I'm still clinging to the wall near one of the small tunnels. It's my emergency escape, though my current opponent can probably follow me there.

The fairy Mira keeps hovering close enough to be intimidating. On our first meeting I didn't inspect her too closely due to the cat nearby distracting me. The first thing which makes her different are the flimsy, long, insect like wings sprouting from her back. I really mean sprouting as there seems to be no limbs or muscles involved. They're somewhat see-through and black, contrasting strongly with her almost white skin. There is a lot of skin visible since she isn't wearing anything to cover it, which is novel too. At least it makes her easy to identify as female. She doesn't have hair, which seems sensible to me, and pointed ears like the elf.

Without the cat, she isn't nearly as scary. It would just take one hit from a claw or even the sharp end of my tail to take her out. I blink with my secondary eyelids and slightly shift my position. My legs a little more under me will give me the leverage to launch at her with speed. It would take too much time to turn around to face her forwards, so the plan is to do so upside down and use whatever strike I can get on her to change my momentum for the landing.

If I can take her out, I'm certain I can escape from the cat in the small tunnels. The dungeon seems to be mostly passively involved, so only the elf could still be a problem, but I don't think he will be. One hit with my claws and my time here will be much easier.

She smiles again, close enough that I can see in her mouth the teeth of a predator. As she lazily drifts out of easy striking range, her whole posture challenges me to do it. It could be a bluff, but how to know for sure? My tail is twitching nervously back and forth while the stare at the fairy remains uninterrupted. Change of plans. If I can just hit one of the wings she'll come crashing down. Once on the ground I can finish her off.

"Come on," she almost hisses at me. "Do it!"

My legs shift a little more and I jump head first at her with my back towards the floor. As I move through the air my position starts to turn a bit, my body now vertical pointing at the floor, to bring my rear claws into play. As I expected, the fairy moves further out of range. Contracting my abdominal muscles to curl up, my tail swings towards her with all the strength my whole body can put behind it. I feel the moment of impact which hurts more than expected. Out of balance the landing goes badly, but I manage to right myself and turn around, ready to pounce on my prey.

Which isn't there. My eyes are drawn up, where the fairy is still flying and holding something looking a lot like the end of my tail, though it looks to be slowly dissolving into nothing. Since my tail-end hurts a lot, it seems likely. A quick check confirms it used to be part of me. Meanwhile the fairy is pointing a finger at me. Suddenly my head hurts as if I've been listening to Talkers for a week, but judging by the frown on her face something else was supposed to have happened. This is enough for me and I start to look for a way to run.

"Oh no you don't!" She sounds more entertained than angry, which doesn't make me feel any better. She moves a hand behind her and gestures as if she throws something. Almost instantly after I feel something slam into me and bowl me over. It sends me tumbling away until I reach the dead bug. When I hit the thing I feel something snap. Instead of stopping me I bounce off it, up into the air. The bounce has slowed my tumbling down enough for me to re-orient myself and my eyes lock on to the fairy again as she makes another throwing motion. Force hits me, slamming me side-first into the wall. More things break, but I don't feel like my life is in danger. At least not from internal injuries, the fairy is still there and she is definitely a danger to my life.

Or a life, since I'm summoned here and I think I don't really die if I die here, even though it still hurts. The question is, am I certain enough to test it against what is almost certainly magic. The answer is no. No I'm not. A part of me tells me I should be more amazed at this casual display of strange powers. Realizing it's also responsible for bringing me to so many places, this seems almost ordinary.

"You thought you had a chance against a fairy because I'm small?" She moves a hand from the top of her head slowly over her bare skin to her hips. With her hand on her hips she throws back her head and laughs, sounding genuinely amused. "Ridiculous! I'm a dungeon fairy in the dungeon that is my home." She giggles for a while before her face turns back to a frown. "The elf told me you would do something like this if given the chance. Your kind only obeys if they see others of their kind doing so. Sheep following sheep. Or you need to be cowed into submission very thoroughly. He told me 'if you need five, summon six and butcher the one you don't need as an example'. Too bad we don't have the resources for that right now, but this was also quite the catharsis. It's a good thing your kind heals fast, we can do it more than once per summon." The fairy closes her eyes, licks her lips and shivers, then she sighs.

