Strange Friends

I Realy like the sounds of the giant gorgan lady. She sounds so lustful XD

Hmmm . . . I wouldn't call her "lustful", really. She just uses that sensuous motion of hers to hypnotize things. More a habit than actual sexuality.

In any case, here we have a curious meeting. Reference to vore is here, so avoid if you dislike it.

Strange Friends Shorts

Song

Calimn let her voice rise gently, going higher and getting louder as she extended the note very slowly. It was perfectly tuned, an elegant sound that seemed to echo softly in the mind. It continued, a series of flowing changes in pitch, all of it blending into a single note that was curiously inhuman. It had the same peculiar haunting quality of whalesong, like something you would hear in the deep ocean.

It was a mermaid's song, and deadly dangerous for all its beauty.

The mermaid was floating down the river on her back, a form of lighter blue among the aquamarine waters that shimmered in the sunlight of midmorning. It was a peaceful day on the Jewel River, quiet and the waters particularly calm. The day was cloudless, a rather normal, single yellow sun sitting up in the sky like a shining circle of gold, and it was about average temperature for the jungle. Hot, but not too hot, a nice tropical feel as usual.

Calimn felt quite good about today. The weather was pleasant, the water was warm, and she had finally figured out the perfect balance of diet. If she ate mostly fish and what edible vegetation she could reach, she could have five or so humanoids a week with no trouble. In all reality, she didn't get them all that often. This section of the river was moderately traveled, but it wasn't like they were everywhere. She only saw ships, in her established territory, about once a week, sometimes less.

In any case, she wasn't worried about it now. This day wasn't really for hunting, not for her anyway, but for relaxing. Easily her favorite activity, besides her 'games', was what she was doing right now. That is to say, floating downstream on her back, eyes closed, and singing. It occasionally had the side benefit of attracting curious prey, but she mostly did it for the intrinsic value of the song.

She was drifting along, nearly asleep but still giving voice to her song, when she heard a wheezy, quiet voice close by whisper, tone choked with fear and awe.

"Unholy ignorance, what is THAT?"

She opened one eye, and discovered a boat, a sleek fiberglass one of the modern make (which was very rare out here) idling along beside her. It was a small yacht, a sail system as well as a motor, and not very large. It was was barely a third as long as her human portion, maybe twenty-five feet total, little more than a bathtub toy to Calimn.

Which was precisely what she treated it like. She picked it up out of the water one-handed, moving into an upright position in the river. She tilted it about, looking it over curiously, and shook it a little. There was a shout of panic, and the noise of things bouncing around inside.

This ship was very advanced, with a set of hovering metal-plastic display screens that floated right above the steering wheel, the helm with a dashboard full of blinking lights and symbols. Calimn wasn't nearly as ignorant on technology as many giant hybrids native to Felarya, having often toyed with the tech being transported on merchant ships. Plus, she had Jab, who seemed to know a little bit about nearly everything due to her talking to most of her prey over all that they knew. She recognized high-level science when she saw it, and this stuff was waaaay up there.

It was then that she spotted the person who had spoken, and presumably the owner of the yacht.

A middle-aged woman, perhaps in her early forties, face showing slight lines but certainly not old. Her hair was an odd sandy shade, narrow shoulders and pleasant face freckled in a manner that bespoke a lot of outdoor work. She was wearing a floppy khaki hat, hanging on her back by a cord around her neck, shorts, and a grey tank top. She had an runner's build and tone, slim but definite muscle behind it. She was wearing sunglasses, but even with her eyes hidden her shock at seeing the mermaid was obvious, mouth wide open and stance startled.

Calimn found herself licking her lips. She wasn't all that hungry right now, but it was a human, her favorite type of food. The woman had her favorite kind of body type, too; not much fat, perfect muscle tone, just the right size. Delicious and healthy. You are what you eat, the mermaid chuckled mentally, and who am I to say no to food that practically runs into me?

"Good Science, what an enormous animal! But a humanoid torso, but a lower half of an aquatic vertebrate! The discovery of a lifetime, surely. Some kind of mutation, or maybe a new species? An evolutionary link between aquatic and terrestrial life? So amazing! Oh, I can't believe this; I'm going to be nominated for the Nexus Science Department for sure!" the woman finally let out, recovering from the initial paralysis of surprise.

Calimn bit her lip to keep from laughing. This human seemed to be a scholar or scientist of some kind, and obviously not from here. Probably the victim of Felarya's dimensional warps, the woman didn't even know she had left her own world, or how much danger she was in. Well, Calimn wouldn't want to pop that happy bubble of delusion, now would she?

"Oh, hello. Who are you?" the mermaid began, putting on a shy but friendly smile.

"Great Dr. Adrinson, it can talk! Not only will this be a biological discovery, it'll be an anthropological one! Oh . . . uh . . . hello, My name is Dr. Wensil Wilson." the scientist greeted, speaking slowly and carefully annunciating each letter.

"No need to talk like that, I can understand you just fine. Also, I'm not 'it'. I'm quite clearly a girl." Calimn clarified, pointing at her partially above-water bosom.

"Oh, yes, how rude of me! I just am a little, ah, flustered at such a discovery. I assumed from having no clothes you were -my apologies if this is degrading- primitive. This is truly a great moment! For myself and for you!"

"For me?"

"Oh yes! Once I can call in a Gravitater specimen tank -I call them tanks because restrainer is such a negative word- you'll be taken to the Nexus Science Department for testing and tissue sampling and have a taxonomy assigned to you. Very exciting! Maybe even a dissection."

Calimn could barely resist grinning. So very naive. Rare was the communication device that could operate in Felarya properly, let alone connect to an off-world source. Even if she did manage, there was no way for a Gravitater (whatever that was) to get here, barring a ludicrously big portal. She played along though, and presented a mask of nervousness.

"Sounds painful. I don't want to be cut up."

"Why not? You'll be contributing to mankind's knowledge of the universe. Sacrifices are necessary for life to progress. Everyone learns that in a cyber-education hyper-sleep crib as a baby, until they hit twenty and are ready to join the scientific community."

"Oh, I found a common point for agreement. Sacrifice is very much necessary for life to go on."

The woman's face brightened. Oh, I'm glad you understand, the face said. Too bad the woman didn't know it was her that was going to give up her life for Calimn's. She was excited. The woman pulled out a flat disk covered in odd letters Calimn couldn't read and began tapping and sliding her fingers on it rapidly. The mermaid waited patiently, trying not to laugh, as the woman frowned and attempted to contact a Gravitater over and over.

"Ah, I'm sorry, I don't know why I can't get a signal. Well . . . um . . . could you tell me about your species? Your culture?"

"I'm a giant mermaid named Calimn. A lot of mermaids live alone, but some live in loose schools and a few in actual cities in the deep ocean. We like to sing, and swallow things whole and alive, like most big folks, and feel it wriggling around inside, hehehe." she giggled, rubbing her belly.

The scientist was actually taking notes, having grabbed one of the floating monitors next to the helm of her vessel, and was currently typing down every word.

"How curious! Eating things without chewing, even though you have teeth. Very odd, indeed. Is your culture aggressive?"

"Not at all. We don't have any need for fighting among ourselves. Once in a while a fight will break out over feeding grounds, but thats rare. Injuries aren't a good thing, out here. Better to settle it peacefully than get hurt and be vulnerable to other, meaner preds. We know about war though. Even have a custom for declaring it."

"Ah, please tell me! I need to know so I don't accidentally insult someone and harm our soon-to-be relations with your people."

"Well, you have to throw a shark. Most sharks will do it, but the most formal, official way to do it is throw a Fucking* Shark at the person you're declaring war against."

"Good Science, that must hurt terribly, being hit by a shark! Just as well that I'm not big enough to throw one, other than a juvenile. I'd never survive being hit by a . . . what kind of shark was it? Ah, never mind, I remember! Odd name. They must mate very often to have such a name."

"Not particularly. Now, I think I'll have lunch. Nearly noon."

With that, Calimn picked the woman up. The scientist, completely oblivious, just nodded rapidly.

"Oh yes, please! How far is it to your feeding grounds? I very much need to record your peoples' diet, if you wouldn't mind."

"We eat vegetables, fruit, fish, some animals we can grab from the water . . . and small humanoids."

"Could you specify small? Are they intelligent?"

Still so very oblivious.

"Oh, they're sentient. And 'small' as in, just about your size. As in, you're it."

3, 2, 1. Calimn counted the seconds, and with each second ticking off in her mind the realization dawning on the woman's face became more and more obvious. Excited interest melted away to be replaced by fear. She got it now, that was for sure.

"Oh, unholy ignorance and low I.Q.'s, you can't be serious! You can't DO that! It's . . . well, not cannibalism, technically, as you're not my species or ev- Regardless, this is very much not proper! We learn as children only dead humans that are no longer capable of contributing to mankind are to be recycled as sustenance! Attempting to eat those still capable of thinking with an I.Q. of 100 or above, which is everyone after the systematic genocide ten years ago, is strictly prohibited! Pro-hib-it-ed, you primitive!"

"Heh, maybe on your world, but this is Felarya, I'm hungry, and you're food. Click, click, click, logic jackpot, I eat you!"

"Ah, ah, I can't think strai- Logic is too . . . perfect. It makes sense, but I can't- Logic . . . must obey . . . the laws of . . . l-l-l-logic . . . and science. Logi-"the woman began stuttering.

She looked like she was shorting out, squeezing her head and staring off into space, jerking around at random intervals and body trembling. She was muttering and popping her teeth together in rapid succession, making the most disturbing face. The fear of being consumed was warring with her from-birth brainwashing, erasing the images of her crib-screen and dream-helmet that had always told her logic and science was the answer to everything.

"Are you oka-?" Calimn began, no longer sure she wanted to eat this human with all the twitching and things, but she was interrupted by the doctor's shout.

"I DON'T WANT TO DIE! PLEASE DON"T EAT ME!"

Dr. Wilson had been torn away from that hypnosis of sterile scientific fact, and now pleaded for her life.

"Please, please, this is against all decency, I can't die here, I want to live! I'll give you anything off of my boat, just spare me! Music . . . mermaids like music, you said. I have an old modified CD player that my great-great-great-great-grandmother listened to all the time, and three CD's, I'll give them to you, just don't eat me! It'll play music, and no plug needed, it's solar!"

A box that played music off a tiny little disk? Now that had Calimn's interest. She adored songs and music, melodies of all kinds, and a CD player sounded like a dream come true. She looked at the small device when Dr. Wilson ducked into the cabin of the yacht and came back out carrying the machine, frantic to keep from being digested. She even gave a demonstration. The sound of a guitar and drums playing a quick, powerful tune came flooding out.

"See, see, it works, just let it sit in the sun an hour and it's ready. Please don't eat me!" Wensil begged, switching the CD player off.

Calimn had the largest, most joyous smile on her face the scientist had ever seen. She's going to eat me, the doctor thought, trembling, as the mermaid took the device away, holding it between a massive thumb and forefinger carefully.

"Are you joking? This is AWESOME! I'm not going to eat somebody who gave me something so cool! Hah! In fact, turn around, sail downriver until you meet another ship, and ask them for a ride to Negav by the Motamo River. Thank you so much! Hah!" Calimn laughed, as excited as a child on their birthday.

The ship turned around, and then the scientist was motoring away as fast as she could go.

It wasn't until the human woman was out of sight and gone that Calimn realized she had forgotten to ask how to operate the machine.



(Legend of Zelda itemget music) Calimn has recieved . . . CD player! A wondrous device that plays music whenever you need it!

Felarya is Karbo's

*The shark's name is not censored, as it is a name and not used in context as a swearword.

Named character are mine unless otherwise stated.

