“Are you sure there are sprites? I would be a bit disappointed if we got all the way there and there were no sprites.” Anna huffed out.

“Yep, we’re still going in the right direction,” I told her.

“Ugh, will you stop doing that? It’s a bit frustrating.”

“I’m sure you can figure out a spell for this,” I half spoke, half chuckled out, “and besides, it’s fun.”

“I bet it is fun, I also bet you’re going to run into a tree, so for my sake, will you stop sprinting in circles while we walk?”

“Aww, but it’s fun,” I told her, dropping [Long Strider] after dipping down to my normal speed. I had tried to just drop it the first time and had ended up faceplanting, which had caused Anna to get worried. I felt a little bad for giving her a scare, but the thrill of running as fast as I could cut the legs out from under it.

There was something simple and fun in being able to run fast, pumping my legs to fly across the ground. Sure, it was useful for getting around, but if you were running just to get somewhere, that just wasn’t as fun.

“We’re close to the village now, I remember that tree there, have you ever seen a sprite village?”

“No, I haven’t, and hold on, you remember a tree? Not even I do that.”

“It’s easy if they're distinctive, look, it’s got that bump, it looks a little like a ram’s head,” I told her, pointing to the weird bump.

“Huh, it does look like a rams head. Spooky. So, what’s the deal with a sprite village? Are they like special somehow?”

“Well, they are really tiny, so they live in mushrooms, if you’ve ever seen a fairy ring, you’ve probably seen a village. All through, this one’s a bit bigger.”

“Fairy rings? I’ve seen a few but never-” Anna started to say but was cut off when we got in sight of the little clearing of the village.

She was cut off by the sound of a tiny voice, tiny but still loud enough to carry across the distance to use.

It wasn’t directed to us, though.

“More tall folk! Prepare for combat!” It squeaked in Kirish.

“ever… What was that?” Anna finished.

“Umm, I think that was a complication.” I told her, before calling out to the unseen sprite, “We mean no harm, fair Sprite.”

“That tall folk speak our tongue, brothers and sisters! What do ye think?” the voice called back, once again not directed at us but presumably at the other sprites.

There was some more mumbling, like when you were in a square, and people were talking, all of the voices overlay on top of one another.

I we stopped and waited for the reply.

If they were anything like the sprites of my age, they would be good-hearted, unless something really bad had happened, we would probably talk-

“Aye then, charge! Till the queen returns, give no quarter to the tall nor dead!” the voice called out.

A swarm of little white dots started to rise from around us, each the size of an ant but countless in number. A cloud of them started to fly toward us, little voices crying out in fury.

“Anna, I think we’re going to have to run,” I told her.

“I can see that.” She started.

I spun towards her, picked her up in a princess carry, and bolted away, [Long Strider] taking me from a walk to a run quite quickly.

The Sprites didn’t care that I was running away, however. I could hear their voices gaining on me, baying for a fight.

I clutched her tight to me and put my back into it, making sure to keep a good grip on her as I picked up speed.

Unfortunately, the trees stopped me from getting as fast as I could, I had to keep swerving around them, slowing down enough not to crash into a tree or slip but fast enough to outrun the sprites, who could weave around them much easier.

The voices all the while gained as I zigged and zagged around trees.

I got to an unfamiliar hill and ran up it, hitting the top before sliding a bit on my way down. It was steep, but I could get down it well enough. I partially slid and partially ran until my foot hit a tree root, and I tripped, falling on my ass and started to slide in earnest.

My feet kicked out as I started skidding down the hill, picking up speed, faster and faster as the hill sloped down and down.

I turned to look back and saw the cloud of sprites come over the hill like a plume of dust.

“Tree! Saphine, there’s a tree.”

I spun my head around.

There was indeed a tree, one too close for me to stop or slow myself down enough to get around it.

I reached out with my sense skills and reached out with my [Aura of Soil], loosening the ground to slow myself while keeping it compact by my foot so I could kick out with my legs and dig my heels in to angle myself away from the tree.

I managed to just skirt around the tree while I hurtled down the slope, but the distance I had gained from the sliding was shrinking again.

So, I compacted the soil to speed myself back up, pushing off the ground with one hand and my feet in a confusing manner.

Anna was freaking out in my arms, but all I could do was hold her tight to me, keep going, and give her something to do.

“Anna, tell me if something gets too close or if you have an idea,” I told her before turning back to look at the Sprites.

I could just make out one of them charging ahead of the swarm of screaming Sprites. It zipped behind me and lined itself up before it screamed, “[Charge!],” and the whole cloud started to pick up speed.

“Anna, I don’t suppose you have an idea to speed us up?” I asked.