While she is talking I pull myself up. My left rear limb is bent at a weird angle in two places and hurts a lot. There is barely any external bleeding. The other cracking sounds were probably ribs as well as my tail, which is now hanging limply below my butt and completely useless. There may be some internal damage, but I can still move on three limbs, so my eyes scan for a way to escape. None present itself as viable options right now.

Mira the fairy looks at me again and addresses me directly. "I'll be marking you. Every time you get summoned you're to go after the noxious dungeon scratchers, the bugs like the one you killed today. The small ones and the big ones. After about an hour we'll play a game of 'chase and run'. I chase, you run and hide. If I find you, we fight." She giggles happily at the thought. "It's been four hours since we summoned you, so we have twenty hours left. I suggest you make yourself useful with the small ones while you heal, but I expect you to tackle some bigger ones too. When the time is almost up, I'll come and find you and we'll play a bit. If I'm not happy with your work, I might get a little rough." She gives me another toothy smile. "Now hold still while I make the mark."

I freeze from where I'd been edging towards an escape. The previous mark had hurt, if that was what those Talkers did, it seemed reasonable to expect the same now. Averting my eyes as the fairy comes closer I await what comes next. A small spot of cold is felt on my back, then nothing.

"There, done. We'll be able to find you if we want to with that. You may grow into something good one day, and I expect you to remember how good we've been to you then. Off with you, back to work."

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By the movement of the air I feel it seems she flies away, but I don't dare to move just yet. That wasn't as bad as I expected it to be. I look around the little alcove everything happened in. The other bugs are out of sight by now, not that I could take one with just three limbs. There is no sign of Mira. I know now that this is what the elf, Tarvinder, meant with a name. Is it something you're supposed to get somewhere? My mind is grasping for anything to distract myself from the pain as I pull myself up the far wall towards one of the small tunnels.

Once inside I feel much less exposed. Especially injured, with other creatures being able to smell my blood, I felt constantly threatened. At least the fairy was right about one thing, I'm healing fast. There is no bleeding and the leg is strong enough to rest some weight on after a few hours, though one of the breaks didn't heal straight. I busy myself by squashing the small bugs that seem to congregate towards small hollows in the bends of the tunnels. After what happened I don't feel like eating, something which has not happened to me before, at least not for this long.

It's taken many hours and a trail of dead bugs, but I'm starting to get a feel for the place. The tunnels are not twisting randomly. Four are spiralling around the main tunnel, with side-tunnels connecting the main four with one another and with the main tunnel. Every so often there is a chamber in the main tunnel and the companion tunnels will connect to an alcove close to it. On several occasions there are offshoots at those chambers heading in different directions, up, down, sometimes doubling back and connecting with a previous branch and all in all making a mess of interconnecting tunnels both big and small.

I've gotten so used to the smell of 'dungeon', it comes as a shock when I run into a place which doesn't have it. One of the branches ends in a deep pit. From far down comes a vague musty smell, reminding me of the smell of decay and fungus back home. I've not been told I can not go there, but in my current state the descent would be difficult. There are a few other places like this.

I also encounter more monsters. Most are spiders, but there are some unfamiliar ones too. One looks like a lizard with black and grey colored skin. They wear clothes and use weapons and have sharp senses. They spot me, but ignore me. Another is an imp-like creature that hangs motionlessly on the ceiling, almost invisible unless it moves. I think it's an ambush hunter, but haven't seen one in action. There are a few rocky brutes wandering around which smell entirely of rock. I wonder if that is what an elemental is.

As I'm killing some more bugs I hear a very unwelcome sound. It's the voice of fairy Mari. I can't make out what it is since it's echoing through the smaller tunnel I'm in. It's time. I've prepared for this. I can do it. Throughout the places I've been to, I've been collecting the dead bugs in places, hoping it will stop her from going there. Not the bugs themselves, but their smell. Even if my own sense of smell isn't as offended by it, hers is, so I should use that. For the last few hours I've been killing some of the bigger bugs, though none as big as the one I tried the first time, and dragging them around the bigger tunnels. This is because I smell. Actually, I stink. Even my own sense of smell confirms it and it would be too easy to track me if I didn't stink up the whole place with dead bugs. As an added bonus, other creatures seem to avoid the areas with the dead big bugs, except for the spiders. Once I've tipped them over and opened up their underside, which is then the upside, they're more than happy to consume what's inside.