Ha ha ha, logic paradox save her. Got to love it. Keep writing.

I was preparing to feel sorry for the poor, brainwashed human -insensitive though she may be-, and then Calimn goes and spares her for a CD player. Brilliant! It's nice to see such an outcome now and then. And an interesting cultural background for the human there!

Thank you both very much.

Indeed, one of the best things to do in order to escape Calimn alive is to have a CD on your person. Just yell "I gotta CD!" and she'll at least listen to you. If you have one, great, if you don't, she's just going to be annoyed and eat you even faster.

Lol iPod with 2137 songs XD about the batteries…

Nice chapter certainly a crazy scientist, how would Calimn push the buttons?

On another note Sharks in fresh water, well I guess it could happen. Cough…

Yeah like the chapter XD I am a bastard really

haha funny chapter ^^
That woman was really lucky, being brainwash-obsessed in Felarya ? bad combo XP

I finished the silvery night entry in the wiki. Please tell me what you think of it and if you agree with the disclaimer

It’s perfect, Karbo! I agree to the disclaimer, absolutely. At Kai: Indeed, how would a giant press buttons so small? Reference to vore.

Strange Friends Shorts

Music

Calimn had a look of extreme concentration on her face. She had one eye shut, the other wide open and focused intently on the CD player. The machine was only a foot from her pupil, the mermaid trying to see exactly what she was doing. One finger hesitated for a moment over the forward edge of the box, the tip of it moving around ever so slightly. She waited for the perfect opportunity to strike, the precise moment she could press down . . . There!

She pressed down . . . and received only the quiet whine of the CD rewinding, and a click as it finished.

“Dang it! My fingers are too big to punch one button at a time. How am I supposed to listen to music out of this thing if I can’t even hit the play-symbol? Mmm . . .” she muttered, thinking.

There HAS to be a way for my to do this, she assured herself, pondering this dilemma, If I can make all these traps and games then I can solve this. She would figure it out . . . well, eventually. Calimn was quite clever, and adept a finding alternate ways of doing things, often in exceedingly creative ways. She could crack this problem, if she went over it in her head enough.

She went for the most obvious solution first, the solution that had occurred to almost anyone who had the basic problem of “I can’t do this with my hands” since time immemorial. In other words, find a tool.

The mermaid had been sitting in her usual spot on the banks of the Jewel River, fiddling with the CD player she had gotten only an hour ago. It was a small box, perhaps a foot tall, two feet wide, and eight or nine inches long, with two cross-wire speakers and a solar power strip running along the top of it. It was waterproof, making it ideal for Calimn, and had TINY LITTLE BUTTONS.

Not only were the symbols nearly microscopic to the huge fish-woman, they were set together in a row, making it almost impossible for her to press one by itself. She had to look very closely, practically put the device up against her eye, to see which button was which. As for pressing the right one, it wasn’t happening.

Calimn sat up on her tail. She had started to become even more mobile on land than before, practicing different methods of moving about out of water. After all, the more versatile you were, the better your chances for survival. Calimn was a fully-grown giant predator, just a hair over a hundred and seventy feet, so she didn’t have to worry that much, but you never knew when you might have to evacuate the pool. Being able to move about on land would be useful in any case. Not only could one dodge aquatic beasts, it opened up a whole new world of opportunities in terms of prey.

The mermaid coiled up her tail under herself, then bounced on it, taking little hops with her arms out for balance. Certainly she was no river mermaid, but she was far less clumsy than most of her kin, mobile enough to catch a human if they were unwary or not expecting her to come out of the water in pursuit of them. Uncomfortable for long periods of time, but it was easier than dragging herself along with her arms.

She made her way over to a nearby tree in this manner, then peered among the leaves for what she needed. With a “hmmmm” of consideration, she scanned the options available to her. No, no, no, not that one, nope, she thought, dismissing each item in turn. There had to be one in here somewhere, the perfect one for the job. She needed the rig- Aha!

It was just right, smooth, slim but big enough not to break if she messed up. A nice, firm grip, good grain to it, no obnoxious additional bits to be a distracting nuisance while she was working with it. It was precisely what she had been looking for, the ultimate tool for this job.

Calimn reached into the foliage and plucked a branch from the tree.

It was about four feet long, no more than a toothpick for the giantess, and just the ticket for managing the miniscule buttons. Carefully, peering closely at the “Play” symbol, a kind of sideways “V”, the mermaid poked at her target. There was the subtle tick of a button being set, and then a guitar began playing softly from out of the speakers. She grinned excitedly at that, elated to have found a solution to her problem.

“Hah! Awesome, music whenever I want it! Am I ever glad I ran into that scientist lady. Can’t wait to show this to Swiftlit. Heh, he’ll probably be scared of it.”

She could imagine that easily; he tiny human friend was frightened of just about everything. If it moved or made noise, he would treat it as a threat. He had nearly had a heart-attack when she had shown him a baby exovole a few days ago, the six-foot fish and in particular its wayward thrashing as it struggled in her grip scaring him half to death. He really needed to calm down a little, he rea-

Suddenly Calimn’s smile turned from ecstatic to mischievous.

* * * * *

Swiftlit held his breath, trying to shrink into himself and vanish. Why couldn’t he have some other ability, like turning invisible? Running fast didn’t count for much against giant humanoids, generally just making them a little sweaty and out of breath. He was sure this predator could hear his pounding heart, or smell him, or something.

It was the gorgon naga again, that gigantic, jewelry-adorned snake-woman that had nearly caught him twice in a row already. He was crouched behind a tree-root, a completely inadequate hiding spot, but the only thing he had been able to get to before the serpentine high-priestess slithered into view. She obviously had sensed him in some manner, as she had halted only a dozen meters from his place of concealment and was looking about.

He tilted his head, peering over the top of the root with one eye, attempting to stay hidden but still keep the huge predator in sight. He shook at the sight of her; why did EVERYTHING have to be so much bigger than him? And want to eat him? She was eighty feet tall from the point where her human waist faded softly into lime-colored scales to the similarly shaded serpents that made up her hair, her massive serpent’s tail more than twice that.

For all her size, she didn’t seem to be doing too well in terms of health. She was a bit on the thin side, not emaciated but visibly undernourished. Even the python-sized vipers that served as hair seemed thinner, and far less lively than before. He might have felt a bit sorry for her, if he wasn’t so incredibly terrified of her. If he was caught, she would eat him without a second thought or even a first thought.

He froze as her forked tongue flickered out, human but for the fact that it was split for the first yard of the muscle. The double prongs tested the air, moving almost like a pair of legs kicking. Swiftlit swallowed a knot of fear as he imagined HIS legs flailing just like that as the naga slurped him up. The idea made him dizzy with fright. He shrank even further into his hiding place as the gorgon withdrew her tongue, shut her eyes for a moment, and then spoke.

“I caught a whiff of a very familiar scent just now. I recall a rather fast human, one that slighted me by refusing to become a meal. I wonder . . .”

Swiftlit ducked down as the predator’s slow scanning gaze crossed over his position, both hands clapped over his mouth to keep his breathing from becoming too loud and alerting the naga to his presence. Should he run? Or stay put and wait for her to leave? Last time she hadn’t bothered to chase him, but if she decided to do so he would have very little chance of outrunning her. If he stayed, she may well sniff him out. She didn’t seem to know his exact posi-

In a flash of instinctive knowledge, an intuition brought on by panic and adrenaline, he looked straight up.

The gorgon had crept up on him, and now had propped her elbows on the tree root, staring down at him with a slight smile.

“ . . . where he could be?”

Swiftlit let off a sound like a balloon losing its air, a wheezing squeal, and shut his eyes instantly; he knew looking directly into those slitted, half-lidded eyes the color of gold was the thing he least wanted to do. He had experienced her hypnotic power once before, and he was in no way desiring an encore.

“Clever. But how are you going to see where I’m coming from?” he heard the quiet, amused hiss above him.

Swiftlit realized she was right, but at this point it didn’t matter. He launched himself forward, then darted sideways at the last second. Her attempt to grab him missed, and immediately he opened his eyes again. He made sure not to look at the gorgon’s eyes, keeping his eyes locked in constant rotation between her tail and hands.

Even if he could only see her expression in peripheral because of this, he could tell she wasn’t happy at being evaded again. She slammed her hands down over and over, trying to catch him, the boy dodging in all directions to get away from each swat. It was lucky that his time in the forest had probably quartered his reaction time, letting him dart out of the way every time.

* * * * *

Lythra had never in her life been so frustrated, nor so humiliated. She couldn’t hit one scrawny little human, not even while concentrating furiously to try and see where he would go with her divination ability. Even though she could clearly see where he was going to dodge, a translucent doppelganger jumping just ahead of the boy to show her, he was just too fast for her to hit, his reflexes superior to hers.

Soon she was reduced to frantically slapping at the ground in a frenzy, hitting nothing but dirt each time.

“Hold still! I’m ordering you to hold still in the name of the Axacath Monarchy, and you’d better listen! Damn it all, HOLD STILL!”

The boy certainly didn’t listen, and after a rapid-fire series of motions like a time-lapse of a tap-dance session, he escaped her rain of slaps and sprinted off, yelling streams of terrified nonsense babble as he vanished.

Lythra let off a long, tired, disappointed sigh, posture deteriorating as she slumped. She didn’t bother going after the human; she wouldn’t catch him, and she was absolutely starving, in no shape to chase him even if she had been in the mood. She slithered off, slowly making her way back to Ur-Sagol.

* * * * *

Calimn was smiling, trying to keep from laughing out loud, as Swiftlit squinted at her, face supremely suspicious. His intensely paranoid look said it all. “I know you did something, I just don’t know what.” was what that narrow-eyed gaze proclaimed.

“You’re absolutely sure this thing is safe? It looks dangerous.” he muttered, turning that cautious stare to the object in front of him.

“Swiftlit, it’s a fifth of your size, not alive, and immobile. Just walk up to it and press the button that looks like a sideways triangle thingy.” the mermaid told him.

“Why don’t you do it?”

“My fingers are too big.” she admitted sheepishly, holding up her hands and wiggling the huge digits.

Well, that was definitely true. With a deep breath to gather what infinitesimal amount of courage he had, Swiftlit stepped up to the plastic and metal box –Calimn had called it a sea-deep layer, whatever that meant- and crouched next to it to examine the set of buttons on it.

One was a plain square, the rest mostly made up of triangles, none making any sort of sense to the boy. Shakily, he reached out and pushed in the symbol with a single large triangle on its side. There was a click . . . and nothing.

Swiftlit let out a sigh of relie-

Suddenly the sound of a man singing and playing some kind of string instrument came blaring out of the device, so loud it seemed like his eardrums were caving in.

Swiftlit’s mouth opened wide, but no cry of distress came out, his surprise so intense that it cut off his scream. He attempted to go in three directions at once, legs headed one way, body another, head in still another. He wound up falling over, limbs flailing all over the place, before he managed to recoordinate himself and take off.

He went up a nearby tree without even really climbing it, doing more of a vertical sprint up the trunk with only minimal aid from his hands. He went up fifty feet and clung to a branch, eyes wide, trembling.

It wasn’t until he saw Calimn rolling around in the river, roaring with laughter and crying tears of mirth, that he realized the trick.

“Ah-hahahahaha! YES, so worth all that time trying to get the volume knob turned to full! The look on your face, HA! Hilarious!”

He slid down from his perch, hesitantly turning the CD player’s volume down, still a bit afraid to touch the thing. Once the music was back down to a manageable level, he glared at Calimn.

“That was mean.”

Calimn had to admit that it had been . . . although it was still unbelievably funny. She swam over, climbing out of the water to sit beside her friend. She patted his head gently, with an amused chuckle.

