[https://i.imgur.com/VGCFMQy.png]
The woodland was quiet and still, the first few new leaves boldly poking out of trees.
Hildegard paid the forest no mind. Instead, her focus was on the two menhirs in front of her.
These were different from the ones that marked the location of the ruins Refenial had woke in. These looked wild and overgrown with moss and lichen. The stones, once cut deep, had long been worn away, making their carvings meaning hard to discern.
They were also a cool blue-grey, lacking the iron ore rust red of those menhirs.
She'd had a bad week. No, she'd had a bad month.
She'd relied on many rare artefacts and a wealth of obscurities collected from lifetimes worth of living. With those items, she'd reached the zenith of her power long after her magical edge was blunted with age.
She was in her magical prime again. Combined with those artefacts, she would have power enough to terrify her enemies, to terrify Griselda.
As her power had waned further and further, she'd reached a point where she had realized she lacked the strength to protect her treasures.
She had chosen instead to hide them across a multitude of locations, protected by secrecy to all but her closest confidants.
With her return, she'd expected to find most still as she'd left them untouched and whole.
Her expectations had not been met.
The list of suspects had been small, time making it smaller still. She'd narrowed it down to one name through blood and threats.
Her eyes narrowed angrily.
She casually conjured a plain iron dagger. There was nothing special about the weapon. There didn't need to be. It was no different than any dagger found in ten-thousand hands across the world.
She gently held it in the thick, magically enhanced glove she wore as protection over her beringed hand. To commit the act she was about to without protection would be a pointless folly.
She began to weave the spellform of one of the most complicated and advanced spells she knew. After an hour, she was satisfied with her creation.
Next, she began to fill it with mana. This took so much more than the spell she had used to destroy the village.
Magic flowed most easily when retelling a narrative truth of the universe, a fact well-known to those of magical scholarship.
All things drift towards entropy, that was a fundamental law of the universe. The spell that had destroyed the village was simply a dramatic retelling of that truth.
This spell, however, this spell was a perversion of the natural order, a direct denial of reality, at least it would be for the place she was about to step into.
The air glowed gently around her with sourceless light. Raw mana made visible in some small way. This strange trait of mana was only made manifest during the most incredible feats of magic or during duels between the greatest of immortals.
Sweat trickled down her brow as the strain took its toll, but she was too stubborn to stop, too determined. It had taken her days to track down one of the constantly shifting entrances to this place. She refused to step back, unsatisfied now she stood on the brink.
As the last of the mana locked into place, the spell resolved into the dagger. It looked no different than from before she'd begun, but the spell had worked, a piece of magic so audacious that it bordered on the mythic. She sagged, almost collapsing to the floor as the pressure of the work suddenly released.
She took a long breath and then straightened herself tall and proper, the spell wouldn't last long, and she didn't have the time to indulge the tiredness she felt from casting.
She stepped between the menhirs. As she did, she felt the dagger tug back in her hand, rejected by the fundamental laws of the reality on the other side. She pulled it through with unyielding determination, unwilling to let such laws hold her back.
[https://i.imgur.com/oMrGBK6.png]
She stepped out into a new plane of existence.
Around her was a tranquil forest. Rich golden light bathed the tall trees upon which leaves sat of every shade and form imaginable.
A gentle breeze caressed all as it passed, leaving a calming, soothing rustle of leaves.
The air was rich with an ineffable scent that sang of gentle autumn days, laughter with friends and happy memories of a childhood that she had never lived.
Nestled cosily beneath the trees was a marketplace stretching out deep into the forest. The stalls were brightly decorated with sheets of fabric, and every hue imaginable merged across the stalls in a mosaic of colour.
This was the Fae Marketplace.
Figures leisurely strolled or tended stalls throughout the place, slender and beautiful beings that walked with an incomprehensible grace that marked them out as Fae.
She tried to avoid taking their features in too closely, knowing full well that their beauty had driven more than one mortal insane.
