Neb ran through the night.
Running was not something she was familiar with, why should she be? Since the end of her first year of life, she had never needed to run, her wings had been more than sufficient to bear her anywhere she wished to go far faster than her legs could have ever managed, and even walking had been largely unnecessary. To be sure, there were times when etiquette required her to walk, but that had only been in the presence of those of higher rank than her, such as when she was amidst the Court of Summer.
Now she ran though, her youthful frame almost childish in size, but still managing to hurtle through the dark woods with the speed of a frightened animal. To run was her only option, the only choice left to her.
Neb was of the Fey, the old race also called fairies, elves, sprites and spirits, immortal beings that used magic as easily as mortals breathed the air. Beings that were beautiful in ways only the most exceptional of mankind could ever hope to be. She was of one of the old Houses, nobility amongst the Court and ranked highly enough that once the Path to the mortal realm opened once more she had been one of the first to be allowed through.
Though there had been many calls for a massed invasion as soon as the Paths had returned, the monarchs of the Court had been cautious. They had known that it had not only been the Fey that had regained access to the world of Man. It had been all the other realms as well. Gods, monsters, the High heavens and the Infernal Legions, all of them would be moving to claim some part of the mortal plane.
The monarchs of the Courts had known better than to throw themselves and their forces between the clashing juggernauts that would emerge in the wake of the Paths returning. But neither could they ignore the opportunities that their return offered, so they settled upon a middle path instead.
By comparison to the mortals the Fey were powerful and terrifying, but when held against the likes of the gods they were but rats beside wolves. To be sure, enough rats sufficiently provoked and acting in concert along with the element of surprise could bring down a wolf and strip its flesh all the way down to the bone, but the losses in such a battle would be grievous. The Courts of Summer and Winter were held in some respect by the various pantheons and immortal factions because of this.
A small number of Fey would be allowed to return to the mortal plane using the older and smaller Paths that were the province of the Fair Folk. Once in the world of humanity, each of them had the right to pursue their own goals, but when it came time to return to the plane of the Fey it was their duty to also bring back tribute for the court.
Only thirty of them had left, and as far as Neb knew seven of their number had already perished.
Dead, like she might soon be.
About her the trees seemed to be closing in, their branches whipping at her, twigs scratching, leaves blinding, roots tripping her. Were it not for her sight being keener than any mortals could ever have hoped to be, the darkness would have already had her careening into a tree or tripping over some fallen log. As it was, she was able to force herself onwards!
To stop was to die!
The thought repeated in her head again and again as her lungs struggled to draw more air into them, to keep up with the demands she was placing upon muscles that she’d never had to strain before. Pain bit into her back with every movement, as the torn and mutilated remnants of her wings shifted with her every step, but she paid it no heed, instead forcing herself onwards. Her once elegant dress, a garment made of unearthly silk and the furs of creatures bred and altered for the luxuriousness of their hides, was a ruin, torn by claws, stained by blood, dirtied by mud, but she didn’t care.
To stop was to die!
Her family had been one of many amongst the court, but they had managed to accumulate enough debts and favours that she had been able to secure a position among the first to be sent. It had been expensive, but she had been sure that it would be worth it. The mortal realm was rich in valuable resources, such as magic, reagents, and souls, but they had one thing in abundance that Neb craved above all else.
Children.
Like many of the immortal races, the fey had a low reproduction rate, meaning that even in a life that could be measured in centuries, if not millennia, a female Fey would only mother two or three children. Unfortunately, given the vicious nature of fey political manoeuvring those that didn’t emerge victorious tended to end up dead, so the attrition rate on the race was greater than the survival rate of their children.
In ancient times, back when they’d still had access to the realms of man, this had been even worse, the toll of keeping their territories secure exacting a high price from their numbers. A price that could not be easily sustained. As such they had developed a means to expand their numbers quickly, by adopting human children into their bloodlines, children that ceased to be human and instead became fey. It was a method that had worked, and the fey came to be feared as child thieves. They would take an unguarded baby and leave only a lesser fey or an enchanted doll in their place. These taken children were transformed, becoming fey themselves as losing all memories of ever having been anything else. They were then adopted and raised in their new households as full members. In some families, they had been treated as lesser, but it was soon learnt that the once-mortal were every bit as grudging, vindictive, and vicious as any pure-blooded fair one could ever hope to be. Those families quickly learnt it, to their cost.
