Quest of the Twiceborn

Nice chapter ^^
It was really intriguing ( and scary ) to see these fairies trying guns

Yes, the main character does utter the phrase "I've never heard of a naga this big"... Three guesses who it is.


Quest of the Twiceborn
Chapter 9 - Foreboding Signs

"Seems like a pain to haul all of this to Pellindale," Dylan was still having trouble with the mule, even though it would see a carrot and continue forward, leading it in the right direction was beginning to wear on him. "Besides, we're almost outta jerky."

"We've got the money to buy actual hot meals in that town, and it's not more than a day further, if I'm remembering correctly." Richie was easily as annoyed with Dylan as Dylan was with the mule.

"Over the next hill actually, looks like we'll have the pleasure of paying for an inn tonight." The sun was already behind said hill, and sinking fast. It looked like they would be at the gate a little after nightfall.

As they crested the hill, the town of Pellindale was starkly lit in the sunset light. The small neko community was built mostly in the trees, though a lot of the structure was also crowded at the base of the forest, with fortified walls that were unusually heavy for a neko town. It was an ideal place to find smokeless powder, as there were constant trade routes through the city carrying all kinds of explosives to the mining towns further West and to the settlements like Bigg's Folly to the East.

At least it would be ideal in theory...

The first sign of trouble was the hole in the town wall. The second was actually a lack of smoke, no cooking fires like one would expect at dinnertime. The fact that the attackers didn't use fire on the village immediately drew Elrich's mind to Drayla, though it was clear that dryads were more or less incapable of assaulting a village.

Before he even said anything, the other two had turned off the safeties on their submachine guns. "Trouble..." Elrich's declaration was both redundant and totally necessary.

---

"So, whaddya think did this, some kinda bug raiders?" Dylan looked up at the huge splintered hole in the wall.

Elrich examined some of the splinters, "Nope, no army, this was one attacker, and something big. Maybe thirty feet taller than the wall itself, and much longer than that. From the tracks I'd say something like a serpent... Maybe a naga, but I've never heard of a naga this big."

"So... what, is everyone dead? Should we get moving?" Dylan looked a little nervous.

"Nah, look there." he pointed to an area of especially bad damage, and lots of serpentine tracks. "Whatever it was rummaged around to get the ones that tried to hide, then right about there," he pointed to a deep track that wound off into the city "It got bored and chased after the ones that took its interest..." He pointed to another hole in the far wall, barely visible in the dark of the forest, "It chased them right out of the city. From the looks of these splinters, Id say it couldn't have happened more than a day ago... maybe even this morning."

"so we pick an inn and pay when they get back? Well, if the innkeeper survived, anyway." Richie seemed to get the idea.

"Huh? Stay the night here? What if it comes back?" Dylan... didn't get it at all.

"If anything, it's prowling around looking for more runners right now... An inn is a whole lot better than a tent."

---

"Okay, no, you're focusing too much of your thought on your hand... Just holding it out and making it glow isn't how you do magic. The gesture is to help you visualize, the hand helps the mind, not the other way around." A younger fairy demonstrates, holding her hand out to the unconscious and caged woman, with a little glow of her markings, the human suddenly shrinks to only a few inches tall, and then back to normal size.

"This makes sense, Mara. But I'm not clear on how the gesture has any effect on the mind." Azif scratched his short beard.

"Well, it's all about perspective... You can either make the human smaller or yourself larger, it's all the same magic, but the difference is the surrounding relative to yourself relative to the target. You need a visual reference to keep yourself and the surroundings the same, and just change the target." She gestured to the woman again, invitingly.

"Okay, a reference point." He holds his hand out and lets it relax to the point of unawareness, though it is just a part of the scenery... His body glows in a diffuse red light, as the human slowly shrinks little until she's about three feet tall. Suddenly, his concentration breaks and he stumbles back looking a little disorientated.

"Hmm, not bad for a first try... You're at about the level of a baby, but considering you didn't know you even had magic a week ago, I'd say you're doing great!" Mara's smile seemed to glow despite the six black markings on her face, even though they looked like eyes, they were arranged a little like a flower centered on the bridge of her nose. The effect was actually cute, as opposed to her mother, who looked more like a spider.

"Did I hear success in there, Mara?" Thyne opened the leaf-like curtain to the room, shedding a little bit of light on the numerous empty cages and stolen and disassembled Deluran and Miratan gadgets. "Hmm, not much of a size change, but it's a start... Come now, Etone would like to speak with you about your proposed strategy."

---

"Urgh, what a long day..." Esile practically fell into her tent, landing against Turk dramatically, "Am I the only one who's not looking forward to Elrich getting back with more guns?"

"I wouldn't worry about it too much. The ones who are sticking with the training are mostly the ones who can actually listen and remember... And not drop their rifle in surprise... of course." He was referring to yet another training injury... After which he started only loading one bullet at a time per magazine for the beginners. "And not decide they know better how to aim than their instructor." And another where a Gerridi decided he could aim better holding the rifle like a blowgun and ended up with a broken nose.

"Some are still too stubborn to hear reason though... Especially from a human." Esile sighed, she herself had been guilty of stubborn pride on several occasions, but never when there was real danger, "And from what I understand, we've been lucky so far with minor injuries."

"Hmm, maybe I should be teaching Thyne's little posse so they can teach the others. They're about as serious as an aneurysm, despite their youth." He was referring to some of the younger orphaned fairies that Thyne and the dridders had taken in and raised, "I think the other fairies fear them enough to respect their lessons."

"Oh gods... I don't like the idea of Thyne's 'dridae' having instructive authority... They're power-hungry enough as it is." She thought for a second, "I'd say get the full dridders to the point they can teach. There's still some difficulties between us and them, but there's more respect, and the dridders already doing pretty well with training, from what I hear. Oh, there's gonna be a little get together tonight, some new faces for you to meet."

"Oh, I know what that means... I assumed you ladies like to party from the first night here... But I'm starting to feel like a prize bull." Turk's grin showed that it didn't bother him, though he was suspecting that his comment might be literal. At least he wasn't hamburger, and he was grateful for that.

---

Frank knew for weeks that he was being used.

All things considered, he didn't mind. After all, he was being used to have sex with multiple gorgeous women every night. Actually, Frank could remember reading about heavens in some religions that didn't seem as spectacular as this.

As he slowly opened his eyes, he wondered how long he was asleep, though it couldn't have been more than an hour. The view as he woke was amazing. One of the fairy girls who's name he didn't know filled his view. She had either grown to huge proportions or had shrunken him down to about a foot tall and was grinding her wet pussy up and down his whole body. Her small, athletic breasts, flat belly and smooth pubis seemed like a surreal undulating ocean landscape of female body.

Somewhere behind him, he heard Mila's familiar voice, "No time to be napping, even if you did have a hard day training us. The night has just begun."

The other girl giggled, "I told you he wouldn't wake up until I started sliding on him. I'm still the stealthiest mage on the pond."

"Heh, too bad you're magic sucks... I bet that's as small as you could get him."

The unknown girl stuck her tongue out in a childish pout, though she never stopped her rhythmic motion through the whole conversation. The expression, plus her relatively small build made Frank wonder a bit as to just how old she was.

Mila just sighed and shrugged, "Well, put him back to human size... It would be a disappointment if he cums like that."

"I dunno, even when hes shrunk I can feel his dick... Besides, he's just too cute like this, like one of Tria's dolls."

Frank had a look of horror which was thankfully going unnoticed, "Okay, she's talking about dolls, I'm gonna go to a very special hell for this." Frank didn't comment any louder than a mumble, which also went unnoticed.

"Oh for the love of Nemyra, don't tell me you've humped your daughter's dolls." Mila herself was mimicking Frank's look of concern with a little disgust.

Hearing that she had a daughter, Frank breathed a sigh of relief. Clearly, she only looked too young. He considered talking but thought better of it. The full frontal massage did feel good, and Mila's other friends tonight were bound to be more shapely than this one.

---

"Okay, I'm here, what is it you had to show?" Benedict was getting impatient, though he honestly didn't have anything better to do than follow the whims of the little half-caterpillar child, he certainly felt like he should.

She spun around enthusiastically with an amazingly cute grin on her face and something in her hands, "Ta daa!" ...It was a slingshot.

"Girl, I think you're confused, we have guns here." Benedict was definitely getting tired of this.

"Oh fine, I'll demonstrate..." She took a rock out of a pouch on the sling, and loaded it aiming for the targets out on the lake... then suddenly she spun again, and shot the rock directly at Benedict before he could react!

"Gaah!" he jumped a little in shock, but then realized that nothing hit him... "Wait, what?"

"It's a phasing spell, we use it to escape from things if we can't get bigger than them..." She shoots another rock through Benedict to demonstrate. He watched at the rock flew perfectly straight into the darkness, unhindered by wind or gravity. "At first I would cast it on the rock in mid flight, but then I figured out how to make the sling cast it for me."

Benedict looked closer at the slingshot, there were little symbols carved on the ends of the tines, and another on the rock she was holding. "so you've made a slingshot that can't hit anyone... That's nice..."

"Well, phasing is useless against bugs, and I hear it goes poof when the invaders weapons hit... So the rocks should hit the invaders and the bugs just fine." as she talked, she could see the grin spreading on Benedict's face. "I thought of it when Ellie got hurt, and that it would help keep it from happening more if I can do this to the guns too."

Benedict's grin was a full-blown smile, "Girl, you are a genius."

Nice chapter
I guess Frank got more than what he bargained for here XD

Around the beginning one of my first thoughts was,

"Yay! Nekos!"
And about as soon as they mentioned the hole in the wall I just stopped and thought,
"Aww crap..."

Great story, I love it so far. ^^

Oy, Combat scenes take a lot outta me... But there's sooo many left to write! x_x;
And no worries, S-guy. Some nekos don't go down so easily!

Edit: I altered this chapter a bit to reflect some of the newer data on fairies with the discussion between Esile and Frank.

---

Quest of the Twiceborn
Chapter 10 - Accidents and Fates

Elrich opened one eye as he awoke. The image that drew into focus was that of the tip of a blade. As his eye drew the rest of reality into clarity, the field of focus seemed to slide up the blade itself until the owner was crisply visible. "I nae take kindly ta folk breakin inta ma house." the look on the catgirl's face seemed more deadly than the razor-edged rapier she was holding above his head.

"Pay for the night is in the bag by the door." He gestured towards the bag, with about six ounces worth of plain gold bars. "Don't tell me you've been waiting all night to try to scare me, Tamine."

