The last sliver of evening light was fading from the western horizon as Milly followed Whitewing, Calista, and Rain along the shoreline of the Lake of Memories. Whitewing had received permission from the Elders to let them attend the Fairy Bazaar, the heart of the Gathering, where merchants, chefs, and storytellers plied their trades to the hundred tribes.

The Bazaar was located at the eastern end of the lake, a clearing surrounded by dozens upon dozens of colorful tents and tiny, makeshift stages. Lively music and the smell of well-seasoned meats and vegetables, as well as piles of sweet desserts permeated the air around them. There was an infectious atmosphere of celebration that would have rivaled any festival back home. Pinpoint light from a thousand wax candles and paper lanterns made the square sparkle in the darkness, lending the Bazaar an otherworldly feeling that Milly felt exhilarating.

“If only I could stay to enjoy it,” Milly thought, unconsciously stroking her full moon pendant. The desperate message from Luna weighed on her mind.

“It’s beautiful,” Rain gasped, bouncing back and forth on her tiptoes. “There could be tea. Or alchemy ingredients! Oh, I can’t wait anymore!”

Rain bounded down the footpath along the shore at full speed, and Whitewing flew quickly behind her. “Wait, Rain!” Whitewing shouted as Rain quickly sped ahead. “I’m supposed to stay with you. Rain!”

Calista looked over at Milly with a playful grin and grabbed her hand. “Come on, gorgeous. We don’t want Rain to have all the fun.”

A minute later, Milly stood in the centre of the Bazaar, gaping at the complexity of colors that surrounded them. If the Bazaar from a distance was like staring at a stary night sky, standing in the Bazaar felt as if she had found herself at the end of a rainbow. Banners of every color imaginable waved gently in the breeze above stalls fashioned from interlaced branches and stones. Each stall was covered in exotic foods, carvings, bottles, crafts, blankets, cookware, and gemstones, each displayed to accentuated not only their own displays but also those of their neighbors. The stalls and their wares were built following the teachings of many past generations, and it gave the seemly misshapen Bazaar a sense of practiced perfection.

There were hundreds of fairies, of all different shapes and sizes, crowding the Bazaar. There were frogs and the women with butterfly wings, but there were also fairies that resembled red foxes, badgers, storks, antelope, and monkeys.

Children ran across the square, stuffing their faces with sweet treats while their parents listened to the ballads of the musicians and storytellers that littered the small spaces between the stalls. The haunting notes of sorrowful ballads mixed with the playfully combative harmonies of string quartettes as the gathered fairies flicked gold coins into their oversized hats.

“Milly, isn’t this wonderful,” gasped Calista, leading Milly over to a stall selling hair accessories. She carefully lifted a headband created from the tightly woven lily leaves and ruby gemstones and slid it into her short-cut crimson hair. “What do you think?”

“It suits you, Cally,” Milly smiled, admiring her girlfriend’s energy. “I love it.”

Calista gave a playful twirl, then gave Milly a wink. “I must get it. I wonder if Rain could enchant it for me?” she said, then turned to the merchant and started haggling. Milly was shocked at how vigorously Calista argued with the fairy, and laughed when she realized just how much Calista and the merchant were both enjoying the verbal sparring. Milly took in the sight of a playful Calista, lost in the joy around her, the Contest momentarily forgotten.

Milly wished she could have stayed with Calista at the Bazaar. But there were more important things to do.

“Cally, it’s all a bit much for me,” Milly said, feeling uncomfortable in the lie. “I’m going to find a quiet corner. I’ll come find you in a bit, okay?”

“Are… are you sure, Milly?” Calista asked disheartened. “I… I thought this could be… um… our first real date.”

Milly’s heart threatened to break. It took all her willpower to stick with her plan.

“Cally… I’d love that. I just… I just don’t do so well with crowds,” Milly answered, brushing her hand across Calista’s arm. That part wasn’t a lie. Crowds made her feel uncomfortable. She had spent too many years alone to be comfortable around this many people.

She reached up and kissed Calista. “You have fun, Cally. I know you love shopping, and I want to see you happy. You get your fill. Then we’ll grab food and sit at the edge of the Bazaar and listen to music. That will be our first date. Okay?”

“I don’t need to shop. I can…”

“No, I want you to shop,” Milly said, cutting her off. She knew Calista would drop everything to stay with her. But she needed to be alone. “You need this, and I like seeing you smile. Plus, you can buy me something for our date,” Milly added, feeling self-conscious. She did not really want a gift. She could not recall a time when anyone had given her a gift. But buying a gift seemed like something Calista would enjoy.

