What’s going to happen next in the Felaryan manga?
What is Lesona plotting? This is my idea. I don’t know I Karbo will use any of it, but I think that it is interesting none the less.
All charectors belong to Karbo, except Leopold, a rather eccentric male naga I invented, and Void, a neko not like any other, except maybe one.
Nagav city a squadron of men and women has gathered in the courtyard of Lady Lesona’s manor. All of them are hardened soldiers many are even adapt in magic. While Nagav is filled with mercenaries and a woman with the wealth of Alastasia Lesone could easily have hired and army ten times as large, these two hundred and forty five men and women have something that the thousands of mercenaries in Negav can never have, loyalty. They have pledged there allegiance to the house of Lesona and the Magiocrats.
Lesona herself stands atop of her balcony and looks at her men as they are patiently awaiting her orders.
Next to her stands her lieutenant, an elder and powerfully build neko, the former mentor of the presumed death battlemage Voidfinger.
“I’m not sure I like this plan malady Ur-Sagol has been abandoned for centuries there is nothing there but ruins now, why risk such large expedition just to get there, can’t we test just test your new super weapon”
“That’s just it Void, it’s just ruins, there wouldn’t be anyone there to see it, there will only be me, you and those that are already loyal to me beyond question.” She waives her hand over the gathered force below her. “It’s all about power Void, if I can reclaim Ur-Sagol, I will have send a message that no one can ignore.”
“But the city was destroyed by Guardians, if your plan of purifying the ruins of predators are successful won’t that just…” He let the words ebb out as a dawning realization showed on his face, or would have if it wasn’t completely hidden behind a mask.
“Exactly” was Lesona’s only response, as she smiled evilly at the horizon where the jungle folia was still thick and green.
***
About a mount later Leopold was on his biweekly hunt near Ur-Segol ruins when something unusual court his eye. It took him a moment to realize what it was that was wrong. The jungle near the ruins seemed less thick, the walls was no longer overgrown, but clean and white. First it seemed unremarkable, but the more he concentrated, and the closer he got, the more lucid it appeared. That was when he first noticed the smell of humans and nekos inside. Must nagas would properly have rushed in without thinking, but he was more scientific then most and had never let his hunger control his life. He never had any problem eating humans; he just didn’t eat everyone he found. Instead he collected them in cages and ate when it suited him.
There was too many unknown variable in this. Who was these humans, and what had they done to so efficiently mask there presence?
The prospect of a new scientific discovery was all that he thought about as he hurried home to his lair to get his equipment and put his cages away. It wouldn’t be wise to take your captured pray with you, when you were on a stealth mission.
Of all of his many gadgets his telescope was the one he loved the most. He got it from a Felarian Express bout he had captured a few years ago. It was about half the length of his arm, but it could enchant his vision many times over.
It had been invulnerable in his attempt to map Felarya.
This time on his way back to Ur- Segal he made meticulous care to record his sense impressions. As before, at great distance, the ruins looked as the always had, when he got closer the walls started to look more and more white and clean. When there was about three kilometers left to the city he started to smell the inhabitants, lastly about 700 hundred meters from the walls he started to hear them. There was definitely some powerful magic at work here.
That was when he saw them, Jessy and Milly the naga and giantess that used to live in the ruins. A couple of trees that had been completely purged of leafs held their capacitated heads, their bodies nowhere in sight.
This was bigger then he feared, whatever it was that hid behind these walls, it was not something he wanted to face himself. Carefully and full of dread he removed their heads from the trees and put them in his sack.
They had always been close to Crisis whom he considered a little like a daughter, she deserved to see them one last time, he just hoped he could convince her not to do something rash before he had time to talk to the fairy queen.
***
The ruin of Ur-Sagol was starting to look like a city again. The walls had been cleaned and the gates reforged. Lesona’s squadron had worked tirelessly to restore the city to its former glory. Lesona had taken residence at a large manor in the central city. She was discussion her future plans with of city with Void when a very nervous soldier suddenly burst through the door.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Lesona annoyingly yelled.
“Ma ma malady, we are under attack.”
“Explain yourself” she significantly calmer replied.
A swam of insect have surrounded the city, they completely block out the sun, a fairy larger then anyone have ever seen is closing in on us from the east and from the south where the cloud of insects seems the thick our mages claim to have spotted a being of unrecorded power. What are we going to do?”
Lesona sat in her chair with half folded hands. : “So no less then two guardians have risen against us, - perfect.
The way she smiled at impending doom was unnerving even for the stoic Void, except for her and Nanzon he was the only one that knew the of the nature of the artifact, but he was still afraid. One thing was a couple of nagas and giants quite another was a guardian.
