suffering, smiled as if Izrimy barely remembered how. Gone, that sweet joy she used to show. Stolen, the light in her eyes. “Liar. Sweeter than nectar and still a terrible liar. Allory. Allory, Allory … I can see … you’ve changed – oh my sap, and how!” Izrimy bent to kiss her, but paused mid-buss to murmur, “A funky butterfly tattoo? What would our Momfae say? I found four other Scintillants after I escaped and we teamed up, but we were ambushed and captured almost at once. I should introduce you. They’re from the Inipsi-Ooka Jungles. No idea where that is.”
How a girlfae buzzed for bliss! Her wings would not stop quivering.
“More Scintillants?” she squeaked joyfully.
Meantime, Izrimy touched her arm with a wondering air. “Allory, by my sap, you’re … but you’re radiant! Momfae always said you had the magic, but this … it’s real scintillance, isn’t it?”
“Sparkly happiness, that’s all. I can’t believe I’ve found you!”
First of many, precious sisfae.