“Alright, beautiful,” Calista said as she relented and embraced Milly. “If that is what you want, then I will find you the best present at the Bazaar.”

“Thanks, Cally,” Milly mumbled. “I’ll come to find you when I am ready.”

She eased herself out of Calista’s embrace, and disappeared into the crowd before her heart convinced her to stay.

Milly weaved her way through the crowd until she reached the stalls at the foot of the fast-rising hills surrounding the Lake of Memories. A group of fairy children were gathered around a stall littered with fruit, chattering excitedly as the merchant passed out samples. Milly recognized apples, oranges, and bananas, but there were others that she had never seen before. A pear-shaped fruit of red and yellow, with a thick skin and dark red centre. Small fruits with shiny white flesh beneath thin pink skin. A prickly green fruit that was so large that one filled an entire corner of the booth on its own. Milly wondered if those fruits existed back in their world. Perhaps they did. But she had been living in fear, her life stuck on autopilot, and without ambition to experience the world.

Why had it taken the God Contest for her to realize what she had been missing?

Milly felt a tug on her dress. She looked down and saw a small fox child chewing on a slice of a deep pink melon as she stared up at Milly with curious eyes.

“Are you the inter…internoper?” the fox girl asked in a low, conspiratorial voice. “Our Elder said that internopers were here, and that we should stay away from them.”

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Milly knelt so the child could get a better look at her. “I… I guess I am. But I’m not going to hurt you. My friends and I just wanted to make sure the Tribe of the Lost Foal arrived at the Gathering safely.”

The child considered this as she took another bite of melon. “You don’t look dangerous,” the child answered, apparently satisfied. “I’m Mikoko, of the Floating Leaf Skulk.”

Mikoko extended her tiny paw in greeting. Milly gently grasped the child’s hand with her thumb and index finger. “I’m Milly, of… of…,” Milly paused. What could she say? She had no family, she had never really had a home, and she belonged nowhere. Except…

“… of the Castle of Glass,” Milly finished. It felt right. She had found a home there, and people that she cared about. People to protect and to love.

“Mikoko, come on! Littlebuck found a baker giving away raspberry tarts,” came a call from the group of fairy children.

“Okay, I’m coming,” Mikoko called back excitedly. “Sorry, I’ve got to go.” And with that, the fox child bounded back towards her friends and disappeared into the crowd.

Milly laughed at the children’s excitement. She did not know if the fairies were real or simply another element of the Contest designed by Oracle and Hephaestus, but she did know she cared what happened to them. Perhaps that was enough.

Milly decided they were real. The decision felt important. It felt right. If they were real, they were worth protecting. If they were real, then so was Luna.

Milly ducked behind the fruit stall before she drew more attention, and quickly sprinted up the fast-rising hills that rose above the gathering. She marveled at how she danced around obstacles and darted up the hillside as easily as if she were walking along a sidewalk. Half a minute later she stood on the top of the hill and stared down at the glittering lights below, grinning. Her breath was steady, her calves relaxed, and she did not have a single bead of sweat on her forehead.

It had been effortless. It had been exhilarating.

Milly tore her gaze away from the Gathering and looked to the plains that stretched beyond the hill. She saw a large boulder nestled within a copse of willow trees, about a mile away.

“Perfect,” Milly said, and she took off at a run across the prairie. The breeze whipped through her tangled hair as she ran, the cooling air of night pleasant on her skin.

“I wonder how quickly I can get there?” Milly wondered.

She began to run, moving faster and faster until she felt her heart begin to pound in her chest. Her legs moving so quickly that her feet hardly touched the ground before pushing off again. The grasses and shrubs whipped across her legs as she sped past, yet Milly felt no pain. Her eyes watered and the whistle of the wind filled her ears and drowned out the sounds of the world around her.

A deer scampered into her path, and Milly leaped into the air. She soared over it and landed ten meters, the length of a school bus, away from the startled creature. She looked back into its stunned expression. A whoop of excitement came to her unbidden, and she kept running.

She reached the willows in under three minutes. She was unsteady on her feet, but her muscles were already recovering thanks to her enhanced toughness and regeneration talent. She looked back at where she had come from. If this had been a race, she would have destroyed the world record.

“Unbelievable,” she whispered. “Doubling my attributes did that much?”

She wanted to know what else she was capable of. She was already considering whether she could use her new air magic to shield her eyes and ears from the wind, or whether she could harness it to give her an additional speed boost.

“Not now, Milly,” she told herself. “You’ll have time for that later.”