The logic behind the artifact was sound, and you could never do what Lesona intended without confronting the guardians eventually, but in his heart of hearts he still could not help but fell doubt. How Lesona could be believe in something so completely, he had now idea.
***
“Tell me again why we are up here?” Anna said
Leopold and Anna was sitting high up in the giant tree, you could vaguely see Ur-Sagol in the distance.
“I’ll like to see a guardian fight, but I don’t want to get too close. How is Crisis holding up by the way?”
“Badly, I don’t think I have ever seen her cry before, I really hope she is okay.”
“She’s with Subeta now, I’m sure she will be fine.”
“You don’t think she will do anything rash?”
“She is rash, irresponsible and careless, but she also has a heart of gold and I have never seen her act in anger. She took you in without a second thought; she gives without ever asking anything in return. She humbles my Anna, as much as I hate to admit it, I properly wouldn’t have done the same.”
“You wouldn’t?” Anna looks at the naga next to her. His long gray hair flows in the wind and his equally gray eyes have an unexplainable depth, like the empty space filled with a thousand stars.
“I’m an explorer, an artist, a philosopher, I live to see new places and further my understanding of the universe, even had I been here when you came, I know I would have dreaded taking a cub like you under my wings.”
“You haven’t tolled my how you know Nemyra, when did you become friends with a guardian?”
“Oh I wouldn’t call us friends, I only meet her once before, and it was only later I found out who she was, but I studied her, when I was in the Fairy kingdom and I pierced together her legend from hundreds of interviews. It was actually only a few dozens I could actually use.”
“You said actually twice.”
“I actually know that.” He sent her one of these boyish smiles. He had this mysterious man of the world aura, that must women found irresistible. Last time when she was over at his lair, and saw his inventions and his art, she almost melted. He was sophisticated and cultured; he knew how to say all the right things, perhaps a little too well. She was both relived and irritated that Katrika had interrupted them right when they was about to kiss.
Since then, she had often wondered how old Leopold really was and just how mush of a father”figure” he truly was to Crisis.
“When was it you first meet Crisis?”
“Why are you asking?”
“Just curios”
“Only a few decades ago, she was already fully grown by then, her story saddens me so, I wonder what happened to her mother, it must have been something tragic.” A long pause followed.
“Did you know her?” Anna asked innocently.
“What no, no naga would ever leave her egg unattended; I can only assume the worst.” Anna seriously wondered if that was the whole story, but she wouldn’t press it.
Then it happened. A blinding flash of light emerged from the city Ur-Segol, a moment later a powerful bust of win followed by a loud bang almost blow them right of the tree. When they again had regained there “footing” the black cloud of insects that had surrounded the city had been replaced by a grey fog. Both expected the city to be gone, but when the fog lifted, its wall still stood. For a moment they didn’t knew what to think, then what Anna had explained as fireworks started shooting up from it walls accompanied by a cheer that could be heard all the way to the giant tree where they sad.
“What what just happened?”
“Anna, I think this problem might be greater then any of us realized.”
***
At the same time in Ur-Segol, Lesona’s soldiers had been torn out of there dread and had started celebrating. No more then a hundred meters to the south of the city wall lay the sundered remains Quaz the scorpion king; without a will to unite them, his insect army of had retreated to dark alcoves of Felarya’s jungle.
Lesona herself stood in the middle of her city with a jar in her hand. In the jar was a tiny fairy no larger then an insect. Around her wrist, ankle and neck she had a thick iron ring, each connected to each other with a chain that almost made it impossible for her to stand.
Her eyes were milky white without any pupils whatsoever.
“Not so alseeing now are you queen of the fairies” Void heard her mumble some meters away. He was there and he still didn’t believe it had happened. Two guardians defeated one of them dead and the other so mercilessly defeated that it would have been kinder merely to end her life then and there.
It was at that moment, when Lady Alastasia Lesona, holding one of the fabled guardians of Felarya helplessly in her hand, started laughing hysterically, that Void inventor of the voidcrawling mask and mentor to all voidcrawler, discovered a new level of dread.
***
At the same time in the Fairy kingdom, the tiny palaces that led to Nemyra’s private universe crumbled, the Fairy’s near the gates, and that those close enough to get out in time went into a full stage hysteria. Panic soon swept all over the kingdom, as fairies everywhere learned of the fall of there queen.
***
“You don’t have to come you know, you can go back to Crisis and Subeta, more then ever I think that they need someone of sound mind.”
“Thanks but I’m sure that they will be okay, and I’ll rather be with you right know, you seem to be the one that knows best what’s going on.”