With a grin, the neko plucked the sword up away from Elrich's face and sheathed it. "Nah, ya make a noise before ya wake, I wan't there fa more than a minute." she snagged the bag with her clawed foot and tossed it to her hand without bending over to pick it up. "Eh, feels about right."

"So where are my comrades, you threaten them for their wakeup call, too?" He noticed that for once, he was the last awake.

"Pff, Richie'd talk his way outta Anko's gut given the chance. An half the girls in town'd have me throat if I put claw ta Dylan." She grinned as she stepped out of the room, "Yer fair game o'course. Evrabody here hates ya."

Elrich shrugged as he stood to follow her, "Nice to see you've survived too, Tams. Any kind of counter attack planned?"

She actually laughed in surprise, "Ye may as well attack a storm or an earthquake! Asides, Crisis nae come round but a few times a year."

"Wait you only get attacked by giant types a few times a year?" Elrich also was a little puzzled she'd use a euphemism for the attacks, just calling it a crisis.

"Huh? Nae, one naga in particular, Crisis is er name. She usually stays on the north side ah tha river. Only slides here on er way to see Drayla."

---

"Hey, Esile!" Frank was the possibly the last wanted to see... More accurately, she was getting irritated at the humans altogether, having had to heal another set of training injuries. No one told her that these stupid gun things might even explode if too badly mishandled. Already she had to wake up early and heal several shrapnel wounds on some kids who decided to sneak out before dawn and practice like the big girls. The humans and their guns, Thyne's secret plots, this whole war, and especially that human who Thyne had been hiding away... It all gave her a sinking feeling that was so totally alien in her hundreds of years, like the happiness was getting sucked right out of her.

"C'mon, Essie. Wait up for me, I got something to talk about." Frank chose the wrong words...

Esile spun in the air and charged towards Frank, growing suddenly as she flew at him. "ESILLLLLLLE WITH AN 'L', you freaking ignorant HUMAN!" She made a swipe to grab Frank, now that her palm was nearly his full height.

"Woashit!" He ducked and rolled expertly into the roots of an especially big mangrove, where he crouched calmly until she calmed down a little...

"The hell?" Esile slowly shrank down to about a foot tall... "I... I never get angry like that."

"Yeah, that's part of what I want to talk about." the look on his face was still completely calm, "It's pretty obvious what Thyne is planning here, so I'll cut to the chase... How many of the fairies here are pregnant?"

Despite knowing that the humans were intended for breeding, the question seemed to hit Esile like lightning "Buh wha? Why are you asking me?"

Frank wondered for a second, "Err... In human culture, the healers are in charge of monitoring pregnancy and maintaining the health of the child."

"Oh... I had assumed that none of us were, since nobody I talked to had laid any eggs yet... Though lately, I have been feeling progressively worse." She looked at Frank, who had a worried look back at the mention of eggs. "Is there an illness I should know about among humans?"

Frank was at a loss as to where to even start about talking about pregnancy, "Okay, I don't know what all this entails for a fairy, but for a human, it takes nine months, and the child is born err, already hatched and alive." He had a little bit of trouble putting it in words that might make sense. "It's attached to you somehow, but I have no idea on the exact workings of it."

she looked a little disgusted, though if it was something that humans could go through, she wasn't terribly concerned. "If they're hatched already, then they'll come out as a chrysalis or a larva? It sounds kind of painful."

"Larva? No, humans don't go through any of that stuff, they start out completely human and just grow over time." Turk thought for a bit, "Well, more or less. I have no idea what a hybrid will start out as, though."

She thought for a bit, "Well, I only know about the friends of mine that have been with Turk... But in forty days, there's been about eighty girls that have had a round with him, and half of them that I know of are acting a little off lately..." after thinking again, "Myself included."

"Well, can't go by emotions. I've been keeping a loose count, and I've also had sex with at least ninety five ladies here..." Frank grinned, "Mila is a freakin slave driver, by the way. and more than half of them are trippin my radar for crazy lady hormones."

Esille looked a little shocked, though deep down it suddenly felt like some kind of competition, and she started to grin a little... "Ninety five, huh? Me and Turk have catching up to do..."

"Err... That's not the point..." Too late, Frank could see the mischievous grin on the little fairy's face, "C'mon, the point is that at this rate, almost every adult woman in the colony here will be too pregnant to fight in about five months, and there will be about a solid month where at least some of you will be giving birth each day, which leaves us wide open for attack."

Esile's eyes widened, several things Frank was saying were hitting home, but mostly, his tone was as serious as any that he had heard from Thyne. "You've talked to Thyne and Mila."

"Yeah, they seem to think that this war will be over in three months... But knowing humans, it's not gonna end in one battle like it would against bugs. If they figure out that we'll have a weak moment in the future, the survivors will bide their time for revenge."

"Okay, I'll talk to Nemaline, she's an oracle among the Girridi... If anyone could figure it out, it would be her." Back to the mischievous look, "And after that, me and Turk see if we can't get with the rest of the colony and beat your and Mila's score."

as she flew away, Frank couldn't help but feel like he inadvertently just caused himself some serious headaches.

---

Turk looked at the modified gun with one part curiosity and one part disgust... At the end of the barrel was a wooden block that looked like a crude mock-up of a big bore muzzle break with two prominent symbols carved in the front, one to either side of the muzzle. "Err, This is what now? Some kind of magic recoil comp?"

"Fairy-designed safety feature, actually." Benedict seemed to understand the humor in the idea.

"The first one blew up this morning!" One of the fairies was a little too enthusiastic for comfort, flitting around and making hand gestures to punctuate her sentences, "It was crazy like BOOSH! And there was fire everywhere!"

"Err, I know these chicks are crazy, but the safety thing isn't supposed to explode, right?" Turk was a little frightened.

"The first attempt was carved on the wood at either side of the barrel, it was pretty disastrous, but this one works a good deal better. It's based on a design Silya made with a slingshot. It uses magic to dematerialize the bullet after it leaves the gun, rendering it harmless." Benedict explained to Turk's further disbelief.

"But Silya found out that when dematerialized stuff hits bugs, they suck off the magic and BAM the bullet is deadly again!" The little fairy flew at Turk's face to give the 'bam' more effect.

"So... Basically, this sounds kinda cool... But is this safety feature, um, safe?" He aimed out into the woods, the bulky wooden prototype almost blocked his front sight, but it wasn't too bad, considering

"Absolutely! Just shoot it at the carcass thingy we pinned up over there and see!" She pointed to a tree... On the other side of it was a rather large dead beetle, only visible by being wider than the tree itself.

Hesitantly, Turk aimed and fired the small rifle. The sound was a little different, and the muzzle blast was much different from what he remembered, but it all held together. At first he thought he must have missed completely, though after thinking about it, he realized that the bullet had gone through the tree altogether. With another shot, he hit the visible part of the bug, knocking a hole in it nicely... "Okay, that's nice. Any catch?"

Benedict chimed in while the fairy was thinking. "The bullets have to be individually enchanted, making them a bit of a logistics problem, though from what I understand, it's a simple thing for these fairies. On the upside, these dematerialized bullets seem to have no air resistance and are essentially weightless. So the accuracy on them is much better than normal."

"Well, I say make a few guns for testing and we put rounds through em. Heck, maybe even take them into a skirmish."

---

"So... This is what you do for fun." Azif's whisper was barely loud enough for Thyne to hear, which was impressive. "I gotta say, this really takes me back... Just like in Panama..." With a grin he silently began to unsheathe one of his machetes. "Oh the stories I could tell you."

Thyne put a hand on the hilt of the machete and just as silently slid it back into the sheath "Shut it, Azif, we are here to hunt, not play." Thyne's voice seemed to be entirely in Azif's head, definitely a trick he would have to remember later. "Remember, you stay silent and observe. Only fight in self-defense, and stay out of the way."

Azif nodded slightly, now that the little caravan below was too close to risk talking. As they got close, Thyne's wings faded into transparency, a sign that they were in the range of the anti-magic crystal. Even though Azif hadn't been using magic long, the feeling of its absence was disturbing.

Thyne crouched on the branch, dead still as the small caravan passed, the first insectoid beasts waved feelers in their direction for a moment. Then the traps were sprung. Dozens of spiderweb nets erupted from the leafy path. One of them even caught a wheel and turned the supply packed cart on its side.

Surprisingly, the soldiers re-gained their bearings almost instantly. Azif noticed that though they didn't even begin to show panic, all of them seemed to pause in thought for a second or two. The result was almost as devastating, as the dridders and dridae jumped in from every angle, focusing their attacks on the large insects and only paying attention to defend against the humans. The exception being Berg, who seemed to wade through the combat from beast to beast with no concern for the human attackers at all.

As Berg made his way toward the cart, one of the better armored humans bellowed into the air in a voice that sent chills up Azif's spine. More so once the rest of the humans in the fight also paused and screamed up at the sky in chorus with him. The Dridders and fought more frantically, finally opening a path for Berg to charge in and destroy the crystal just as the humans scattered and a deep thrumming noise seemed to shake the entire forest around them before finally exploding in a cacophony of crashing rock and splitting wood.

Azif clung to the branch as his tree sprung back and forth. He had instinctively drawn a machete and shielded his face from the spray of splinters.

He looked up into the now sunlit clearing into a face he hadn't seen for almost two months... The horned and wickedly grinning visage of a Tonorian. "Ah fuck!"

The next seconds seemed to span ages, the hellish grin turned from Azif and the beast took aim at one of the dridders. The magic that had faded in the presence of the crystal was now rushing back into him along with an instinct to protect that he had never felt before. His feet felt like rockets suddenly went off beneath them as he hurled himself forward, drawing a second blade as he flew mindlessly at the back of the Tonorion's neck. Energies seemed to flood into him more greatly than before, sending his mind back to hundreds of fights in dozens of jungles against odds nearly as hopeless as these.

then the blades scraped against the Tonorion's armor plating and Azif's battle trance was very rudely interrupted. The blades made barely a scratch, and were dulled in an impressive display of sparks. The Tonorion shook and bellowed, knocking Azif into a free fall. In a panic, he drew a third machete, the only spare he was carrying. The Tonorion's head was making a lunge at his falling body, though at least with his feet losing contact from the beast's magic dampening hide, he could feel the supernatural strength suddenly return to him.

Once again, time slowed as he desperately slung the heavy blade at the lunging creature. Azif was not a man who prayed, he hadn't believed in anything more than power and chaos. This moment was no exception, but he could feel that something was guiding events like a puppet master, pulling strings from somewhere completely unfathomable. For a brief moment, he could almost see the threads of fate between him, the blade and the beast.

