Felarya: My wife is a... Fairy ( IX )

Chapter 9 – Cill into the yawning abyss

Inside Kortiki Town:
“Don’t scare me like that”, Rick said with a look of reproach, “I thought I wasn’t going to comprehend what you were saying anymore. Well… I mean less than normal.” Nemyra just returned a devious smirk. The fairy swung her hips and added “What about body language or hand signs? Don’t you think it’s infelicitous that I’m proficient in the human language while you, dear husband, can’t understand a single word fairy?” Rick bashfully looked sidewards while being confronted with the obvious. There wasn’t a cornucopia of books on the fairy languages to begin with and almost all scholars agreed on that the best way to learn a fairies native language was getting yourself a fairy and have her teach you. Insanely enough that wasn’t really the problem.  The problem was that most fairies, after teaching you her language, were shrinking you, popping you into her mouth and sealing your fate with a sound gulp. For many fairies reading books, and teaching others what they learned from those books, was quite some fun. While it was common that other fairies paid with just something negligible like a hug or happy smile, for humans the service of a fairy teacher was usually donating his body to the fairies hunger – or stomach to be precise. The fairy taught you hour after hour with a cheerful smile, even enlivening you to give your best, yet always looking forward to relish herself with your flavor on her tongue, drool over the moment she finally could devour you. One point in addition why fairies enjoyed a rather odd reputation as they had no problems with happily interacting with humans just to eat them afterwards – absolutely harboring neither ill intend nor with the slightest qualms. In that moment they just were the predominant predator and the human the inferior prey, nothing personal. The human blacksmith heard a story about a fairy attacking a human couple, eating the male while sparing the female – when seeing the crying female the fairy just patted the females shoulder pitiful and said that she shouldn’t take it personal and that she just was hungry, flying off with a kind smile, telling something outrageous like they might become good friends in the future. Fairies were such fearsome predators. Rick somehow felt keyed when looking at his fairy wife, not knowing what was going on in that fairy brain of hers.

“I’m sorry, I had my hands full with you… I will try to learn your weird language, but you have to teach me”, Rick retorted finally. He was quite positive that his payment wouldn’t be to act as supper. At least most probably. The human blacksmith eyed Liatris from tip to toe and afterwards his wife. “So, you were not relying on the translation spell at all? You always spoke human language with me?” Nemyra nodded soundless in response to that question. Rick wondered how she actually learned it, but decided it was better not to know too many details. Meantime Liatris watched them with question marks floating around her head. It was obvious that the translation spell seemed to be broken. The fairy with the light-purple hair played around with her ponytail. Not that she was bad with academics, but starting very early young Crimson Maidens were trained mostly in martial arts and how to increase their fighting power. Other subjects, like languages, got a raw deal. On the battlefield it wasn’t necessary to understand what your enemy was saying – it was not needed to rip out their innards, turning them into a bloody mess. The memory of her youth was a bit hazy. Occasionally is was vibrant and clear when her other half took over. Liatris was somehow aware of her other half, but felt not connected with her, as if two persons were sharing a single body. She sighted and would wait until the fairy queen was telling her what to do next – as harmless canopy fairy she wasn’t going to take initiative. Danger could be anywhere. However, her entire body felt on edge. Her other half could pop up any second and putting the Liatris, which was currently awake, to slumber. A vexing feeling. Like your soul awaits to be teared of your body and being put into a blurry glass jar, not clearly able to follow what happened outside. The fairy with the green eyes never felt this way before for such an extended period of time. It strained her immensely.