“Not unless you want to hit the river so fast we die!” I shouted.

“What river?” I asked, turning back around.

Sure enough, just at the base of the hill, just visible under the canopy, was a river.

“Oh. That river.” I said matter of factly. As if had just noticed there were rain clouds or maybe a cow grazing ahead.

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My mind started spinning.

Death by a million stings behind me or getting splatted into a river ahead of me. I both needed to go faster and slower at the same time.

No, not at the same time, but one then the other.

I don’t think Sprites can swim, just like bugs… something about being too small or something, so if we get to the river, we’ll probably survive. But we need to stay ahead of the wall of angry stinging Sprites.

So. How do we go from very fast to slow quickly?

I kept watching the river approach as the buzzing battle cry came closer from behind. The tiny part in the back of my head that came up with plans started to spin up, one idea at a time.

How do go slow after go quick?

What go up, come down.

Can go fast up and come down slow?

“Anna, can you make a ramp?” I asked, my brain still puzzling out where I was going with this train of thought.

“Yes, I can, why?” She asked, obviously confused.

“Go fast up a ramp. It lets us go fast and not die.” I told her.

“Oh… That’s a good idea.”

I turned back around and was met with the terrifying sight of a wall of ant-sized people close enough to see, each with a tiny blade held in hand.

“Anna, if you can speed us up, now would be the time to do it,” I told her, trying to keep the panic out of my voice as I reached out and tried to get the grass and underbrush to part and let us through faster.

I watched the wall of sprites close while Anna reached out and cast a spell.

Wait, wasn’t there one ahead of the others?

“Uh [Tailwind], [Tailwind]!” Occurred at the same time as “[Courageous Dive]!”

I felt something slam onto my head as I watched the swarm fall behind as we sped up, it grabbed my hair and something tiny stabbed into the crown of my head.

“Ow, I said,” reaching up to swat the tiny thing off my head, only to be met with a tiny blade stabbing me again.

It wasn’t agonizing, the blade was tiny, like a sewing needle for the little thing to even hold it, but it still stung from landing with its skill, and it was still sharp.

“Stop that, you idiot, get off of me.”

“Nay, the tall folk have betrayed the pact! And ye folk have given us grave insult and stolen our queen, while I live, I shall fight. For the Queen!” it squeaked, swinging at my head.

It wasn’t particularly effective.

“We didn’t do anything to your queen, you git!” I told it.

I felt Anna cast, “[Shape Earth], [Earth Wall], [Shape Earth]!”

I turned back around and realized how quickly we were zooming toward the river.

How quickly?

Quickly.

We hit the ramp about a second after I whipped my arms back around Anna and got tossed up and into the canopy, arcing over the ground until, for a moment, we were weightless.

My back stung in the air, hitting the ramp had hurt, and I was fairly sure I had gotten some cuts from rocks at some point.

For a moment, we sat there in the air.

“Hold on, Anna!”

“I’m not exactly going to let go!”

We fell for a few seconds before we hit the water, plunging below the surface.

We hit the water flat on my back.

It was like getting slapped by a giant, it stung like nothing else, knocking my breath out as we hit the river.

But I was still awake.

That was a bit unfortunate for me because I could feel the water flooding into my lungs, which got me jerking instinctively as I started choking.

We started to zip down the river, carried by its current. I didn’t pay attention too much while I was drowning, but before everything went dark, Anna did something, and we got thrown up to the shore of the river.

Anna did something else, and I felt the water get pulled from my lungs.

I sucked down the air, the vignette of dark raced away from the corners of my eyes as I did, I managed to flop on my side before I started coughing my lungs out.

When I finally got enough air down, I rolled onto my back.

“Thanks, Anna, you saved me there.”

“No problem, I wasn’t much help there,” she said, walking over to look over me, “Are you hurt? Did you hit your head? Are you-”

“I’m ok, Anna. I’m good. Are you ok?” I told her.

She took a breath and started nodding, “I, yes, I am ok, I just sat there while you carried me, you were the one who took the brunt of sliding down the hill. I’m good.” She told me.

“I’m good too, although I’m soaked.” The sprite in my hair agreed.

***

The trip back to the cottage took a hot minute, but we got back, and I stored the Sprite under a cup while we got some tea ready.

We both stewed over the guest, we had talked it over and decided to interrogate them. They had done some really dumb stuff. If we had wanted to fight, we probably could have caused some major damage.

Well, Anna could have done major damage, I didn’t know any attack magic, but I could have swatted as if my life depended on it.

That and the queen bit had left the both of us wanting to know why a Sprites would go out of their way to attack us.