Those children turned in this manner could also produce pure-blooded children of their own, and since it was the blood of the family they became a part of that was used to change them, this was viewed as a legitimate means to continue the bloodline. It was a way that had saved many an ancient lineage back in the old times after many of the pure-blooded heirs had been lost to either battle, intrigue and revenge.
Then the Path between the Planes had been closed and children were no longer free for the taking.
The courts had struggled to adapt, but the nature of the fey was to be every bit as cruel to their foes as they were loving to their families. Every action and reaction led to them losing more and more of their race, faster than new blood could be birthed by their weak fecundity. New laws of conduct had been invented, new rules governing what was and was not allowed in the pursuit of the interfamily feuds. Some of it had worked, some of it had failed. But in all, the only thing it had done was to slow the decline that seemed inevitable. By the time the Paths had returned the various races of the fey had been reduced to barely a half of the population they’d possessed when the Paths closed, and the figure would have been even lower were it not for the strict and wise governance of their monarchs.
Neb herself was the last daughter of her family, though once she’d possessed both a brother and a sister. Both had been lost to feuds with other families when she was young, but she still remembered their presence. For the fey, the bonds of family were all, and the loss of her siblings had been a scar that they had not recovered from.
So, she had sought to correct it, to find mortal infants that she could take and bring back to her home realm so that they could become her new siblings. She had chosen this corner of this continent because not only had it once been the territory that her people had been able to hold, but also because it was currently uncontested. The others that had come through with her had immediately set off for the new lands that had been colonized in the centuries since the closing of the Paths, desperate to see new lands and gather new power. Neb had thought she was being cunning, keeping to an area where she could move in secret, steal what she wanted and loot the ancient abandoned sites where the settlements of the fey had once been hidden.
There, she had been certain that she’d be able to locate caches of ancient weapons, magical tools, and lost reagents. It might have been millennia since they had been abandoned, but the magic in them should have been strong enough to preserve them for centuries more yet, and the concealment spells upon them would have ensured that no mortals would have stumbled across them. So they would have been ripe for harvest, a wealth of resources to be presented before her monarchs upon her return, and then her new siblings could have been changed and added to her family. It was a perfect plan, and she had been quietly working upon it since she had arrived.
She had already carefully observed a nearby mortal town and had selected the infants that she would take. They were two boys and a girl, each of them belonging to families that were either negligent or simply poor. Neb would be sure to leave gold in their place, a suitable payment for her future kin, as well as a declaration to this land that the fey had returned. All she’d needed to do was find the cache of artefacts she sought, and thanks to the information she'd been able to dig out of her family’s archive that had been the easy part.
Or so she had thought.
She could hear it behind her, the rustle of shifting leaves, the small snaps of twigs, the swish of air as it moved. How?! The question burned in her mind even as she struggled on, how could something so huge move so quietly?
“I’m sorry . . .”
The small mournful words carried to her ears despite how quietly they had been spoken. She felt the blood freeze in her veins as she realized just how close her pursuer must be for her to hear them so well. Fear gave her strength, and she forced herself on, putting on a burst of speed as she tried to reach the mortal town.
Would it follow her there? She didn’t think so, not since it seemed to be avoiding that area. She’d heard nothing of it in town when she’d been investigating. Oh, she had heard rumours of something in the woods, but since whatever it was had never seemed to come into the town she’d dismissed it as just that, a rumour and nothing more. But if it had been avoiding the town then there was a chance that it could offer safety if she could reach it!
“I’m so sorry . . .”
How was she to have known that something would have found the old store of magical artefacts before her? How could she have known that it would have already raided the stockpile of potent magic and-
A log caught her in the back of her knees, the force of the impact enough to take her legs out from under her and send her tumbling to the dirt and leaves of the forest floor.
“I . . . I can’t let you go though . . . I’m sorry . . . I just can’t!”
An ordinary mortal would have been broken by the fall, their bones and joints snapped by the forces of momentum and gravity working against them, but fey were a hardier breed. Even so, Neb had struck her head upon a stone as she came crashing down, and the impact was enough that it took her a few seconds to recover before she could scramble to try to regain her feet.