“Aw, don’t be such a worrier. Isn’t it neat that it plays music?”

“Ummm . . . I guess so. It sounds nice, at least.”

Once he had calmed down and relaxed a little, he had to admit the idea of having music at any time was rather interesting. It wasn’t long before he was humming the tunes out with Calimn, the two of them sitting on the banks of the Jewel River and losing themselves in the flow of the melody.



Calimn, of course, finds a way to use the CD player, and, of course, uses it to scare Swiftlit.

Felarya is Karbo’s

Named Characters are mine unless otherwise stated.

Lol didn't expect this >_< Nice addition to the story. I feel sorry for the gorgan lady going to ursagal I wonder :p

Hehe, sea deep layer.

Can't Calmin try using her fingernails to press the buttons?

French snack wrote:

Hehe, sea deep layer.

Can't Calmin try using her fingernails to press the buttons?

Lol just got a mental image of Calimn trying to use an iPhone

hahaha great chapter

I really grinned all the way seeing Calimn make her trap and then seeing her rolling on the floor laughing. It was communicative XD

Ah, too funny. Swift really needs to calm down, though. His paranoia is going to get him hurt one day.

Swiftlit loses three rather important things, and Calimn runs into danger. A little vore, but nothing major. Any feedback is appreciated.

Trouble Ahoy

Calimn let herself drift to the bottom of the river, all the way down to the deepest channels in the middle of the Jewel River.

She settled onto the sand and stone, lying on her back to look up at the tiny speck of weak light that was the sun. Despite the depth, the legendary clarity that had been part of the reason for the river’s name let one see perfectly in the water. The other reason for the name of Jewel was scattered about in the silt around the mermaid.

Aptly dubbed, the Jewel River was full of gems. Diamonds, rubies, emeralds, opals, some precious stones that had never been given any name before, littering the bottom of the river quite liberally. They glinted as small specks of colored fire in the dim light of the place. It made for a pleasant, soothing atmosphere.

Calimn knew that farther upriver was a large area even more beautiful than this, overgrown with glowing blue crystals that bathed the whole section of the water in a phosphorescent light. She didn’t go there much, as that was mostly the territory of crystal mermaids, and slightly dangerous because of the odd creatures that swam in the grottos and underwater caves there. This bed of glinting gems suited her just fine.

Half-asleep, she blew a steady stream of bubbles and watched as they danced swiftly towards the surface. The low light, quiet, and overall tranquility of the riverbed was making her lethargic. Maybe she would take a nap down here . . . Well, best not to. She was a giant predator, but there were always things bigger than you in Felarya. And, as everyone familiar with the place knew, if it was bigger than you, it would happily eat you.

Reluctantly, she sat up and spun, pushing herself up off the bottom with her powerful tail. The forceful swirl of current generated by her movement caused the patch of riverbed under her to swirl up in a whirlwind of sand and shining jewels. She floated upward, watching as the bright display faded and settled back to the bottom.

Many prized those gems. It was a part of why she got to eat more humanoids than most predators; people just showed up looking to get their tiny hands on the riches. She herself didn’t understand it. Sure, the stones were shiny and beautiful, looked nice, but she just couldn’t see the purpose of attempting to collect them. She sometimes gave away the biggest gems she discovered to one of her friends, as something nice to look at, but actively diving to get as many as you could . . . ?

Well, the smaller folk seemed to be into them, for whatever reason. Maybe she would take one or two to Swiftlit. Though, he didn’t seem like the type to get excited over a bit of bright rock. Maybe, maybe not. No, he wouldn’t be interested in that, she decided, tilting farther back and swimming farther towards the surface.

She was about to break the surface when she noticed something that piqued her curiosity.

She was fairly close to shore now, and most of the trees of the Miragia forest grew right up against the banks, branches overhanging the water. It was on one of these branches that she had spotted a shape. It was somewhat blurry and distorted because of its being viewed from underwater, but she could tell it was a hybrid, a small one.

It couldn’t have been more than five or six feet tall, the lower half a dusky brown and about twelve feet long. A naga, surely, sunning on the branch. Small, probably relaxing but watching for danger from in the sky or the ground. Most likely not looking for trouble from the water. Calimn smiled.

Lunch.

Calimn mostly ate fish, humans and the like more of a catch-as-catch-can side dish. Between the random warping of the Miragia Forest, the shipping trade, aspiring gem collectors, and just plain chance, she caught a decent amount of sapient prey, but certainly it was a rare enough occurrence that she wouldn’t just pass up a random opportunity.

She carefully sank lower, not wanting to move too fast and catch their attention, and got ready to jump. She could reach that branch, if she gave a bit of effort. It couldn’t be more than fifteen meters, maybe a bit more, but in any case it was far from being out of reach. With a burst of rapid motion from her tail, she powered her way up out of the water, rising two-thirds of the way out of the river. Rather than using her hands, she simply opened her mouth and caught the dangling end of the naga’s tai-

She felt legs, lots of them, scrabbling around on her tongue, and chitin rather than scales.

Okay, that is NOT a naga! she realized.

She fell back into the water, creating a gigantic splash as she hit the surface and plunged into the sluggish flow. She felt a sudden, intense resistance, a powerful tug, and then sudden slack. What was THAT?

With a quick flick of her fin, she resurfaced and spat the chilotaur she had almost eaten onto shore.

* * * * *

Swiftlit felt pretty good today. He had eased off the fear somewhat, beginning to settle into a comfortable routine and getting more familiar with the forest surrounding his underground house. He still stayed raptly alert for any danger, but while the intensity remained present the unhealthy level of nerves accompanying it had started to fade.

He had actually deigned to explore a little, currently running around up in the canopy. He felt safer up here, able to look down at the forest floor more than a hundred feet below and knowing nothing ground-bound could reach him. Arboreal predators might be a hazard, but he would manage, and it was better than sneaking around in the underbrush.

He had gotten better at judging how to move with his dimensionally skewed weight, and he could jump between branches and vines with a fair amount of accuracy and alacrity. He missed, now and then, but he was no longer crashing into things constantly as he had been doing before.

He had finally begun settle into his lifestyle, and it felt great.

He sprang to a nearby vine, grabbed on, and swung on the leafy green rope. The abrupt rush was exciting, and he gave a quick laugh, as loud as he dared allow lest he attract unwanted attention. Letting go, he landed on a thick branch large enough to lie down on comfortably and ran along it. With a burst of speed and a long leap, he grabbed another vine.

A really squishy, flexible vine.

Instantly the “vine” coiled around his wrist, suckers suctioning onto his arm. He gave a startled yelp as he was suddenly yanked upward, so fast that everything became a blur of green and brown. He looked up, turning his head aside for a moment to avoid getting a twig through the eye.

He had been caught by some kind of freakish jellyfish, or a squid, or . . . well, something pretty weird. It was a blob of flesh, some ten feet in diameter and the color of a new bruise, a deep shade of lavender, with twenty some odd tentacles covered in suction cups and ending in hooked claws. There were no eyes or anything else that he could see, but there was certainly a mouth.

A puckered sphincter at the top of the monster, it widened into a gaping pit of rotten breath and wickedly pointed teeth. The stink of putrefying meat rose up like a blast of stench from the open door of a slaughterhouse, making him gag even as he screeched and twisted in an attempt to break the abomination’s grip. It was no use, the tendril rubbery and completely inescapable.

His brain had turned into a whirl of fear and racing thought, but somehow, out of the chaos, he grasped an idea.

* * * * *


“Blagh, gross!” Calimn complained, spitting and taking in a big mouthful of river water to wash out the taste of chilotaur.

The mermaid couldn’t stand to eat insects, nor anything resembling them. They didn’t scare her, and she had no problem with them, but she would NEVER eat any creature even vaguely related to one. The smaller varieties of chilotaur, dridder, and any other insectiod hybrid were, by default, off the menu for her. She might converse with them at a distance, challenge them to a game, but eating one?

Her response to that was, very firmly, “NO”

“I’m sorry for trying to eat you, I thought you were a naga.”

The chilotaur, gasping and soaking wet from the abrupt dive into the river, flopped around for a moment before righting herself. Fairly young, the hybrid possessed a round face and figure, and dark, extremely curly hair. She immediately darted off into the forest, but not before Calimn noticed something very odd. The chilotaur had a rope tied around her waist, the end of it snapped and trailing in the dirt as she scuttled off. Almost as if she had been dangling over the water like . . . live bait.

Calimn looked around for a sign of anyone in the area, but saw nothing. Who ever had strung the taur up must have left her there, maybe as a punishment of some kind, maybe as bait for a large, high-jumping fish. An exovole? Perhaps a smaller mermaid, even? Curious . . .

The ballista bolt that went through her arm was a surprise.

The projectile pierced her upper arm, scraped against bone, and then caught, barbs hooking. Suddenly it was pulled taut by a heavy steel chain attached to the end, and with such force Calimn was nearly pulled over onto her side.

To say that it hurt would have be an understatement of unprecedented magnitude. The ballista bolt was easily ten feet long and two feet in diameter, and had hit hard enough to go in a good six feet. Not only that, it had vicious barbs along the first three feet, all of which were now perforating the flesh of her bicep and digging into the muscle. Some were even grinding against the bone, causing white-hot agony that seemed to saw at every inch of her.

She had been injured before, but certainly she had never had a siege spear go into her arm, ever. She gave voice to a cry that was equal parts pain and astonishment, and automatically clamped her opposite hand to the wound, blood already beginning to seep through her fingers.

Who had shot this thing at her, though? Her eyes followed the chain to the trees, where it was attached to . . .

What in the WORLD?

It looked like a cannon of some kind, but slimmer, the barrel longer, and a large steel tank for air or water or some other substance on the back. In addition, there were gears and cranks all over the thing, as well as a heavy piston and a powerful motor. There were wheels, rubber ones with thick metal spikes for traction, all six set up at the bottom to allow the clanking behemoth to move under its own power. The whole contraption was nearly the size of a house, twenty feet tall, twenty feet wide, and close to thirty feet long.

Sitting on top of this bizarre machine was a small figure, no more than a meter tall, and both gender and species obscured by the leather clothes it wore. Even the face was nearly invisible, hidden between a leather mechanist’s hat, a scarf, and heavy goggles. The soot covering what little skin she could see didn’t help.

“Alrigh’ fellas, looks like we’ll be eatin’ fish tonigh’!”

The exclamation brought her attention down from the operator of the machine. She was amazed to find a horde of the beings, nearly identical to the first in dress and demeanor, crowded around the base of the cannon. There had to be sixty or seventy of them. In front of the group was the one that had spoken, a large gold badge evident on its coat.

“Le’s pull this fish in, eh? Heave-!”

The chain ran through the barrel of the ballista gun, and came out the back attached to a large wheel, end trailing on the ground. It was this that the creatures grabbed, close to half of them. Calimn would have laughed, if she hadn’t been in so much pain. As if these tiny things could haul her out of the wat-

“-HO!”

The chain snapped to, and the mermaid screeched as the barbs dug into her arm. It hurt, but that was the least of her problems; these things were STRONG! Only thirty of them, and they were slowly dragging her out of the river. Calimn reached out, grabbing the steel tether. She wasn’t going to be beaten by a bunch of uppity midgets, that was for sure! Taking a breath to ready herself against the pain, she yanked as hard as she could on the chain.

It didn’t break, incredibly. It was galvanized, super-heavy-gauge steel, or something like it, and it creaked from her massive strength but little else. She managed to pull away from the machine, the small beings pulling on the chain being hauled forward.

They didn’t give up though, and instantly leaned back and set their heels in, making the loam pile up in front of their boots as they were tugged along. They continued to pull and strain, grunting as they attempted to keep the mermaid from making any more headway.

