Chapter 269: The Fae Wilds

“Oi, don’t be steppin’ on the pixies now!” Cedric caught Merzhin by the shoulder. “Don’t want to be startin’ off negotiations by crushin’ a few babes, now do we?”

“What?” The Saint paused, looking down at where his foot was about to fall. Each grass blade glowed with an inner light: tiny green sparkles drifted from each one like sparks from a campfire. Among the sparkles a single flower bud shaped like an egg rose with golden light seeping through slight gaps between the petals.

“…you mean to say there’s something sleeping in there?” Merzhin asked, slowly stepping away from the flower. “Why would they leave their young on the ground? It seems a good way to get them crushed under someone’s boot.”

“Not sleeping,” Drestra of the Crymlyn Swamp said, kneeling beside the flower. “Waiting to be born. Baby pixies grow inside the petals of these flowers, like chicks inside an egg. When it’s time for their birth, a flock of pixies will gather around them and spread pixie dust over the petals to open them. Then the pixie hatches from the flower bud, sort of like a baby bird would from an egg.” She looked up at The Saint and raised an eyebrow. “Anyone wandering around in here stepping on babies would soon find themselves missing the offending foot. Pixie young are well protected.”

“So it’s a pixie egg?” Merzhin mused, looking down at the flower.” Perhaps it would be good to transplant our little friend into a fitting vessel and bring them back with us. Raised in the full light of Uldar’s glory, they might-”

Drestra cursed under her breath.

“Oi, careful there boy-o!” Cedric squeezed Merzhin’s shoulder. “There’s eyes about, even if we don’t see ‘em. Ears too.”

Merzhin gave a thin smile. “I merely jest.”

“I don’t see the humour,” Drestra muttered.

“Joke or not, you’ve got to be careful with what you say in the lands of the fae. It’s doubtful they’ll see where’n the laugh’s supposed to be comin’ from with a ‘jest’ like that. An’ last thing we need in our lives is more enemies.”

Crack.

As though responding to his words, something moved quickly through the woods, snapping a branch as it did. Cedric, Merzhin and Drestra turned their backs to each other and eyed the trees.

Heartbeats passed.

No threats appeared.

In these strange lands though, it was hard to tell where a threat might come from. The woods in the land of the fae seemed to shift and twist, like the trees were limbering up before taking their first steps. Lights drifted between their branches: tiny lanterns floating on the warm wind like dandelion seeds. A deep orange glow seeped through the canopy from the sky: the sort of light that came from the sun in the midst of setting.

But there was no sun.

When The three Heroes had first stepped through the fairy circle, there had been no trees to block the sky, but there also were no signs of sun, moon, stars or other heavenly bodies. Instead, the heavens had been filled with strange clouds in the shape of beasts, people, fairies and maddeningly complex symbols. The more they’d stared at them, the more the forms seemed to turn and twist like they were alive.

The three Heroes had quickly moved into the forest: growing overly consumed by the sights in the fae lands held its own dangers, and they wanted to reach their destination before the light faded. Yet, after hours of walking, the quality of light hadn’t changed at all: it was as though the land was permanently caught in a strange co-mingling of dusk, twilight and sunset.

And things only grew stranger from there.

The world seemed almost…hazy to Cedric’s eyes: the edges of every leaf, tree and rock were softened, like they had been painted into being with soft brush strokes. Yet—as Drestra had found out when she’d hit her shin on a stone—they were both solid and substantial.

As were the residents of the land.

“Hehehe, look at the big ones! They are afraid!” a tiny voice giggled from above, tinkling like little bells.

“The brownyies told them not to fear, but they fear anyway! Scaredy-cat Heroes!” another cried.

“Scaredy-cat Heroes!” several other voices joined in.

Cedric glanced at a swarm of tiny pixies flitting through the hazy canopy, peeking at them through the branches. They giggled and chanted—pointing like small children—while the beating of their wings sounded like music that was strange yet…nostalgic, but Cedric couldn’t place where he’d heard their song before.

“They mock us.” Merzhin looked up at them sternly. “We, who have been chosen by Uldar to make grim war against The Enemy, are being mocked by winged children.”

“Let it go, Merzhin,” Cedric warned him. “Don’ be so small a man that their giggles’d get you all riled up. Besides, each o’ them’s probably older than our grandparents. Trust me, friend, you’re not wantin’ to be pushing the bounds of their hospitality. This entire place is watchin’ us, make no mistake.”

Merzhin glanced about again, with distaste in his eyes. “Of course. I suppose it is best that we keep moving, then. Hart and the knights await us and I don’t wish to be here for too long. I well remember the story of the young Thameish man who wandered into the Fae Wilds for what he thought was a few days…only to find that years had passed him by when he returned to Thameland.”

Another peal of laughter rose from the pixies above, like Merzhin had made a very old joke.

“I think we’ll find the old stories’ve got more than a share o’ truth to ‘em if’ we don’t take proper care here,” Cedric said, pointing to a curious looking tree with plum coloured vines curling around its trunk. Red leaves drooped on its branches. “Come on, there’s one of the markers the brownyies told us to look for. We turn right here.”

Cedric led his companions to the right, and they travelled along game trails in the fae’s forest with the greatest of care. Merzhin held his head down, watching his every step, making sure he didn’t trod on pixie flowers or anything else he shouldn’t.