When the tea got done, we sat down and lifted the cup. Their wings were still wet and stopped them from flying, and they had fumbled their sword when we had hit the water.

The Sprite was slightly larger than the others, they stood half an inch tall bipedal, poofy white fluff and chitin covered them, and four tiny arms lay on their hips, their wings were not in sight, instead retracted into their shell.

“So,” Anna talked up first, “what reason did you have, what dumb idea gave you the idea to ruin our morning.” She said, getting straight to the point.

I did my best to look intimidating to help her out, Anna was too cute to scare people, at least in my opinion, but I was biased. Maybe Anna was scary, and I just couldn’t see it, either way, expressing herself was important, so I was all for it.

The sprite started to act cowed, they scratched their head with one hand, wrung two hands and covered their mouth with another.

“Well,” they said, “I was a bit hasty,” they said, raising their hands from their mouth and head in awkward surrender. “I hate to tell you, though, we were wronged by your folk, we were to be protected, and being wronged gets us in a bit of a tizzy.”

I translated for Anna because the sprite apparently could understand Anna but not speak the language.

“Do tell, how have we wronged you? Who did you treat with? I certainly didn’t know you were there. If Saphine here hadn’t passed your village, then I would have never realized there was a village, and I’ve lived here all my life.”

“We’ve called the valley our home for almost thirty generations! We have been living on the land granted us by the [lords] of the land and paying tithes when the sun is renewed and the frosts clear. Our Queens ave always honoured our pact! But our lands have been unprotected, our Queen stolen! We have been betrayed! By my honour as a [Queens Guard] as a [Lady] of the court, I must avenge her disappearance.” they said.

With each word, she got angrier, more indignant. Until the guilty tone had phased into a voice so passionate, it was almost magnetic. I translated for Anna again, trying to follow her tone to keep the message, which got her to chuckle at me. I was translating directly, squeak and all.

It gave me a warm feeling that almost messed up my monologue, but the Sprite clearly didn’t care for it.

The sprites were terminally courageous, all of them were noble-hearted. But I could get it, a Queen Sprite going missing was as bad if not worse for the sprites than a normal monarch disappearing, the queen was the mother of the entire place.

Eventually, a Princess would mature into another Queen, but they moved out before they were mature, it might take years, and with how prone to doing dumb stuff like charging a [Mage], they tended to get themselves killed right quick and die out.

I told Anna that, and she looked first at me and then at the Sprite.

“How are they still alive?”

“By living under the protection of others!” She indignantly raged at Anna.

“Stop that, Anna’s not to blame here.” I chastised.

“I’m well aware, you glowy-eyed freak, but people like you did, you walking corpse. Just looking at you makes me want to throttle you!” She said, continuing her tirade.

“I’m not undead, you overgrown vapid bug, piss right off with that.”

“I’m not a bug, you half-kin glowy-eyed, lying twit.”

“I think I like her,” I told Anna.

“Should I be worried about you running off with her?” She asked.

“I would never,” I told her, “I’m not that kind of girl, Deerfoxes are Monogamous.”

The Sprite gaged.

“Oh, shush you!” I bickered at the Sprite, “Now, you said that there were undead involved?”

“Aye half-kin, on my honour.”

“Anna, she’s saying undead did it.”

“Undead?” She asked.

“Yeah, she thinks I’m an undead, so probably an ensouled undead.”

“Oh?”

“I… feel a little obligated to help.”

“You don’t need to, it’s not all on your head, I could send a letter and get some [Hunters] out that way, probably.”

That just made me feel more obligated because I trusted them less than myself to fix something. I had a track record of not jumping people in their homes, and if they came across the village and they decided to repeat their actions, there probably wouldn’t be as much left of it as today.

I grimaced, and Anna picked up on it, no words needed, and raised her hand and placed it on mine.

“As long as you come back, I won’t stop you miss I’m going to save the valley.”

“I thought I was Saphine of the one name, what happened with that?”

“In my defense, only having one name is weird.”

“It’s not that weird.”

“It’s downright barbaric,” the Sprite countered, “I swear it by all three of mine.”

“Three names for someone so small? Well, what are they? It feels weird thinking of you as just a Sprite.”

“If you keep calling me short, it’ll be a grudge between us long-leg, my name’s Selliban Citritan Titania, you ogre, and don’t forget it.”

“Well, Selly, would you like help getting your queen back or not? Daylight’s burning, and I have to be home tonight, or the fog will rip me apart.”

“By the lords most high I ought to… Wait, you actually want to help?”

“Yes. I’m going to help,” I told the Sprite.

And hopefully, this time, I won’t die mid-fight and win from pure chance, I’ve been practicing, darn it, I want to see it pay off.