Calimn hissed loudly, and had to stop pulling. Blood was streaming down her arm, seeping from around the spear in her upper arm to drip ruby droplets into the river. It was blindingly painful, and the anguish was sapping her strength. What was more, she was feeling fear, serious fear, like she hadn’t felt for quite a while. This was an EXTREMELY bad situation.

She could see fish starting to gather, getting the scent of her blood in the water, and it gave her a sense of surreal dread. I could really die, she realized, and those fish will pick my bones clean if I do. She could almost see her own skeleton, gleaming white against the pale sand at the bottom of the river, and that image terrified her.

It was that fear that inspired her to start fighting again, and fight much harder. She thrashed powerfully, trying hard to get her tail around so she could bring the full force of it to bear in the water. She needed to get so she could utilize her swimming strength to overpower these strange creatures. Her face twisted up in a rictus of pain, but she pushed against the agony piercing her arm and flailed as hard as she could manage.

She actually made some progress, pulling the cannon itself forward several meters, when the operator started up the engine. The piston began pumping, steam whistling from the pipes, and the thing went into reverse. A winch started up inside the bowels of the metal beast, and the cannon began to roll backwards.

It dragged Calimn right out of the water and onto shore.

She swallowed a knot of fear in her throat. This was BAD.

* * * * *

Swiftlit snatched at the harpoon strapped to his back with his free hand. Being swung around in the air made the task nearly impossible, and for all his scrabbling at the spear he missed over and over. The gnashing teeth below him were rapidly getting closer, and the panic was building even faster. He had to get ahold of the harpoon, had to- Yes!

He struggled with the tool for a moment, nearly strangling himself with the strap, and brought it around. He had never actually used the metal fishing spear as a weapon before, preferring to run or hide when something came after him, but if there was ever a time to use it defensively, now was that time.

He chucked the thing, with as much strength as he could muster, down the creature’s throat.

The result was instantaneous and violent.

A gout of jaundice-yellow blood gushed up out the monster’s mouth, accompanied by a warbling bellow that made the boy’s ears want to curl up. The ball of flesh seemed to explode, tentacles writhing in all directions. The frenzied motions had Swiftlit screaming, the human being whipped around so fast he couldn’t tell which way was up. The world turned into a green blur of madcap speed and bestial roars.

Swiflit was slammed up against a branch, and then he was falling. The thrashing of the abomination had thrown the both of them out of the tree, and now both were in free fall, headed for the distant but rapidly approaching ground.

He grabbed a branch that rushed by him, actually managing to get his arm around the limb, and hung on with everything he had. The tentacle was still stuck to his wrist, and a second later there was a massive jolt as the fleshy tendril hit its limit. Swiftlit yelled as branch cracked, threatening to give way and let him fall to his doom, but then the suckers of the member gave way instead.

There was a wet, pulpy crash as the monstrosity hit the forest floor.

The boy hauled himself up onto the branch, tensing as the already strained wood moaned under even his lightweight frame, and crouched. He stayed there, wheezing and shaking from the adrenaline high still coursing through him, for close to ten minutes. At last, he climbed down out of the tree.

The beast hadn’t splattered on impact, but it was a close thing. It looked like a deflated balloon, that saffron blood puddled around the creature like a lake of rancid mustard. It was very still, and surely dead. Swiftlit was though of retrieving the harpoon from the corpse. It had saved him twice now, with this thing and once with Calimn.

He gave up that thought and ran when the monster started to convulse. It was the death throes of a doomed animal, but he was absolutely sure he was not going to get close enough to check if it was really dying. He took off, sprinting for home. Forget exploring. He was going back to his burrow, and staying there!

It wasn’t long before he was back at his hole. He jumped down the open tunnel and crawled into the comforting dark of his underground house.

Whew. Every time I go out exploring, I seem to get mobbed by trouble. Maybe I should stick closer to home, he wondered.

“Your door was open.”

It was that little voice that often nagged at him, paranoia. Only this time, it had something useful to say. Immediately Swiftlit began to edge toward the exit, feeling the wall as he went. The moss plug that hid his burrow entrance had been set aside, and that meant only one thing.

Someone, or something, was in his house.

The makeshift door had been intact, pulled out whole, so that meant it had been a SOMEONE. Not that the intruder being sentient was any comfort. It could be a human-sized naga, which Calimn said could eat things as big as himself by dislocating their jaws. It could be a dridder, with venomous fangs and ensnaring webbing. It could even be –and he gulped at the thought of this- a fairy. Fast, versatile, and absolutely terrifying.

He was still sweating over the possibility of there being a fairy in his home when he stepped on something.

Something squishy.

Something slimy.

Something that suddenly grabbed his foot and screeched at him.

Swiftlit answered with the same noise. He couldn’t see what had ensnared him in the blackness, but he could feel it. It was warm, almost hot, and extremely viscous. Sticky, like some kind of glue or slime or something, and it was attempting to envelope his legs.

He tried to jump, to escape, but forgot about the fact that he was in a burrow. He only succeeded in bashing his head against the ceiling. He landed on the thing attacking him, and it was slippery as well as sticky; he slipped, feet flying out from under him. He did a faceplant, and, spitting out dirt, tried to get away again.

He couldn’t get up now, both feet stuck firmly in the syrupy stuff, but he scrabbled at the floor, yelling and kicking. With his feet immobilized, he couldn't do much of the kicking part, but he made up for it with all the shrieking. Whatever had ahold of his feet screamed back at him with a bloodcurdling cry, and what felt like hands snatched at his legs.

Abruptly curling, Swiftlit jack-knifed forward, and popped right out of his shoes. He left both, socks still hanging out of the shoes, behind as he rocketed out of the burrow. He didn’t even bother opening the door; the plug was sent flying as he exploded up out of the hole and ran for it.

He had lost his harpoon, his footwear, and his house, all in a single day.

* * * * *

Calimn wondered if this was how Swiftlit felt most of the time.

She was scared, terrified, in fact. She was stuck on land, a ballista bolt through her arm, in pain, surrounded by a mob of whatevers, beginning to dry out, and overall supremely unhappy.

“We-hell, le’s get this fish gutted and cooked up, eh? Got to keep up our strength, until we figure out where we is, yeah?” announced the one with the badge.

“YEAH!” was the resounding agreement.

Calimn felt a surge of fright, and, to a degree, incredulity. These weird creatures were going to EAT her? The irony wasn’t lost on her, and she let off a sharp, jittery laugh. Turnabout. Nothing quite as funny as turnabout. The amusement died the instant she saw the beings pull shovels from their belts, the tools with razor edges.

She might have been hurting and out of her element, but she was still a lot bigger than these twerps. She swung her arm into the crowd of little brutes, the creatures scattering under her blow. She didn’t hit any of them, but it gave her the opportunity to flop towards the water. If she could just . . .

Another chain, this one in a lasso, dropped around her head and snapped shut on her neck. The beings not occupied with the harpoon chain now took up the lasso’s other end and began hauling on it. Calimn yelled as she was yanked onto her back, choking as the noose pulled tighter and tighter. Why were these things so freaking STRONG!

“No use tryin’ to ge’ away, fishy. Royal Anti-Dragon Artillery Corps always ge’ our targe’.”

“Anti-Dragon Artillery?! I’m a mermaid, not a dragon!” Calimn protested weakly, vision starting to fade as her air was cut off.

“Ho-old up there, fellas, this fish can talk.” the captain ordered, and Calimn felt a welcome rush of oxygen refresh her lungs.

The boss of her assailants then addressed the mermaid. Calimn kept a close watch on the commander, but tried to steady herself. She was unnerved by the situation at hand, but she had to keep her head on straight and stay calm or it would only get worse.

“Well, you’re a merwhazit, eh? Can you tell us where in bloody blue blazes we is? This innt Averi, that’s fer damn sure. Caught us a centamachi, decided to use it fer bait. Those things kill plenty of us Knockers every year, but the thing blubbered all over, beggin’ an’ cryin’. I tell you, never knew centamachi could talk. Or could turn the humanoid-lookin’ part all girlish and without spines and shell and bugger-all. Aimed for fish to eat, but just as well we caught a merwhazit.”

“Knockers?” she asked, slightly curious but still hurting too much to put any great interest into what these creatures were.

“Oh, yeah, knocker goblins. Like regular goblins, ‘cept we live deeper underground, and we’re a lo’ stronger.”

“I noticed. You mentioned Averi?”

“Yeah, Averi, westernmos’ country in Alteana. Curren’ly a’ war with the Suveri Kingdom. We’re the Anti-Dragon Corps, squad six of twen’y. We deal with the big boys, dragon knights, wyverns, trolls, giants, galvosages. Well, we would if we could find the war. Seem to have los’ it. One minute, we’re figh’in’ on the plains, nex’ we’re all by our lonesome in jungle. SO. Where is we? Eh?”

“How about you get this noose and harpoon off of me first?” Calimn suggested, tugging at the chain around her neck hopefully.

The goblin pushed his goggles up to reveal his eyes, a peculiar shade of primrose pink. They weren’t friendly eyes, either. Set deep in his grey-skinned skull, they glittered with something the mermaid very much did not like.

“How abou’ you tell us, and we don’ shoo’ a ballista bol’ through yer eye.”

The cannon, in fact, had three barrels, two smaller ones that she hdn’t noticed before now, and one rotated to aim right at her face.

“You’re bigger than us, so we don’ take any chances, eh?”

Well, there went her plan to escape these pygmy maniacs. She was going to have to tell them, and go along with it until she could get loose.

“Felarya, okay? You probably got into a vanishing land in the Miragia Forest, and when you stepped off your soil you got transported here. So can you get this harpoon out of my arm and go away?” she answered.

This was one thing she didn’t like about living so close to the Miragia Forest. You got exotic food fairly often, but you never knew who or what would show up for dinner. Once in a while, like now, you got serious trouble ladled onto your plate.

“Felarya, eh? Jus’ recently our best portal mage has been tryin’ to connec’ to there. Said he migh’ be able to summon a giant somethingorother to help with the war. Nobody ever heard of Felarya before that crackpo’ showed up. Guess he screwed up and go’ us stuck here.”

Okay, you know where you are, so . . . ?” Calimn asked, jangling the chain again.

“Righ’. Aric?”

The pilot of the cannon nodded, then pulled a lever. Calimn gave a sharp, extremely loud cry as the machine’s gears clanked and the barbs on the bolt in her arm retracted into the spear seamlessly. A moment later the harpoon slid out of her arm and vanished back down the artillery barrel. It was followed by a gush of crimson as the blood it had been holding in came forth.

As the chain around her neck slacked and fell off, Calimn made her move. She had had about enough of these overbearing gremlins. She spun, slamming her tail into the war machine with everything she had left. The whole outfit groaned, rocking onto its side, but it didn’t fall. The machine was abominably heavy, squat and with a low center of gravity. All the mermaid managed to do was give her tail a nice bruise. Nursing both her injuries, Calimn rolled back to the river, vanishing with a gigantic splash.

She sank to the bottom, blood trailing in long wisps from her arm. It was painful, and she would have to take a good two weeks or more to heal, but it wasn’t life-threatening and the hole was so small in comparison to her size she probably wouldn’t even have a scar.

The larger injury was to her pride. Getting manhandled at her size was an embarrassment, especially since creatures even smaller than a human had done it. Jab would most certainly ask about the wound, and would most certainly not let her live it down, ever.

Well, it was over and done with now, and she could go on with her life. Shake it off, no big deal, she told herself. She hadn’t died, and her injury would heal. The knockers probably would all be gone within a week, consumed by the forest’s warps or the forest’s beasts, and whichever happened, she wouldn’t have to worry about them anymore.

