“Are you going to live Griff?” Joel asked in a worried tone that distracted Dahlia from her jumping up and down on Mr. Disapoofer’s head.

The large man with the big axe looked very pale.

“Bram had the potions,” Griff said. The big man sounded sad, but resigned to a grim fate. His wounds seemed to hurt him a great deal. Blood still trickled through his makeshift bandages to splatter the ground.

“I told you leaving town without Jessa was suicide,” Zorah told Joel and Griff, while she walked over to stab the hyena-men through the throats to make sure they were dead. She also did a quick search of their bodies, but Dahlia wasn’t sure what Zorah might be looking for. The archer’s lips were pressed into a thin line, and she avoided looking at Griff.

“Your bleeding is going to catch the attention of another pack, Griff. There’s no way we’re getting back to Riverwatch alive with you bleeding like that.” Joel declared. The Half-elf kept scanning the surroundings while he rocked back and forth on his heels. Dahlia found it interesting, the way the Half-Elf kept looking at his swords and Griff. What might she be about to witness?

“Are you okay, Mister?” Dahlia asked the bleeding, pale man.

Griff looked shocked to see the fairy, as if his mind had already blanked out their savior. The look of desperate hope that entered his eyes as he looked at Dahlia offset the insult to her ego of being forgotten.

“Lass, I don’t suppose you could heal an old forester?” Griff coughed. He’d lost a lot of blood. Dahlia was surprised he was still alive, let alone able to talk. The pungent, corrupted scent of the Hyena-men’s blood failed to cover up the brighter, copper scent of human blood.

“Mm. I know a spell,” Dahlia demurred. “You’ll owe me!” Dahlia cried happily. When the mortal didn’t try to negotiate, Dahlia’s smile grew larger by the second until she couldn’t possibly smile any wider. The old, worn and wounded forester seemed to mistake her smile for desire to help, or concern, and not realize the source of her joy was in someone giving her anything she wanted down the road instead of nailing down a price now.

Zorah and Joel both winced when the fairy mentioned a debt, but Griff hesitated only long enough to give Zorah a desperate look. The woman shook her head to indicate no healing items had been scavenged off the corpses.

“Aye, I’ll owe you a favor, lass.” Griff agreed somberly.

♫”Soft as a breath in midnight hush,

Banish fear and earthly rush,

From hidden realms your magic beams,

Fill our hearts with healing streams.

In starlit glades, your whispers rise,

Mending sorrow with gentle sighs,

Scars unbound, old pains undone now,

We stand renewed beneath the bough.

Whisper forth, bright mote of life,

Cradle souls in dancing moonlight,

Kindle hope in the deepest gloom,

Heal our hearts, let new life bloom. ♫

Dahlia sang the words that bubbled up in her heart, and the magic formed a green wisp of verdant life energy. The wisp floated beside her, nearly as large as Dahlia herself. Which was to say, quite tiny. Unlike the fairy, the wisp was an ephemeral mote of positive magical energy and nothing more. It wasn’t a true Wisp.

Wisp Heal (1st level Necromancy spell): Summon an orb of healing energies with ten charges. Each charge heals a minor amount of health. The Wisp remains until spent, or until the caster rests.

“You don’t see magic like that every day,” Zorah said breathlessly.

“Back in Cambria there was an elf who…” Joel trailed off when Zorah’s silence and hard stare caused him to trail off.

“We’re in the ass-ends of nowhere, at least a half day out from Riverwatch. Shut up about Cambria already.” Zorah scolded Joel.

“Oh, where’s Cambria? What’s Cambria?” Dahlia asked.

Zorah and Joel glared at one another, Zorah seemed to dare Joel to speak, and Joel stared back at her with a smirk—until Zorah took a step closer toward Joel, and he held his hands up.

“A Kingdom far to the south, little one. Hailed as the land of magic, and home of the Council of Magi, led by the illustrious Vaelmir the Eternal. Far from here, but not quite as far as where you’re from, I’ll wager.” Joel answered Dahlia’s question, but he paid the price of a slap upside the back of his head from Zorah.

The fairy didn’t fall for his bait and offered no information about her own origin.

While they bickered, Dahlia triggered the first pulse of healing. The wisp diminished by a little from its full glory as a mote of light broke free from the larger mote of positive energy and drifted over to merge with Griff. He barely improved. Dahlia triggered the spell again and again, until the man’s wounds had closed completely. He still looked haggard, but his wounds had sealed and no longer oozed blood on the forest floor. Only five of the Wisp’s charges remained.