Then the blade met its mark perfectly in the giant insect's eye. At that moment, Abdazred "the Machete" Sherazif slammed into a tree and his part in the battle was mercifully over.

Nice chapter ^^
Nice action and fight here

Whew... More exposition... Hope I didn't overdo it. Gotta keep at least a few mysteries around.

---

Quest of the Twiceborn
Chapter 11 - Informative Revelations

"You can't be serious." Elrich looked baffled. It wan not an expression that sat comfortably on his face, "No, never mind, I know you're serious. Though that's only by lack of creativity."

Thyne scowled, "Your petty insults are taxing, shaman. He has shown both his valor and his desire to go through with the ritual." She sighed with no small amount of frustration. "And despite my misgivings about him, the majority has agreed."

"We're talking about Azif here. Sure, he's smart enough to follow your laws, but he's smart enough to twist them as well." He thought for a moment, "If I could just talk to-"

"You underestimate your power, human! The dridder council was in session for two straight days in this matter before you got back. Even in the odd chance they were to not completely lose patience and suck you dry, you have missed your window to even make the attempt."

"Very well, though Azif is not released from his contract with me before the time is up here."

"That would be between you and he." Thyne made a little 'shoo' gesture, to signal that the matter was closed, "Your people have certainly lived up to their end of the bargain while you were gone... We have over a dozen rifle-competent fairies and close to fifty very competent shooters among the dridders and girridi. Also, thanks to some fairy insight and refinement at the hands of your master, Benedict, we have made some magical improvements to your human weaponry that can be applied to the new guns within the week."

"So when do you plan to go through with the attack?" The question was nonchalant, though it caught Thyne a little by surprise.

"Hmm... You're pretty observant." She fiddled idly with some part of technology that she had stolen at some point. "Though we have been able to destroy many of their antimagic crystals in ambushed and raids, it seems they can continuously produce more. Though despite this, the total number of crystals they use never goes above six."

"So they have a central power source for them, and it can only handle six at a time."

"That's the theory... And that's where we run into our problem. None of our forces can get to the central crystal, though we've used some of the shards to triangulate exactly where it is."

"I won't commit my men to a suicide mission."

"Then give them the option to volunteer for it. You may choose their replacements under your contracts from my people should they die." Thyne was quite used to Elrich's style of negotiation by now.

"If they die or if they choose to stay after our time to leave..." He already had all five fairies picked out in his mind, just in case.

"Sounds perfect." Thyne and Elrich bowed to each other, both wearing a grin of mutual back-stabbers...

---

"Interesting, both the shaman and Thyne have asked me this on separate occasions..." Nemaline glided over to her shelves, filled with little crystal tablets. The seer's cottage, like those of all of the Girridi, was fairly large. The floor was made of glass tile and covered in a four inch deep layer of water, letting her glide effortlessly.

Esile didn't mind standing in the ankle deep water, as Nemaline was very particular about keeping the hut clean. "At first I thought the plan was unsuccessful, since I hadn't laid any eggs, but recently I felt something inside me, and apparently human's have a different way about this kind of thing. Frank was predicting that this birthing stuff would be a taxing process."

"Hmm, this Frank is wise... I have foreseen this to a degree, a time of suffering has been looming since just after the humans arrived, it was only after the scrying that the shaman asked of me that I was aware of its cause." Nemaline's tone was unnervingly serene as she talked about what sounded like disaster, "Ah, here it is..." She pulled down one of the thinner tablets and touched a thin finger to the back edge of it, causing symbols on the surface to light up.

"Okay, so... Out of the two hundred and forty five fairies in this colony..."

"Two hundred and six are going to have children within seven months."

Esile's jaw dropped, over eighty percent of them... "But that means... Even some of the young ones... I mean, they're out of their cocoons and all, but still young in the mind."

"Yes, it seems that several among you have had a rather eventful passage into adulthood." Nemaline grinned, "Not to worry, Thyne hasn't forced this on anyone... Though this has indeed been her plan from the start. Only a half dozen adults are left before the entire adult fairy population is ready."

"Okay, I think I'll need to train some extra healers, then."

"A few other numbers before you leave... Seventeen twins, and seventy five of the total are males." Nemaline smiled, "Those were of particular interest to Thyne, actually."

"A... A third of them are going to be male? No wonder Thyne only wanted the humans for two breedings..." She thought about it for a second, "More than that and we'd overcrowd the place."

---

"NNGH! I swear, this better be worth it..." Azif, for all of his apparent toughness had never gotten a tattoo. Though now he certainly wasn't regretting that past choice, as the pain of it now wasn't unbearable, but was definitely uncomfortable.

"Shut it, human. You wanted to join us, now you'll go through or I leave this unfinished any you'll just look like a disgrace." One of the smaller dridder women was doing the tattooing. Several dridders and young, tattooed fairies also stood around observing. One fairy stood by Azif's side chanting softly and empowering the lines as they were practically engraved into the man's skin.

"Besides, if you can't take this, then there's no way you'll last through the ceremony later." One of the dridae chimed in.

"At least the human can hold back tears, that's better than you, Dela." Another responded.

"I'm not bothered by the pain. I'm just getting bored with it." Azif could lie pretty well, which quieted the others a bit.

"Perhaps you should be more appreciative of our generosity." As Thyne entered the room, the murmurings of the dridae suddenly snuffed out. "Realize that you are only accepted because of your valor in our defense. The decision to join us is one that took many of us years to realize and accept. You and your human companions haven't been here for two months, putting your motives in suspicion."

"Majority rules on this matter, lady Thyne. Beside, Berg spoke on his behalf, methinks he's been dridae in mind longer than he's even known." the dridder finished another line as she spoke. "Berg also said for me to take extra care in the precision of his marks... The next few days will be more than time enough for this tender human to reflect."

---

"Turk, we need to talk." Elrich's abrupt appearance from the shadows was enough to send Turk into a frightened jump, though thankfully not enough to scare a scream out of him.

"Holy fuck, man, don't do that. Jeez..." Turk checked to make sure he hadn't spilled his drink, thankfully, he was able to control his surprise at least that much.

"Listen, Thyne is going to ask the group to volunteer for an undercover mission... She's likely going to send Esile in with the group in order to lure you into volunteering." Elrich could see Turk's expression change to deadly serious, "It is imperative that you do not go on that mission."

"Let me guess, Thyne plans to off me with the mission as cover? Damn good bait she's set up if so."

"Actually, I think she plans on killing everyone sooner or later... With the possible exception of Azif. Which brings me to another point." Elrich let Turk swallow his drink before continuing, "I chose four of you. Eddie Bryce, you, 'Padre' LaFontaine, and Abdazred 'the machete' Sherazif."

"Woah, woah! Azif is The Machete? I knew he was a freaky motherfucker, but you're sayin he's the freakin Arabic Hannibal Lecter?" Turk would have definitely spit out his drink if he hadn't waited.

"Yeah, he most certainly is... And he's about to be in a crowd of his own kind once he becomes a dridae. The point is, that will make you the last of the essential four that is gonna cross that river with me, which makes you the most important guy here."

"Wait, wait, essential four? What the hell kind of cryptic bullshit is that? And don't you tell me that I'm anything like the Machete... I just kill folk, he's a fuckin sicko."

"Of course... You and him both have a capacity for wild magic, and a general disconnection with humanity. Though I'd agree you've got more taste than he."

Turk was not even a little bit amused, "Fine, cut the shit, what are we."

"Ah, well, you are basically part Merfolk, and Azif is part Anansi... To be specific, his ancestors worshiped a thing called Atlach-Nacha, and yours were followers of Dagon."

The name 'Dagon' seemed to resonate with Turk in a particularly unpleasant way... Like something from a nightmare. "I... I don't think I want to hear more. And if Esile is going, I am too."

Elrich thought, then sighed before continuing, "Okay... Meet with Esile somewhere near the water. I'm sure you'll find a way to convince her to decline from joining the attack. I'll keep Thyne from forcing the issue."

Hmm, Chapter 11 didn't get a whole lot of responce... At least this chapter has some talky and some fighty... And setting up for the great big battle of the Fairy Pond arc.

---

Quest of the Twiceborn
Chapter 12 - People Aside From Humans

The two walked along the edge of the fairy pond, arguing as they went. The argument was lively, though not angry. If one paid no attention to their youth, one would have assumed them to be an old couple, debating like it was a well rehearsed play. Esile of course, made sure to keep herself between Turk and the water, as the pond itself tended to shrink humans to a convenient bite-size for the mermaids beneath its surface.

"no, it just doesn't make any sense..." Esile was having a hard time wrapping her brain around Turk's accusation, "Frank already knows about Thyne's plan and he's fine with it."

"I don't think he does know... Nor do you. Yeah, after a while I figured out that we're just breeding stock to you fairies, but Thyne would most definitely rather us dead than get across the river." Turk couldn't believe that he was taking Elrich's word for this, but from the shaman's attitude, he could tell there was a major problem.

"Hey, I'll agree, she's cold down to her bones, but what good would it do her to kill you? she wanted you more than nine months so that we could all have a second go with y-" Suddenly, she looked as if she'd seen something explode on the horizon.

"Ah, that sounds like a 'eureka' pause... Figure it out yet?"

"I'm not sure, but Nemaline said that all of us are going to have children... With more than two breedings, we would overcrowd the pond... And more than a third are male."

"So, pushing the population to the maximum with a second breeding would be a bad move on Thyne's part. Therefore, she was bluffing when she said she wanted us here for ten months..."

"Okay, even so... I can't fathom why she would want to kill you." Esile was having to wrack her brain all over again.

"There's no reason for her to hate us in particular, except she clearly has a problem with our leader."

"Well, yeah, despite their first impression, it does seem they're at each others' throats..."

"Guess there's all kinds of things you learn about a total stranger after you've fucked them. Who knows, maybe it's a religious thing." He shrugged,

"Pff, not unless the guy worships Trejal, and that's unlikely if he's not from Fe- huh?"

Turk had stopped dead in his tracks, "Woah, wait... I recognize that name. On our first travel out, Elrich got his magic stick thing wrapped to cover up a 'mark of Trejal'... So that's a religious thing?" as he spoke, he could see Esile's eyes widen. "That... that's bad isn't it..."

"Okay, I believe you... There are still a few women here who aren't pregnant, once they are, she'll just need an excuse..."

"The mission... Elrich said there was gonna be some kind of undercover mission and she's gonna try to send you to get me to volunteer. Apparently, he needs me in particular for something and Thyne knows it."

"Huh? Why you in particular? I mean, you look like you could do magic if you knew how, but that's nothing special around here."