“You’re fine. You survived. You are A-Okay.” she coached.

On that positive note, she let herself drift downstream, towards her favorite spot.

A little sunshine and relaxation would help with the fear still dancing along her nerves.

* * * * *

Swiftlit quickly found out why humans weren’t supposed to run as fast as he could go.

He had lost more than just his tool, home and shoes back there. He had lost his speed, the major reason as to why he was even still alive in Felarya. Without anything to protect his feet, he couldn’t hit his top gear, not even close. He could get up to about as fast as someone his size could normally run, but that was it. Any faster and the friction started to tear up his feet, the thorns and pebbles and just the soil cutting into his unprotected soles.

If he attempted to reach full speed, he would rip his own feet apart.

He crept through the Miragia Forest, headed for the river. He hadn’t thought to go to Calimn at first, thinking he could just gun it and spend the night in a tree. Now that he knew he couldn’t run in top form, he was scared, and when he was scared, he went to either his burrow or to the mermaid. With his house taken over by who-knew-what, his only option was to reach the river, find her, and ask to stay with her until he could figure out a new method of lodging.

He kept every one of his senses tuned for any sort of danger. If he met a wild animal, ran into a carnivrous plant, or encountered a giant predator, he wouldn’t be able to escape, period. Without his shoes, he would have to rely exclusively on avoiding detection and reflexes. Even with this thought in his head, he knew if something happened, he would most likely die.

One hungry predator, sentient or not, and he would be doomed. In the Miragia Forest, there weren’t many huge creatures, but the flora and fauna changed on an almost daily basis. One day bright flowers and small fuzzy mammals, the next brooding dark trees and ferocious giant snakes.

There were dimensional potholes and vortexes, as well. They could portal you, kill you, alter your physics, rearrange your anatomy, change the weather and temperature, sometimes even twist time around. Swiftlit could go through them without much happening, his own instability disintegrating the vortexes, but sometimes the stronger instabilities would only be altered and weakened.

He had once stepped into a vortex only to suddenly fall towards the sky, gravity reversed. He had spent the rest of the day very carefully travelling on the undersides of branches, the effect finally wearing off after several hours. Mostly safe from warps and the like, he had only the predators to worry over.

He was certainly worrying now. He had to keep low and quiet; he had nothing but stealth to rely on now. If he was caught, it was over. If ANYTHING found him, he was dead. The gorgon naga? Dead. A Kensha beast? Dead. Fairy? Dead. The whole business had his heart ready to explode.

Astonishingly enough, he made it to the Jewel River without incident. Nothing leapt from the canopy or underbrush to devour him, it didn’t rain, and he didn’t run into any giant predators. His relief at having made it to the water was short lived, because that was when he saw Calimn.

She was spread-eagled out on the riverbank, eyes shut, and a sluggishly bleeding hole in her upper arm. His own troubles evaporated so fast it was as if they had never been there in the first place. He instantly darted over to her and jumped on her face with both feet, shouting “Calimn! W-wake up! Don’t die! St-st-stay with me, Calimn! WAKE UP! DO NOT DIE!”

She sat bolt upright in a second, throwing both hands up into the air. He went tumbling off of her and did his second faceplant of the day. He was up again in moments, and caught the last bit of Calimn’s yell.

“I give up, don’t use the cannon on me again!” she yelped, both hands up in a gesture of surrender and eyes shut tight.

After a brief pause, she opened her eyes tentatively and caught sight of him. She gave a visible sigh of relief and lowered her arms once she realized she wasn’t about to be skewered by vengeful goblins.

“Geez, Swiftlit, you scared me. I thought you were those knockers again.”

“Knockers?! Wh-wha- nevermind-d-d th-that! Y-you’re b-b-b-b-b-b-b-bbbbb-“ he squeaked, face turning a unique shade of magenta as he struggled to get the word out through his panic.

“Bleeding. It’s not bad. I’m okay, so cool off before you blow a fuse.” Calimn assured.

The boy’s face returned to its normal color, but he still continued his worries.

“Y-you’re okay, right? You’re n-not going to d-d-die? You’re not b-bleeding to d-death?”

Calimn smiled at his concern, and nodded at the rapid-fire inquiry.

“I’m fine. It hurts a lot, but it won’t kill me. I ran into a bunch of midgets with heavy artillery. They were- . . . What happened to you? You’ve got a big bruise on your wrist. And where did your shoes go?”

Swiftlit felt a wave of ease pass over him. Calimn was alright. As for his own situation, who cared? The harpoon? Good riddance, he didn’t need a weapon. His shoes? Oh well. His burrow? He could find another. Suddenly worrying about those things seemed stupid.

“N-nothing. Nothing happened. I just lost a couple things. Glad you’re okay.”

Calimn, a practiced liar, knew he was not saying something, and called him out on it. She rolled over onto her stomach and gave him a look of concern.

“Tell me what happened.”



Swiftlit is houseless now, and can’t use his speed until he can find a pair of shoes. Calimn gets a rather harsh lesson in turnabout, and a nice hole in her arm until she can heal up.

Felarya is Karbo’s

Named characters are mine unless otherwise stated.

Both characters' sense of fear is well described. Despite the pain and shock and fear, it probably did Calimn good to get a reminder of her own potential vulnerability. Nice touch, too, with Swiflit realising his losses are nothing compared to Calimn's well-being.

I've always thought he should move in permanently close to her. Maybe now he will.

French snack wrote:

Both characters' sense of fear is well described. Despite the pain and shock and fear, it probably did Calimn good to get a reminder of her own potential vulnerability. Nice touch, too, with Swiflit realising his losses are nothing compared to Calimn's well-being.

I've always thought he should move in permanently close to her. Maybe now he will.

Swiftlit might not like Calimn's idea of permanently close.

aethernavale wrote:

Swiftlit might not like Calimn's idea of permanently close.

Hehe... He might certainly be alarmed if she suggests it and phrases it that way!

Ah-hahahaha . . . yes. Aether wins a cookie for prediction of Calimn's first suggestion.

Swiftlit and Calimn try to figure out the problem of Swiftlit having no house or shoes. Minor reference to vore, but nothing else. Comments are welcome.

Strange Friends Shorts

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“Wow, so you’ve been living all by yourself in the forest? I always thought you lived in a village or something. You should have told me, I would have let you stay with me.” Calimn affirmed.

“Well, until that really cold day I honestly was scared of you. Way too scared to stay any place you could crawl to from the river. And after that I was just comfortable with the burrow. It’s my house . . . was my house.”

“Well, living on your own is pretty brave.”

The boy felt his face heat up at the praise.

“N-no it isn’t. I was just too scared to run around looking for people to live with. I’ve never met anyone my size. Just a lot bigger and a lot smaller.”

The mermaid reached behind herself and pulled a long sapphire strand over her shoulder. She ran her fingers along it, humming to herself as she twirled the blue ribbon around her finger. She considered the situation before her, thinking.

Swiftlit had lost his home, and shelter was immensely important out in the wilds of Felarya. Lying out in the open was asking to get eaten, especially at human size. He needed somewhere to stay. It would have to be safe, comfortable, warm, and insulated from the elements. Preferably close by. Where, oh where could his new house be . . . ? she wondered.

An idea lit up her face with the glow of an epiphany.

“Hey, I know!”

“What?”

“You could live with me.”

“How? I can’t breathe w-water, and I’ll sink like a rock if I get wet. There’s no way.”

“I mean in my stomach.”

“Wh-what!?” he squeaked, alarm tingeing his visage.

“No, seriously, think about it. You could sleep there, just yell at me when you want out. I just swallow some air and you’re all set. There’s nowhere more safe, since I can shut off my insides. It’ll be great!”

“ You have to eat, and half digested stuff, maybe a . . . p-p-person. N-no. I’ll just . . . find a new house.”

“Yeah, okay, it was a stupid idea. Sorry.” Calimn apologized, seeing that the suggestion had hit a wall.

She fingered the strand of hair still coiled around her digits. She refrained from eating anything before pretending to eat her friend, so his argument made the flaw in her idea, overlooked initially in her excitement, quite obvious. What to do . . . Maybe a little music would help her think.

The CD player was actually at the end of the strand of hair she had twined around her forefinger. The machine was completely waterproof, so she had decided to tie it on by the handle, so as to keep it on her person without having to carry it. She undid the knot of hair tethering it to her after a moment of work, then used the twig, similarly twined into her locks, to switch it on.

She listened to the song that emerged for a few notes, then matched it perfectly, humming along. Swiftlit, in contrast, sat in silence, pondering the manner in which he might deal with this dilemma. He had to find a house, but he really didn’t know where he could look for one. Calimn told him that most humans lived in peculiar dens made of wood and stone, but he had never actually seen one himself, besides half-destroyed remnants while in Ur-Sagol.

Where did you find houses? Were they all in one place? Or were they scattered around the countryside? Where they built in groups, or completely alone? Who did you go to in order to ask for one, or did you have to make one yourself? It was far too confusing. He would just find another burrow, or a hollow tree.

“I’m going to go find a house. I’m sure there’s something around. Maybe that stone place. I bet there’s lots of places to stay there.”

Calimn looked somewhat incredulous. Ur-Sagol had places, sure, but it wasn’t the safest of areas. It was something of an oasis for giant predators, because of the gate. Tourists, travelers, and even a caravan of airships came through the circle fairly often, so it was frequented by nearby predators consistently, looking for new arrivals. Large buildings and ruins to hide in, yes, but they offered just as much concealment for the giants as for the prey species.

“It’s not very safe there.”

“It seemed okay to me . . . well, except f-for the giant w-wolf. Kensha beast.”

“Trust me, as a predator myself I can say for sure you don’t want to hang around there permanently.”

“Okay. Not that stone place.”

“Ur-Sagol.”

“Right, not Ur-Sagol.”

“The Miragia Forest is pretty safe, since you can’t get all messed up by vortexes. Plus, it’s close to the river, so you can visit without having to go all that far. The more ground you have to cover, the more likely you’re going to run into trouble.”

“Umn, maybe. But I’d have to search the whole jungle for an abandoned den or something to live in.” he murmured, half to himself, biting on his knuckle gently.

Calimn had to admit that running all over the forest looking for a house would be neither easy nor safe. She didn’t know of any ruins or villages in the Miragia Forest, either. The dimensional instability made it practically uninhabitable by anything not immune to its strange physics. Permanent residents were most likely few and far between. Of course, established complexes in any part of Felarya, besides the rare metropolises like Negav, weren’t exactly common. They had to be either well-hidden or protected in some manner to exist for very long. Otherwise they just became buffets.

The mermaid turned the idea over in her head a few times. Bound to the waterways and their immediate surroundings, she wasn’t exactly the most worldly of predators. She didn’t know of any villages, at least not off the top of her head. Wait, actually, I do, she realized.

“Safe Harbor. You know, that place you went looking for when you . . . um, ran off. You could go there.”

“No thank you!” Swiftlit squeaked hurriedly, voice going up several octaves at a jump.

He had bad memories of his attempt to reach the village. He had been chased by a Kensha beast, then nearly killed by falling out of a ridiculously huge tree. Not to mention his being harassed, caught, and nearly eaten by a giant naga*. He didn’t want a repeat of that particular scenario. He hadn’t even been able to find the village, even. No, Safe Harbor wasn’t an option.

“What’s upriver from here? Anything good?”

Calimn shook her head in denial right away. The Jungle of Perils was no place for a human. Even your average giant predator would hesitate to go into that crimson swathe of scarlet trees and danger. Even farther up the Jewel River was the Green Hell, and if Swiftlit went into that place . . .

“Negav. I guess you could go to Negav. That’s a really long way to go, though. Well, not all that far for you, since you can run so fast.”

