After about a few minutes of getting lost and turning around and looking for a place to hide, they finally found an empty room that they dropped down into.

“Okay, that last one was on purpose!” Van complained to Gloria as a few moments prior he again crashed into her unexpectedly.

“Hmph! I don’t know what you're talking about.” Gloria replied, crossing her arms.

The two got into a little argument, which led nowhere and forced Van to change the subject just to get out of it. Turning to the imps, he addressed them with the many questions he had come up with while crawling through those vents.

“How did you find us? Did you know this was going to happen?” he asked them.

The red imp puffed out her chest. “Of course, we knew! We are certified baddasses!”

The blue one looked at her like one would an idiot and then turned to Van and told him the truth. “We actually had no clue something like this would happen,” she admitted, making red deflate. “But Ren was worried that something might. He can be surprisingly paranoid… he felt like it would be a good idea to prep us out ‘just in case’ anything went south.”

“To that end,” she continued. “He gave us a pendant that could track you, and these suits that make it harder for others to track us. With the added bonus of temporarily making us invisible and speeding up our movements… for five seconds... and only once…” losing some momentum at the end there, only to perk right up again.

“While you all were distracted by the scenery, I noticed movement in the shadows, and immediately told my sisters to disperse… I know I risked wasting the one-time use of the suits, but like Ren, I too err on the side of caution. Thankfully I was right to do so. Afterwards, we tried looking for vents to climb into. It was difficult at first…” looking down at her large breasts for a moment. “But it was worth it since it meant saving you.”

“By the way… it was green’s idea to use the vents,” she added, making sure to share the credit with her sister for the rescue.

“Hey! What about me!?” red complained.

“You wanted to push forward and knock everyone out!” blue said, exasperated.

“Hey… no one will notice… if there’s no one to notice…” red said seriously.

Blue just rolled her eyes.

“That's… uh… very interesting, but still doesn't really explain how you knew where to find the vents or which one to take to find me,” Van said.

“Oh! That’s simple!” red said. “I am a fire imp! I can control fire!” making a flickering flame appear. “And to some extent, shadow…”

“I can control Ice.” the blue imp said, “and to some extent, the arcane…”

Everyone looked towards green.

“I-I C-can control… um… nature… a l-little… and maybe um… wind… or… earth?” green said nervously.

Blue then spoke up for her. “It was thanks to her ability to feel out the tree using her affinity to nature that allowed her to feel out the way. If it weren’t for her, we would never be able to find you, pendant or no.”

“I see…” Van said then looked towards green. “Thank you green. I think after this, all of you deserve a name…” he said with a gentle smile.

Green blushed. “Y-your welcome,” looking entirely bashful and not meeting eye contact.

“Well… while this is all nice and all… we really should be figuring out our next course of action,” Gloria said seriously, then started listing what few facts they had.

“For starters, it is clear to me that we have a traitor in our mists. If what you said is true, someone set Lyn up to fall, and may also have my daughter… Though I still can’t be sure if she wasn’t the one who let out the red knives initially or not, it is clear that more investigation is required.”

Van frowned, but kept quiet, knowing that Gloria was just trying to cover all her bases. He knew that Lyn had to be innocent…

“We also know that someone that has access to the war room tried to kill us, and overheard our conversation and deemed it a threat to whatever treason they have done so far…” Gloria continued. “It is clear to me… the first thing we should do is find Lyn, and my daughter and find the truth of what is going on post-haste! The future of our great forest depends on it.”

“Couldn’t agree more.” Van said, then turned to green. “Can you find us a nice and quick route to the dungeon? We need to get there as soon as possible. We only have seven hours before my and the others shrink potion disperses.”

“S-sure! No problem!” then paused. “B-but… what about Luna and Anna? What are we going to do about them…” she asked concerned.

Van hesitated, she brought up a good point. Luna and Anna could right now be in the hands of a traitor who had no qualms with killing Gloria, the literal high queen of the entire alliance. Who knows what could be happening to them right now… but he had to go with green in order to point them in the right direction… this was a pickle he found himself in…

“Don’t worry.” red said, getting his attention. “You only need green. Me and blue will provide a distraction if necessary. First, we will find them while sneaking in the shadows… and if we see anything bad that might happen to them… we will attack!” slamming her fists together with glee. “An attack with explosions and lots of smoke! They will never see it coming!”