“Ni sekvas la spurojn de sango”, Nemyra explained to Liatris, which nodded, feeling not very good with that. Following the bloody steps on the ground was for sure not leading to some famous picnicking spot. Liatris’s eyes formed two big green wobbly globes, accompanied by a maudlin face. Nemyra was marching in front of the group. Rick followed her with almost no distance between them. The funny sight got completed as Liatris closed in more and more with each step, finally leaving almost no space between her and Rick. Not that she was trying to hide behind a human, but trying to hide behind the fairy queen. Nemyra inwardly giggled each time her human husband bumped against her back, yet outwardly she showed her best poker face without the slightest emotion. Nobody would be able to read anything from her. She fought countless battles and there hardly was anyone who could stand a fight against her beside the other Guardians. She stopped in the middle of the thought as at the upcoming road junction she sensed demons. They could be responsible for the previous massacre. Again the signature was faint, but very lively. The fairy queen closed her fists, bracing herself for battle, which caused an eerie knuckle-cracking sound. The human blacksmith was quite startled from that sound and grabbed forward without thinking. “I don’t want to be a bad sport, but I don’t think it’s the right time for that”, Nemyra commented dry while looking down, inspecting the two hands that grabbed her breasts from behind. “Ah.. oh..”, Rick panted and hastily retracted his hand, noticing a certain softness and assessing the probability what it could be at about breast-height. He was almost enclosed by wings. The two from his wife in front which started to spark, causing Rick to worry about some immediate danger. The second part of wings from Liatris behind – which was far too close in Rick’s perception. Especially because he knew nothing about that strange two-faced fairy.

At the North-East perimeter of Kortiki Town:
”You are such an unbelievable equivocator… I never said that. That’s just the imagination of your malfunctioning mind”, Konta noted with a certain degree of amazement. “You said you don’t wanna sit on my shoulder all the time, because its unconformable… and my dad always says it wise to check things out y’self, Konta… hurry and admit your defeat, I can’t see any problem”, Zycra replied confident of victory. Konta took a deep breath and turned his head right, looking at his right shoulder, being fed up by the succubus sitting there. On his shoulder sat the very same succubus which usually towered above him. During her frequent Felarya visits she also ate fairies from time to time and because her stomach acted like a magic sponge, their fairy magic got stored there, allowing her to use simple fairy magic as long as it was not digested. At the moment she still had some fairy magic left and used it to shrink herself down to about nine inches. “I like it here. Nah? Nah!?” Zycra added with a malicious grin, while crossing her legs. The succubus with the chocolate brown skin leaned backwards and spread her tiny wings. “Fairy magic comes in handy, but I feel like I need fresh supply”, Zycra focused on Alvaron which walked behind them, which looked away with disgusted mien. He listed to her explanation how she got the size shrinking magic and thought of it as preposterous. How could somebody eat fairies? All fairies where living and sentient beings and nobodies food. That was common knowledge at Felarya. Demons just were absolutely hideous evildoers in Alvaron’s imagination. “Hey, Choco-Wings, focus!” Konta said stern, trying to prevent that Zycra’s thoughts were floating off somewhere. His past experiences with the brown skinned succubus told him that it wasn’t necessarily a good thing to have her running wild with ideas. Zycra turned towards the human, suddenly leaning against his neck, licking it a bit “You charmer… you desire that marvelous body of mine that much? Stripping me naked with your greedy eyes to see my captivating brown skin?” Konta raised one eyebrow and return flat “You are naked all the time”, the human coughed additionally and finished his response with “You almost stomped me flat with that marvelous body of yours… so… Nooooooo”. Zycra let down her wings and snorted “What a letdown. Killjoy as always… poking fun at a poor little succubus”.

Zycra shook her head, putting her hands up in the air in a gesture of perplexity. “Why are thou humans vengeful in such a way? Pulling out the old chestnut… pettiness”, the brown-skinned succubus yarned to demonstrate her perception. Konta harrumphed and fixed his hat, which almost did fall off by surprise. He was sure that this damn succubus really meant what she said and as such he just could not let it slip. “Old chestnut? That was about an hour ago, you…”, he bit on his tongue and looked straight forward. Avowedly, he would have been screwed without Zycra’s help as the weird fairy, which chased him around, was drawing closer and closer. He managed to avoid being caught, but it was only a matter of time. Those damn fairies had truly astonishing stamina. Right at the moment the fairy with the turquoise hair would have jumped on him, he did run into Zycra. She just stood there like an advertising pillar in the middle of the trees. The human bumped accidently right in between her toes, as she had changed back to giant size, and got pinched there. When turning around the fairy was gone and when looking up he looked at the face of a succubus grinning like a Cheshire cat. Not just that she firstly wouldn’t let him go, she also called him ‘Nice-Toe-Jewelry’. Left and right on Konta’s temples little frown lines started to rebuild. The utterly officious smile of the giantess still preyed on Konta. Said succubus just blinked at him with chaste eyes which made the human groan in response. What did he expect? Zycra is just Zycra, yet he vocalized dourly “Screw you, damn succubus”. Zycra just giggled, poking out her long tongue at the proud human warrior. “If you please… behave yourself. You are guests at her majesties kingdom and we will be at our destination very soon”, Alvaron called to order, trying to cut off the demoness’s and the human’s indecorous behavior. It wasn’t much longer until they were at the border of Kortiki Town. He could already see the strange dome above the city as they landed in save distance – like queen Nemyra told him. Zycra’s wings drooped and now she was sighting. That witty fairy queen had her at her heels. She vividly remember that her father telling her to do everything in return for the gem she got. The demoness assumed it was only delivering some gossip, but now it turned out to be much more costly in terms of labour. Certainly she just could have said ‘no’ to that errand fairy walking behind her, but what if the fairy queen told her father that she needed her help and she refused. Her wings drooped even more and she began to pedal while holding her head. “Stop that you tiny slacker”, Konta remarked, feeling the demoness’s tiny feet clobbering against his shoulder. He should complain about her forcing him to accompany her. Once again Konta sighted while Zycra’s eyes suddenly sparkled gorgeous and she asked the human out of nowhere “Can I at least eat the fairy-errand-boy? As compensation? Pretty please…?”