“I can’t.” he said, and she detected a myriad of negative implications in his voice.

“Can’t what?”

“Run fast. I lost my shoes, so I can’t run as fast anymore.” he admitted, a peculiar mix of nervousness and bemusement on his face.

He gave a demonstration of his reduced pace, dashing a few dozen meters before turning and coming back. Calimn was thoroughly surprised. She had gotten used to his odd ability to move much faster than expected, and seeing him constrained to a strictly human pace without being doused in water was somewhat unnerving.

“Well . . . that’s going to be a handicap. Even if I check any ships I see, I don’t think I’ll find a pair that’ll fit you. Your feet are really small . . . and I don’t know where you could get new ones your size. Where do they make those things anyway?”

The huge predator had no clue where they might find shoes. She couldn’t wear them, obviously, and as such she had never even thought of them much before now. They had simply been the slightly bothersome things that she had to spit out occasionally after a meal. Other than that, she didn’t know much about them.

Maybe Jab would know. Jab talked to anybody she could get to hold still, and was something of a glutton for facts. When she caught a sapient creature to eat, she would devour both them and every bit of information she could wring out of them. Though gentle, her interrogations could last for days, and that meant days to collect all the knowledge of her prey. As a result, the harpy seemed to know a little bit about practically anything one could think of.

“Hmmmn. I think I should introduce you to Jab. It’s about time I told her about you.”

“Oh, Jab. Oka- Wait, y-you mean the giant h-harpy Jab!? That Jab!?”

“Yeah. I’m sure she’ll be interested in you.”

In reality, the mermaid was slightly nervous on how her friend would react. She was a kind-hearted soul, albeit a tad annoying at times with her constant chatter, but this was pretty major. “Oh, by the way, I made friends with this human. Don’t eat him, okay?” sounded awkward no matter how you phrased it.

Swiftlit appeared even less enthused about the proposal.

“Interested in e-eating me!” he countered.

“I think it’ll be good for both of you. Jab can teach you about all sorts of things, and she’ll have somebody new to talk to, a new perspective. You’ll like her, I bet.”

Swiftlit wasn’t sure how he could get out of this. If the harpy didn’t accept him, Calimn might lose a good friend, and he didn’t want to cause that kind of trouble for her. Then there was the fact that he was scared spitless by the thought of being anywhere near a giant predator besides Calimn. He needed a good argument, something to extricate himself from meeting Jab.

“I’ll look for a place to stay, first, and then you c-can introduce me, okay? Shoes? HA! I-I’ll find another pair while I’m looking.” he laughed, trying to hide the fear with false bravado.

Calimn, of course, saw right through the attempt. Still, best not to push, she thought. She was worrying more about the implications that would come with Swiftlit’s moving house. He was going to be out on his own, without any permanent hiding place, and unable to outpace much of anything if he got into trouble. For once, she wished she had legs. If she could go around on land, she could escort him, keep him safe.

Even if he did find a new home, like as not it was going to be some distance from the river, and that meant his visits would become far less frequent. Between the distance and his cut speed, he would have to keep his traveling to a minimum. He could die, even, and she might not know for days, even weeks. That thought kicked the bottom out of her stomach and then threw her heart down the hole for good measure.

“As soon as Jab comes for a visit, I’ll tell her about you, alright? You can hide out or something, but I’ll feel a lot better if Jab knows about you and let’s us know about where we can get some proper shoes.”

“Okay, but I’m going to go find a house. Right now. I’ll be back . . . um, when I find one.”

“Swiftlit, are you absolutely sure you want to do this? Without your shoes, you can’t outrun anything.”

“Yes. I need a house. I’ll be okay. I was fine up until now.”

Calimn knew he was right. He needed a place to live, or he would be picked off in short order. That meant having to go out and look for a new home, and despite the danger she was aware that it was necessary. He had lived this long, so she would just have to trust that he would continue to avoid the hazards of Felarya.

“If you’re sure. Just be careful. And make sure not to go upriver.”

He gave her a thumbs-up, then hurried off into the Miragia Forest.



Well, there goes Swiftlit. Off to find himself a house, and shoes. Hopefully shoes before he runs into anything dangerous.

Felarya is Karbo’s

*Reference to Crisis - Crisis is also Karbo's

Named characters are mine unless otherwise stated

I really liked those two chapters !

You are developing Miragia forest well here, giving a good sense to a region that is generally not used a lot

And I love how you conveyed the sense danger facing Calimn and Swiftlit. it was especially striking in Calimn's situation, as it seemed a odd one, almost comical if her life wasn't on stake. This really show how unpredictable the region is ^_^

Now I must say I have a bad feeling about Swiftlit going in the jungle barefoot...

So, I finally read through all of this, and I must say I enjoyed it. Calimn is very strange. Playful and somewhat scary, but still caring and friendly as the same time XD It's very nice to see her and Swiftlit get along despite everything :3

Thank you very much, everyone.

I went back and edited some parts as I planned, but it's nothing as major as I thought it would be. Now that that's settled, I should have the next bit up in a few days.

Finally got around to finishing this. This is the new Strange Friends story arc. Two new characters introduced, a guest, and a fresh start. Minor reference to vore in this chapter.

New Friends

Chapter 1: In Quiet Comfort

It was dim in the depths of the great Vermys-Pieaug Library*. This was very different than the areas most of the public walked, that lighter, tamer place where the shelves weren’t a hundred and more feet tall, books didn’t flutter about like bats, and the carpets didn’t occasionally slither around the musty halls like plush serpents. No one bothered to put up lights here; there was no point. It was a rare thing that much of anyone came into these queer, gloomy rooms, and any who did had to either bring their own light or simply deal with the deep shadows. Here and there a soft glow pulsed among the shelves, flowers and plants growing seemingly out of nowhere that were possessed of a subtle incandescence. A human would have trouble seeing for much more than a dozen meters if not possessed of some light source.

It was dangerous here, as well. It was more like a forest than a library, filled with the mutterings of strange creatures that lurked in the dark corners here and there, the creaking of shelves that sounded so much like the shifting of trees, the quiet ruffling of paper. Creatures padded across the floor, clambered over piles of books and papers, skittered along the sides of the massive shelves like spiders. Some were meek and harmless, others deadly and wild, all very peculiar and most to be found nowhere else in Felarya. However, it was, like most libraries, a place of quiet, and other than shufflings and snufflings in the shadows these beings did not cause much disturbance.

There was more than these occasional odd beasts to present a hazard, though. To be come lost in the endless maze of shelves and alleyways would be the easiest thing in the world. Not only that, this labyrinth had no compunctions about moving around or shifting. The shelves moved, though never while watched, and rooms could change positions while you weren’t looking. It was disorienting, and frightening, to those unused to this phenomenon. The creatures, from the lurkers to the flying books to the living carpets, seemed to have no trouble, however.

One of them in particular.

Large, pointed ears twitched as something nosed its way through a drift of dusty essays close by, paper crinkling as it was displaced. Unnaturally long, unnaturally pale fingers ran over the smooth wood of the shelf it crouched beside, searching, searching. Two huge disks of white glinted in the dimness, looking about now and then, peering into the gloom for signs of what it sought.

* * * * *

Xelan opened one sleepy eye slowly, gaze sliding downward. The quiet creature was back. She couldn’t hear anything, not so much as a peep, but she knew he was there. She could feel the slight vibrations through her sensitive roots, soft footfalls that made almost no noise. He thinks he is being stealthy, the fool, she laughed to herself, not unkindly. He was hunched over near her trunk, crouched to examine some of the lower books in the shelf next to her. He was in easy reach; all she would have to do would be to bend over, snatch him up, and eat him.

She let out a slow breath, a slight sigh . . .

And was instantly fixed with the gaze of a pair of pale disks as the being looked up at her.

She froze, illusion reaffirming to make her look like a shelf overflowing with papers, but the damage was already done. The creature straightened, looking directly at her with those owlish eyes.

Xelan smiled. Clever elf. She had never meant to eat him, of course. She knew him, in a way. In was more of a very loose acquaintanceship, a quiet, neighborly attitude. They never spoke, but they acknowledged each other, exchanged nods when he went by. His hearing was so extraordinarily sharp that he could pick up her breath, her movement, and pinpoint it. She had tried to catch him, once or twice when he had first appeared, but he had always kept out of her reach, and illusions were of no help when your would-be prey could hear you bend down to grab him.

He was a curious person. He was an elf, of sorts, but with weak eyes and larger ears. He didn’t like bright light much, as far as she could tell, staying away from the lit ‘safe zones’ and bundling up in those heavy grey clothes of his. He was a bit short for an elf, as well, and the whole of these differences made her think that he might have come from another world, perhaps one where light was scarce, or maybe where elves had lived underground for a long time. When or why he had started living in the library was a mystery, but she had known of him for a few weeks.

She respected him. He was quiet, never rummaging about like some of the very rare visitors that dared to venture this far. He handled everything here with the utmost care, and read through every book and essay he could. She herself loved books, and seeing a fellow bibliophile handling all this knowledge so delicately and respectfully made her feel at ease.

It was also comforting to see another thinking being all the way back here. It was very lonely, rooted here, all by herself and with not much of anyone to talk to. Xelan had no connection to the outside, unable to speak to the other dryads in Felarya, and only limited connection with the few other dryads in the depths of Venmys-Pieaug that she could reach. Thinking about it made her feel the slow, longing ache of isolation in her chest. Maybe she would speak to him. There was no guarantee that he would respond. Indeed, she had never heard a word out of him, and for all she knew he could be mute. She was shy, but this elf had been around for some time, and the familiarity finally overbalanced her inhibitions.

“Hello.” she tried, hesitantly.

The elf said nothing at all. The glinting disks shifted upward as he pushed the thick, huge spectacles farther up on his small nose. These glasses were the most defining feature of the man, large enough to practically cover a third of his face and so thick his actual eyes were completely hidden. She couldn’t see his features very well, and what she could see was slightly distorted by the gloom. His skin, or what little of it was exposed, was unbelievably pale, with almost no color and very slight translucency. The total effect of his appearance made him look like a mix between a vampire and an owl.

When the silence stretched out, Xelan started to regret speaking. Perhaps she should have left it, and let their casual-nod relations go on as before. Well, no going back now. She struggled to find a subject to bring up, but nothing seemed to come to mind out of all the information she had stored away.

“Uh, would you like some light? It must be hard to look for books when it’s rather dim like it is.” she inquired.

She leaned to one side slightly, reaching for something on a nearby shelf. It was a plant, a long, delicate vine that hung off of the shelf, spilling down the rows of books like an emerald waterfall. The whole thing was glowing, a phosphorescent light that turned everything within a few inches a pale green with that light. It was not the ivy that she took, though, but one of the flowers blooming off of it. They were a pale turquoise, giving off the same color in the halo of bioluminescence that surrounded each for about a meter. They were about the size of her pinky nail, and as such she was very careful as she plucked a single flower and bent down to offer it to the elf.

The light turned his pale skin light turquoise as it got close, shadows emphasizing thin lips and sharp cheekbones, his spectacles becoming a pair of blue moons. He stood a few feet out of her reach, not moving an inch to either back away or take the proffered lamp. The silence immediately began to grow as before, making the dryad distinctly uncomfortable. She was about to give up and retreat back to her solitude when the elf finally spoke up.

“That is kind of you. I generally do not carry any light source as it would most likely increase the probability of being noticed by the more dangerous inhabitants of this information repository. I also have a fair dislike of most varieties of light in the visible wavelength, but bioluminescence is one of the kinds I find more tolerable. I suppose I will accept your offer.”