"Wait... You've said that the pond shrinks humans, and it sort of stands between us and the river." A plan was coming to mind. "Elrich said I'm not totally human... So I should be resistant. He needs me to help cross the lake."

"Are you kidding? the lake is heavily magical, even if you're not all human, it could still mess with you." She was getting concerned by his look out over the water. "Are you with me."

"Yeah..." With a shove past her, he continued "But I gotta try!"

Esile tried to grab him before he jumped and almost immediately into the water. In a desperate save, she cast a growth spell after him to counteract the shrinking of the pond... Which as it didn't shrink him, her increasing his size by ten times was certainly not what she should have cast.

---

Elrich Carter looked out over the water during his meditation, admiring the trinary sunset... He grinned as by the banks, a huge mer creature suddenly burst from the surface of the water, and immediately dove back in. "Heh, didn't think he'd become huge... This might be problematic, but still just as well. No way he's going undercover now."

"Clever move, shaman." The young voice that came from the shadows was cold enough to freeze blood. "Your little escape plan is useless if you are to simply die here and now."

"Ah... Thyne thinks she can keep her hands clean of this by sending a child..." Slowly, he stood. The motion of it was fluid and the robes he was wearing concealed his legs, "Kid, you don't want to fi-" Elrich's speech was cut off by a sudden warping of space, which apparently fizzled into nothingness as it hit his back. If not for the slight wisps of smoke and singe marks on his robe, it might not have even been noticed. "Oh, never mind, I guess you do."

"Sinera will smile upon your death." The murderous glare on the dridae's face, and the hate in her words were all the more horrifying for the fact that she couldn't have been more than ten years old. With her icy declaration, she drew her blades and readied herself as her wings began to glow intensely.

Elrich's own grip on his scepter was tight enough to make the leather creak under the strain. Though his back was to the child, his over-the-shoulder glance was enough to size her up. Without a word, he dashed and spun, narrowly avoiding a huge knife edge as the dridae simultaneously lunged and grew, covering the distance between them literally in the blink of an eye. The two flew into the shadows, weaving in and out of the branches. He was desperately trying to break the huge Dridae's pursuit, or at least to get her to shrink down to avoid obstacles.

Rather than shrink down and make herself an easy target, the dridae was quite content to simply blast through the trees with her magic. She knew that the shaman would be steering her towards the village, to bring her into the open and get the other fairies to stop her. Just the thought of the other fairies in their ignorance brought a little scoff to her lips as she flew through the splinters of another tree. She wasn't going to let the twiceborn get that far. She slung one of her blades at the twiceborn's back, though he obviously dodged it, and by doing so fell right into her trap.

Elrich's feet barely touched the ground, the motes of magic around him manipulating the leaves beneath him to catapult him with each step. Before he could land on the next branch, he found the thrown knife flying at him again from the front, apparently returning to the dridae like a boomerang. He put the scepter out in front of him. This time, a mass of powdered bone erupted from under his robes, which quickly formed into a fang-like blade that was just strong enough to parry the vastly enlarged throwing knife. Unfortunately, the recoil from the mid-air block was throwing him straight toward the open-mouthed dridae.

"Oh HELL no!" He spun in the air, fluidly shifting the ivory blade into a gauntlet as he caught the Dridae's flying knife. The pulse of magic he sent through the scepter was immense, and he could tell the artifact was nearly at its limit, but the strength that pulsed through the gauntlet was enough to allow him to swing the massive blade at the suddenly very surprised dridae's face.

The impact was ugly. She tried to dodge at the last second, and avoided taking the blade to the roof of the mouth, but the swing instead connected with the side of her massive neck, The force of the slash continued along her shoulder and straight through the length of one of her wings. The shock of practically losing one of her wings was enough to send her careening into the ground. As she fell, she tried shrinking to conserve her magic and escape on foot, though she barely got down to four feet before the strain of shrinking down combined with the bleeding from her slashed throat caused her to pass out.

Elrich also landed roughly. the magic he had been storing up for weeks had finally been depleted by that massive swing. The gauntlet dissolved back into powder as he crashed into the underbrush and also fell unconscious.

---

The crashing in the distance seemed to add some urgency to Thyne's call to gather the human guests. It was short lived, however, and stopped before she began to speak. "I have need of one or more human volunteers for a special mission tonight," she looked around at the three gathered humans, "I see that there have been some problems... I know where your Benedict and Azif are, but where is Turk?"

From the direction of the lake, a roughly ten foot tall creature emerged from the trees, accompanied by Esile, "I'm sorry, he went crazy and jumped in the pond. I've been shrinking him back down a bit, but it will take a long while to get him back to proper human appearance." Esile was stammering and panicking like a kid who just dropped a fine china dish.

The three others in the group recoiled slightly in horror, the creature's face looked a little like Turk, though he was covered in iridescent black scales with fin-like ridges behind his ears and a mouth that was out to the full width of his jawbone. His build was also different, slightly more apelike, with his arms ending in a pair of large, inarticulate fins. Thankfully, at least his pants were intact, which left the rest to the imagination. He shrugged and grinned, though the very human gesture was a little disturbing on a Deep One, "Yeah, it was a hell of a thing, dunno what came over me."

Thyne massaged her forehead with her palm in front of her face, "Very well, Between the three of you, I need a volunteer who will go undercover in the bugs' human army. I won't pretend that it's going to be safe, but you three are clearly the only ones I've got, and your rewards will make the sum Benedict has promised you seem paltry."

Frank, Richie and Dylan looked at each other questioningly. Richie had no love of fighting, and even less love of possible death. Frank simply wasn't moved by the promise of reward. Dylan simply shrugged and stepped forward, "Ehh, why the hell not... Not to harsh on y'all, but I din plan on leavin with y'all anyway, may as well keep tha place safe."

"I'm going as well," Azif stepped from Thyne's tent nearly covered head to toe in the now finished black tattoos, "It's clear that you require more than one show of loyalty from me. If I go before the Naming ceremony, my markings can be covered by mundane means, and I am by far the most combat capable of the humans."

Thyne nodded and looked between the other two, "Very well, a two man group should suffice. You both will come with me and I will brief you on the mission. The rest of you," she gave a glare at Frank, Turk and Richie, "are confined to your tents until tomorrow night." She also shot a glare at Esile before she turned to leave.

Just as she began to go, another fairy flew in, about twelve inches tall carrying an equally shrunken dridae, "Milady! I found her just outside the West Encampment! She's lost a lot of blood and I can't heal her."

Thyne also shrunk down to inspect her more closely. She recognized the girl who she had slipped the information of the shaman's origin, "Oh no, Mara... Did you find who did this?" The chill in her voice was nearly literal.

"No, what ever it was was tonorion sized or larger by the looks of the damage to the forest... She must have put up quite a fight, there was a lot of blood."

"Esile! Forget about fixing Turk and work on Mara, I want her back to consciousness by tomorrow!" Thyne spat out her orders before storming away.

Holy crap, I've been gone for months. Well, after a rousing and epic battle with writer's block, senior level classes and school administrators, I'm ready to write some story again! BEHOLD! Lucky thirteen!

---

Quest of the Twiceborn
Chapter 13 - The Swift Execution of Plans

One would find being confined to one tent to be fairly miserable. Especially so when one's traveling companion is transformed into a 500 pound humanoid fish. "Holy shit, Turk, we didn't think you could possibly smell worse. Way to surprise us all." Frank grinned to hide his grimace.

"Yeah, yeah. Yanno, if it weren't for the fact that we're already in a magical realm full of horrors and beauties beyond mankind's imagining, this would be some kind of life-changing experience." Turk looked at a big, unwieldy fin that was only just beginning to resemble a hand. "As it is this probably isn't even in the top ten weird shit moments for this week."

"Huh, I see a guy unfazed by turning into the creature from the Black Lagoon, the first thing I wonder is how unhinged he was to begin with." Richie looked over at the scaled creature and raised an eyebrow. "Besides... 'Horrors and beauties beyond mankind's imagining'? When the hell did you become a poet."

"Well, gave up all those good looks, had to get someth-"

"Please shut up, you big trout." The fourth occupant of the tent interrupted Turk. She was a little smallish for a dridder, with a fuse to match her stature. "These kinds of transformations are very difficult to work with." Her hands were constantly glowing as she concentrated her healing magic on restoring Turk.

"Why the rush, Flora? Esile said he'll turn back over time. Besides, don't you need a swimmer in your ranks?" Richie was a little surprised at the rush.

"Lady Thyne needs warriors, meaning a hand on a gun. You are the best that your little band can offer in those regards." She sighed impatiently, "Besides, taking the battle underwater would break our treaty with the mermaids, and it would only take one of the bigger ones to eat half of our encampment."

"Mermaids? Well, that figures." Frank shrugged a little, "I guess it also makes sense that they eat people like candies, too."

---

"I'm surprised, you're staying when there's a four way split on two million dollars if you survive to earth." Azif was busying himself with adjusting the rather uncomfortable chitinous armor as he talked to his comrade.

"Ya crazy? I'm the stud for a whole village of not just hot, but magically hot hos. I'd spend half a mil in two months livin' this lifestyle." Dylan finished with the last strap of his armor. "Besides, that four way split has a big wad of 'if' on it."

"Sneaking into an enemy base full of brainwashed soldiers to blow up their secret weapon without so much as a firecracker. Somehow you think this is a sure thing?" Azif finished with the armor and donned the helmet with a dull whump. "For a human, I'd call this a suicide mission."

Dylan grinned like a fox, "Fuck da pessimism, Azif. Dis is a good plan an I'm gonna live."

---

Both Dylan and Azif had smuggled goods before, so the pouches on their bodies weren't entirely uncomfortable, except that they were squirming with fairies trying to find a comfortable position inside. Each of them had a hammer, with some kind of contraption inside that Frank had devised earlier. Between them, they carried a palette of "captured" fae weapons like a wounded man on a stretcher.

"I've followed two times where troops have captured our weapons... Repeat what I say on the cues and you should get in." Tria was hidden in a hollowed out part of Azif's helmet, positioned to whisper in his ear.

The entrance to the insects' cavern was both simple and intimidating. A gash in the earth with no visible bottom about thirty feet long and nine feet wide. The walls smoothed by some kind of acid erosion where it was stone, or by plasticine coating where it was soil. Along one side of the gash, wooden bars protruded without much visible support, forming a crude kind of staircase.

"Do not hesitate, don't speed up or slow down on the stairs. to them this is all routine." the little whispering fey kept on to Azif. He assumed that Dylan had a similar fey helper. "It's more solid than it looks, and the guards are at the end, they'll see hesitation if you show it."

