“Just stay away from them pixies.”
–quote from Igot Bayter, farmer, married to a newt.
-
Remembrance 10, 2497 AK, Radiant Empire, Cleft Isles, Greyport
Kaydence jolted awake, a muffled scream caught in her throat. Sweltering dampness enveloped her. Thick, fleshy ropes pinned her arms to her chest, and dry coils filled her mouth, suffocating her. Alarm pumped through her veins, and she almost struck at her attacker before the last threads of her nightmare finally unravelled.
She was not under attack. The dampness was her own sweat. Those were not ropes wrapped around her, but her mother’s arms and legs, while Annet’s curly hair pressed into her face.
Annet was a clingy sleeper. She must have slipped into the too-small bed they shared sometime during the night, after another late shift at the Bear. To Kaydence’s chagrin, the woman always managed to creep past her sharp senses, which should have caught any movement in their tiny home, even in her sleep. Though it often caused her distress, Kaydence had learned to accept it. She only hoped her nightmares had not disturbed her mother’s rest.
Heart still pounding, Kaydence turned aside and quietly coughed out a few stray hairs. Gently, she untangled herself from her mother’s embrace and slipped off the bed. The stone floor was like ice beneath her feet as she crossed their cluttered little cave. Dawn was still hours away, and only the faint glow of embers in the firepit kept the darkness at bay. She pulled off her nightclothes, crouched by a bucket, and began wiping herself down with the frigid water.
Outside, far below, dockworkers were already hard at it in the depths of the Split; echoes of their labour drifted up and through the window shutters. Most of the town had yet to rouse, still recuperating from yet another night of revelry. The Founder’s Festival lasted a fortnight; until its end, many businesses would stay closed in the mornings—and Annet would spend her afternoons at Naela’s, helping the old herbalist brew hangover cures.
It had been over a week since Kaydence’s infiltration of a necromancer’s drug-smuggling ship led to her brush with an undead inquisitor and the windmill incident. The dead boy’s funeral had been a sombre spot in this supposedly festive time. Annet had attended the ceremony. Kaydence had not. She sold some of the drug-related information to Edon, but it did not amount to much. By the following day, the Elusive Mer was gone, and no official record mentioned any ship of that name.
Her arm had mostly healed, though it still throbbed as she brought the wet cloth over tender spots. Looking back, she had acted far too rashly—sloppily—in both the fight and the fire. After nine years of relative peace, the sudden danger had thrown her off. But it was no excuse. She could only blame her own stupidity.
With a frustrated sigh, she set the bucket aside and dried off with a quick Fire spell. Her mending mana veins stung from it. That recovery was slower; overusing magic was a lot like pulling a muscle. She could still use it, but it was painful, and pushing too far could lead to permanent injuries.
Once dressed, Kaydence returned to her mother’s bedside. Annet stirred as if reacting to her presence, but Kaydence gently touched her mother’s forehead. “Sleep,” she whispered. A soft wave of Darkness flowed from her, settling Annet’s consciousness like ripples fading on a pond. Kaydence wished she had the power to grant peaceful dreams, but all she had to offer were horrible nightmares.
Hers were growing worse again.
Last week’s events had exhumed old memories—more so than the Festival usually did. They haunted her waking hours and brewed terror in her sleep. Worse still, a treacherous whisper had crept into her thoughts, reminding her how much she missed the thrill of action, of feeling like what she did mattered, of leaving her mark on the world—not watching idly as it drifted by her and she faded away.
On top of everything, an insidious certainty gnawed at her: Sarmin would talk. Any day now, her secret would spill out. Kaydence had always planned to leave before it was too late, before her presence brought disaster upon this family—but she kept delaying. Now, that choice risked being taken from her. Yet, instead of relief, a clawing anguish twisted her insides.
Kaydence brushed a few chestnut curls from her mother’s freckled face, her fingers lingering for a moment longer than needed. As she did every day, she sent out a gentle pulse of Life magic, quietly mending any hidden ailment and soothing the tiny strains caused by Annet’s hard-working days. It was the least she could do, yet far too small a reparation for stealing this wonderful, kindhearted woman’s chance at a normal daughter.
The world might spurn her mother, call her tainted, the woman who gave birth to a cursed child. Yet Annet had never given her daughter anything but love—a love Kaydence knew she could never deserve or hope to fully repay. “I’ll make it right. I swear,” Kaydence whispered, unsure if to the sleeping woman or to herself.
