LATE THAT EVENING, ALLORY flitted into her cocoon. Tiny as she was, she carried herself with undeniable authority. Sweeping aside a white Faesilk hanging which had never been there before, she pinned her family with a ruthless, ravaging gaze.
“So, who’s teasing the runt now?”
They hung upon a large Semmish Spinner’s web, her Dadfae and Momfae and all six of her pupae-siblings. Each was wrapped like a fly in a cocoon of white spider silk. Not only were their bodies and wings inescapably trussed, but the silken bonds also bound their mouths shut. Making mewling sounds over their gags as the appalling majesty of their captor became apparent, their sapphire eyes pleaded with her to let them go.
Not before a smidgen of overdue torture.
Allory rubbed her hands together and then made a show of popping her knuckles one by one. Her family winced and whimpered at the sonic assault.
“So, where shall I start?” she sneered. “Eskan, you snivelling worm, remember how you used to pull me around by my wings when we were young, and that time you dangled me from the tarazin tree for half a day before they found me there? Well, I’m going to pull your wings now – I’ll pull them right off!”
Her voice boomed strangely, drawing a muffled scream of terror from her brofae.
What … is this a memory? a tiny voice protested in the back of her mind.
“Zhilmory, you call yourself my Momfae? You disgust me! Why did you never protect your littlest one? Why were you never there when I needed you? Why were you so pathetic, letting yourself be bullied by Dadfae? Why did you despise me and hate me so? Was it because I was your runt, the shame of the family? Well, see what I have become! I am strong! Powerful, even!” Her roar rocked her Momfae on the web. “And you will pay for what you did to me, that I promise you.”
Reaching out, she stroked her sisfae Narembi’s trembling, tear-stained cheek. “You see, not even death can keep you from my grasp. I will rip your soul out of eternity to serve me forever!”
Slowly, she sashayed down the line of her captives, lording her supremacy over them. Recollections crowded her febrile, aching mind. Every last word, insult, put-down and beating she had ever taken. All the times they had not stood up for her. Every beetle stuffed down her serami, the fake snake her brofae had slipped into her blankets one night, the time Amoran teased her with a small crimson jan spider, making her shriek and run to her Momfae, who had laughed it off and ordered her to stop making a fuss. Every cruel joke at her expense. Every snicker, wince and complaint at her nightmares.
Pausing last before her Dadfae, she sneered, “Jahruzan, you were always trying to act like such a manfae, bigger than every other warrior, but everyone saw through your act. They were always just indulging you. Inside, where it matters, you’ve always known how insignificant and pathetic you are and I’m here to tell you that everyone in our colony always knew it. Do you have any idea what you did to your family, you disgusting, bullying alcoholic, you Faeling abuser, you nauseating waste of good nectar?”
Her Dadfae broke down, weeping piteously.
She spat directly into his face. “I don’t want to hear it. I’ve got plans for you, you walking suggid!” He made begging noises around the gag. “I’m going to … pluck and shape your eyebrows!”
Eep? said her brain. Something’s not right here …
Jahruzan’s eyes flew wide. A thick terror-sweat pearled on his brow.
“Aye, and after I’m done beautifying those eyebrows, I’m going to style your hair just like a girlfae! And force you to wear a skirt!”
Really? That was a threat?
Apparently, it petrified him so much that silver blood began to trickle out of his nose in a spontaneous nosebleed.
Allory sneered in his face, “That’s right, you suggid-sucking miniature troll, although it would be an insult to any girlfae to make you one. So, I’ve a better idea. I’m going to stuff you up Monsteron Realm-Waster’s left nostril and he can use you for a nose wipe!”
Throwing back her head, she heard herself give a wild bray of evil laughter.
That was the moment the pinprick tip of Yaarah’s talon prodded her in the ribs. “Gnarrr! Allory Fae, my whiskers are not for knotting!”
* * * *
Dreadfully embarrassing. In all the pomp of her Allory the Meaniefae guise, she had managed not to sleepwalk, which might have been understandable and not her first time, but rather to sleep-knot Yaarah’s whiskers in fourteen different places. Tightly.
A sparkly paragon of evil genius.
The alleged genius spent the better part of an hour unpicking her wicked work and asking for forgiveness non-stop until the Felidragon’s snores assured her he had received her apologies with good grace. Allory reflected upon the dream and decided it had been just that – a dream, but an uncomfortable one which revealed more darksap than she had ever imagined might dwell within her. All creatures were said to have darksap thoughts and desires, but … that bit about plucking her Dadfae’s eyebrows?