“That's… the smartest thing you’ve said like… ever…” blue said after giving it some thought. “Kinda…” finishing with a shrug. “The smoke could be used to help in our escape after saving them, should it ever come down to it. We will keep our cover though until you come back just in case and only act if necessary.” she finished, making red pout.

“...alright,” Van said, agreeing. “I’ll point you two in the direction I feel Luna and Anna in, and then you will sneak around and see if you can keep an eye on them. Should anything happen… well… I trust you two will figure it out.”

“While you do that, me, you,” pointing at green. “And Gloria will go in search of Lyn and Amie, err, Evergreen, and see if we can’t rescue them. Sounds good to everybody?” he asked.

Everybody nodded.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Good! Let's go!” Van said.

The group then split up and went their separate ways. Red and blue went up the air ducts first and took a sharp right turn in the direction that led deeper into the tree. Van and his group took a left and started their crawl towards a shaft that would lead downwards and hopefully towards the lower layers of the tree until they found a place to drop out off.

“...wait a second… Why am I in the back!? Shouldn’t I be taking the lead!” Van said after realizing after a few minutes that he was back behind Gloria.

“Don’t be silly Van.” Gloria said, “you are a male, and on top of that, you are the only one who can point us into Lyn’s direction, your protection is of high importance to us. Not to mention, this… green imp of yours is the one that tells us which route is a dead end and which isn’t, and so needs to point us in the most suitable direction using your connection.” she said matter of factly.

“...you just wanted me behind you… didn’t you…” Van said, a little suspicious.

“Preposterous! Don’t be so full of yourself! I’m just stating the facts!” Gloria said, sounding a little offended.

“Okay… but if that’s the case, that just means I should still at least be behind green. And you can cover up the rear to… ‘protect me’...” Van said.

Gloria then started another argument with Van that lasted a while until Van realized a pattern and confronted her about it.

“Wait a sec…” Van said after some thought, looking at her… behind suspiciously. “Could it be… the reason why you wanted to be in front of me… is because ‘you’ didn’t want to watch me from behind?” already getting a disturbing image of Gloria watching his ass sway back and forth.

He couldn’t see it. But he could tell by the sudden nervousness and posture of her body while moving that he might have just hit the nail on the head.

“You gotta be kidding me…” Van thought in disbelief, “she’s a mother! Or… maybe she’s had sex but got the sperm donated… so she’s single… which means she doesn’t have anyone… and therefore… horny…” his eyes widened. “Oh… gods…”

“N-no! Of course not!” Gloria defended herself. “Do you really think ‘I’ out of everyone, the high queen! Would be swayed by a stranger when I could have any male in the entire queendom! Don’t be silly.” she said rather harshly, but it also sounded a bit over the top.

Van kept his silence, not wanting to say or do anything that might make this more awkward than necessary. Green was up ahead and she was shaking like a leaf, very nervous about all the shouting and arguing and worried that the guards might hear. But now she was also nervous about the tense silence between Van and Gloria. She was very much hoping that they could finish this task soon.

That was when she did her bravest thing yet… Turning around and addressing the group in her nervous voice.

“U-umm… so… there are guards around and stuff… so… let’s keep quiet for a bit so as not to draw their attention okay?” making it so that the awkward silence would be about needing to keep quiet and not because of what they just said.

“Okay…” Gloria said.

Van nodded, but realized no one could see so said. “Alright…

Thankfully nothing else happened other than Van giving some directions and Green telling him if they could take that route or not. After half an hour of crawling and falling down a few vents they finally found a room that they could drop down into that didn’t have any guards.

“I’m very conflicted right now…” Gloria said after dropping down. “On the one hand, this has allowed us to get close to saving Lyn and potentially my daughter. On the other hand… this is a glaring security flaw…” looking largely conflicted about the matter.

“We can figure stuff like that out later,” Van said, let's first figure out how to rescue Lyn and Evergreen. No doubt whoever has them imprisoned would have guards that only they could trust with this matter. Meaning that just because we have Gloria here, doesn’t mean they would just hand over the captives and surrounder…”

“D-do you think that… um… that they might have decided to move Lyn and Amie somewhere else while we were crawling through the ducts?” green asked nervously.