Xelan blinked. A few weeks. She had known he was here for at least that long, but how he spoke, the precision and vocabulary of it . . . He had been here for quite some time. Years. Maybe decades. Not for the first time, she wondered how he had gotten here, and when. How many books must he have read, in all this time? Hundreds? Thousands? More? She let the flower go as thin fingers curled around the stem of the plant, straightening back into her usual position.

“Who are you?” she queried, hoping to ease the mood a little.

“Myself? Quen. I am a scholar and alchemist.” he replied, so softly she could barely hear him.

“Xelan. Would you mind speaking to me for a time?”

It came out before she could really think about it, the request. She mumbled half an apology, feeling slightly embarrassed about it.

“I would rather keep my own company, thank you. I must return to my bibliographical studies, focus on absorbing more information on varying subjects. Even at this rate of speed in terms of reading, it will require several thousand years to view and completely analyze all of the material in this library.”

Xelan felt a massive wave of incredulity wash over her at his words. There was absolutely no way he could possibly be serious. Surely not. Surely no one was so persistent in the pursuit of reading and knowledge that they would actively attempt to read the Venmys-Pieaug Library dry. Such a thing was ludicrous. She loved books herself, but that? That was . . . well, unhealthy to say the least. Doing nothing but reading paper after paper after paper, devouring both fiction and nonfiction books one after another . . .

She actually felt a flicker of quiet anger in her heart, a small match struck and lit inside her breast. Squandering himself in the depths of the library, pouring over musty tomes and doing nothing else. She had no choice but to stay here; it was exhausting to uproot herself because of the depth at which the system extended, so she almost never moved, and even if she had legs leaving the library meant being in the influence range of the Isolon Eye and in the middle of a city full of people who would be very unhappy to see a predator wandering around the streets. She spent her days reading what she could reach, speaking to the other dryads on occasion when the link was working properly between them. She had to. Quen did not.

“Why are you wasting your life in here? You could be doing so much else with yourself than reading for the rest of forever.”

* * * * *

Quen adjusted his large grey beret, pushing his glasses back up with the other hand as he did so.

Wasting his life? What could this arborous hominid mean? He looked at them closely, her words, mind handling them as carefully and dexterously as it could at great speed. Decades of constant, uninterrupted reading and analysis of every work he finished lent him intelligence and immense mental alacrity, but regardless of how he examined her statement, he could not see what was implied.

“Clarification, if you would.”

“You should go out and . . . live. Do something with yourself. Just staying here for years, reading for the rest of your life . . . that’s such a waste.”

Quen dissected the words, took each one and examined it, put them together, looked at the whole of it, parts of it, the tone and pitch. No matter how he turned it over or tested it, it made no sense.

Quen had come here, to this place, this Felarya, in the first place because of his insatiable need to learn. It had happened by accident. His own world was one of endless darkness and twilight, and books practically didn’t exist. Everything lived underground, the aboveground a desolate wasteland of sand, scorching temperatures, and a snarling beast of a sun that only once a week allowed cool night to fall. The weak eyes, large ears, and pale skin that separated him from most elves came from his people living in caverns lit only by phosphorescent fungi for generations. The Vrai, as they called themselves, had no history records, but some of the oldest elves could remember their grandparents speaking of how their grandparents’ grandparents’ grandparents’ grandparents could recall when the sun had not been so hot, and the elves had lived above, and the Vrai could live for three or four centuries if illness or accident never took them.

With few writings, Quen’s thirst for knowledge had been only mildly slaked by word of mouth and the rare stone tablets he could find, and it had eaten at him for twenty years until he had found something in the dark tunnels. A book, ratty with age and wear, and opening it had pulled him into this place. He had been overjoyed to see so much information, and had immediately set to teaching himself how to read. After that, he had begun his venture into absorbing all the information in the library. He had read and read and read, read incessantly for years. His impeccable memory had recorded every single passage of every essay and every book he had ever touched, and he had a massive hoard of knowledge filed away now.

How could this be a waste?

“Knowledge is all I want. Everything I can learn. Everything.”

It was one of the simplest things he had ever uttered, but it was his own personal truth. That truth reached through to the dryad, obviously, because she looked wholly taken aback.

“If that is what you want . . . then you should go out and learn first hand what you wish to know. Experience it.”

Quen felt his mind lurch. He had never thought of such a thing, not in his whole life, and it shook his usual stability and calm. Field research? Active learning through experience and fully tangible sensory input? The implications struck him a mental blow that made his brain shift out of its settled rut of dry, scholarly pursuit. Learning in such a manner . . . it could be an amazing augmentation to his normal reading. He looked up at the dryad.

She was, by his estimations, smaller than most species of dryads he had read about, close to seventy feet tall*, her skin a dark brown and very smooth, much like the wood of the surrounding shelves. Her hair seemed to resemble not so much leaves as papers, whole sheaves of them, and the eyes that shone out of her long hair were a deep mahogany, nearly black. Had he not known where she was already and her illusion still in place –for she had dropped it in his presence- he would have never seen her. She could have gone wholly unnoticed, but she was wiser than himself. He had much intelligence, but it seemed as if he had forgotten sensibility in the midst of his searching for new knowledge.

“You . . . you are a veritable sage in the matter of practicality. I shall henceforth engage in regular field research on the subjects I study. The current area is the geological formations caused by the hydrological conditions of large cascades. In this case, I shall go to the Chordoni Falls. Research shall begin immediately! Immediately!”

He hurried away before Xelan could say anything more. He was excited, truly excited, for the first time in many years. This . . . it had the potential to rearrange all the information he had stored away in his head, put it to use in a practical setting. Oh, how much he had to get done! He could experiment with the alchemical properties of all the plants and substances he had read about but never actually seen or touched.

He paced quickly through the maze of shelves, navigating through the labyrinthine complex composed of piles of books, mountainous shelves, gently glowing plants that grew along the floor or ran down the sides of shelving units like luminous water, some seeming to be made of folded vellum like origami. He kept going for nearly an hour before it began to get a bit brighter, the creatures that occasionally wandered the hallways and rooms more sparse, the plants less evident. Slowly the wildness of the deeper reaches fell behind him, the dimness rapidly waning as overhead lamps began to appear in rows on the ceiling.

It was now that Quen began to feel a tad less enthusiastic. His eyes were not made for harsher light, and it was discomforting. Bioluminescence was fine, and moonlight was ideal, but lamp or torchlight made him uncomfortable, and direct sunlight was close to painful. The Vrai elves had lived underground a long time, and as a result their eyes were weak and skin easily sunburnt by exposure to daylight. That was what his heavy clothes and thick spectacles were for, guarding his skin and eyes respectively. Still, he was adverse to bright light, and he tried to stay in the shadows as much as he could. Of course, by now the shadows were so sparse and so small he had no way to stay in them.

He began to run across signs, tacked onto the shelves, with large, bright letters of warning to alert anyone to have come this far of the dangers ahead. Some had listings of what might be farther on in the direction Quen had just come from, warnings of mobile carpets and aggressive flying books. Most had the advice to avoid going deeper unless well prepared.

He also began to run across folk visiting the library, and this made him even more nervous than the lights did. He avoided them as he could, ducking behind shelves or into alcoves to keep out of sight. He didn’t like people much. He liked books. This dislike inspired him quite nicely, though, and out of the thirty or forty people he ran across on his way to the exit he was only seen by five, and three of them had only caught a glimpse. He finally reached the last shelf, and halted.

The exit, a set of enormous double doors, was no more than a dozen meters away. The shelves, though, ended here, and that stretch to the exit was without any cover at all. There was a set of pillars, solid stone and big enough around that a man couldn’t encircle one with his arms, but they weren’t sufficient to hide him. The polished floor gleamed slightly with the light from the overhead lamps, mocking with the brightness that made him squint even through his thick glasses. He slid back a bit as he assessed the situation. He didn’t want to be bothered with anyone, but there didn’t seem any way to get past the front desk without being spotted by the person running it. He peeked around the corner of the shelf again, checking to see if the clerk was looking.

It was hard to make out her features properly. Burning Sun, I loathe being halfway blind, he thought to himself, squinting harder to examine her. She was medium height, fairly young but definitely an adult, wearing a lavender dress with rather frilly sleeves, perhaps five-six* or so, waist about even with the desk. Light amber sort of hair, dark gold. Her eyes were a warm, bright hazel. The glint of good cheer in her eyes matched the glint of her teeth as she smiled, handing a book to an older woman for checking out. Fairly normal . . . until you noticed the wings. Pearly grey, they were attached to a lion body that composed her tauric half, the fur a honey color except for a darker tuft at the end of her leonine tail. A sphinx, then.

But how to get by her?

There was no way past the desk without being directly in her line of sight. That large, polished wood guardian was situated to the right of the doors, his left, and set in such a manner that there was no way to get by it without the clerk seeing everyone who passed. Behind it were several doors, further increasing the chances of getting caught if someone happened to be looking out from one and just happened to notice a suspicious-looking elven man wearing heavy clothes attempting to sneak by. Quen muttered derisively to himself. Was there no way to get past that clerk unnoticed?

The sphinx turned for a moment, bending down to get something from one of the desk’s drawers. Maybe a paper, maybe a pen, perhaps a book; it didn’t matter. The elf saw his chance and went for it, skittering across the open space towards the bronze-plated doors like a mouse.

And, true to the nature of the cat, the sphinx caught him.

“OH HEY!”

Quen froze in midstride at the enthused shout, gulping down a knot in his throat. Now it looked like he was caught, and the clerk seemed to be hell-bent on speaking to him. She was waving him over to the desk, grinning enormously the entire time. Bursting with energy and friendliness . . . why did he feel like that smile was a death sentence? No choice now. He was going to have to go over and talk to her. He walked to the desk slowly, reluctant to get into an interaction. He didn’t like speaking to others, and he had such an immense amount of research to do.

“Well, I’ve never seen you before. I remember almost everybody who I meet, but I don’t remember you –and I probably would with those ears and HUUUUGE glasses- what was I- oh right, I didn’t see you go by the front desk coming in. SO! How did you get by the desk without me seeing you? Or did you come through a secret door or something?” she asked, smile brightening to the point where he could practically feel his orbital nerves melting from the wattage.

Quen wasn’t sure how to deal with this cheery creature. Her overt aura of friendliness was making him nervous, and he didn’t particularly want to tell her that he lived in the place she worked at, albeit in the most remote areas of it. The thought of her coming into the deeper section to disturb his peace, however unlikely it was that she might, was a horrendous concept. He stayed silent. Maybe she would just give up and go back to her job if he said nothing?

“Eh? Are you going to answer?”

Sun . . . there was no escaping.

“I . . . live in the back . . . of the library. I’m not doing anything immoral or illegal . . . so don’t traverse the space from this area to mine and bother me . . . please.” he said, haltingly.

He normally was better-spoken than this, but all the light was distracting, annoying him with its harsh gleam, adding to the discomfort of having to speak to someone.

The surprise on the sphinx’s face was evident.

“Live there? Hmmm. What do you do?”

“Read.”

“Well, I know that, this being a library, but what else? Do have hobbies or a job? Do you work here? I’ve never heard Bio* mention anything about someone working in the deep sections. Oh, right. I’m Honey*.” she introduced, nodding rapidly.

“Umn . . . Quen. I don’t work here. I live here. I read. That’s all. Goodbye.” he muttered, the whole thing coming out in a hurried rush.

He turned on his heel, heading for the doors as quickly as he could without actually running. He had to get out of her viable conversational range before she engaged him in vocal communications again. He picked up the pace when he heard her say something more, slipped past someone coming in, and darted out the door. He was out. The sunlight, full-on sunlight, hit him, hurting his eyes as he emerged into the noontime day. He felt his unguarded ears heat up, almost no pigment to keep the sun from burning them quickly, and he hurriedly pulled his beret down over the tips to provide at least a little defense.