At the South-West perimeter of Kortiki Town:
An orange haired, scantily dressed, fairy jetted between the trees close to the town perimeter of Kortiki. Subeta passed the trees left and right in alternation, gracile pirouetting from time to time and showing off her dexterously outstanding flying ability. Maybe she wasn’t the fasted of the fairies, but she was definitely very skilled in sidestepping and zigzag-flight. Even when rushing in between the tree’s she carefully looked around to not miss anything. That weren’t just the trained eyes of a Felarian huntress, but her unwillingness to overlook interesting treasure spots. Not everything emitted a sensible magical aura. Using all your senses was the first thing every young fairy learned. Subeta fetched the magic loupe, she got from the fairy queen, from her pocket and looked through. The collector fairy decelerated almost instantly and remained floating in mid-air, her dragon-fly shaped wings softly moving. “Wow…”, she expressed her amazement blatant. Everywhere on the ground where footprints and other markings. They did glow in all colors of the rainbow. Subeta focused her eyes which immediately caused the crystal to zoom-in or out. “Wow… once again”, Subeta giggled happily. That stone was the real thing. She never read something about it and it was pretty astonishing. Subeta almost intuitively understood the meaning of what she saw. Removing the loupe she was looking at plain solid stone, but when using the loupe she could see all kinds of traces. As skilled huntress she could even tell if it were markings from fairies or other visitors. With footprints if it was a male or female fairy, how fast they were walking and other characteristics. Subeta was very skillful with tracking and information gathering spells, but the kind of information she was able to see with the magic loupe was unparalleled. “Definitely worth to be added to my collection”, she rejoiced happily. The fairy queen said something about it only be a loan from somebody else, but as long as that somebody didn’t know her, it should be fine to keep it. In worst case she would just claim she lost it. The collector fairy rubbed her hands in glee. Sticking with the fairy queen definitely led to valuable treasures.

Subeta again looked around, seeing all kinds of colorful dots and lines. There was a single blue dot some miles away and somehow Subeta felt that this must be the signal of a human. She didn’t know why, but it was like the loupe transmitted that information through her eyes directly into her mind – which gave Subeta an idea. Maybe this feature was swinging in both directions. “Let’s see”, she commented inquiringly. The fairy with the orange hair concentrated her eyes on the blue dot on the loupe, looking deeper and deeper into the gem. At the moment she felt the dot moving, she started to very carefully chanting a spell. Subeta bit on her tongue as it was tough to create the spell and not defocus with her eyes. Suddenly her efforts were rewarded. “Yaahooooo!” Subeta rose her arm high up, striking a victory pose. She felt a soft plopping right inside her belly and something starting to squirm. She actually managed to cast a belly-warp spell through the loupe on a human that was approximately eight miles away. The fairy closed her eyes and rubbed carefully around her belly, almost drooling from the complying feeling inside her stomach. “What a useful tool… for everyone”, she noted down, referring to its usefulness for humans to detect magic traces and fairies alike, as she demonstrated. Knowledgeable humans labeled the canopy fairy’s belly-warp spell as most dreaded fairy-spell. Belly-warps were hardly detectable, but some humans were pretty ingenious. Being able to directly cast a belly-warp on a group of humans from far away was a dead certain catch – literally. With some training it certainly must be possible to warp a whole adventurer camp directly into her belly, Subeta pondered. That would be convenient and left more time for exploration. The fairy nodded. It was fine from time to time to take the loupe from her collection and put it to good use.