Interspersed among them were other immortals of every imaginable form. Most commonly, monsters who had shed their desire for souls, but many were of stranger kin than monster.
As a mortal, she was an intruder here.
This was a place of immortals, few mortals ever stepped in here of their own free will, and it was said that the rare few who stepped out again only did so at the price of their free will.
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She could see a few humans and other mortals amongst the brightly coloured stalls, but at best, they were slaves. Most were simply cattle for monsters or objects of passing entertainment to be sold for an afternoon's amusement.
Hildegard gripped the dagger tightly in her hand and walked forwards, careful not to look down at it.
A Fae turned and noticed her as she approached. The joyful, predatory smile on its face as it saw her mortal nature turned to one of terror-induced madness as it saw the iron dagger in her hand.
It screamed and ran, shoving aside a large toad monster with no concern for either its or the monster's safety. Its fear of the weapon superseded all hint of even its survival instincts.
More immortals turned at the screaming. All seemed at least deeply shaken by the dagger, the Fae most deeply of all. Some fainted on the spot, others clawing and shoving with deadly, mindless fear at anything or anyone in their path, desperate to flee.
Hildegard let a hint of a smug smile onto her face.
To see immortals, beings who considered mortals like her as nothing more than insects beneath their feet, so broken by fear, brought a feeling of inescapable schadenfreude.
The lands of the Fae were a different reality. The Fae could easily step between the two nearly identical planes with their near-identical universal laws.
One glaring difference existed between the realm of man and the realm of Fae, though.
While iron was common and natural in the human plane, in the land of the Fae it was something antithetical to reality.
Under normal means, it was impossible to bring so much as a single shaving of iron into this world. With her magic, with her grand spell, she had, for a short time, made a madness-inducing impossibility manifest.
This simple dagger brought into this realm was a thing of unnatural abomination. Anyone who looked upon it would know this on a level deeper than even their basest instincts. It was wrong in a way that could challenge even the sanest of minds.
The Fae, as creatures born of this realm, were the worst affected by this abomination of iron, though any who looked at the dagger while it resided in this reality risked their sanity.
Hildegard made sure to walk with an unhurried pace through the marketplace, glancing at stools and their wares.
She picked up a strange yellow fruit from one stall biting experimentally into it, not finding its sour, sharp taste to her liking; she dropped it to the forest floor.
A few stalls down, she picked up a ring, examining it closely before putting it in her pocket.
It had been a long time since she'd been active, a long time since her retirement, and even immortals might forget in time.
She was back now, and she'd make sure to take this moment to make a point, to remind the immortals of the mortal they had so feared only a few centuries before.
She had to make it clear she had power and that any immortal would be wise not to tempt her to use it.
After a while, she felt her point was made, and she approached a large white tent. She knew her target was in there. It was time to get answers.
She pulled back the flap and stepped in.
[https://i.imgur.com/oMrGBK6.png]
The inside was spacious and well-lit with tiny golden braziers that hung around its ceiling, the floor was carpeted with the soft hides of rare monsters, and the air was rich with a gentle aroma of a spice that even Hildegard, with her ancient lifespan, couldn't identify.
At the centre, sitting on a golden chair, was a man leaning forwards on a simple black walking cane.
He wore thigh-length boots carved with countless scriptic markings and was dressed in simple black trousers and a white shirt that hung half open.
A long mane of ginger hair was tied into a ponytail behind him. A plain white scarf was tied around his eyes to stop him from accidentally glancing at the dagger.
On either side of him stood two exceptionally beautiful human women. One held a golden jug and goblet, the other a bowl filled with strange fruit that seemed to glow faintly with a warm sunny light.
Both women also wore white blindfolds, and while they were dressed in the technical sense, neither their clothes nor their poses left anything to the imagination.
"Hildy!" The man said warmly as he smiled wider than any human could, revealing his feline teeth.
