The swashbuckling octopus (say it ten times fast I dare you) descended in a whirling storm of flashing blades, ready to cut Ammeline to ribbons as he fell towards her. There was a moment where time stood still.

Ammeline considered her position. The threat above her. The battlefield. She steeled herself....

And jumped three paces backwards.

Kalbert Abernathy's blades, all right if them, impaled the ground beneath him up to the hilt. He stood there, still gripping the handles, as a hush settled over the watching crowd. Ammeline looked at her with her arms crossed in front of her. The still moment lasted for a moment. Then another. Then again, until moments could only be described as minutes.

"You're stuck, aren't you?" Ammeline asked.

"Bah! Ye won't best Kalbert Abernathy so easily!"

The octopus struggled against the swords for a moment.

"You could always fight without the swords," Ammeline suggested.

"And have ye cut my tentacles off!?"

"Well yes I would do that," Ammeline admitted. "Unless you surrendered."

"Kalbert Abernathy won't surrender a duel, ye poison tongued vixen!"

"Ahahahahahaha!" Ammeline laughed. "Well I can respect that."

She pulled her foot back and booted the octopus as hard as she could. She miscalculated a little. She'd kind of forgotten she had super strength while she was holding the sword. What had been intended to gently urge him away from the swords instead sent him flying up into the air, where he bounced off a tree and slammed into a crater on the ground.

"Ahahahahahaha!" Ammeline laughed. "Seems to ME as if I am victorious! Which means..."

"The new queen of the fairy court!" The faries cheered.

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"Oh! Yes, well, I declare myself off limits and otherwise put the old queen back in charge. Where is she?"

"She ran away when you started winning the duel," one of the Faries called out.

"Fine, whoever's next in charge..."

"But what about your coronation?" Someone shouted.

"I do NOT want a coronation," Ammeline said. "I've spent too much time on this already."

"I don't know if they give you options..."

"They who?" Ammeline blinked.

And then everything disappeared in a wave of green light.

Ammeline found herself floating...someplace else. She wasn't an expert on magic, or an expert on alternate dimensions, or faries, or anything like that. But where she had just been had been someplace with air. Here, there was...

It was like time was upside down and space was made of the wrong stuff. To her eyes it looked like an empty black void, but it FELT like floating in an ocean she could breathe. And every sense screamed at her it wasn't empty.

An impression reinforced when two faces floated out of the darkness. Or...masks? Both looked like the faces of beautiful women. One was dark green, the other pale blue. The green one was decorated with gleaming emeralds, the blue with rubies, intricate designs all around their stern, feminine features.

"Look sister, a mortal comes for the coronation."

"It's been centuries."

"How interesting."

The voices echoed out from behind the masks. Ammeline got the sense the masks were just avatars, symbols representing creatures she couldn't see...

"And do you taste that, sister?"

"She tastes of both our courts...and genie."

"Yes, of genie. How strange..."

"I know a genie," Ammeline said. "She's my friend. And my other friend's girlfriend. Do faries have a problem with genies?"

"Do you hear her tone, sister?"

"Yes! She can't even perceive us, but still..."

"If we have a problem with genies we will have a problem with HER. She makes it very clear."

"To answer your question, mortal, genies and faries have a complicated history. But the last genie to infuriate us was usually male, so we probably have no problem with your friend."

"Well good," Ammeline said. "Who are you?"

"Why I am Titania."

"And I am Maeve."

"The queen of the Seelie..."

"And Unseelie."

"I thought the two fairy courts hated each other."

"Things are more complicated than that. Anyone who would be a queen should understand."

"I didn't really want to be queen. Not of this random fairy kingdom anyway. It just seemed like the best way to avoid being bothered."

"That's not how being queen works."

"Bother bother bother, that's all it is."

"But you are interesting."

"And there are things we could use a mortal champion for..."

"We approve."

"You shall be queen."

"You're not listening," Ammeline said. "I don't WANT..."

The mouths of the faces opened, and power flowed from between their lips, crashing into Ammeline's body like crackling lightning.