“Hmmm… what is this?” Subeta again gazed through the magic loupe and discovered a strange spot. It was an area of nothingness. A black bubble on the loups surface. When using her own skills she could feel absolutely nothing unusual from that direction, as if everything was completely normal. However, the loupe told a different story. Definitely worth a visit. Subeta changed course and headed towards the suspicious zone. Just to be cautious she activated one of her camouflage spells. A little glance sidewards to the frozen Kortiki Town should be a first-rate indicator that something very dangerous was ongoing and prevention was better than cure. Subeta rubbed her hair, because she noticed herself that this was a rather uncommon thought for her. Normally she rushed in and tried to deal with whatever came up. The company of the fairy queen must have caused her some edginess.

Inside Kortiki Town:
“Let’s take a look, I’m a bit curious I have to admit”, the fairy queen said with an incredible joyful smile of anticipation. In Revision every day had some new human strangeness for her which also was quite funny, because she thought she knew everything about humans, yet Rick occasionally managed to surprise her. Nemyra could hear some whispering and creaking from around the corner. She could faintly feel the presence of demons, humans and fairies. Everything was dull and like covered in clouds – it was not easy to trick her senses, she would pay them kudos for being able to pull that off after she had dismember them. Nemyra looked at Liatris, prompting her to take a step forward and accompany her. She also wanted to instruct Rick to go into hiding till things were settled, however the fairy suddenly felt something touching her legs. Looking down it was Rick’s head. The blacksmith got curious as well and ventured is way through his fairy wife’s legs and peeked around the corner of the dwelling they hid behind. A rather disturbing sight greeted the human. Six or seven fairies and the same number of strange looking creatures with horns and claws stood close to each other – frozen in time like the rest of the town. Among them a lot human-looking beings with black hoods and cloaks were walking around. Their clothing was somehow glistening with a strange black radiance. Rick could see one or two faces. All of them had black stripes which were glistening as well. Some held likewise black cubes from which threads reached out to the fairies which seemed to be partly visible and invisible at the same time. The human blacksmith gulped, being more and more disturbed.

The purple pair of legs, the human blacksmith pulled his head through, dragged him back. Nemyra took some steps back, keeping Rick in that position with an incredulous mien, before she grabbed his shirt and pulled him up. The fairy queen looked very focused and deep inside the eyes of the human. Without her saying a single word, the human could hear her ringing voice inside his head, asking him if he was desperate to die and what he was thinking. He didn’t knew himself, he just wanted to know what was round that corner and even made his fairy-wife curious. That was just his character. In the meantime Liatris peeked around the corner and was already coming back, receiving more the less the same glances. The fairy with the green eyes twisted the tips of her index fingers against each other and stated hushed “Sowwy, mi volis vidi epokoj”. The human blacksmith felt tipsy and covered his eyes with his hands for a short moment. He still saw the afterimage of his wife’s purple eyes. Liatris quivered a bit as the same purple eyes met with hers, leaving no doubt that the fairy queen was going to drag her along for the upcoming quarrel. Nemyra got very close to Rick, telling “Hide somewhere”. With steady steps the fairy queen walked towards Liatris, making her walk backwards without realizing that about fifteen steps later both would lose cover. Exactly this happened. The fairy queen and the awed Crimson Maiden, in canopy fairy mode, stood right in the middle of the cross-way, gaining uncovered view on the strange bunch of people.