Silly enough that she was able to dismiss it and sink into a restless sleep at last.
An overnight thunderstorm turned the shoulders of the road into a quagmire and flooded several of the bridges, however, making for slow progress the following day. Sodden, miserable travellers shambled uphill toward the fast-moving cart, reluctantly and with dully furious expressions stepping aside as Yaarah refused to reduce their speed. Allory eyed a wailing infant balefully. No sympathy for the green ones. Suggid-sucking slavers! The haggard mother begged from Ashueli; the Princess gave her a small ruby. The Scintillant had to turn away or she would have done or said something regrettable.
After rushing along a straight road for at least twenty miles that afternoon, the following day turned to hill climbing. This region boasted many mushroom villages surrounded by colourful fungus farms. Some stood in great tiered platters whole colonies of Miniature or Low Fae could have played upon, or the tall dome-topped type, or others in clusters and branches. Riotous colours made the land appear cheerful and fertile, but the many pinched faces and suspicious glances turned their way proclaimed the Marakusians’ fear. When Sabline led them to a campsite she and Ashueli had picked out for the night, both warriors advised against having a fire or drawing any undue attention to themselves.
Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!
Who wanted a cooking fire anyways, Allory carped to her sisfae. They had spent the entire afternoon talking with the other Scintillants, swapping harrowing stories. Allory had not expected that her own tale would elicit sympathy, but the account of how the Ripper Baboons had hunted her together with a touch of scar show-and-tell had her sisfae wiping away tears and the other Scintillants murmuring in commiseration. None had done well. Far from acting enamoured with the probable high price that most of a colony of Fae might achieve, the Marakusians had treated the Scintillants abysmally, denying them food, water, exercise or medical care. Izrimy’s left foot had been crushed during the battle, a detail Allory kicked herself for not noticing. When one flew most places, feet were not as important as for land-bound creatures; however, the bones had healed badly and she was in constant pain.
The other four Scintillants had fared even worse. Allory wished she knew what to do for them. They acted so withdrawn, their gaunt faces unable to crack a smile. Maybe what they needed most was care? The colourful Chameleons certainly had tenderness to spare, mothering their much smaller ‘cusfae’ – a Chameleon term for cousins – at every opportunity. Harzune developed a deft hand at shooting nectar down Zzuriel’s throat, but he proved less deft at restraining his poetic escapades, which the girlfae received graciously yet with the odd bemused twitch of a white eyebrow. He made certain that her bottle was placed in a suitable location each night, while Yaarah and their new Elven not-twin worked unceasingly on the issues related to her magic.
Those scholars could talk the hind leg off a Dragon.
Izrimy shared that it was their Dadfae who had invited a beating upon himself to distract their captors while she and several others made their escape. “He’s a hero,” she said. “He was tireless in keeping everyone’s spirits up and in searching for opportunities to escape – and you should have seen him fighting the slavers at our colony! He slew three Men on his own.”
There in the fight, I saw …
Nothing. Everything was as it should be.
“He certainly is a hero,” Allory agreed softly, yet something tasted odd in her mouth, just like that amsinthe nectar. “I want to show you what Scintillants can do. Do you think we could find a quiet spot for the six of us?”
She danced for her sisfae.
Inside the empty crate covered in a thick tarpaulin to prevent any hint of scintillance from escaping, Allory led her fellow Scintillants in her first-ever attempt to teach – well, to teach anyone anything. Not a terrible effort. It earned two slight smiles from the boyfae and tandem kisses upon the cheeks from them afterward – was that a jealous glower from a golden prowler there – and a slight but discernible instant of sparkle from her sisfae.
Izrimy’s delight was priceless. “I didn’t know I could do that! You –” she pressed her lips to Allory’s forehead between her antennae “– you are a gift, Allory Fae.”
Somebody might have been guilty of a touch of excess glittery tingling, whereupon her scattershot healing ability finally emerged and her sisfae’s foot yielded to restoration. Izrimy’s expression as the bones wriggled about painlessly in her foot and reshaped it to perfect wholeness!
A touch later, as she flitted toward Yaarah to speak with him, a familiar weight gripped her being. Allory gasped, “Oh no …”
At the same instant, Sabline winged down into the camp. “Everyone, get under cover! You have to see this.”
“Duck under cover to rush out and see it?” Ash sniped.
The Sabrefang yawned to show her fangs to best advantage. “No servants about to make up your mind for you, Highness?”
“No!”
“Oh, by my fires, what will you do?”
