Finvarra sat on his throne atop the trees, looking down upon the silent city square.

Of course, to even call it a city was flattery. Certainly, tens of thousands of true fairies and pixies called this city home, but compared to the hundreds of thousands, even millions that lived in the metropolises that Humans, Therianthropes, and Angels built, it paled in comparison. Even other fae were often more numerous.

It was only expected; by their very nature, the fair folk had never been particularly numerous. True fairies were born from flowers, conceived of magic and happenstance. They in turn could pair up and find love with each other, and in turn bring pixies into the world.

That was where it stopped.

Due to their ageless bodies True Fairies were far from fecund, but Pixies, to the last, were sterile.

It was only with dogged defense of their lands, and through valuing each and every one of its people, that they could find some small safety in numbers. With every square meter of flower field destroyed, every kidnapping, every life lost, those numbers slowly dwindled. There were fewer than a half million in all of Albion.

He couldn’t even check them without the system.

The day’s events weighed heavily on him. Every single loss was his failure as a Great Fairy, as their king. It was two in the morning, but he couldn’t bring himself to sleep now. It wasn’t right.

He noticed flicker. Two lights, one purple and one pink, flew up to him with speed.

“Rocket, Vera. What news have you?” he asked.

Vera bowed his head. “I’m happy to report no loss to the fields. Not one leaf lost.”

So, the good news first, then. Finvarra barely managed to avoid scoffing. Not one leaf lost? They’d lost nearly a million acres of flower fields to the underworld rift with no end in sight before a proper fucking miracle had brought them back! If only that had been true of his people, then he would have had cause to celebrate.

“And what of our casualties?” he asked, even-toned even though he wanted to scream.

Vera looked down. “We’re still searching, but… of our noncombatants, sixty reported missing, thirty dead, and seventeen wounded. Of our response unit, three reported missing, one hundred and eighty-three dead, forty wounded.”

His stomach lurched. Three hundred and forty of his people. Three hundred and forty times he’d failed. This event alone had wounded, kidnapped or killed enough fairies and pixies to wipe out an entire year’s births. “I see. If there is nothing else, then you are dismissed. Thank you, Vera, for the report.” He was honest in that. He was grateful for the report, just not its contents.

No, there was only one silver lining, however small. “And your report, Rocket? How fare the newblooms?” he asked.

Rocket nodded. “They are well, my king. I’ve tucked them both into bed. They tuckered themselves out talking about… well, a great deal, some of what Liandan proposed was beyond my understanding. I believe what they’ve told me to be of great import.”

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“Oh?” he asked. These two grew more perplexing by the hour.

Rocket told him of what she’d heard. That the end of the system came at the hands of its alleged creator, a powerful deity of space and time. How he told them that their future selves had fought with him in events that may never come to pass, and how he’d told them that they would have to help the world now that the system was gone, and how he’d ended the incursion with a twirl of a finger.

Finally, she told him of Liandan’s theories. How she believed they might still use magic. How animals, and perhaps spirits as well, were made up of countless tiny living things all working together to make a sum greater than their whole. How she thought they might combine that knowledge with magic to bring about new healing arts.

“Preposterous,” he muttered.

It certainly was on the face of it. The existence of gods was not in wide dispute. He himself had met three over the course of his life, and the other races claimed there to be even more, and even that there were those that utterly eclipsed the others in the sheer scale of their being. From what he was hearing, this was certainly one such being. The others used the system. This man created it, and then dismantled it in the blink of an eye.

Finvarra didn’t know whether to thank the Third or curse his name.

That such a being would pay attention to fairies not an hour old, however odd they may be, beggared belief.

And yet, he had witnessed it himself. He had seen the flames recede like a wave from the shore, sweeping the demonic incursion along with it, each moving backward unnaturally. Were it not for the corpses of both friend and foe left behind, there would be no evidence they’d ever been here at all.

All this had taken place mere minutes after the system snapped out of existence, just long enough for a short conversation.

No, this was no coincidence. His was a clever people, but no newbloom could have spun a tale that added up this cleanly with such limited information.

It was preposterous, yes, but it was true.

He stood up, planting his axe’s handle on the ground and leaning on it with both hands. “Rocket, I hereby assign you as the guardian of Belladonna and Liandan,” he decreed.

The archer blinked in surprise. “Wh- my king, what? I will do ask you ask, but why would you…”

“Several reasons. You were the first to give them shelter, you’re one of my deadliest warriors, and your mother plants are both poisonous.

“Most importantly, though, is because I trust you. There is too much happening around those two for me not to pay them any special attention. I don’t know what merit there is in their ideas, nor why they are so unusual, nor what their futures may hold, but we would be fools not to nurture these seedlings, and I would send my absolute best to do so.”

“I understand, my king. I will not fail you in this,” she said.

“If there is nothing further, Rocket, then you are dismissed.”

With that, Rocket curtsied, then took off toward the greenery. She sounded unsure to him, but that was to be expected. Watching after the young was a far different task than slaying the enemies of their kingdom, but he had faith that she would see it through like the good little soldier she was.

He would send others to assist her, but his intuition told him that it was better to let the twins become familiar with a single fairy for now.

The king’s eyes fell on his healer once more. “I take it you have something else to tell me, Vera?”

“Yes, my king,” he answered. “As you know, once night fell, we moved our wounded to the local hospital, but as we did, we noticed a therianthrope woman moving about the field. She seems to be caught in the Phantasm of Wandering, but she’s aware of it as well. We believe she’s trying to free herself from it rather than let it turn her around.”

Finvarra felt his blood boil. That a therianthrope should find herself so deep in their territory now, of all times, was suspect. “I shall deal with this personally,” he said through clenched teeth, hefting his axe up into his hands. He would find out what this intruder was here to do.

He was in no mood for mere pranks to deal with invaders. Not today. Not while Albion was vulnerable.

If this woman was there to take advantage of his people while they still reeled from their losses against the demons; to kidnap or pillage, torture or kill? Then she would soon wish that was all he would do to her in turn.