“I do wish they had sent a guide to meet us,” The Saint said. “I swear, most forests are like mazes to me, but this feels especially…maze-like? Labyrnthine?'' He tested one word after the next, then looked at a tree that was twisting its trunk back and forth. “…twisty. That’s the word.”

“They didn’t send a guide because they’re seeing if we’re so helpless that we need one.” Drestra’s golden eyes scanned the canopy, their reptilian slits peering out from above her veil. “My people have had many dealings with the fair folk, and they find us mortals to be loud and clumsy, at best. So they test us: if we can’t even find our way to their meeting house on our own, then we’re not worth talking to in their eyes. They’d look at it like trying to talk to a dull-witted goat, utterly useless.”

Merzhin sniffed in distaste. “Such games they play. This is no time for games or tests. The Enemy moves, and does not waste time. I cannot help but wonder if holy alliances are so rare between the fae of Thameland and Uldar’s children because of such…propensity for games in a time of trials.”

“It’s their ways.” Cedric shot a look at Merzhin. “Just as how we wouldn’t let a random wanderer meet the king: we’ve got our ways of confirmin’ folks as not havin’ their heads in their arses, and the fae got theirs.” He gestured to the forest all around. “An’ it’s bad manners to criticise someone’s ways in their own home. So why don’t we find ourselves a nice little change of subject, aye? Don’t want to get ourselves in trouble already. Oh, watch it, Drestra. Beware the forest mushrooms.”

“I seeee them,” she said, stepping past a group of mushrooms with red-caps filled with yellow dots. They rustled and leaned toward her as she skirted them. “If it’s a change of subject you want, then I have to say, I’m excited about these Generasians and their work. We might end up with some new weapons and ways to fight smarter.”

“I’m jus’ hopin’ to Uldar they’re not all talk. Ain’t goin’ to bloody lie, I’d take help from a devil about now.” Cedric ducked beneath a branch, pausing as a menhir stone loomed ahead on the forest path. On it was an arrow pointing to the right.

He squinted at it. “This way.”

Turning to the left, he led The Heroes in the opposite direction: the arrow had been pointing to a faded—almost invisible—symbol that was shaped like three swirls coming together in a central point.

A ‘Trinity Knot’, his clan called it: it symbolised death among those that still followed the old ways in Thameland.

“I look upon their presence with optimism, Cedric,” Merzhin said. “And our brothers and sisters from the wizard city have done well by us so far: some of their people donated to the cause before our priests were called back from the city. And this official partnership with our king has brought us much needed food and aid.”

“Aye, the field rations’ve gotten a lot better since that deal got made,” Cedric agreed.

“Indeed, and they have the church's full support as well,” Merzhin continued. “I have faith that their presence is all part of Uldar’s plan. …though I question why priests are disallowed from visiting their lands. It is most unfortunate. Close-minded.”

“I don’t mind,” Drestra said, her voice crackling like flames. “As long as they help us, they could make priests put on dancers’ costumes and do jigs for all I care.”

“…I will ignore that bit of heresy. And you should care more, holy Sage. You refuse to hear Uldar’s voice.” Merzhin sighed. “Despite the fact that he has marked you as one of his own-”

“Oi!” Cedric looked at Merzhin. “We agreed to let that lie, didn’t we?”

“I did, and I was not planning to take it farther, my friend,” Merzhin said. “I meant no offence, holy Sage.”

Drestra looked like she wanted to say something rather…heated to The Saint, but a pleading look from Cedric made her hold her tongue.

“In any case, I hope we can visit Greymoor soon,” she sighed wistfully. “Think of all the magic…all the knowledge we might share with each other.”

“Aye, that’s the hope, isn’t it?” Cedric said. “That we might get a chance to be of help to each other. But that’s only if’n we get a moment to stop having to sprint from one end of the kingdom to the other, puttin’ out one fire after the next.”

“That’s something I’m hoping to put an end to by keeping my skill and powers growing,” Drestra said. “Right now, I’m at the point where casting fourth-tier spells is second nature to me, so I don’t think it’ll be too long before I can cast fifth-tier ones. And when I can do that, there’re fifth-tiers I want to learn that can transport us hundreds of miles in an instant.” A smile that was more like a snarl lit up her face as she rubbed her hands together. “Just thinking about meeting those wizards gets my blood going because I’m sure they know spells like that, and if I can learn some from them, our lives’ll become that much easier.”

“Do you think they would teach you without expecting payment?” Merzhin asked.

“Maybe there can be a trade. That way, we can-Ah, I guess this is it.”

“Aye, I think so,” Cedric said.

The forest came to an abrupt end, like it had been cut away with mathematical precision. Well tended flowers of a dozen colours bloomed where the woods ended, stretching out before them. Rising from a mound taller than the rest of the landscape was what looked to be a little cottage of stone that one could find anywhere in the Thameish countryside. Yet, the more Cedric looked at the structure, the more he saw that it was anything but ordinary.

Its thatched roof was woven together like threads of spun gold. Its stained glass windows seemed to shift colour each time he blinked. The smoke puffing from the top of the stone chimney billowed skyward in neat, singular clouds that formed animal shapes which rose and swelled to join the clouds filling the sky.

“Well, this is the place.” Cedric took a breath, gripping the haft of his weapon which had transformed into a long staff of shining metal. “Now, before we step into their den, let’s go over the rules one more time.”