Sure enough, the boards barely made a creak beneath their armored feet. Thankfully, they were broad enough and close enough to block the view into the abyss below, though the lack of railing and width of the staircase made it so the slightest sideways glance would provide a good view into the depths. About halfway into the gash, the tunnel at the other end was barely visible. four guards with long spears stood in the entryway.

"Teka!" one guard held his hand up in an obvious 'stop' gesture. Dylan and Azif stopped on cue while two of the guards looked through the stack of weapons on the palette.

"Biet. Letka" the guard spoke with a low-pitched monotone.

"letka teltev." Tria whispered, and Azif repeated in his best monotone.

"Kekka tikti natia."

"kessakal tekiki."

The guards finished their search, one of them spoke up, "Takirka laika tashe."

"Oh fuck, I don't know that one!" Tria bit her lip, she had almost shouted rather than whispering.

After a moment of thought, Azif shrugged his shoulders and made a sound like 'Kiah'.

The two guards who had spoken looked at each other for a tense moment before they also shrugged and the leader said, "Takurt."

"We can pass. Damn, that was close." Tria relaxed as Azif and Dylan continued into the dimly lit caverns. Only a faintly glowing line of some kind of moss was visible running along the middle of the smooth floor. The light wasn't even enough to show the walls, leaving both of them to only guess at the size of the corridor. "Okay... around the bend it's right, left, left, then straight on until the big door."

As the walked, Azif thought silently about how Tria, Mila and the other scouts could have all this knowledge. He pictured her shrunk down to the size of an ant, maybe even to the size of a speck of dust... He had heard Mila was the best in the village at shrinking, it was anyone's guess how far down she could go. Once inside here, her magic must have been gone. No way to get bigger, no way to fend off sickness, no way to even fly. It must have taken her months, maybe years of hard living to explore these caves.

---

"They're moving. Looks like they're bringing most of their army across the mouth of the pond." One of the dridae scouts placed some small dead beetles on the map in front of Thyne. "Somehow they've made a bridge across overnight. I think they don't expect the west side of our camp to be defended."

"They'll be sorely disappointed, though they've certainly picked an bad time for this. Most of our best fighters are with those two humans. Let's see what kind of forces are crossing that bridge." Thyne turned and swept open a flap of the tent. Calmly, she hovered out over the water, looking to the west, towards the river that fed the pond. With a squint of her eyes, several magic lenses materialized in the air, magnifying her vision.

"Milady, there were two I was unable to-"

"How the hell do they have a mage and a priest with them!?" Thyne interrupted, loudly enough to make the young scout jump. "Three tonorions, five goliaths... Looks like two hundred humans and half a dozen catapults. They're clearly tired of just raiding us. No worries. Even if the infiltration fails, our new guns will be enough to drive this force back. If they succeed, it'll be-"

Suddenly, there was the loud crack of a tree falling to the northeast, and the angry roar of another Tonorion. Thyne whipped around to look into the woods, still using her magical lenses. Trees were swaying in a large swath of the canopy, and every now and then, glitters of chitinous armor on hudreds of human soldiers. "Well, it looks like they're tired of fighting this whole war... Good thing we are as well."

Nice chapter ^_^
The transformation was unexpected

Heh... It certainly won't be the last transformation...

---

Quest of the Twiceborn
Chapter 14 - At the Edge

"It... How can it be..." Azif looked up at what was suspended in the giant chamber.

"Looking at it... I feel like... What is that feeling?" Dylan was also staring, only barely aware of the world around him.

"Like I'm missing something." Azif felt it like a hook in his soul. Drowning out the distant shouting... "Ow!"

Tria was biting viciously on Azif's ear to snap him out of the trance, "Don't look into it! It's how they brainwash humans!"

Azif looked around in a bit of a panic, quickly finding Dylan. He was walking, hypnotized toward the huge, sinister vortex that took up most of the room. With a grab and a yank, he pulled the man back from the magic circle that seemed to contain the swirling blackness. "Snap out of it!"

"I wha... HOLY SHIT!" Dylan jumped back from the edge. "What the fuck is that thing!?"

"Some kind of psychic vortex. Must be the way they fuck with magic. I'll bet it was also how they initiate new members." Azif was looking around the room, careful to not look directly into the vortex again. the room was huge, almost a two hundred feet around and a little over a hundred feet tall, the center occupied by a huge green crystal that provided enough light for the whole room.

"Did ya hear that at the end? Someone giving orders, but I couldn't understand it."

"Didn't get that far... Must be some psychic insect that can control people once their will is gone." Azif looked like he had a plan, "Okay, there's six pillars, holding that big crystal up over the vortex on those cables. That must be some kind of broadcasting crystal for all their smaller ones. If we can knock down some pillars, the crystal will swing out and their whole system will be screwed." He pointed to the columns that arched in towards the middle of the room like giant ribs, from the tip of each, a glowing chain that lead to the central crystal.

"If we're lucky, dey'll lose control of dey soljas, too."

"Okay, you get that one, hit it on the inside of the arch and get out of the way." As Azif ran, he pulled at one end of his hammer, revealing the tip of a large bullet. The weapon itself was crude, little more than a thumb tack tied to the back of the cartridge and slipped into a hole in the stone hammer head. If all worked well, the big round would fire when the tip of the bullet hit something hard. While it was crude, it was the best damage they could do without magic.

"For anarchy!" Dylan swung his hammer in a wide arc, hitting the side of the pillar with an impressive explosion. Thankfully, the hammer head didn't explode so much as it snapped off the handle. The pillar fared worse, with a big hole right through it. Dylan stepped out from under the creaking support as it began to tip.

A similar blast echoed from Azif's pillar, and the two both creaked and began falling in toward the center. As the stones tumbled bast the threshold of the protective circle, they were whisked from gravity's grasp and into the vortex in a wide spiral through the air. the other four pillars creaked ominously, but they held, despite the vortex's direct pull on two of the chains still attached to the crystal. From down the hallway, arose a clamor of shouts and armored footsteps.

"Aw fuck, NOW what?"

---

"Mistress Thyne! the eastern side is reporting magic is active again!" A messenger arrived nearly out of breath from flying.

"Good. Melanie, get all the gunners using ghost bullets on that side and lead in the heavy squad and your best dridder huntresses. I want that front eradicated before the others even get here. Berg and I will see to the west side with the gerridi and my dridae." Thyne pulled back a curtain on one side of her tent and pulled a curtain back. In the middle of the various polished mechanical oddities was a large and intricate rifle ornately decorated in gold filigree suited to a human king.

Loading a round into the drop-block chamber of the rifle, pulling the lever action to close the chamber and cock the rifle. She exited her tent to stand before the two dozen young dridae, all looking silently ready for battle. Some gripping their intricate daggers, crackling with magic, most cradling their human-made guns, held in military formation. Surrounding them were the dridders to one side, and the girridi to another. "Yesterday..." She hadn't thought to make a speech, but with this gathering, it almost seemed to be essential.

"Yesterday, we were exiles. three disparate bands of refugees who had come together out of fear and desperation. Today we are sisters ready to fight, not just to breathe another breath, but to thrive against those who would wipe us from the world. Tomorrow, we will be legend! The great immortal vanguard of our people!" With that, she held her gun high. The rest of the army spread before her did the same, their weapons raising skyward, not with cheers, but with a single rush of disturbed air.

They were ready.

---

"Okay, listen. I agree with you guys, I think Thyne wants to make sure there's absolutely no contest to her power when this is all over. On top of that, while I was healing Mara, I did a little looking in her brain... It looks like she was tricked into trying to assassinate Elrich, which explains why we haven't seen him since yesterday. Chances are pretty good that he's dead." Esile saw no mourning from the four remaining humans, including Turk, who was finally restored. "Turk and I have come up with an escape plan, and I believe that Mila will help with it, but I can't come along."

At this, there was definitely a reaction, "Next to Elrich, you're our best hope out there." Richie sounded worried, but Turk just looked heartbroken.

"If I go, Thyne will freak out like a force of nature. She'll turn her whole army towards looking for me. Mila is supposed to be on a scouting mission for the next three weeks." Esile smiled, "Besides, you're wrong about me being the best out there. Mila has a lot of tricks besides shrinking."

"And you'll still have that best hope of survival anyway." The whole group turned to see Elrich in the open entryway of the tent. He looked like he had been put through a paint mixer, but still walking with some assistance form Mila.

"He was right where you said his body would be... Looks like Mara was at her maximum size when she went after him." She let him go and he crumpled into a sitting position next to her. "He must be made of tougher stuff than he looks, because she should have smashed him outright at that much difference."

---

"Okay, come on... Dis bitch is ready to break. Just needs a-GRRR!" Dylan was having an impossible time trying to push the last pillar over while Azif hacked at the opposite side of it with one of the de-powered fairy weapons. "Dammit! This shit should WORK!"

"Hold that thought." Azif ran back to the palette to grab a sharp sword, and then to the door just as three guards passed through it. With expert slashes he powered through each of them before they could even swing at him. "They just don't st- Oh, this could work..." he grabbed several of the bottles from the bandoleer of one of the guards. "Dylan! Outta the way!"

He opened one of the bottles, careful to not take too much of a smell from it. "Yep, acid." Without checking the others, he tossed the armful at the pillar, seeing them shatter impressively and splash the steaming mixture all over the inside base of the arch. With a shrug, he disconnected the armor breastplate and handed it to Dylan. "Get the fey ready to fight when this drops. The rest are on the way."

Dylan undid the hidden pouches in his and Azif's armor and let the fairies scurry out to the hilts of the laid out weapons. he picked one of the smaller swords from the pile and watched the rush of guards coming towards them from the long, narrow hallway.

Azif jumped up, pressing his feet against the wall to get leverage between the wall and pillar. With a final shuddering groan, the arch finally tipped and finally toppled inward. As it fell though, the rest seemed to move in slow motion. The crystal didn't swing down and out of the circle like he had thought, but the unbalanced load pulled the other three pillars in, as the bulk of the crystal fell into the center of the vortex itself. Azif's eyes followed the crystal for too long, and his gaze was drawn again into the vortex.

The disintegrating crystal seemed to make the vortex flare somehow, increasing it's power massively. As Azif looked into it, he felt his will to live blasted away like paper in a sand storm. The whole scene before him seemed to tear away to show a huge landscape of diamond, until the horizon erupted with what he realized was a scorpion's tail, cast in perfect glittering gemstone. The whole landscape heaved up before him and a horrifying insectoid maw opened before him, crystalline teeth sawing and spinning, ready to tear him to ribbons. Just in time, he felt himself pulled back from it, the massive scorpion shrinking in the darkness.