Nemyra focused on the black cubes. While looking at Ricks eyes she extracted the things he saw directly from his mind. She was fully aware how many entities he saw and what they were doing. The number of fairies. The number of humans. Finally the number of the unidentified creatures, which very obviously were demons. For the fairy queen it was clear that was going on. Those cubes were containers for dispersive magic. The threads which spread from them to the fairies were like pipelines. The dispersive magic was pumped into the body of the fairies, which made it react to the fairy magic. As result the fairies bodies disintegrated. It was the same as if matter and anti-matter would get into contact whereby the two annihilate each other, dematerialize into energy quanta. The same principle applied with magic and dispersive magic. Like matter turning into energy quanta, the magic turned the other way round into particles – crystalizing as fine black powder. Usually this black powder was rather useless as each particle wasn’t powerful enough to have brisance.  However, if you had an initial nucleus the powder started to form a solid crystal. Those crystals where called Obscurita. They consumed light and thus were pitch black. They emitted nothing, making it almost impossible to detect them by conventional means. On the other hand they stored an incredible amount of magic, which was set free when breaking the crystal. The fairy queen knew that it was one of the most wanted resources for species without magical affinity or for magical beings which were in need of large amounts of energy to even make their bodies move. In prehistoric times very dangerous and fearsome beings roamed Felarya, feeding on those crystals. Those beings could break a whole dimensional plane when their energy oozed out, making it almost impossible to even live on Felarya. Said beings were assumed to be the major reason for Felarya’s dimensional instability. Thinking of initial nuclei the fairy glanced at the demons. It seemed like the black cloaked humans used pivotal rods to open gates, connecting Kortiki with hell, to lure some demons in, using the human inhabitants of fairy kingdom’s guest town as bait. Something rather unbeseeming, Nemyra labelled. The demons got caught in the dispersive time-spell, which domed the city, and were used as nuclei. It was still widely unknown why the black powder started to crystalize when getting into contact with demons, but it effectively ate away their bodies and left nothing but chunks of Obscurita.

“Bad idea to mess with my kingdom”, Nemyra spoke unfazed, causing the humans with the black cloaks to notice her for the very first time. Nemyra closed in, reaching the first cloaked guy before he could react. The whole body of the human exploded from head to feet by just a soft touch with her index finger on its neck, leaving an empty cloak – drenched in red color while the innards of the killed human burst apart, hitting the solidified demons all over. “FAIRY”, one of the cloaks guys yelled and instantaneously shoot a beam from one of the black cubes at the intruding fairy. Nemyra delicately jumped back and avoided being hit without effort. She wasn’t going to underestimate the power captured in those cubes. The power was most certainly extracted from the stolen book from Muroyo and thus a real treat. Especially because she couldn’t freely use her fairy magic inside the dome that held Kortiki hostage. Nemyra also refrained from using her true strength as she accidently might blow away the whole town. At least she would hold back as long as it wasn’t getting really critical. Better losing a town than the whole fairy kingdom. For the time being she would restrict herself to fight with her raw physical strength – which alone already showed to be pretty bad for her opponents.

“Ieeeeeeeeeeeeek”, Liatris also got suddenly tackled by a whole bunch of cloaked attackers. Two of them holding cubes as well. Instead of fighting back the fairy with the light purple hair, which was tied to a ponytail, started to run and jump across. “Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me. Creeps. Creeps” She yelled around while trying to avoid them as they seemed to jump in front of her from all corners. “Wuaaaaaah”, she yelled once more as one of the guys with a black cube appeared in front of her and the cube started to emit an eerie aura. A flash dipped the whole scene in blending light. Rick, which ignored Nemyra’s advice and kept an eye on the fight since some moment, had to avert his face. With the bright flash fading away and after his eyes recovered another voice commented on the situation. “Cor blimey! You almost got me. Well… almost, right?” Out of the light an orange haired fairy with a truly murderous smile on her lips appeared. The slim built Liatris got replaced with a thewier and ruggedized version of herself. Her wings took on a silvery sheen and grew larger while a pretty prominent tattoo formed on her left cheek. Rick could see that in the middle of her chest a small mark indicated that she got hit my something. He also was able to understand what she said for an unknown reason. The human blacksmith’s eyes widened as his eyes hit the human figure, holding the black cube. He was fine. Expect one little detail. Liatris smirked “Trying to burn the Burning Edge? Bad move. Don’t you know that if she looks at you, your head turns into charcoal?” The standing figure twitched as if it thought it was still alive, yet missing its head. The cutline sizzled, not burned anymore but already charred. The silver-winged fairy took the black cube out of the hands of her unfortunate enemy, while the other attackers regrouped. “As token of gratitude”, Liatris said with pretty sarcastic vibe in her voice, while she lowered her gaze. The bright glistening eyes of the fairy burned the remains of the standing figure before her to ash. The human blacksmith watched the cremation in awe, starting to feel an unbearable heat himself while just looking at the Crimson Maidens eyes from the sideline. It almost felt like his own body was on fire and thus he averted his eyes rather quickly.