Van paused and closed his eyes for a second then opened them. “No… they still seem to be there… Perhaps whoever it was figured that we are dead? Or maybe they just haven’t opened the door yet…”

“Or just sloppy…” Gloria added with a thrown. “If I had died by a sloppy person, I would never be able to live it down…”

Van tried to figure out how that would work, but then also figured he had more important things to do. “Alright girls, what’s the plan? There doesn’t seem to be any more vents that would allow us any closer, and there are guards not that far from here from where we last saw them when crawling those ducts. Do we try to sneak on closer? Or do we just try to rush them?”

“U-umm… i’m not really good at… fighting…” green said nervously.

“No need to.” Gloria said, her eyes hard and now slowly beginning to glow. She then turned to Van. “I will deal with this…” her voice hard as tacks, and all her suppressed anger about everything that happened finally reaching a boiling point.

Before Van could stop her, she walked out the door and down the hallway.

“Wha-?” one guard said.

“Who-?” another one asked, confused.

“My queen!?” a third one in the back quickly realized.

By the time Van rushed out the door to follow and help, the task was already done and all three guards were strewn about.

“Umm…” Van took a moment to register the scene before him. “We uh… need one alive…”

Gloria flipped her hair back. “Hmph! They're alive, just knocked out. Search them for keys or whatever…” she said, already getting tired of this. “They should be lucky I didn’t take their lives, it’s more than they deserved…”

“Right…” Van said and started to do just that. Wincing when he had to turn a fairy over and feel and hear the little pops and crackles as the many broken bones in their bodies moved. He was even wondering if death would have been preferable… at least it confirmed that fairies did indeed have bones…

After a few more moments he found what he was looking for and began to move towards the door.

“Hurry up, otherwise I’ll just blow down the door.” Gloria said.

Van paused. “That was an option?”

“Yes, but it would have set off the alarm,” she said matter of factly.

“Ah…” was all he replied with and set the key into the keyhole and turned the lock. As he opened the door, his eyes widened and he had to jump back as a sword tried slicing through the air where he just was. He quickly righted himself and prepared a counterattack when he realized who it was.

“...Lyn!?”

Lyn blinked. “Van!?” looking at him in surprise. “What are you doing here!?”

“That’s what I want to ask you!?” Van exclaimed. “We came here to save you! How did you get out!?” he asked, wondering how she did it.

Lyn relaxed and rushed to give Van a hug. “Am I glad to see you here…”

Van paused and returned the hug. “I’m glad to see you too…”

“Van?” Amie said, peeking through the doorway, then her eyes went wide when they landed on Gloria. “MOM!?”

Gloria rushed over to give her daughter a hug. “Sweety, I’m so glad you're okay! You had me so worried!” tears running down her cheeks, surprising Evergreen since her mother was normally not like this. But it has been so long since she got a hug from her that she didn’t mind wasting a few moments to enjoy this. But in the end, her questions couldn’t be held back and she pulled back a little.

“Mom, what are you doing here? And… why are you dressed like that?” looking down at what Gloria was wearing or lack thereof.

After a few moments, the two groups began to explain everything that happened to each other. Lyn going into detail about what they had to endured and deal with before finally figuring out the method of breaking out of the prison they found themselves in.

“So like, after I realized that the cage might be magical, but the lock wasn’t, I just used what I learned from playing around in Ren's library and what I remember about what I read about picking locks to set us free. After that, since I'm normally stronger than the average fairy anyway, I knocked out the guard and stole her sword and keys. And the rest is history!” Lyn said happily. “Though it did take a while…” she amended solemnly.

“Really need to rethink the security of my tree…” Gloria muttered to herself.

“What about you guys? What happened while we were locked away?” Amie asked.

Van and Gloria began to explain their sides of the story. Van about how the forest went to shit and Gloria about how everything also went to shit but in a different way. Both ending with having to flee from a room that was being pumped with red spores and looking for them.

“Alright then, now that we are all caught up, what do we do now?” Van asked. “We still need to save Luna and Anna, as well as everyone else who came with us.”

“The answer is simple!” Lyn said. “First we save Luna and Anna and everyone! Then we beat the shit out of Saline! Done and done, simple!” like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“While normally I would disagree with the crude way you put it. For once, I’m entirely on board.” Gloria said, her eyes beginning to glow. “Once I’m through with general Saline…” her hand slowly turning into a fist. “She’s going to wish she was never born…”