After a moment, he realized the woman's hands that were wrapped lovingly around him. Someone was pulling his vulnerable psyche away from the beast's grasp. Slowly he turned his head to see the face of his rescuer. She looked like a beautiful phantom, glowing pale skin, pale gray eyes and slightly pointed ears. As his gaze drifted mindlessly downward, he saw her waist marked the transition between human and spider that had now become familiar. She was by far the most beautiful dridder he had seen, her presence seemed to layer sanity onto him gently, like strands of web mending torn and tattered cloth. "You... You saved me."

"Yes. Because you can save me."

"But I don't..." He looked into her eyes, wanting to say that he didn't know her name... but before he could, he realized he did know her. "Sineria"

Quest of the Twiceborn
Chapter 15 - The Battle of Fairy Pond


"Remember, hit and fade. Use the flares to gauge the range of their antimagic. Keep behind trees while moving. Human size to fire, shrink to cover. GO! And let none pass the tent line!" The dridae swarmed into the forest lining the beach, ready to flank the enemy forces from beyond the antimagic field. The dridders, along with Berg and Thyne stood a line along the beach with their big heavy shields and plate armor, and the gerridi scattered out on the water, mostly armed with their blow darts, planning to save the guns for a surprise attack after the dridae let loose with their own.

Thyne also made a small effort to hide her gun, readying her crossbow instead. "My dridae will know when it's time to fire. We charge in, throw up smoke to stop their archers, then feint into a retreat to draw the enemy into a line. Once the guns cut them down, we form our phalanx to break the rest of their charge. Berg can take care of the catapults if they decide to use them."

The dridders didn't respond aside from bringing up their shields into a wall formation and lowering their spears. Berg also lowered his huge lance paralell to the rest of the troops. "LOCK RANK!" The line lowered in time with berg's order. "CHARGE!"

The sound of hundreds of armored claws bursting into motion at once was something similar to an blast of distant thunder. They moved like a swift spiked wall at the enemy formation. Thyne herself stayed behind, flying up and taking aim with the lens spell she had used before. Her crossbow picking carefully through the enemy line. "Come on you bug-riddled mage, where are you hiding..."

The charge stopped short of the bug army's front line. As a surprise tactic, the dridders put the momentum of their charge into a massive throw of their spears in one volley. just short of the front line's own braced spears. The only exception being Berg, who was able to leap clear past the front line and sink the huge lance into the torso of the central tonorion of the enemy line. The clash was enormous. With berg landing claws-into the tonorion and bushing the much larger beast back a step from the impact. As he leaped back off, and down toward the fray, he drew a huge scimitar, signaling the rest of the dridders to draw their own swords.

There was a moment of pause between the soldiers switching between their steadfast defensive phalanx and a very short-distance charge. The thick white smoke quickly began billowing up from the line where the dridders' spears had landed, but the enemy army seemed unfazed, quickly reorganizing and closing in on the dridders' flanks.

If the dridders fighting ability was their best skill, their acting was a close second. They broke ranks and ran without Berg's orders, looking genuinely frightened. Berg himself cut his way through aw small swath of the humans, but he also jumped away when it was clear that he was surrounded. The running was less of a fight and more of a race. Trying to outrun the snuffing out of the fairy-made flares as the antimagic field overcame each of them. Finally, once again as a line, the surviving dridders crossed a lit flare, with Berg high in the air over them.

The dridae and the gerridi fired their ghost bullets into the fray. the sensation of the crisscrossed wall of copper bullets passing harmlessly through the dridders was almost sickening, though the spells were definitely effective. The bullets turned back into material as soon as they crossed the antimagic line and ate into the charge like a splash of acid on a rock. After the first volley, they kept pouring the semi-automatic fire into the still mindlessly charging bug forces.

As Berg turned he brought his rifle to bear on the distant rear line. Taking aim, he sent the first shot at the furthest wound catapult. The half inch-wide bullet only made a small hole in the catapult arm, but under the tons of tension that were built up in the wood, a small hole was enough to shatter it spectacularly, sending splinters and shrapnel all over the archers. The second shot didn't hit as close to center. The catapult sprang up, but the damage was enough to send half of the arm, as well as the boulder straight up into the air from the stress of firing. berg paused a moment to watch the boulder rise in the air and fall back down, smashing clean through the head of one of the enemy goliaths.

The headless insect quickly went berserk, smashing blindly into the remaining catapults, and tripping one of the tonorions over onto the back line of troops. With an impressed whistle, Berg took aim back at the rest of the goliaths, trying to pick out the one that was carrying the antimagic crystal.

Berg and Thyne saw the effect first. The crystal went from a deep green color to murky black, its aura suddenly growing dark enough to obscure the crystal itself from view. "HOLD FIRE!" Her order was bordering on fear. This was something she hadn't seen one of these do before. A few stray shots had unfortunately fired just as she cried her order, wounding one of the dridders and dropping another as the field moved swiftly forward. Thyne herself flew down quickly, but the front edge of the field overtook her, forcing her landing to be entirely at the harsh guidance of gravity. She faintly heard Berg's voice bellow over the wind, "GRAB FIRM! HOLD STEADY!"

for a terrifying few seconds, everything was being sucked into the crystal, until with a loud rumble, the dark vortex was gone, leaving the insect army in complete shambles.

---

Mila flew fast, and for a leader among scouts among one of the quickest species of all of Felarya, 'fast' was beyond the speed of sound. In the distance, the sounds of battle were like a storm. The constant rumble of gunfire from both sides of the encampment raised goosebumps on her skin and made her heart pound in her chest like a frightened animal. In a box on her waist were the five remaining members of the Benedict party. Her path took her directly over the middle of the pond, by far the least guarded direction. She was amazed that the shaman could maintain an invisibility spell with the amount of damage he had taken, even if she had to cast it in the first place. He was keeping the spell working while she concentrated on flying as fast as possible.

The loud boom of the big fifty-caliber rifle echoed out over the pond, followed by the loud crackle of a catapult disintegrating. "Damn, I wish I could be there to watch. Sounds like we're kickin ass." Turk sighed, picturing the tactics he helped devise coming into full use.

"I'm actually a little curious to know how it was that Thyne planned to kill us without arousing the ire of her followers." Benedict was being slightly morbid as usual.

"Woulda been something boring..." Richie had his eyes closed to fend off motion sickness. "Probably woulda fed her dridae something about the lot of us being traitors, have them eat us all to cover her tracks, then tell the rest of the town we had abandoned them."

The flight was silent as each of the members pictured what it would have been like. "I don't even have to picture it. As far as Thyne is concerned, she already got me." Elrich's voice was distant. His focus on assisting Mila's spell.

The box shifted noticeably as Mila rocketed at an angle upward. "We're about to hit the bugs' antimagic, hold onto something!"

"What, is she gonna launch us like a ballistic through it?" Turk looked at Elrich a bit concerned, clearly this wasn't in the plan. "She's twienty feet tall and carrying a big box, the air alone is gonna break us up!"

Suddenly, a huge boom and rumble shook the forest ahead of them. "The antimagic? Holy shit! The antimagic is gone!" Elrich sounded genuinely surprised for once.

"Holy crap, Dylan and Azif actually pulled it off." Turk looked to his side through the still invisible box, "Why are we still going up?"

"Can't keep... too mu-" And then Mila's magic ran out, her flight becoming little more than a ballistic arc.

---

Dylan and his finally human-sized troupe of fairy warriors were having a relatively easy time. Thankfully for Dylan's conscience, the armored guards weren't reduced to mindless sheep, but something more like mindless zombies. They still tried to fight, but they had no clue as to how. They had left Azif back in the vortex room. Dylan assumed the same had happened to him as had to the soldiers. "So, I suppose the prisoners..."

"Growing population needs food." Tria smirked a little that Dylan might be concerned.

"Could be worse. It's not like you're sacrificing children to some tentacled god or something." He hacked through a few more of the living zombies.

"speaking of food, you're wasting them." One of the others disarmed and with some expert flicks of her sword, disarmored one of the guards. As soon as the armor was off, she grabbed him by the collar and shrunk him down. As she disarmed another charging guard, she popped the shrunken one into her mouth and swallowed him casually. "Mmm. Battle does wonders for the appetite."

"Whatever, Cynthia, just don't drop your guard like that too much." Tria was a little disappointed at the undisciplined behavior from her fellow dridae, but was willing to let it go, as the battle seemed to be a cakewalk so far.

They ran in the darkness until they saw another group of guards, they switched to a defensive stance, not expecting the whole group to suddenly clutch at their throats and drop, revealing a blood-spattered Azif behind them. The magic in his tattoos had burned through the makeup covering them up. "I must have gotten lost... The halls behind me are clear." He turned down another bend in the hallway. "Let's get out of here." Somehow, the slight Arabic accent he had was now completely gone. Replacing it was an inhuman chill in his voice.

"Well, damn..." Dylan thought out loud as they walked back toward the entrance of the insect stronghold. "I guess we're some kinda war heroes now."

Though noone seems to be reading this side of the stories board, I'll post this and the last chapter here for completeness. I'm also going to post the whole first part and all subsequent parts of the story on the new Felarya site as well, with some added proofreading corrections and actual names for the chapters.

---

Quest of the Twiceborn
Chapter 16 - Lacuna Ad Debellum

The first thing that was very obvious was the sudden deafening rush of wind around Turk's ears. The most obvious transition from flying under immense magical impulse to falling in a decently high ballistic arc was that the stillness surrounding Mila that formed a perfectly sculpted teardrop suddenly collapsed, leaving the unconscious fairy and her box of passengers subject to the harsh reality of aerodynamics. Somehow, the invisibility spell Elrich was still maintaining included some kind of noise dampening component, keeping them from being subjected to a full blown sonic boom off of Mila's head. The noise whistling past them all was bad enough, but the feeling of the air pressure just sneaking in between the slats in the box was enough to remind Turk and the others that they were strapped into little more than a five-person coffin. The revelation being more than enough to panic most everyone a bit. "Dammit, Carter can't you stabilize us or something?"

"Without the antimagic, we're still under Nemaline's eye, if I let go of this spell now, we'll be spotted and taken back as traitors." Elrich was still extraordinarily calm despite the dire situation.

Turk felt around, the smooth wooden lid on the box was only a foot from his face, and for some reason, he could barely make out an outline beyond it. For a moment, he thought it was the condensation from the air pressure change against Mila's skin. With a little more discerning, though he could see her outline against the sky. Something about her invisibility was casting a slight white glow against the fading dusk sky. He placed his invisible hands against the invisible barrier in front of him, only barely aware of the bodies around him.