You made that promise before, an insidious voice reminded her—her own. A foul feeling tried to rise from her gut. She pushed it down.
This was different.
She would not make the same mistakes again.
Shaking off her lingering unease, Kaydence snuck out of their cliffside hole and onto the old quarry’s path, stepping into the last moon rays of the fading night. She only had a couple of hours to complete her errand—fetching the one resource she needed to start Sarmin’s training—and make it home before sunrise. Her sleeping spell would last about that long.
What did I get myself into? Sighing again, she conjured her Shadow Cloak, enhanced her legs with Life magic, and in moments, she was bounding up the cliff. She quickly cleared the edge of the Split and took to the rooftops, eyes sharp for any unwelcome company.
Since that night, Kaydence had not seen the local bloodthirsty inquisitor—not that she expected to. The Vampiress was likely preoccupied with breaking her partner out of the duke’s dungeon. The day after the fire, Duke Emeth Kroah had made a rare public appearance, grandly announcing the capture of the “nefarious mage behind the night’s sacrilegious attacks.” Kaydence doubted any Vampire could be subdued so easily; it had to be this “Gabriel,” the Air mage, whose aura she had also sensed near the explosion.
It was all speculation, of course. She had no solid proof that man worked for the Inquisition—personal disdain aside. If he were, he could have used his status to evade arrest; on the other hand, she suspected the duke did not even know the Inquisition was in town. It fit her inkling as to why the drug-smuggling necromancer could act so brazen right under the Guard’s nose.
The geas Kaydence had placed on Tanya might also explain the Vampiress’s absence. Still, all it did was prevent her from sharing information about her, and it was fairly weak at that, owing to a hasty casting.
Duke Kroah had further urged citizens to report any suspicious individual, and Kaydence had gotten dragged to the guardhouse thrice since then. The half-hearted interrogations felt more like harassment than real accusations, but she smelled another, even more unpleasant motive. As a minor, Kaydence needed her mother to bail her out, which gave that sleazy Flynt the perfect excuse to chat up Annet—likely the whole reason behind these repeated arrests.
Between the stress of potential discovery and enduring Flynt’s lecherous gazes towards her mother, Kaydence was almost looking forward to Sarmin’s magic lessons.
At least she might finally get to blow off some steam.
* * *
Kaydence crossed town unnoticed, vaulted over Greyport’s decrepit, vine-grown walls, and landed lightly on the other side. She sprinted across the open stretch between the city and the Grey Woods, then plunged among the giant ash trees and quickly rose to the skeletal canopy, wishing to avoid leaving a trail in the snow. Followers were unlikely, but stealth was a force of habit.
Her strides stretched long, swift and silent, jumping between branches and carrying her deeper into the woods. She was in a hurry, but not desperately so; her exact destination was still uncertain. However, Kaydence trusted in her mana sense to guide her. She shot past a series of rune-engraved cairns, and a subtle pressure in the air faded as she left the confines of Greyport’s protective wards—those that kept the worst of the forest creatures at bay.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
After a while without more change in the ambient mana, she grew ever-so-slightly concerned her objective might be further than anticipated. Eventually, the tangled branches grew too dense to navigate, forcing her to drop back to the forest floor.
She landed in a crouch, breath steady, ready to press on.
A trapdoor spider tall as a wolf exploded from its hidden burrow the moment Kaydence touched ground, leaping at her with a piercing shriek. The twisted monstrosity was bulbous, malformed, with over a dozen legs jutting from strange, unseemly angles. Kaydence barely slowed down. She rolled under the attack and drove her fist upward, smashing through black chitin into a gooey mess. Her fingers closed around a solid mass; she let loose a crude Fire spell. The creature was incinerated before it even registered the blow.
Pausing for the first time since leaving home, Kaydence lifted the lumpy crystal that remained in her grasp after the monster crumbled to ash. It was a vivid bruise-purple colour, looking more like flesh than mineral, and its rough, uneven surface pulsed faintly with warmth. But it was undeniably a crystal—a monster core, to be exact, a magical lithoid parasite that transformed its host into a ravenous, mana-craving mutant. Even now, Kaydence felt it feebly tugging at her magic, though the drain was fading fast as the core cooled down, unable to “survive” outside its host.
Two thousand, five hundred years, and still working perfectly as intended… Geniuses really are scary. She pocketed the core—it would be worth some pocket change on the black market—and quickly resumed her run. A few more monsters attacked her, and she destroyed them, keeping the cores, but for the most part, Kaydence was content to ignore the wildlife.