Her voice is sounding closer as I exit the smaller tunnel, cut across the main tunnel and enter the small tunnel on the other side. It has yet another side tunnel going diagonally downwards in a shortcut to a part of the main tunnel there which is closer to where I think she is now. I'm hoping she has passed there already when I get there, allowing me to evade for a bit longer. As I get to the lower junction, the ruse seems to have worked. Her voice, initially louder, fades away slowly. I managed to make out the words now, some of them. "Come out come out wherever you are." and "I'm coming for you" are repeated a few times alongside some humming, the meaning of which escaped me.

There is no illusion in my mind that I could ever escape her. If she wanted to, she could ask the dungeon to find me. She's doing this for her entertainment and I'm hers to play with. My tactic so far is to follow where she's already been, a tactic made easier by the noise she's constantly making. Scrambling from one tunnel exit on a wall to one on the ceiling I accidentally dislodge a larger piece of rock and the sound of it hitting the floor echoes loudly through the tunnels. The singing stops for a moment, then returns, heading this way. 

My choice is simple, try to run again or an ambush. Now I've stopped for a moment I can feel how tired I am. It's probably what caused me to dislodge the stone. Being so focused on running made me less aware of the state of my body. Ambush it is. Taking an example from the thing I saw clinging to the ceiling, it makes sense to position myself over the top of the smaller tunnel where her voice is approaching from. As it comes closer and closer I tense and ready myself for an all out attack.

It never happens. So focused on the sound, I am completely surprised when the fairy flies out much sooner than expected. As she passes under me my claw reflexively reaches out, but she dodges easily, twirls in the air and launches something at me. It hits me with a shock and all my muscles first cramp and then start to spasm out of control. Losing my grip on my position my head hits the floor first. As I come to a stop on my back in a small depression my limbs are still twitching and out of my control. The fairy floats into view above me, more of the same stuff she threw at me this time dancing between her hands. She looks happy.

"I like what you did to cover your trail, but your resistance to almost all magic is borderline cheating, you know? You shrugged off the charm like nothing, fire, acid and lightning resistant?" With that she unleashes some more of that 'lightning' on me. This time my breathing stops until I see spots dancing in front of me and my hearts are hammering in their places. As my vision clears the fairy is still floating above.

"And you even don't suffer from the cold unless it's extreme."

The temperature around me drops suddenly. I can almost feel the air moving towards Mari as a pinpoint of heat forms between her hands. Regaining some control over my limbs, it is still hard to move as the freezing cold makes me sluggish. Suddenly she drops the pinpoint of heat on top of me. Remembering the fire I felt before, I'm not terribly worried. When it hits me though, my almost frozen skin practically shatters, leaving only a thin layer to protect me from the heat. It hurts! It hurts so much! I can feel it going through the skin and touching one of my heart chambers, which stops beating and feeding my body with nutrients. For a while I wonder if it's going to burn through me, but just as suddenly it stops.

"Let that be a lesson, deep cold and high heat don't mix," she giggles.

I know I'm looking in her direction, but I don't see the fairy. My eyes barely register anything as I try to stop myself from passing out. Ancient instincts tell me how to survive with one damaged heart and I start to curl up and enter a trance while my body is frantically trying to repair itself. Instead of things going black as I lose consciousness, it is turning white as the summoning comes to an end.

Appearing in my cell I curl up in remembered pain. In front of me is Harijia, looking faintly amused. Her expression quickly turns concerned about something, then the pain at the back of my head hits me. That is the brand put there by the Talkers. Unable to think or move I can only stare as Harijia opens the cell door with a key and does something behind me. The pain is literally paralysing me, I can't even turn my head to see what she is doing. Something cool touches me and the pain flows away. Exhausted, I let myself fall down on the floor, just breathing for a while.

Harijia slithers into view. First I can only see the snake part, it takes some effort to direct my gaze high enough. Helpfully she lowers herself and speaks in a careful and neutral voice.

"I think I can answer some of your questions now."