A few seconds too long.
“Why . . . ? Why did you have to come . . . ? I just wanted to be alone! So why . . . ?”
Rolling onto her wounded back she pushed herself backwards, trying to make more room even as she tried to get to her feet. She could see the thing that had been following her, though perhaps saying that she could see it was an exaggeration. Aside from the darkness of the forest at night, the creature that had been pursuing her was covered in a strange hazy distortion. As though she was seeing it through clouded or warped glass. She could see small details, but the complete picture of the thing was hidden from her. Though that was not any sort of comfort, what small details she could see were enough to chill her blood.
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The thing was large, easily bigger than a cart and the bulls that pulled it combined. Yet for all its size the creature moved through the forest and between the trees with a sinuous, almost liquid, smoothness. The strange combination between its silent motion and the vagueness of its form lent it an almost unreal quality, as though it were some sort of illusion that had attained substance. Neb was of the court of Summer, and so was no stranger to sights that would have left mortals gaping in disbelief, if not mentally broken. But this being before her terrified her in a way she’d never experienced before, not even in the heat of a duel to the death!
Part of it was the creature’s physical appearance, something that could never have come to pass in the natural world. Its hide was smooth and dark, maybe black, maybe red, in the shadows of the night it was impossible to tell. The main portion of the thing was composed of many long snaking limbs that glistened as though they were covered in some viscous substance, yet she knew from first-hand experience that they were dry as old paper. Some were short and thick, others longer and more dexterous. The inside of the longer ones were lined with rows of long and vicious fangs that would have been at home in one of those mechanical saw devices she had seen mortals use to cut down trees. The mass of limbs obscured the rest of the creature's body, the only other detail she could make out with any clarity was perhaps the most disturbing.
Atop the main mass there was the upper half of a person, their form half submerged within the flesh of the monster, as though they were trying to rise from the sticky water of a bog. The obscuring effect covered them, making it impossible to tell if the figure was male or female, how old they might be, or even if they were clothed or naked. The only hint was the voice that reached her, and even that was distorted to the point where she was unsure if it was masculine or feminine. However, there was no mistaking the anger that was starting to creep into the formerly mournful tone.
“Just . . . Just leave me alone! Is that too much?! Just leave me alone and I won’t get hungry!”
Even as the human portion of the creature continued to mutter their nonsensical words the longest of the tendrils were reaching out for the downed fey. She had no attention to spare for the words, instead, she scrambled onto her feet and tried to back away, only to find her retreat cut off by a sheer wall of dirt. That had not been there before, she was certain of it! But the pitted stone and crumbling dirt looked old, as though this was something that had been there for years, making her doubt her certainties.
Had she been fooled by an illusion, something concealing it from her sight even as she tried to escape? She, a member of the Summer Court? Or was it something else, a trick that she had not noticed, turning her around and sending her other than where she’d meant to go? Questions raced about in her skull, scattering her other thoughts, and as she fought to regain her composure those snake-like limbs slowly reached for her.
She knew how dangerous they were, after all, it had been them that had shredded her beautiful wings, reducing her to this pitiful ground-bound state. Her wings, though gossamer thin, had actually been as tough as woven steel. And those fang-lined tendrils had torn them apart as though they had been mere cobwebs! She’d tried to retaliate, tried to fight back, but her best efforts had been the ineffective efforts of a puppy against a fully-grown tiger.
So, she had run! She’d run as hard as she could, as far as she could, as fast as she could!
And it had done nothing but delay the inevitable.
No! The thought bubbled up inside her, firming her spine, putting fire in her belly. No! She wasn’t going to die like this, not in some wild backwater of the mortal realm at the fangs of some leftover abomination that had been squatting in the remains of her ancestor’s treasury!
Nab was a fey of the Summer Court, the faction of her race aligned with all the qualities of that season. Light, fire, life, growth, all of those and more were a part of the forces they drew upon. Nab possessed a natural alignment with plants and their growth, a talent she had honed. In the past, it had served her well, but in the face of this monster, it had been useless.