"Puss." Hildegard replied flatly.
"Why it is simply delightful to see you." He chuckled, gesturing to his blindfold. "So to speak, of course."
"You will return what you stole."
"Hildy, dear sweet little Hildy, all business and no fun, Hildy. Though I must say, you do know how to make an entrance. I don't think I've ever heard of anyone ever having the guts to bring iron into the Fae Marketplace and a mortal no less."
"Where are they? I'm in no mood for your foppery."
Puss leaned back in his chair, "Come now, it's been centuries. You come and visit your old friend Puss after all these years, and there's no 'hello' no 'how've you been' just demands."
Hildegard regarded the man coldly. "Hello, Puss, how've you been? Me? I'm tracking down the person that stole my stuff, and I'm about to find out what happens to someone when you stab them with an iron dagger while in the Fae lands."
Puss leaned forwards, resting his head and hands on top of the cane, "Reaaaaaly? But then you'd never find your stuff."
"If I don't get my stuff back, I'll do the next best thing and make an example out of the one who stole from me." Hildegard said in exhasperation.
Puss gave a wounded expression, "does our friendship truly mean nothing to you?"
Hildegard snorted in amusement." friendship? Where were you when I was dying? Well, I know now, off robbing me blind."
"I made you laugh. Perhaps there is hope for your forgiving me yet. As for your treasure, I was merely..." Puss gesticulated as if looking for the right word. "Keeping it safe for your inevitable return."
Hildegard couldn't resist smiling at the blatant lie.
"And now a smile, my, I'm going to start thinking you've gone soft." The blindfolded monster said.
"So if you were keeping it safe, where is it?"
"Somewhere safe, of course. Give me two weeks, and I will make sure it is all returned to you. You have my word as a gentleman."
"You're no gentleman. One week."
"No, wouldn't things be terribly dull if I were? Ten days."
"Seven."
"Alas, I cannot go lower than ten, any less, and I'd risk breaking my word, and I do so hate to disappoint."
"Fine, but if it's not returned, then I will kill you."
Puss sat up straight, slowly stretching, "Good, now that ugly business is concluded, please do stay. I do so love your company."
"No. I've got no time for your stupidity and games. Ten days." Hildegard said, turning and leaving the tent.
Puss waited a few moments until he was sure that Hildegard was far enough away and removed his blindfold.
[https://i.imgur.com/oMrGBK6.png]
"Well, this just keeps getting more and more amusing. If I didn't know better, I'd have thought you'd planned this." He said to the air.
A figure stepped out from nowhere, suddenly present in the room. They wore a long hooded brown cloak that covered them right down to their feet, leaving no part of them visible except for their face, which was covered with a mask.
A winding spiral was crudely carved on the white clay mask, the two small eye holes the only sign of a face.
"She seemed mad. I thought she might kill you." the figure said in a voice that was rendered wholly toneless and without character through magical means.
"What, little Hildy? Pshaw, she'll kill when she has to, but she's too softhearted that one. You though, if she finds out you're the one who keeps messing with her apprentice and sending those monsters, she'll kill you and not think twice about it."
"She'd have to catch me first. The boy is unexpected. I only intended the death of the boy as a means to wound Griselda. Now look where we are. The spiral is, as always, unexpected in its twists and turns. He somehow managed to bring Hildegard back from the brink. I couldn't have done that, and I know you couldn't have either."
"Hmmm," Puss said non-committedly.
"It makes me want to push him more. Just yesterday, he even killed a pig monster that had advanced to talking. He managed that while still only being level two in systemic magic."
Puss looked up at the figure. "Fascinating. I might just have to pay the boy a little visit once I've paid back Hildy if he's as interesting as you say."
"I doubt she'll like that, Griselda either, not that I care what she wants."
"Well, that's half the fun of it," Puss said, pulling a cat-toothed grin.
[https://i.imgur.com/3vZaHAB.png]