Rick glimpsed back, but Liatris was already gone – nowhere to be seen, just some very devilishly cries were audible from one of the byroads. The last scream was followed by a gush of blood which spray-coated the wall across from the roads entrance. Another outcry of pain, followed by a series of dull impingements, drew the human’s attention away from the blood spattered alley. His advertency was caught by the second combatant. Nemyra jumped away from a group of three humans, holding black cubes, with a genteel backflip, landing on just her right hand with sprawled legs in the middle of two more humans. Her body begun a skillful twist while she spread her legs, effectively kicking the two figures - evasion impossible. It was almost as if his fairy wife would dance, Rick mused. A rather deadly performance. The upper body of one of the humans, the purple-skinned fairy had hit, was instantly torn off and flying back into the spacious street. His lower body remained motionless like it wasn’t hit at all. The second human met the other leg of the fairy diagonally from upper left to lower right. The entire body got ghastly deformed before it finally broke apart with horrifying creaking noises. Fragments of bones scattered around everywhere while the flesh gunned away like minced meat. Rick took some steps back, crossing both hands in front of his mouth, desperately trying not to ralph. The most terrible thing he saw in his entire life was his village attacked by a giant fairy and people getting eaten like livestock. However, seeing someone mowed down like the moment before was definitely very close to that. The blacksmith had wobbly knees and gulped hard. Regardless how meek and amiable his fairy-wife was in his recollections, she definitely had a very dangerous side to her. Somehow it should have been obvious, but just reading about something or having it told to you was definitely another level than really witnessing it. Especially as the human was pretty sure that the flamboyant fighting power he saw firsthand a moment ago was only the tip of the iceberg.

With a certain uneasy feeling Rick took steps forward, again taking a look at the fighting scene. Regardless how he felt currently, he was still rooting for his fairy. The blacksmith slid his head very careful around the corner, barely enough for his eyes to see what happened. “Bind her”, one of the cloaked fellows shouted, trying to finish a magic spell made especially to render fairies unable to move. The fairy queen already defeated a dozen of them and so the last three, which were brave enough to not haul asses, switched from cornering their opponent with the dispersive magic to using a special anti-fairy spell. Immobilizing a fairy was most certainly the best way to defeat them. You just should never forget about their size-changing magic. The three humans simultaneously shoot a green beam towards Nemyra in an attempt to bind her down from three sides. The beams hit the fairy and featured a radiant green halo, actually causing the fairy to stop moving. “We got her. We hot her”, one of the humans blazoned with relieved overtone. The human blacksmith was caught by surprise and assumed the worse. What kind of a men would he be if just looking how his wife got into trouble without trying to be of help? Without seeing it through to the end, Rick stormed toward to the middle of the crossing and shouted “Assholes! I’m here, too…” His heart almost skipped a beat as two of the attackers faced towards him, one of them with suddenly flashing up black cube, ready to fire off whatever was contained in those cubes. In an instant, a large whirlwind of magic jolted skyward. The green glowing aura, made to immobilize fairies, snapped almost instantaneously. Countless waves of purple blazing spiral vortices lanced along the street. The two human figures at the left and right side disintegrated as touched by the purple vortices. Devoid of a protective stance Rick got hit by those streams almost without any time lag, being pushed back with tremendous force. It was a blessing in disguise that the blacksmith got veered against a bush instead of a solid wall, because even the collision with the wood made him groan loudly. A bolt of pain, like it must feel when hit by lighting, rush up and down the human’s spine. Consecutively, Rick wasn’t able to keep footing and fell down to his knees, uttering sounds of agony fouled up beyond all recognition.