She leapt over a colony of slimes grazing placidly on the corpse of a giant beast. The inoffensive-looking red blobs had already picked the bones clean and started dissolving them to get to the marrow. A pack of dire wolves forced a slight detour; a three-eyed owl hooted indignantly when she startled it; one of the rocks she slid across shifted and revealed the head of an irate tunnelling tortoise. It spat stone pellets at her, but Kaydence dodged easily and kept running.
The monster attacks grew less frequent as Kaydence sensed her destination nearing. Something’s not right, she thought warily. She had expected more monsters the closer she got—not fewer. Usually, this meant a bigger threat had claimed the area, and the last thing she wanted was to waste time dealing with anything actually dangerous.
At last, a sharp spike in the ambient mana made her slow to a cautious walk. Up ahead, bright, shimmering lights pierced the pre-dawn gloom. They seeped through a ring of tall, jagged stones encircling a dip in the landscape, lush with moss, verdant vines, and conspicuously off-season flowers in bloom. The clearing in the dense giants offered a glimpse at the clearing sky above. The air tasted more alive here and prickled her tongue.
Approaching with wary steps, Kaydence began to pick up on high-pitched, giggling voices. She kept low to the ground, pressing herself against a mossy boulder, and peered over its edge.
Her lips curled in disgust.
The lack of monsters made more sense now.
Fairies.
A whole swarm of the little pests flitted around a glowing pond—Kaydence’s goal. They were everywhere: chattering, playing tag, dancing in the air, lounging on the luxuriant vegetation, or diving into the glistening waters.
Fairies were tricksters, shapeshifters, and masters of illusions. But they often appeared as small, androgynous figures made of iridescent light. Gossamer wings fluttered at their back, leaving trails of glittering dust in their wake, and their big, glossy eyes swirled with misty shimmers, void of iris or pupil. They had the intellect of adults but the wisdom of children, with an endless appetite for mischief—and enough magic to make it everyone else’s problem.
A single sprite posed little threat, but fairies rarely appeared alone—and provoking a swarm could be deadly. Uniquely, this race could link their mana pools together, unleashing terrible spells that defied all known principles of magic. In his youth, even Seifer had treaded carefully around them—until his own power grew into its own realm of insanity.
Maddeningly, fairies were also unpredictable in what might set them off. One moment, they would be giggling and tugging your hair; the next, you found yourself fleeing a firestorm or croaking as a transmorphed, warty toad, confused about your sudden craving for flies. The reason could be the gravest offence or a simple joke. Only they understood the difference, and they seemed blissfully oblivious to how fragile human bodies and minds could be.
Kaydence wanted nothing to do with them, but that was not an option unless she accepted to return empty-handed. Curses… The things I put up with for that brat. Taking a deep breath, she forced herself to drop her stealth and relax her grip on her mana, letting it flow just enough to be noticed before standing up and boldly stepping into the vale.
The laughter cut off abruptly.
Dozens of pupilless, irisless, glossy eyes turned to the intruder all at once.
Kaydence strolled purposefully toward the glowing pond, ignoring the prying stares. Two key rules applied when dealing with fairies: they despised deception, and acknowledging them only spurred greater mischief. The little pests thrived on attention. Displaying her power as a show of good faith and avoiding eye contact were Kaydence’s best chances to avoid conflict.
The silence lasted only a heartbeat before erupting in high-pitched chatter.
“It’s a Human!” “A Human?” “Is it a girl?” “Is it a boy?” “Too tall! Too tall!” “No wings.” “Poor thing.” “Young girl. Old soul.” “Bad soul.” “Evil soul.”
“Sad soul.”
Kaydence’s eye twitched, but she managed to stay impassive. The fairies still kept their distance; she might yet get away with this. Kneeling by the Spirit Pond, she pulled out the leather waterskin strapped to her belt.
After a moment’s hesitation, she dipped a finger into the glowing water and brought it to her lips. Void! Her eyes grew misty. Even a single droplet seared like white-hot metal. She quickly absorbed the surge of pure mana into her own reserves, leaving only a faint, numbing tingle on her tongue. Potent stuff. She coughed, satisfied. This would do nicely.
Ley lines—pathways of raw power—crisscrossed the underground in an intangible web. Myths likened them to the veins of Shu, the Earth God, whose body became the world itself in the Beginning. These ley lines usually flowed deep within the planet’s crust, causing the formation of mana crystals. However, in some places, they surfaced, creating strange environments that attracted magical creatures of all kinds. Monsters, in particular, were irresistibly drawn to these mana wells. But here, it seemed the pixies had thinned out the local monster population.