Ash said nothing, but the way her eyebrows drew down promised unspecified existential horrors.
* * * *
This time, Allory struggled and failed to lift the weight. By the time her companions had everything secured and the Chameleons had worked on turning them into just another patch of ground, she managed to tramp over to the lookout boulder behind which her companions lurked, leaving two-inch-deep footprints in the hard-packed dirt.
How did this even work? How could her muscles possibly lift a leg that could crack small rocks with its weight?
From just beyond the boulder the hillside dropped away steeply. The road wound away to their left, taking an easier but far longer route down to the green plains below. By the faint glow of a fading mid-evening dusk, the plain looked featureless but many of the mushrooms were bioluminescent, which meant that they could make out the dark forms flitting about above them. Dragons and Fire Raptors. The same toxic mix they had seen attacking the Giants in the Canyonlands.
Sabline hissed, “They came out of the storm, as best I could tell –”
“Aye or nay?” Ashueli interrupted, but mildly.
“Frrr-hssst, I spotted them too late,” the Felidragon snapped. “My inattention is unforgiveable. By the direction of their flight, I make it that they came from the storm front which, as you can clearly see, is now moving steadily closer. We will need to move faster to cross ahead of it. Help me to estimate its speed in relation to ours, Scholar Yaarah?”
“Yaarah, Sabline, Ashueli, Varzune and I,” Harzune said at once.
Xiximay cleared her throat.
“Dangerous omission there, brofae,” Varzune put in. “I mean, I know she blends in with the dark and all that –”
He said, “Varzune, now’s not the time. Xiximay, my mistake. Join us. We’ll pool the data.”
The Phoenix Fae rapped, “Do you have a problem with me?”
“Me?” Varzune said, clearly faking surprise. “Not at all. Calm down. Your hair’s like a beacon.”
“I am calm!”
Her hair promptly burst into flame. Clearly a beacon of serenity.
Varzune did not snigger, which might well have ended very badly indeed, but he was clearly thinking something because Xiximay made a disgusted sound in her throat before turning away as if to dismiss him from his very existence.
Shiver!
The combined Fire Raptor and Dragon force appeared to be working systematically across the well-populated plains. The logical flying pattern suggested a search operation, Yaarah muttered darkly, to which the Hazintwines agreed at once. Fresh kill? Something else?
Something … sparkly?
“Is that the city way in the distance?” Allory asked, pointing across the grassy mushroom-meadows. “Er … seven points anti-spinward of direct sundown, would you make it?”
“Close enough,” Harzune encouraged in just the right indulge-the-runt tone to inform Allory that her estimate was wildly inaccurate.
“Well, that’s not a swarm of giant fireflies,” Varzune chirped.
Xiximay shouldered him out of the way as she strode to Allory’s side. “Ignore the disrespect. Aye, that’s the city, alright. That’s where those two carts must be headed.”
“Suggids, keep your tattoos on, lady!” Varzune growled. He met the Phoenix’s glower with a smile meant to rile.
Allory sensed trouble. Incipient trouble, more to the point. Unlike Sabline and Ashueli, who appeared to have founded a relationship based on mutual smacking about the pointy earhole and regular insults, these two gravitated toward outright war.
“Good work on the directions, Sparkles,” Yaarah purred. “I’d estimate eleven points, myself –”
Harzune interrupted, “That’s of no consequence. If we ditched the cart, we could make a run for it – maybe an all-night run once those beasts move on. I’m thinking the older Elves and weaker Fae ride the lizards or fly with our Felidragons, if they’re willing. There’s a chance we might catch up with that pair of Slaver carts before they reach the city. If so, we –”
“Make some toast?” Ash suggested hopefully.
Xiximay snarled, “Toast? I’m in.”
“Maybe steal some fresh lizards there and keep right on going?” Yaarah put in, stroking his whiskers worriedly. Meeting Sabline’s gaze, however, made him clear his throat and square up his shoulders. “All I meant is that I’m not liking the speed of that storm front, mrrr-prrrt. It’s really picked up – plus, Allory agrees that it’s not merely a physical phenomenon. Some foul magic is driving that storm. We do not want to be in its way when it strikes the city, which is undoubtedly its aim.”
Allory had the oddest notion that all of her sparkles shuddered and rearranged themselves as one. Prickly, but oddly so. Like a magical itch one could never scratch.
An allergy to impending evil? Suggids!
The warriors put their heads together and came to a decision without needing any kind of vote. Unanimous. To dally was to die.