Precisely as the human blacksmith opened his eyes again, he noticed shoes directly beside him. A glimpse upwards revealed some large knife with beautiful pearlescent engravings. Every muscle in the human’s body ached and his bones felt like a heavy cast-iron bell hit by a massive badalo. Rather humiliating, the only thing Rick could pull off was tumbling sidewards, finally resting on his back like a helpless turtle. It crossed his mind that he was going to die, cut down from an unknown cloaked ratfink, because he wasn’t able to avoid the knife he glimpsed at. “Skittering away is futile”, a female voice said calm and composed. The human blacksmith opened his eyes once more – he closed them, awaiting his assumed final fate. The voice belonged to Liatris. The attacker with the black cloak still stood there, not moving a single inch. Rick noticed a second pair of legs standing behind the guy as the cloak didn’t reach down to the ground. The face of the black clothed human quivered strangely. His right eye moved rapidly from right to left and back, while the other eye was completely white as the eyeball was skewed backwards. Spittle flowed out of the corners of the mouth. It was once again a rather disgusting sight. “Man! Picking up a fight with a Crimson Maiden with such a weak body. Humans are crassly stupid vermin”, Liatris jeered cross as two sticks. A river of hot steamy blood run down her right arm as she had driven her hand, outright, through the skull, directly into the human’s head, squishing his brain with closing her hand inside. The human collapsed in the moment the fairy with the orange hair pulled her hand out of the skull, shaking her hand with the statement “I hate brain tissue stuck underneath my nails”.

Liatris was covered in blood all over, looking like an insane serial murderer. Rick almost fainted by grossness. Fortunately, he couldn’t see into the alley Liatris came from. The Crimson Maiden ruled that those guys, which came after her, weren’t worth to meet their fate by being cremated by the renowned ‘Burning Edge’ and decided to train her martial arts combat abilities with them. The alley was filled with torn off arms and other limbs, cracked skulls and frazzled chests. “Am I right in assuming that you checked that none of those cloaked humans you killed was one of the bunch that attacked you previously? None of the guys we are looking for?” Rick looked upwards, following a pair of purple legs until his eyes reached up to the face of the fairy that asked that important question. The Crimson Maiden shrugged, fondling her ponytail sheepish. When her second personality took over the fairy usually wasn’t caring for anything anymore and so, of cause, she forgot completely to check for any familiar faces. Checking as of now wouldn’t make any sense as nothing identifiable was left after she had been done with them.

Meanwhile Rick’s eyes met with the eyes of his wife, causing him a little shiver. She looked down on him as if she was preparing to eat him personally – quite a bit intimidating. Nemyra appeared outwardly calm, as most of the time, but was royally pissed on the inside. She told her human husband to go into hiding and stay there until further notice. Nonetheless, he jumped right in front of the attacking enemy, which was totally uncalled for. Those puny attacks had hardly to none effect on her. So why did he came out? The fairy queen hunkered over her little human klutz and laid her arms around him. She slowly helped him up, soulful caressing his injured back. Initially she planned to undo the immobilization spell not in such a forceful fashion, but when Rick left cover he was momentary targeted by one of the disguised enemies. A split-second later and he would have been hit by a solid beam of dispersive magic. Usually dispersive magic was harmless to humans, yet such a massive ray would have been an instant kill. As her fairy magic was mostly blocked, due to Kortiki Towns shielding dome, she used a portion of her elemental magic. The fairy queen held back as much as possible to eliminate the attacking humans while not killing her own human. Nemyra whispered softly into Ricks left ear “Stupid Rick, got yourself hurt. You can call yourself lucky that your fairy has such good control over her powers”. Rick wasn’t going to complain. He knew that it could have a bad end as he left cover, but nevertheless he wanted to be of help to her. The fairy queen rubbed the injured back of her blacksmith again. It wasn’t her intention to hurt him at all. She felt a bit vulnerable while looking at her human husband – for someone like a Felarian Guardian a pretty novel experience.

“That’s… That’s…”, Rick suddenly pointed behind Nemyra and repeated that words several times, still flipping over. “Cool down, Mr. Acura. Your protective fairy is here and working her enticing ass off”, Nemyra joked. She would have to give him some massages when coming back to Reversion to make up for the little accident of sending him flying against a bush. “No. No. I mean, … look”, Rick pointed once more behind the fairy with the glistening wings which looked at him with her seductive purple eyes. The fairy queen turned around. She was sure that there was nothing dangerous or important as she would have sensed that. “That human there… that is the one that commissioned me to fix the rod… you know, that rod the other fairy with the hat brought back… the dented one”, the human blacksmith had a soupçon of volubility. “Is he…?” Rick added with unsecure expression. Neither Nemyra nor Liatris seemed to be fairies which did things by halves. “Still alive”, Liatris noted and suggested “We should adjust that”.