“Thank you! You’re a life saver, lass. I’m Griff, and this here’s Zorah and Joel,” the large forester introduced the party.

You have gained one Glimmer point.

Dahlia wondered what a Glimmer point was, but the humans were waiting for her to introduce herself.

“You can call me Dahlia,” Dahlia told the three big people. “This is Mr. Disapoofer, he’s my best friend!” Dahlia’s enthusiastic introduction for Mr. Disapoofer garnered her a suspicious look from Zorah, as if the archer expected the wolf to morph into a fey lord or that she fully expected some other ludicrous revelation might happen at any moment.

“Ruff!” Yes. Mr. Disapoofer barked his approval at being called Dahlia’s best friend. “Ruff!” Hello, he greeted the three humanoids enthusiastically.

The mortals looked shocked to hear the telepathic greeting from a wolf in their mind. Not for the first time, the mortals shared looks that made the hair on the back of Dahlia’s neck raise.

“We need to get back to Riverwatch. Snarf’s pack won’t give up because we took out one hunting party,” Zorah lectured the two men, but didn’t stop there. The archer turned to address Dahlia.

“I don’t know what you’re doing out here alone, but would you like to come back to Riverwatch with us? Even together this is going to get hairy. The last time Snarf came through the bend he nearly breached the walls around town and dozens died.” Zorah painted a grim picture with her matter-of-fact words.

“Why does me being a fairy seem to scare you three?” Dahlia inquired, rather than answering.

“There aren’t many Fey in this part of Nantes, maybe all of Nantes, since the War of Iron and Thorns. I don’t think you’ll be in any danger in these uncivilized lands, but we haven’t dealt with your kind in centuries. If you go to populated areas you are bound to cause quite a scene.” Joel answered Dahlia’s question.

“I guess I’ll come with you,” Dahlia said without giving it much thought. She’d been looking for people, and they wanted to take her to where there were other people. That’d been her goal. Mortals were dumb and easy to trick if she needed to leave, and the forester owed her.

“How many spells do you have left, Dahlia?” Griff asked. The forester moved to walk behind Zorah. Dahlia giggled in amusement at the large human hiding behind the smaller archer. Joel stuck next to Griff protectively and further played into Dahlia’s mirth at the two small people protecting the big man. Small, of course, was relative. Compared to Dahlia they were all colossal.

“None,” Dahlia answered with a chaotic laugh. “But I’ve got five uses left on Wisp Heal, my Shadow hasn’t been hurt yet, and neither has Mr. Disapoofer.”

Indeed, the undead shade lurked behind Dahlia and Mr. Disapoofer in a menacing sort of way. It showed no sign of flagging despite participation in the combat. The Warp Wolf hadn’t been hit at all, unlike the tiny fairy. Dahlia’s grass-bound wound seemed to escape her notice, or she deemed it so mild that it wasn’t worth using a charge of Wisp Heal.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

The reality none of the humans were aware of—the fairy thought the gash from the bird made her look badass, and she endured the pain to look tough. Dahlia didn’t have any familiarity with concepts such as conservation of resources, nor had she ever lived in a place without abundance. The dangers of the Soulweald were not hyena-men.

“Follow and protect us,” Dahlia ordered her Shadow. It made a dismal moaning sound and fell into the shadow of Mr. Disapoofer.

“Which way gets us back to town fastest?” Joel asked Griff and Zorah.

“If we stick with the river it’ll take us to Riverwatch, but if we get hemmed in against the river we’re done for. The river winds a lot in these parts. If we go through the forest it’ll save us a quarter of the day, but there’s threats bigger than Snarf in the Bramblewood.” Griff tried his best to make the woods sound ominous and scary, but Joel, Zorah, and even Dahlia looked skeptical.

“We owe it to Riverwatch to make it back as quickly as possible. If the town gets raided without warning we might find only smoking ruins waiting for us, and the ferry lines cut.” Zorah spat on the ground.

Dahlia appreciated the cut-throat simplicity with which Zorah viewed the continued existence of Riverwatch. No matter how else the archer felt about the town, Zorah seemed to consider its existence necessary for her own ease of life. Dahlia had a small burst of insight that bubbled up through her mind, not unlike a gas bubble rising through a swamp. The archer could, and would, be useful to her in the days ahead.

“Ferry?” Dahlia asked. She wondered why they were saying the word ‘fairy’ weirdly.

“Riverwatch and its ferries are the only safe place to cross the Silvervein River for hundreds of miles. Ferries are boats that use guide ropes to cross the Silvervein.” Joel explained as succinctly as he could.