"Guys, I don't think she's waking up!" Richie decided to state the obvious, "Isn't she s'posed to be awake for this? I mean, did we have a plan for landing?"

Turk barely heard his compatriot's rambling. For a lack of a better term, his life was flashing before his eyes. His escape from an oppressive family in a decrepit seaside lean-to town. His hits for the Marcone family, dozens, perhaps a hundred by now people that the world might or might not miss. Through that time, he never felt much. Like he was simple removing pieces from a gummed-up machine. He knew that each was a human, with a full life, but somehow, none of them were really people to him. In the past few months, learning that magic existed, that this whole realm existed. He had gone from a place full of not-people humans to a place full of not-human people. And in the past day, finding that he was the latter category rather than the former. Now, he felt less like a stone shot through the air and more like a fish caught in a current. More than anything, he felt like he was more connected to this place than he had ever been connected to anything before.

"I can do it."

"Say what? You can do what, fly?" Richie must have been talking the whole time, but it didn't matter.

Turk felt something flow from him, into his hands and out through the box. The spell was familiar, it had been cast on him at least once every night by Esile amidst their debauchery. He somehow suddenly knew the name of it meant 'Invigorate' thought the specific sound of it was something too non-human to be considered a word. The flow of magic was flashy and unfocused, causing Mila to glow for a second even through the invisibility and causing all the human inhabitants of the box to writhe and spasm a little bit. He felt like it took an energy out of him that he never knew was there to begin with.

"Hooooly shit! What was that? What did you just say? Did she just glow? Why do I feel like I just snorted a bucket of Morocco White? Fuckin shit I'm in a fuckin box!" Richie was apparently a little more vocally affected than others.

Mila's eyes opened with a start as she suddenly felt herself replenished. The air once again stabilized around the huge and invisible fairy as she regained control and continued on past the bug territory and out toward the Jewel River to the north.

---

Thyne returned to a scene for which her success on the west side of the camp could not have prepared her. Of the fairy forces, the west side had the vast majority of the dridae and gerridi, with the eastern front covered by the younger dridders and the natural fairies. The losses had been staggering despite the early failure of the bugs' antimagic weapon. At least half of the forces had been depleted, not just for the bugs' numbers, but because the mage follower of Qaaz had teleported from one front to the other when Thyne couldn't see him.

They hadn't bothered taking the demented mage alive or even attempting to eat him as they had done to many of the brainwashed human infantry, instead they simply presented Thyne with the remains of his body. cleaved messily on a diagonal by one prodigiously huge fairy's swing of a severed Tonorion claw.

"It's like the soldiers were just a shield against the fey spells. I've not seen magic wielded like his since we were still in Nemrya's kingdom." One of the older dridae gave the report. All the fey in the area were too busy healing the wounded or crying over the dead. The swath of forest had been leveled by nothing short of a maelstrom of elemental magic. Scorches and black marks covered much of the ground, with the pile of enemy corpses heaped in a turtle formation in the center. In patches there were lines of ash that were clearly lightning strikes, in others jagged rocks jutted from the ground with impaled fey and dridders alike in their weave.

"I've never heard of an archmage of this caliber among the humans in centuries, and he sprung up right under our noses without so much as a name..." she looked around at the devastation and bristled. This was the kind of fate that humans deserved, the kind that should have been visited upon Negav centuries ago, but somehow this time it was focused on this little band of runaways, apparently by chance. "I hate to say this, but this smells like a direct Guardian intervention. If so, we may just be the most lucky living things on Felarya for the destruction to have been this minor."

"If this is directly from Qaaz, then we're doomed." The dridae furrowed her brow and recoiled a little.

"Not necessarily. One guardian cannot act with too much focus or another will act in opposition. It has been the way of Felarya for millennium." she looked towards the sky. "We may have centuries before a war like this blossoms again... But to assure we do not, where are the coward humans, I need that we forget them quickly."

The dridae smiled a little as she spoke, "It seems fate has taken care of it already." She pointed behind her to the tents. One particularly long line of fiery destruction was extended from the battlefield, and it took Thyne a moment to realize that where the humans' tent once was was wiped clean by the mage's fire.

"Ah. A tragedy, truly." She could barely contain some mad laughter at the coincidence.

---

They didn't know quite what to expect. Fanfare, confetti, beautiful women throwing themselves in adoration... Dylan imagined a feast of fruits and roast meats. Azif pictured a feast of more traditional fairy food, namely their fallen opponents.

Neither expected to see the destruction that they walked into. The looks on faces who had lost mothers, sisters, friends and lovers. Each face that looked up at the two seemed to catch a spark of relieved amazement for a tiny moment forgetting their losses. Their dridae companions set to work helping the wounded, and Dylan ran to help them, feeling caught in the current of their urgency. Azif strode through with a confidence of purpose that seemed to hold him over the ruined battlefield as he strode toward his goal.

"Lady Thyne, we must act quickly." He stopped, standing at full attention addressing her almost as an equal. "I must speak before the survivors tonight. And..." he knew this would be hard to word correctly, "Nemaline will know the truth of it, I must speak tonight as a full dridae."

"You speak like you have the right-" Thyne's words were cut off as she turned to look at the man addressing her, "Your marks... They've completed."

"I have had a vision of the queen of all spiders, Sineria wills that we unite under her." The man's words were like a message spoken through his mouth, but from another soul entirely.

"We will not press unwilling dridae into our ranks, such tactics are foolish and blasphemous," Thyne almost whispered her words like some dire conspiracy.

"I couldn't agree more, but if I speak tonight, and as a proper representative of the cause, they will join." He neglected to speak the last part of the message:

They will join, or they will run.

Nice chapter ^_^
It is going to an epic finish

Quest of the Twiceborn
Chapter 17 - Terminus

The only word everyone agreed described the ceremony would have been 'hasty'. The dridders practically swarmed into Thyne's large tent, clearing furniture and weapons to form a proper circle. Everyone's movements were with some unspoken urgency to ready everything.before dusk fully fell on the village. One of the dridders whose name Azif had never learned slid from the crowd to stand with him in the center of the circle, still buttoning some pieces of ceremonial importance to the shoulder of her deep blue tunic.

She thrust a spear into the dirt floor, and the brunt end of it flared to life in a swirl of magical flame that lit the room. "You, of human blood, born lower than could reach the weaver's feet, have reached beyond your blood to honor yourself in the name of Dridder kind. You wish to shed the frail form of your humanity to ascend into our ranks?"

"Without question, I do." Azif was glowing faintly, though from the reactions around him, this may have been normal.

"Abd El'Azred Sherazif, who's name would be chaos, Slayer of men, Slayer of beasts, and Slayer of armies. Your destiny among humanity is forfeit and your name is removed from the weave of fate." She reached a hand up in concentration and plucked at a string hanging in the air that didn't exist a moment before. She considered it a moment before speaking again, "You are a child of rebellion, that eats at the roots of his makers. As a thing that should not have been. Fate speaks that you are Nephanim, the hound that bites the world."

"I drop the burden of my old name and carry this name as easily as the air upon me." His voice seemed distant again, as if spoken through him rather than by him.

"Then let all know that you are a Dridder!" the thread the priestess held burst into fire, wreathing her hand in an aura of magical flame. With a thrust more like an attack, she hit Nephanim's chest, forcing the magic into him.

As the tattoos on his body ignited, something else happened as well, lines of pure magic began to drain from the air itself, flowing into him like golden laser beams from all directions. As his body glowed brighter, it began to shift. Claws, fangs grew and two pair of spindly spider's legs sprouted from his shoulder blades. The watchers and the priestess backed away slightly, a little surprised by the physical transformation. When it was over and the glow faded, the legs were long enough for to boost Nephanim's height by a good two feet if he chose to stand on them. He looked at the priestess with new eyes, red and dimly glowing, "It is done."

---

The jewel river was below Mila before daylight had fully faded. Despite Turk's spell, she could tell she couldn't fly much further than the far bank, and she easily landed on the soft sand with her much relieved cargo.

Elrich released the invisibility spell and promptly passed out long before they reached the river. So the rest of the humans were quite happy to be released from the box. "Can't complain about the stewardess, but the seating's worse than coach." Richie joked as he stretched. "So, what's the plan now?"

"I'm gonna say we don't camp. Three of us carry and the other three rest. The resting get shrunk down enough to fit a carry pocket. It's an old tactic we used while ground-scouting." she handed out some things that looked like tiny padded sleeping bags with a wooden slat on one side. "Attach it to your back or chest. Those are the easiest places to sleep... Speaking of which, I'm definitely gonna have to be one of the first to rest."

Frank, Turk and Richie looked at each other and shrugged. Mila shrank Elrich and Benedict before herself, each got into their bags, the shaman a bit more groggily than the others, and the trio set off with their carried allies.

---

"We became warriors before we stopped becoming children. You all have known hardships and trials that would stagger your kin. As one force we rose up, not only against humans or insects." Nephanim looked out over the crowd of fairies, their expressions empty with loss or exhaustion. "Today we fought against the machinations of no less than a Guardian of Felarya." The revelation brought a wave of shocked murmurs through the crowd for a moment before he continued. "Qaaz, the lord of all insects was at the heart of this war. He turned forces against us that could have destroyed the greatest of human cities, and we survived."

"No one has stood against a guardian!"

"Not without help! And we had help in this war. Not from the Nemrya that turned you out and sent you to die, but help that has been invisibly pulling at the fabric of fate. Someone manipulated events to bring us here, to bring you weapons, to bring you inspiration, and to bring you exactly the heroes you needed to win." He paused again, letting the strange timing of the humans' arrival sink in, "Unlike Qaaz or Nemrya, our benefactor was not able to act overtly. Only to pull from the dreams of her deep sleep. Through the ravages and abuses at the hands of the Guardians, she was nearly unable to even speak to us, to tell us the name of our true champion."

Flora leaned toward Thyne to whisper, "My gods... Is he talking about the sleeping queen?"

"In the moment of our triumph, I caught a glimpse of the one who strove so hard to save us all, who granted us a priestess who could truly make us a part of her cause." He nodded over at the dridder who still wore her dark blue tunic and golden adornments. "The one who saved us was Sineria. And you have all proven yourselves worthy of becoming her kin."

This time, there was a wave of murmuring amongst the dridders, which quickly went from confusion to agreement. Fairies though were silent, looking at each other and thinking. From the back of the crowd, one younger fairy threw up her hands and cheered, "For Sineria!" causing the tension to finally break into a roar of cheering and applause from both the majority of the fairies and from the surrounding dridders.