Greyport was built atop one such hotspot, which fueled its potent wards. Kaydence had gambled on finding a minor leak in the woods along the same lay line, and it had paid off.
She went to fill her waterskin.
Unfortunately, the fairies finally got tired of simply watching and gossiping from afar.
In an instant, they swarmed Kaydence. A flurry of giggles, babbles, and colourful sparkles exploded around her as tiny hands yanked her hair into tangled knots, loosened her shoelaces, and tugged her clothes in every direction, trying to drag her into the glowing water. Sharp little teeth nipped her ears and nose, and shimmering dust was thrown into her eyes. She tried to ignore the assault, keeping her focus on filling the leather container—but then she felt the swarm’s interest shift as several fairies peered curiously at what she was doing.
“Why is the Human taking the water?” one asked, prompting a heated debate.
“Can she?” “I think so.” “I think not!” “Is she a thief?” “Thief! Thief!” “Maybe she’s not a thief?” “The water is ours!” “Will it snow tomorrow?” “The magic is ours!” “Is it?” “I’m not sure it is.” “We only found it here.” “We found it!” “So it’s ours!” “Is it?” “It is!” “No, it’s not!”
“I like her eyes.” “Pretty eyes.” “Bloody eyes.”
“How much blood did they see?”
“Can we take them?” “I want them!” “I don’t.”
“A bargain for the water!”
“Oooh! Bargain!”
“Take them!” “Pull them out!” “Rip them out!” “Scoop them out!”
“Maybe just one?”
“Which one?”
“I’ll take the other!” A red fairy floated in close, reaching for Kaydence’s left eye, smiling an innocent grin full of needle-point teeth.
“Yeah, nope,” Kaydence huffed. A sudden Fire spell engulfed the incoming sprite. “I like my eyes where they are, thank you.” She quickly plugged the waterskin and stood. The swarm had frozen while the red fairy fell and writhed on the ground, ablaze and wailing.
“AAAAAH! It burns! It burns!”
Another fairy drifted over, head tilted in curiosity, lidless eyes wide and unblinking. “Does it?”
The red fairy stopped mid-scream, still blazing, and shrugged. “Eh. No.” They giggled, and the flames receded, forming a flaming dress around their body. “That’s just what Humans say when I set them on fire!”
“Oooooh! Acting!” another fairy cried with delight.
“Very good! Very good!” chimed a dozen more, clapping their tiny hands as though Kaydence’s retaliation was all part of some elaborate play. The red fairy bowed to the audience, launching a mess of cheers and demands.
“Do another one!” “Encore! Encore!” “Kiksi, do the Human freezing to death!” “No, Okiki, do the drowning one!” “Drowning! Drowning!” “I want a musical!” “Who brought snacks?”
“Hey!” The red fairy interrupted with a shout, “The young-old Human’s getting away!”
Crap. Kaydence winced, only halfway out of the vale, but she did not stop or look back. Instead, she picked up her pace, now actively running rather than sneaking.
“Human boy! Come back!” one shouted, though a chorus of other voices immediately contradicted them and each other.
“It’s a girl!” “No, it’s a boy!” “Is he?” “I decided!” “No, she’s not!” “Don’t run away in the middle of play!” “So rude!” “She stole our pretty water!” “Tasty water!” “Wet water!” “Water’s always wet, idiot!” “She attacked Sparki!”
“Vengeance!” The word rippled through the swarm, reprised by many overlapping voices, shrill, delighted, and gleefully sinister. “Vengeance!”
“Is vengeance wet?”
“Vengeance!”
“I like her eyes.”
“Vengeance!”
“How much blood is a wet vengeance?”
“Err… I don’t know.”
“Who cares? CHAAAAAAARGE!!”
All Hell broke loose.
“Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit!” Kaydence fled through the forest, swearing up a storm, clinging to the waterskin, and dodging a hail of sparkles and random energy bolts of every colour. A rainbow cloud of giggling fairies zipped after her, shrieking and blasting wild spells. Every time one got too close, Kaydence fended them off with a weak puff of fire. She had to restrain herself; hurting one of these little devils, even by accident, would only make the situation a thousand times worse.
She had a good run. However, eventually, sheer numbers and aerial superiority overwhelmed her. A stray spell hit her feet; she stumbled; her face hit the snow—and they were on her.
* * * * *