Milly sat cross-legged on the ground, resting her back against the boulder. She opened her inventory and withdrew Red Fang’s Amulet of Fire Resistance, her reward for defeating the leader of the wolf raiders. She had been unconscious when it had been added to her inventory and had only discovered it this afternoon. This made it the only magical item she possessed that Calista and Rain did not know about.

She sighed as she gazed at the ruby amulet resting gently in her palm. Its centre blazed with blue fire, and it was cool to the touch. She looked at her scarred arm. Her Scarred Witch class meant it would never fully heal. She would wear the scars of that battle for the rest of her life, however long that was. Would this amulet have been able to prevent it from happening again?

“Don’t think about it. You don’t really have a choice,” she whispered as she stared at the blue flame within.

It would have been more efficient to use the Wedding Ring of Phillip the Ogre. The small strength bonus it provided was no longer all that beneficial. But Calista and Rain would notice she no longer had the skull-shaped ring on her finger. As they would notice the absence of any of her other magical items. They would start asking questions that she could not answer, and that might put them all at risk.

Milly had promised to keep Luna’s secret. She intended to keep that promise.

She grasped the amulet in her left hand and her full moon pendant in her right and channeled her magic. Luna’s Pendant of Guidance sprang to life, glowing faint blue in the darkness. Milly could sense its eagerness as it waited for her question.

“Where is the nearest back door?” Milly whispered to it. The pendant grew warm in her hands, and Milly watched as the ruby amulet dissolved into a fine golden dust that scattered on the wind.

As the final remnants of the sacrificed amulet floated into the air, her destination appeared in her mind. It was a grove of apple trees, growing beside a small, shallow lake filled with reeds and algae. It was tended by a small crew of shabby and ill-treated fox fairies and guarded by a band of wolves.

“It would have been easier if the back door was somewhere innocuous,” Milly whispered.

She glanced down at her scarred arm. She knew she should be afraid of the wolves. Yet she found no trace of fear within her. Only righteous conviction.

She could help Luna.

She could free those fairies.

All that stood in the way were the wolves.

And she had a score to settle.

“Thanks Luna,” she whispered. “Be brave. I’m on my way.”

* * *

Mildred Persephone Brown

Player

Level: 20

Specialty: Survival

Class: The Scarred Witch

Class Features: No limits, Weaver, Relentless, Outcast, Consequences

Sub-class: Her Inquisitor

Sub-class Feature: Oracle’s Avatar, Ceaseless Skepticism, Explorer, Warrior Witch, Incorruptible

Strength: 32 (+4 from Wedding Ring of Phillip the Ogre, + 4 from Collar of the Victor)

Agility: 35 (+15 from Gown of Moon and Stars)

Toughness: 38 (+4 from Collar of the Victor)

Magic: 65 (+15 from Gown of Moon and Stars, +2 from Milly's First Witch's Hat, +8 from Luna’s Pendant

of Guidance)

Talents: Healer's Touch, Fire Magic (Beginner), Earth Magic (Beginner),

Reanimate Rodent (Witch's Hat), Telekinesis (Beginner), Oracle’s Divination (Beginner), Regeneration

(Beginner), Air Magic (Beginner), Water Magic (Beginner)

Unique Talent: Salem’s Fury

Rain Desjarlais

Player

Level: 18

Specialty: Brewing, Experimentation

Strength: 15

Agility: 18 (+6 from Dagger of Lugh Samildànach)

Toughness: 24 (+6 from Dagger of Lugh Samildànach)

Magic: 22 (+8 from Luna’s Pendant of Imagination)

Talents: Nature's Bounty, Alchemy (Beginner), Dagger Specialist (Beginner), Fire Magic (Beginner),

Metal Magic (beginner), The Creativity of Hephaestus (from Luna’s Pendant of Imagination)

Unique Talent: The Mage Alchemist of Lugh Samildànach

Calista Gale

Player

Level: 18

Specialty: Hunting, Reluctant Leader

Strength: 28 (+6 from Spear of Pinga, +8 from Luna’s Pendant of The Journey)

Agility: 18 (+6 from Spear of Pinga)

Toughness: 18

Magic: 14 (+4 from Huntress' Scrunchy)

Talents: Protective Shield (beginner, augmented), Spear Specialist (intermediate), Improved Perception

(from Huntress' Scrunchy, now worn on ankle), Spear Recall (beginner, from Spear of Pinga),

Companion of Artemis (from Luna’s Pendant of The Journey)

Unique Talent: Pinga’s Redeeming Protector