“Having wings is great,” Dahlia told the others smugly. They mostly ignored her, but Joel examined her wings appreciatively, which earned him a smile from the fairy. The other two ignored her perfect pose, shoulders back, fully showcasing the purple-blue-and-black butterfly wings. She spread her delicate appearing wings to their full span and produced a burst of fairy dust to add a cloud of sparkles with which to frame herself in.

“I say we cross the Bramblewood,” Joel voted half in a daze, partially transfixed by the magical display of the fairy, and her fey allure.

“Aye, the Bramblewood.” Griff nodded and tapped his foot, impatient to be on the move and in the comparative safety of walls and civilization.

“What do you think, Dahlia?” Zorah asked the fairy.

“I like forests,” Dahlia answered.

“Griff, you’re in the lead with me. Joel, you’ve got the rear. Dahlia, you stay in the middle of the pack, okay?” Zorah explained the marching order for the group. The two men nodded their assent, as if it had been the expected order.

Dahlia didn’t like not being first. Being in front meant you got to have the first chance to see treasures and claim them. Were Zorah and Griff greedy people, like the sharp-eyed Deborah back home? Did the mortals intend to keep all the treasures for themselves?

“Okay,” Dahlia said after only a momentary hesitation. With the speed of Mr. Disapoofer and his teleporting, Dahlia figured she’d be able to get to any real finds before the giant humans did, and they were taking her to their home.

The humans were slow. For such big creatures they were almost plodding at their pace. Dahlia had to repeatedly scold Mr. Disapoofers telepathically. The Warp Wolf struggled to slow itself down to the level of humans for the first ten minutes of their travel. She needn’t have worried about the idea of losing any treasures to the ponderously slow mortals. Unfortunately, the Bramblewood had far fewer treasures than the Soulweald.

The Bramblewood was mostly a new greenwood, or young forest. Some of the trees had larval spirits, but almost none had developed dryads or other nature spirits capable of conversing with yet. A few hundred more years, maybe, and the inquisitive motes of magic that dwelled within the largest trees would be able to hold a conversation. Not a great conversation, but they could at least tell Dahlia things like where the nearest collections of magic were to be found, or report on things like humans hiding shiny things in their domain.

Yet out at the edges of Dahlia’s senses, she felt the familiar tingle of awareness, likely a dryad or other treefolk. There were familiar vestiges of darkness, ancient and terrible, secreted away in the otherwise young forest.

“Did someone burn down an old forest?” Dahlia asked the humans.

“No idea,” Zorah said.

“Not much old growth in the Bramblewood, but there is some still hanging on. Could’ve been a fire that wiped out the old growth?” Griff speculated but had no answer for Dahlia either.

“The final battles of the War were fought near here, if I recall my history,” Joel said. “The old nations have been slow to gobble up the land of the Fey. Gone or not, the land itself seems to seek a steep price to allow new tenants.”

The air held the familiar scent of damp and decaying leaves. The tree trunks were dark and rough, covered in moss and fungi. The names of these mundane forest treasures eluded her, for they weren’t the magical treasures that she grew up nibbling on in the Soulweald. A faint mist moved through the valleys and low-lands, and the humans took great care to avoid it. While it looked unfriendly, Dahlia had never met a cloud before. When she was on her own, she’d come back and find the fog on her own.

The quiet of the wood was sparse, but enough to not be unnatural. Dahlia saw glimpses of foxes, owls, squirrels, and other tiny woodland critters. At least, that’s the way it began.

Somewhere in the third hour of their trek, Dahlia noticed the animals had all vanished and she couldn’t quite pinpoint when that had happened. She’d been on the lookout for any of her favorite forest treasures, but not even one had shown up in the stupid forest, with its low magic-concentrations. Why, she hadn’t even seen a single sign of another fey creature!

Maybe the idiot mortals of this world really had gone to war and driven out the Fey, and that hadn’t been a horribly bad joke?

“Shit,” Zorah whispered when a strange clicking occurred. It originated from underneath the woman’s left boot when she stepped down.

“Trap?” Joel asked from the back of the pack.

“Don’t move your foot,” Griff instructed Zorah. The big man used the haft of his axe to push some of the gathered leaves and brush away from the woman’s boot, revealing a small stone box buried in the ground under her foot.

“What in the fuck’s a Cambrian Inferno Mine doing out here in the Bramblewood?” Zorah spat.