The blades and spears she’d made from leaves and twigs had done nothing, crumpling on the monster’s hide like paper against armour. Once or twice she had thought that she’d managed to inflict damage to the more slender limbs, but when she had looked again the wounds that it had taken her strongest floramancy to inflict were gone. Likewise, the shields that had saved her many times in the past were of no use, acting only as minor annoyances to the slashing and rending tendrils that ripped through them like some nightmare emerging from the night. She had been bested before, by older and more powerful members of the court, but the sheer savagery that this monster had displayed as it tried to get at her had sent her into a panic.
Even so, she still had a final weapon to use, a last resort to call upon. She’d not used it before because it was an . . . expensive magic to use, and doing so would instantly use up the seven decades worth of magic that she had been stockpiling within it. Still, it was better to use it trying to survive.
“ROT AND DIE!!!” She screamed at the monster, letting the force she had carefully contained within herself spill forth.
Unlike most fey with affinity to plants, she had been fortunate enough to be born with a secondary ‘hidden’ affinity, one that her family had kept carefully concealed and had educated her upon out of sight of all others. This affinity was for the poisons that plants developed as natural defences, and given the vicious and virulent venoms that the plants of the fey plane had evolved over the millennia of being exposed to magic this was a potent affinity to possess. For centuries now she had been perfecting the art of absorbing the nature of those poisons into her magic, then syphoning off a small part of her body's naturally generated magic, using it to cultivate those very poisons, and then condensing and storing it into a magical pearl that grew at the back of her throat. When she ruptured that pearl and exhaled the massive amount of pent-up poison . . . well, it had been her final resort for much of her life for a reason!
When she broke the pearl a tide of purple and green miasma roared out of her mouth, the venomous flood howling like the winds of a hurricane. Her magic prevented the released poison from finding its way down her throat, so the only means of escape was through her mouth. Had the fey not used magic to reinforce her flesh and bones then the force at which the toxic fog roared out would have shattered her jaw and torn the teeth from her skull. As it was she was glad that she had the wall of earth to her back, it kept her from being blown over by the force of her attack, now that she didn’t have her wings to grant her the flight needed to keep her balance.
The flood of miasma washed over the creature before her, the plants and insects about it blackening and shrivelling in place. Some of them even began to melt, the potency of the poison such that they broke down at a cellular level as though they had been sprayed with acid. Even the very soil seemed to rot, breaking down into little more than sand and sludge as the otherworldly poison of the fey annihilated all life within it, and even the remnant of life that had rotted were scoured as well.
Neb stared as she watched the desolation her attack was wreaking upon the woodland before her, and even though it was an action that was needed to save her life she could not help but feel a pang of pain. Fey like her were tied to growing things, to the plants in full bloom, to the trees thick with leaves at the height of the summer season. To see those same plants killed by her power was . . . unpleasant.
But this monster . . . such a creature she had no compunctions about melting it down to the bones and leaving nothing but blackened sludge of its flesh!
More than half of the venom contained in the pearl had been released now. Had she been able to she would have ceased the flow, sealed away what remained, but such was not possible. She had to wait until the flow exhausted itself, only then could begin the creation of a new pearl and begin to-
Her thoughts were cut off as she saw something impossible, a shape moving through the miasma of her poison!
NO! No, that couldn’t be possible! That poison was as inimical to life as she could have possibly made it! In the past she’d used it to melt fey champions, mighty warriors that represented entire family lines in disputes, down to nothing but muck and a few bone shards! How?! How could anything possibly be living through it and still live?!
“Not enough . . . not enough . . .” The words were spoken between deep panting breaths, and the fey found herself stunned by the absurdity of any living creature being able to breathe amidst that murk. “Did you think that it would be? Did you think that that I’d be out here if it was?! IT’S NOT ENOUGH TO END IT!!!”
The last was spoken in a roar as the monster continued to advance on her, drawing closer despite the hurricane-force winds beating upon it! She could see it now, see how her poison was eating away at it, opening up great swathes into gaping and weeping wounds. She could see those wounds darken and curdle at the edges, sickening and rotting in bare seconds until they were the type of mortified wounds that only the greatest of healing magic could ever hope to save. To all others, the only chance would have been to simply sever the poisoned limb and hope that the rest of the body could recover.