Flora looked out over the roaring crowd with a little grin, "I'm gonna need more tattoo ink..."

---

The next morning broke through the trees in little flits and streamers. Turk was the first to see the ruins, a little amazed at how quickly they had gotten to them and at the same time, a little disappointed at the small number and size of the buildings. "Wow, it looked further away on the map..."

"Huh, bigger, too." Richie thought for a moment, "Maybe it's some kind of suburb or something?"

"It's a watchtower, idiots." Mila's tiny voice drifted up from her pouch. She slid up and out of it. "Allright, I think it's our turn..."

"Huh? How is that a watchtower?" Frank tilted his head, "Oh, on it's side... I see." the other two also looked a little sideways and their jaws dropped slightly.

Benedict looked groggily out of his pouch as it was set down, "We there yet?"

"Nah, just some minor ruins, We get to shrink and you get to walk now." Turk yawned a little to emphasize.

"Not just yet, Turk, now that we're landed and we have some kind of shelter, we need to regroup a bit." Elrich spoke as he re-grew to his normal size. "There's only three of us, and this isn't going to get any easier. It's time to get me back into my true form."

The others looked around at each other in route to the stone ruins, wondering if this was a good idea. Mila was the one to finally speak. "Umm... The curse that's sealing you is pretty hefty. I'm not the best at removing curses or anything like that. Maybe if we had Esile with us."

Elrich grinned at her modesty "Mila, what's the difference between a curse and a messed up blessing?"

"The apology." It was an old joke Mila remembered from the fairy kingdom, but wondered a little how the shaman knew it.

"Right, you don't have to remove anything, you just have to fix it. The one who put this on me was trying to alter my magic so that it would work on my own body, but instead, my magic turned inward without fully changing enough to work on my living body. Unfortunately, my magic is death-oriented, making a bit of a problem when I cant get it to flow outside of me."

"Oh, so you need a magical alignment shifted..." Mila knitted her brow in thought... "I don't have the first clue how to do that."

"Not to mention, we have no idea what your true form is." Richie sounded only half joking, "Maybe this place has my paranoia up, or maybe it's my keen video game instinct. But I'm picturing you going all Sephiroth on us... And I don't feel like battling for my life if I don't absolutely have to."

Elrich sighed, "First, all I really need is for you and Turk to dump as much life magic on me as you can, I'll take it from there. And I promise, I won't fight anyone."

"How about us? We form a circle or something?" Frank thought this was all a bit amusing.

"I think we'd be better off on the other side of a wall, actually." Benedict mused and walked over to a decent bench-like piece of rubble to sit.

---

Turk couldn't describe what he was doing, he had doubts that he could do the spell a second time. He looked at Mila, who nodded, everything was ready. He raised his hands in time with the fairy. He felt the magic around him that had been building up for centuries and remained unused. And finally, he chanted the one-word spell that defied human pronunciation.

The magic was less of a flow and more of a blast. The energy pouring into Elrich Carter seemed to have no end, and his capacity for it was equally unending. For a time, nothing happened, just a faint glowing around the shaman that slowly increased. Suddenly, he dropped onto the ground, shaking and convulsing into a fetal position. Turk tried to stop the spell, but Elrich had gone from a magical vessel to a magical vortex, pulling the energy from the very walls. With a look of panic, he barely got to his hands and knees before the spell finally exploded.

"What the hell?" Frank turned where he was sitting to look at the room from which the explosion had come.

"Told you we were better off outside." Benedict said before hearing the shaman's pained howl.

Turk and Mila both fled from the room just in time as the stone walls burst outwards, revealing a huge pair of semi transparent black wings that jutted from the dust of the explosion.

"Ah son of a bitch." Richie imagined he could almost hear the orchestral background music of a video game boss fight.

But almost as soon as they appeared, the wings vanished, and another shock wave blew away the dust. Elrich sat in the middle of the room, perched atop the coils of his own serpentine body. His torso had gone unchanged, except for the scales on his forearms, but below the waist, he was definitely a snake. The coils shifted a bit, and his tail became visible, though it looked more like an eyeless snake's head rather than a tail at all, complete with a mouth of it's own over two feet wide.

Elrich looked at the other four with something like a feral madness in his eyes before his tail struck. It seemed to swallow Benedict in one fluid action, faster than the others could even react. Frank was the quickest, shouldering his rifle and taking a shot without having to think.

The one shot missed, and the monstrosity that once was Elrich Carter, Feign of the Serpent Valley and Twiceborn of the Stormcrow vanished into the ruins.

Quest of the Twiceborn
Story One Epilogue

"The gate of Ur-Sagol? Every fairy who's approached it has been struck down by some kind of ancient curse... It would be insane to go there." Mila looked a bit concerned... Her and Turk were on their turn to walk, now the second day in Ur-Sagol... It wouldn't be long before the others would be awake and even less time for their packs to be full of looted goods. "Besides, if it was your destination, then it's almost absolutely sure that the shaman is there waiting for you."

"Bleh, Just as well. With Benedict dead, we're all still fugitives if we go back to Earth... Though I guess it's not a terrible thing to try to get to Negav." Turk considered the old map with Drayla's corrections in one hand and the scepter Elrich had used all this time to cast magic in the other, "With the money we could make from this haul, I'd bet we could live comfortably for a while." He set down a sleeping pouch next to the packs full of precious items.

"Oy, time to carry loot?" Richie crawled out of the pouch with a yawn. "Alright, I heard the conversation, and my vote is we go to Negav."

"I'm up for that too," Frank's voice came from Mila's pouch. "Really didn't have anything to go back to anyway."

As the two re-grew and shouldered their packs, the group of four set off for an entirely new adventure.

---

Esile crouched in the darkened tent, her and Dylan surrounded by other fairies, "This is madness. Not what we expect from Thyne." Her words were soft, frightened, and conspiratorial.

"We didn't fight for the dridae, we fought for ourselves," another chimed in.

"Traded one tyrant for another. Nephanim and Thyne. They're both mad," from yet another.

"Azif was crazy before, but some'n in dat bug hive changed him." Dylan chimed in, "We won, but he still buildin him an army fo dat Sineria thing... He worse'n just crazy."

"And an army he's getting. Soon there won't be more than a dozen non-dridae left when all this is said and done." Esile continued again, "It's pretty clear that we're going to get exiled again, or just wiped out if we stay."

"She must think we're stupid to fall for this," another muttered.

Esile thought a moment before speaking again, "No, she thinks we're just common fairies. By all rules of nature and magic, we should never have known betrayal by our own kind. It should be by the very nature of fairy kind that we not see this coming. But we have, and so we do."

"People have a saying; what don't kill ya make ya strongah." Dylan looked around at each of the fairies. "y'all strong... Now I see why."

"That's great, but what's the plan?" One more whispered, sounding a little agitated, "Thyne still has Nemaline on a short line, she'll knw anything that happens, and quickly."

Esile wasn't used to being a leader, but the others in the tent were looking to her. "Okay. In three days Dylan will need to go to Biggs Folly again to get one last round of supplies. I think Thyne will see it as normal enough to allow it. And she'll likely have him leave alone, all the more chance of him getting coincidentally killed. We will shrink and leave with him in his pack and in the smuggling pouches we made."

"She'll prolly sic a killer on me, jus ta be sure."

"True, but that she knows better than to order a killing of a well-loved hero within scrying range of the camp." Esile grinned, "And we're much craftier than her little dridae."

And with that, the band of fairies agreed to be exiled once again.

---

The creature that was once Elrich Carter slid up silently toward the gate. With a flick, the serpentine mouth on his tail opened wide and ejected Benedict onto the ground. The old man landed unsteadily, slipping and falling into a sitting position. "goddammit, what the hell did you do that for! I am fucking covered in slime! Oh that's just auugh." He flailed his hands a little to try to get the thick spittle off of them.

"It was the quickest and safest way for me to carry you..." the shaman concentrated for a moment and his tail seemingly shrank in towards his body and split back into a pair of human legs, complete with what looked like blue jeans. "As far as the other nagas I passed were concerned, I was just another one of them."

"So I take it the magic worked..." Benedict regarded the shape shifting with some disgust.

"Hmm, It takes concentration to hold this form, but hopefully I can keep it long enough to pass the defense system on the gate." He nodded toward the massive portal, still flickering past images of faraway places. "Looks like it had a nasty force spell against anything too non-human."

"Huh... Well I suppose you frightened my lackeys off... If they think I'm dead, they're certainly not going to come ask me for the money." Benedict strode towards the gate with as much confidence and dignity as one could have while covered in clear slime.

Elrich strode forward behind him, readying himself in case the security was more sophisticated than he had seen. He wasn't ready for the huge bolt of force that slammed his chest, flinging him ten feet back and simultaneously crushing his ribs and burning his flesh.

"Well, looks like I don't have to pay anyone after all... Have a nice life, Shaman." with that Benedict slipped through the portal and on to his own world. Feeling reborn from a state of near-decay to something almost perfectly like youth.

The shaman lay on the ground, feeling his lower half slowly shift back into it's serpentine form and feeling the life magic now internalized swiftly healing both the burns on his chest and the cracks in his ribs. He could even feel the magic restoring his lungs and upper heart, all in a matter of minutes. somehow, the denial of home was like a beautiful joke, and so he laughed. It loud enough to echo through the abandoned towers around him and chill the young nagas who had made the ruined city their home.

Benedict's quest had ended, but for the Feign of the Serpent Valley journey had only begun.

Well that was a great finish ^_^
And a whole nice story as well

i liked this story, and it took me yesterday and today to read. i hope you put more out

Karbo wrote:

Well that was a great finish ^_^
And a whole nice story as well

tamc wrote:

i liked this story, and it took me yesterday and today to read. i hope you put more out

Thank you both. There will definitely be a second (and third) story, though there will be a long break before I start the second one. This is definitely the first time I've stuck with a story through to the end, even if it is only a temporary ending.

More than anything, the setting really has its hooks in my in a way that other subjects (fanfics and the like) just haven't been able to do.

ypur storie is awsome

Just finished reading this story. It is excellent! I can see you put alot of effort into this...it's very exciting and got even better over time.

it's quite long. you know.

I know it's nothing much, but I've updated the story to better fit with some of the Felaryan facts that have been made/discovered since the oricingal writing. Also, I kind of 'renamed' the main character because calling him by my screen name at this point was silly to begin with. Elrich Carter was his name to begin with, he was just going by his nickname (or title, more accurately) throughout the story in the original writeup.