“I’m flattered, but I don’t really know much more then you do. Whatever it is these humans have if it can destroy a guardian, it can destroy all of us. The best thing we can do right now is to figure out what’s going on. The first thing we ought to do is…” Leopold caught himself shoot mid sentence, as the canopy around them suddenly started to disappear. No disappearing wasn’t the right word, the trees wasn’t teleported away, they was torn from there roots, cut into planks by invisible saws and turned into a fence, on both there sides. Before Anna had started to realize what was happening, she was already being dragged to the side by Leopold who held her solidly in his hand.
After a few moments of frantically retreat, they found a safe place to watch from a tree some a couple of hundred meters away. From out of nowhere a wall close to a hundred meters wide had appeared, protected from both sides by a solid 20 meters high wall of tree trunks and covered in neatly placed stones in the middle.
“What the…” “Shh” he caught her of.
“Do you sense that?”
“What?” Anna listened but couldn’t really hear anything. After having listened intently for a few minutes she finally started to hear what Leopold had heard all along. Trumpets, that loudly marked the passing of someone very important.
It took almost an half an hour before the humans that played the instrument finely passed there hiding place. There were 21 in total. Four nekos was carried a throne where a women in a spectacular ball gown sat. The throne was surrounded by four armed guards at each side and four trumpeters at the front and back of the column.
The woman on the throne carried in one hand a strange looking scepter and in another a jar, that had a tiny chained fairy inside. It took her a moment to realize that she had seen that woman before, she was at her worktable that night, she was the one that cursed Lea.
It was first then that she discovered the 22nd member of the entourage. He was almost obscured behind the throne. He was a masked neko that reminded her of one of the thieves that had tried to steal from her the day before she came, but this one looked significantly more powerful.
“It looks like they are heading to the city of Negav, we need to find a spy that can go there so we can find out what is going on. Do you know a human you can trust?”
“You don’t have any human contacts?”
“A few, but none that I can count on, not in a time like this. Do you know anyone, it’s imperative that we find out what is going on. The entire future of Felarya is a at stake.”
“Well” she toke a long pause. “There is one I know.”
***
About a week later Léa walked into Nagav City. At the main gate she was stopped by a guard in a brightly collared red and white uniform.
“Halt madam, what is your business in the city of Alastasia?”
“Alastasia? Isn’t this the city of Negav?”
“Negav was the name of struggling outpost led by a ragtag horde of mages, Alastasia is the illustrious capital of Felarya ruled the divine grace her royal majesty queen Alastasia the first.”
“When did this happen?”
“I am not entitled to discuss the affairs of our must divine ruler…” he started as pompous as before, but in a considerable lower tone he added: “but if I was you I would cheek the Adventure Guild”, he finessed in his normal self-important tone that now seemed a little forced: “Enjoy your stay ms.”
After passing the guard Léa got the first good view of Negav, or Alastasia as the gate guard had claimed it was now called. She hadn’t been here before so she didn’t really know what to look for, but the giant red banners with a yellow crone above a white “A” that hang almost everywhere had to be new. They seemed oddly out of place, all new clean, compared to the dirty old houses they hang from.
Léa had stopped to examine one of the banners when a small girl almost ran into her. The little girl had long curly blond heir and wore a red hooded dress of the same color as the brightly colored banners. She looked to be nine or ten years old
“I’m sorry miss, I didn’t see you standing there, are you looking at the new queens banners?”
“Yes I was just wondering about what happened here. Do you live here? Perhaps you can tell me what happened?”
“I don’t live here all the time but I can tell you what I saw.”
“Please do.”
“About a week ago this strange lady came through the gate. She made her own way through the jungle and her entourage made vary loud noises so everyone could here. It’s strange that she could go though the jungle like that and not be attracted. I guess she has beast repellant or something like that.”
“I guess she does.”
“Anyway then she goes to the palace, and everyone looks very strange as she pass, I guess I do too.”
“Go on”
“Okay then at palace I don’t know happen but then a man comes out and proclaims her queen. Ugly man, with one eye, he dead now, fell of balcony next day.”
“You saw that too?”
“I see lots of things; you do that as errant girl.”
“Don’t you mean errand girl?” The girl looks Léa suspiciously in the eyes.
“Lady you won’t not make trouble for queen okay, queens have big plans for Felarya, plans felt even for small girls like me.” With that the little girl disappeared into the crowd. Léa stood for a long time and pondered what had happened, there had been something strange about that girl, then it hit her that it was her eyes, they looked to old to belong to a girl that young. It was then that she found a small key in her pocket that hadn’t been there before, a small note on the key read palace servant entry.
A cold shiver rand down her spine as she realized just who that little girl she had just talked to might have been. Whatever the truth might be, she was certain that the answers could be found in the palace and the very same person that had coursed her to be an outlaw even among her newfound friends.
Whatever Lesona was plotting next, it couldn’t be good.
Subject: The Big plot 
Mon May 03, 2010 4:42 am