But not here, not with this abomination!
Even as her torrent of miasma ripped away at it, their flesh recovered, regrew, just as fast. Before her very eyes, she watched as muscles that had been dissolving into bile and puss suddenly regenerated into full health. Skin that had been on the verge of breaking apart instead firmed and grew revitalized.
It . . . it wasn’t stopping! Even though she was pouring enough poison to slay a city onto the monster with the force of a tornado, it wasn’t stopping!
Panic beyond anything the fey noble had ever experienced before burst up in her heart. This creature . . . it seemed to be on par with the mighty living engines of war created by the Summer Monarchs themselves. She could think of nothing else that could compare, not even the wild magic-warped beasts that inhabited the neutral lands between the Courts. This was like facing something out of a nightmare! Something that refused to die regardless of what she tried.
The torrent of poison was almost exhausted now, but Neb was now drawing further upon her reserves of magic, adding more to the remaining flow, and enhancing it further. The torrent redoubled, and even as she could feel her reserves beginning to dwindle, she pressed on regardless. This had to work! This had to work! This had to w-
A long tendril, one covered in wounds but still moving strongly, burst out of the haze of poison like some deep-sea serpent rising from a murky ocean. Before the fey could react the long limb as thick as her arm encircled her ankle and tightened, the fangs on its length biting deep into her flesh. The torrent of poison cut off in a strangled scream as the tendril flexed and dragged her from her feet, lifting her up into the air as though she weighed no more than an apple that had just been plucked from a tree. Blood sprayed out of her leg as the fangs savaged it, biting into her flesh and opening her veins to the air, but for all the pain it was causing her that was not the focus of her attention.
The mass of limbs that had obscured most of the monster’s form had pulled aside to reveal the maw of some abomination from a nightmare! There were no jaws, no teeth, just a deep black pit large enough to swallow her whole, the inside lined with a multitude of small mandibles, each of them tipped with small sharp claws. Her eyes pierced through the dark, letting her see all the details in crisp sharpness as she was dragged through the air towards it.
“Why?! Why did you have to come and disturb me?! I was safe, I was sleeping! Then you came and I got so HUNGRY!”
The tone was both wrathful and melancholic at once, but Neb paid it no mind. Instead, she was thrashing in place, trying to escape the limb that held her, uncaring of the way the fangs tore at her with her every movement. She’d abandoned her pride as a fey, she’d discarded her wisdom as a magic user. Terror, exhaustion, and despair had all combined to reduce her to the wild animal that lurked in the back of every fey’s mind
She didn’t want to die! She didn’t want to die! She didn’t want to die!
She was screaming now, though she had no idea what she was saying. Pleas, threats, offers, curses, it could have been any of them or all of them. Words spilt forth without her thoughts or choice, just wild verbalizations of a train of thought careening out of control.
Oh, Black Summer! She was only a few inches away from the maw now, she could smell its carrion stench, feel the wind of its breath, see the mandibles beginning to wriggle as though in eager anticipation of her being in their clutches!
Neb thrashed, her every free limb wildly swinging as she tried to free herself. Her whole body bucked about, throwing itself this way and that, uncaring of torn muscles or broken bones. And all the while she continued to scream, babble, and beg.
Her efforts had some result, but it wasn’t the one she wanted. More tendrils constricted around her, more fangs biting into her as the beast bound her beyond her ability to fight. It should have been agonizing, so many fangs cutting into her, but she was so flooded with fear, magic and desperation that the pain was a far-off thing, something she was distantly aware of but which had no impact upon her. How could it? There was no room in her mind for anything other than that gaping maw!
“I’m sorry, but you found me. I didn’t want you to, but you did! And now, this is all I can do for you, because I’m just so hungryyyyy!”
She heard the words, but she didn’t understand them. She felt the tendril that slipped around her neck, but she didn’t comprehend it. She sensed the fangs digging into her throat, slashing it open and letting her life’s blood spill forth, but there was no pain. All she was aware of was that the edges of her vision were going darker, the world fading away even as she was pushed into that maw.
Her last thought, just before the darkness took everything, was to be happy when the world went away and took the monster with it.
The last thing she heard, even as her thoughts ended, was a small and mournful; “I’m sorry.”