The Crimson Maiden directed her gaze on the unconscious body. In less than a fraction of a second the body vaporized under her infernal red parching eyes, leaving just a rapidly decaying mist of ionized plasma gas. Liatris smirked rotten, yet promptly searching for eye contact with the fairy queen. She said nothing while Rick was on the verge of shouting at the fairy with the silvery wings and infernal red eyes. Nemyra put a finger on her lips to signalize Rick to stay quiet for a while. The human blacksmith hat a lot of opportunities to learn what the quirks of his wife meant and usually he respected them. “And? Got something out of him?” Nemyra asked placid. “She freaking killed him! Without asking anything! How should we now…”, Rick lost his cool and bawled out with a snarl. The only reason for him coming along was to find that guy which commissioned the rod. He wasn’t sure what that airhead of a fairy was thinking, if something at all, but it couldn’t be much. At least Rick was convinced and took that as fact. “Humans”, Liatris enjoyed herself by smiling snotty, holding back as usually a human which was cheeky ended up in smoke before counting to three. She tittered again as Rick tried to look away, avoiding her eyes. The Crimson Maiden added saucy “You know, it isn’t important where you looking at, it’s crucial where I’m looking at”.

Nemyra harrumphed deep and without ambiguity. One additional menacing word towards her human husband and she would demonstrate how unvarnished she could express displeasedness. In a way only a Guardian could do it. “Back to the point”, the fairy queen added as terminal verbal warning. The orange haired fairy flapped with her wings and raised her arms, declaring defeat. “I ripped the soul from the body before annihilating the mortal remains”, again Liatris smiled deviant. Her special ability to look beyond the flesh and grasp the very soul of living beings came in handy. Usually she would just burn away the soul, destroying it in the process so that is wasn’t able to reach hell or haven, effectively killing a person ultimately for all eternity. However, this time they were interested in the knowledge of the subject, which meant that Liatris consumed the soul bit by bit, causing fragments of its existence and memory to float into her mind. The Crimson Maiden had to be very careful. Too fast and the memory was eaten by her minds flames. Too slow and the memory faded away as it was not part of the soul, but just attacked to it for a short period of time after the physical bodies death.

At the South-West perimeter of Kortiki Town:
Subeta reached a secure spot close to the odd-looking area where the magic loupe did show just a dark zone. She still couldn’t feel anything and consequently she grabbed the magic visualization tool from her pocket. The fairy adjusted her hat with a casual flip against it and placed the magic loupe in front of her right eye. The dark zone was now filling almost the complete surface, but from this close she could see shadows moving around. They looked like blobs, but from time to time the shape changed into something more humanoid. “Let see if we can see something”, Subeta whispered softly and moved carefully towards the shadows real location. Luckily, Subeta was quite experienced in sneaking up to imprudent and even to crafty adventurers. Like walking on tippy-toes she approached the unknown group. Passing by some trees she could suddenly hear voices. Silent voices, however the fairy figured out that they were chanting fervently. A chill was running down Subeta’s back as she vividly remembered the word of the fairy queen. There really seemed to be a group of people chanting spells or doing something else down that line. “How could she have known that?” Subeta asked herself hushed, glimpsing around a tree which she used as hiding. Five figures with black cloaks stood there around some dark burning fire. The smoke from that fire drifted away towards the black dome covering Kortiki. It was likely the source for that strange structure, the collector fairy assumed. Also not all of those figures seemed to be humans. At least one had claw-like teeth coming from its mouth. Furthermore this special fellow was not part of the group that created the magic spell. It was just looking - like an observer.

Subeta decided for a tactical withdrawal and moved away from the group. The fairy queen just told her to search for such a group, not more, not less. Should she head back and report it? Well, Subeta wasn’t someone to run home to squeal. She was a fairy who liked to take action and solve problems herself. Keeping this strange group and the black smoke in mind, the situation almost begged for a solution. A dissolving solution. Subeta patted her tummy and giggled playful. After that, the fairy put her hands on the hips and twerked. She most probably had the perfect idea how to turn the situation into a toothsome one.

End – Chapter 9 – Cill into the yawning abyss