“Actually, that’s not Cambrian,” Joel corrected her.

“But it is a gods damned Inferno Mine, isn’t it? Who gives a shit if its Cambrian or not?” Zorah asked with her voice comically high pitched.

“Yeah,” Griff said somberly, as if he’d pronounced a death sentence. “It’s definitely a mine. We’ve ran into a few different types out here in the woods before.”

“It might be an Inferno Mine. No way to know the element until it detonates.” Joel grimaced.

Mr. Disapoofer growled and looked back the way we had come. A pack of five hyena-men crested the last big hill two hundred yards back, and when they caught sight of their prey, they all laughed and jeered with their awful sounding calls.

“Leave me behind, I’ll take them all out with me,” Zorah said with grim reluctance.

Dahlia looked between the rapidly approaching Hyena-men and Zorah, then down at the rocks.

“I can delay the trap,” Dahlia said confidently. “Can you pull it out and throw it at them?”

All three of the large creatures looked at her in deep consternation. Dahlia looked back at them with a confident smile.

“None of you know how to manipulate magic, do you? That’s fair, since you’re mortals after all, and I’m a fairy, a magical being. I’ve been playing with traps since I could fly. It’s a game, you see.” Dahlia explained to the dumber than usual looking mortals.

Memories flickered through her mind. Jaunts through the Soulweald with her sisters. Competitions to see who could grasp the flow of magic around ancient glyphs and worn traps and make them do other things than what they were intended for.

“Fuck it,” Griff said. “Tell me what to do, little one. Zorah, get your bow out and pick them off before they reach us, Joel, defensive line.”

Dahlia hopped off the comfortable head of Mr. Disapoofer and landed next to the stone box, her purple butterfly wings beating, unnecessarily, only once or twice in the descent.

“You can take your foot off now,” Dahlia told Zorah once her tiny hand touched the stone box. The sparkling eyes of the fairy glowed as she took control of the ambient flow of magic through the old trap. Fairy dust swirled around the tiny fey, and pulses of magic made little popping sounds. Dahlia focused on the fiery magic inside of the stone box. Magic was easy to coax into doing things, if you asked it nicely, gave it some fairy dust, and had spent a lifetime playing games in enchanted woods.

It also helped if you understood magic. Wizards manifested this understanding via scholarly endeavors, formulas, and the cold hard facts of empirical evidence. Sorcerers frequently had innate connections to at least one source of magic. Dahlia was neither sorcerer or wizard, but a Gloamcaller and a fairy. Magic was hers, and she was magic.

Congratulations! Your skill in Magic—Thaumaturgy has increased by 1, to 2.

Rank 2 grants you Subtle Infusion—Your spells may tap the leylines of magic that run through reality. Once per day you may cast a spell with by tapping the leylines to either reduce the cost (no spell slot spent), or amplify the effect.

The dumb voice in Dahlia’s head recognized her greatness, but she already knew she was the best.

“Alright biggy, you can pick it up and throw it. For extra measure..”

Dahlia brought her tiny fingers to her lips and blew a kiss to Griff. To the human’s surprise, the kiss solidified in the air, made of royal purple energies. It struck the dumbfounded man on the cheek. Clearly it thrilled him to his core from the way he squirmed and shivered as Dahlia’s Shadow Kiss suffused his being and echoes of her unnatural fey essence twisted fate and chance to more beneficial outcomes. What glimpses of fates denied did the logger see for a brief moment, and alter his actions to avoid?

Dahlia wished she knew. No doubt there would be great entertainment to be found in that knowledge, but the ability gave her no insight into what those she blessed with a kiss saw or experienced.

“And for even more, extra good-er measure! Fates be Swayed!” Dahlia commanded as she twisted the flows of magic in the area even more. The dainty voice commanding reality, rather than begging it for help, drew the suspicion and attention of Zorah when Dahlia activated the cantrip Echo of Destiny. Golden threads flickered around Griff, and Dahlia impatiently tapped her foot on the explosive.

“Now pick it up! They’re almost here! You’ve got to throw it for a big boom!” Dahlia instructed Griff with a growing sense of urgency. Unlike the mortals, she could sense the pulsing, destructive flame magics contained within the mine, and how thin of a thing it was that she prevented it from detonating with them still inside of the blast radius.

Griff looked to Zorah who fired arrow after arrow at the oncoming pack of hyena-men, and Joel who waited with his blades drawn.

“Do it!” Zorah shouted. Griff snapped out of his daze, pulled the mine into his hands with a cringe, and hurled the box.