Now . . . time to find the Chordoni Falls.



Quen heads out for the Chordoni Falls. Probably not going to go very well for him, given who hangs around there. Comments and critiques are welcome.

*The Venmys-Pieaug Library, Honey, and Bio (Biomtvich) are all Moonlight-pendent13’s

* (Seventy feet tall, five-six) Quen has very poor eyesight, and a hard time judging size. Actual sizes are (one hundred and twenty feet tall, six-four)

Felarya is Karbo’s

Named characters are mine unless otherwise stated.

Oh neat, interesting where it picks up considering where ya left off o: Quite an interesting elf, and I hope the Chordoni Falls isn't too much for him ^^;

Oh, one quick thing

Quote :

He hurried away before Xayla could say anything more.

Xayla? You mean Xelan? Kinda took me a second ^^;

Oh dear. Chordoni. How unfortunate. :p

As ever, very well written, clever and engaging. I'll be impatient to see more... and to see how the characters meet up.

Second chapter of New Friends. Quen gets into trouble with a familiar face. There is vore here, so avoiding this if you dislike it is recommended. Critique as you like.

Chapter 2: Questions Galore

Quen held the limpobo sapling over his head, angling it to keep the sporadic beams of sunlight that burst through the dense foliage overhead off of him. His almost translucent skin would sunburn unbelievably fast if he didn’t stick to the shade. He had learned that quickly after leaving Negav; there were still peeling patches on the back of his neck and hands.

He really couldn’t have cared less about a bit of sunburn at the moment, however. The Tolmeshal Forest was even better than he had read. The gigantic trees towered over everything, casting a slightly greenish light over the forest floor. Vegetation was everywhere, huge and intertwined almost to the point of forming solid walls in places. Bright flowers grew here and there, little explosions of color amid all this green and brown, in almost every hue imaginable, and almost every size imaginable, as well. Vines, many thicker than a person, hung in complex webs and tangles in the colossal trees, forming bridges and nets between the massive branches.

Below the heavy roots he was traveling on was the maze of detritus and interwoven matting that formed the underbelly of the jungle. Peering down into those dark recesses from above only revealed darkness and crisscrossed roots. One might be able to travel through that labyrinth, but it would be excruciatingly slow, full of backtracking to get around all the snags and walls of knotted vegetation. No doubt that area was full of insects and snakes, many likely to be poisonous or otherwise dangerous. Quen had dismissed it for that reason, though it would be nice to be out of the sun.

He kept darting to some plant growing nearby, bending down to examine a flower, or plucking some berry to look over. This jungle was an alchemical wonderland, full of things that could be used in any number of ways, fruit and flowers and roots that all had different properties and effects. Some weren’t even identified by any of the books he had read. He plucked anything he could pin as useful, and those he could not identify to check on later. There were just so many plants, and so much he could do with them.

There were insects, too, that he examined carefully, and determined several of them to have useful properties that could be utilized chemically. He didn’t bother them, given that he was far too busy with all the notes he was jotting down. He had to awkwardly hold his makeshift parasol by pinning to between his shoulder and chin, writing in the small, leather-bound notebook he had found discarded in the Library*. He jotted down everything he ran across, appearance, properties if he knew them, every scrap of information he could glean.

He kept detached, writing down the facts clearly and carefully, but inside he was ecstatic. Though the blazing rainforest sun was a bother, this field research was a boost for his intellectual pursuits, and his mood. The Venmys-Pieaug Library had plants, often rare ones not found elsewhere, but the jungle simply had more variety, and much more vegetation. He found himself in the dilemma of what type of potion he should make first, but before he could ever sit down and get to work on a chemical he would see another flower or leaf and become distracted trying to look over it and determine its effects.

He would have to thoroughly thank that dryad when he returned to the Library.

There was so much to do and investigate out here. It could be months before he actually went back to Negav, years, even. There was simply such a gigantic amount of research he could do that it would take him a ludicrous amount of time to finish it all. Ridiculous amounts of time, especially considering he was actually trying to get to the Chordoni Falls and study the geology of them.

He started at that sudden realization.

He had been so excited about his surroundings, the possibilities, that he had forgotten about his original purpose in leaving Negav. He was here to study hydrological effects on geology, how the water affected the cliffs and soil, not to dart around collecting plant samples like an erratic botanist. He took a breath, straightening up from kneeling to peer at a patch of unusual moss. No more delays, no more distractions. He had work to do, and a large amount of it. No matter what incredibly interesting thing he saw on his way to the falls, he would not stop.

This included, unfortunately, the incredibly interesting fact that he had just stepped into a clearing.

“Bah!” he grunted, blinded by the sudden flood of harsh sunlight. He had left the limpobo tree behind a short while ago, putting it down to re-root before it died, and now he could barely see. Being halfway blind in the first place, sudden sunshine was simply throwing oil on the fire. He wound up tripping over a vine or something of that nature, rolling off the root he had been walking on and landing on . . . grass. He sat up, putting an arm over his eyes to block some of the sunlight. The root complex was much diffused in this patch of clear ground, the field a bit lumpy where some half-broke the surface of the dirt. The grass here was not quite knee height, a peculiar hue between green and purple, maybe maroon, the two colors mixing into something that was rather beautiful.

Quen got back to his feet, brushing some dirt off of the sleeve of his coat where he had caught himself with his elbow. He was looking down to do so when he noticed something right next to his foot.

He went down so fast it was as if gravity had suddenly decided to triple.

He knelt beside the tiny, incredibly delicate flower with the utmost care, not wanting to crush it. It was minute, the bloom barely the size of his pinky nail, the stem long and very thin. It stood at barely six inches high, overshadowed by the odd-colored grass around it. The color of the flower was a very, very bright orange, a miniscule yellow dot in the center. Even so, it would have been easy to step on the plant, and he was glad he had spotted it before moving. He leaned over it, hardly daring to breathe on the flower, and peered closer. Yes . . . this was indeed the legendary-

Suddenly claws wrapped around his waist, squeezing him tightly, and then the ground rocketed away from him so fast it had his head spinning.

“Noooooo! The FLOWER!” he screeched, reaching for the ground hopelessly.

“What’s up, maggot? You leave your tush out in the open like that and somebody will hand it to you on a plate, idiot. Seriously, even if you’re a worthless worm of a snack, at least put you’re one brain cell to work and learn to stick to the damn trees.”

“Put me back down! I have to-“

“Yeah, I’m sure you do. Anyway, retard, I-”

Quen tried to pull himself out of the harpy’s grip, but her talons weren’t opening up any time soon. No matter how he pushed against the slightly scaly-textured vice holding him, he couldn’t get loose. It didn’t help that he had to keep one hand on his glasses and beret to keep either from flying off in the gale of the wind going by. The turbulence of the harpy’s speed was such that he could hardly keep his spine from folding backward, and he had to lean into the wind to avoid bending into a U shape.

The harpy was still chattering on about some nonsense when a second bird-woman, quite a bit bigger, banked close.

* * * * *

Jab grinned.

“Yo, Ulia. What’s a broken-winged useless sludgeball like you doing clogging up the sky with your chubby, moldy-feathered butt? Falling on your face trying to catch a measly little midge?”

The bigger, darker-feathered harpy grinned back, blonde hair whipping around wildly.

“Nah. Only midget snot-rag chicks like you fall outta the sky while hunting. I’m just zipping around. Whoa, a nothing like you actually caught something? You better give me some or I’ll tear your wings off and ram ‘em down your throat.”

“Hah! Go learn to hunt yourself, you drooling monkey with feathers. It’s one weird-looking, scrawny, know-nothing elf. Barely enough for me, so buzz off and skin yourself on a mountain.”

“Pfft. How about we test how bad you are at flying? Whoever wins gets the elf.”

“Heh, assuming you can even fly and eat at the same time, princess of failure.”

The elf in her claws, previously looking intensely disgruntled at being swooped on, now became even paler than before, if that was even possible. It seemed it had finally dawned on him that he was in deep, deep trouble. The little shrimp had caught on to the conversation. Quick on the uptake, and able to cut through the harpy dialect that gave a lot of people trouble. Interesting. Worth putting some effort into keeping, anyway.

Jab tilted to the right, then reversed the motion and spun in a rapid corkscrew, descending for a moment before opening her wings again and catching a current to level off.

“You call that flying? Pathetic. I’ll show you how it’s done.”

Ulia adjusted her wings, then snapped them shut and performed a front-flip as she fell. Once done, she caught up and smirked.

“Beat that, board-chest.”

“Oh please, don’t . . .” begged the elf in her grip.

“Okey-dokey, donkey-face.”

Jab flapped hard, gaining altitude. Once she had some height, she prescribed a double loop the loop, centrifugal force dragging at her ‘guest’, and dove during the second cycle, pulling her wings shut and spinning like a top as she stooped. At last, she opened her wings, pulled up hard, and did a neat backflip on the way up. A few strong downbeats of her wings set her even with Ulia once more.

“That was easily the most ridiculously boring, feckless, %*%&ing pointless piece of *^&% move I’ve seen in my life. You should get taken the hell down with damn Harpy Carneye and dismembered by uptight sphinxes.”

Jab smiled.

That was obviously her win, with that great compliment. Ulia nodded to her, then veered off to cruise around some more. Jab laughed, heading back home. Now it was time to get back to her roost and check out what this elf knew. Hopefully he had more information than the one she was keeping at her nest right now. That girl just blabbered over the same old stuff, half of it incoherent, and after only a day had run out of facts. Still, Jab had humored her, given her time, and here she was after four days.

The harpy pulled up as the falls came into view, letting the strong air currents that wafted up from the basin carry her higher. All that falling water caused a massive updraft, a large part of why Jab, and the other harpies that lived here, had settled midway up the falls. There were several caves there, and precipices, ideal for any harpy wanting to roost.

The Chordoni Falls were impressive, a gigantic cascade of white and frothing water crashing down the side of a mountain and into a lake before flowing off in a wide river. Not nearly so large as the Jewel River, but still plenty large, the Chordoni River went off to empty into the Jewel farther on. The falls, though, were what gave the place its real distinction. They were big even for giant predators, towering downpours that churned up massive clouds of mist at the base. There were some huge rainbows, too, hovering where the afternoon sun hit the swirling fog, adding to the natural beauty of the waterfall. There was the fact that Vivian* lived here, too, another addition to the ‘charm’ of the falls.

Jab hovered for a second before landing on the lip of her little cavern, stooping a bit to avoid the stalactites on the ceiling. She had banged her head on those stupid things so many times going in and out she had learned to duck down or face a sore spot on the top of her head. The cave was a bit small for her, but it was what she got. The roomier spots had all been taken, and this niche was too cramped for most of her fellows. Being short had its advantages, sometimes. It was dry, though, and the floor soft with limestone dust that had formed a powdery carpet through years of erosion. She hopped a bit deeper into the cave, then set her captive down.

“Now, where’s that other little speck of vomit?” Jab muttered, looking around.

There she was. The woman had crawled back into a corner, away from the small bed of leaves Jab had collected for her, knees up around her chin and arms wrapped around her legs. She was wearing a low-cut grey dress, obviously not an explorer and unlikely to be a native of Felarya. Jab had found her wandering around the Miragia Forest, a fact that further enforced the idea that she was a victim of warping. Despite the harpy’s coaxing, the human just wouldn’t continue talking. Well, maybe a bit of company would help her along. Jab nudged the elf over to the woman gently, using the longer feathers of her wing as a broom to scoot him toward the other guest.

“You two get acquainted, or I’ll crush your tiny heads like berries. I’m going to grab something to eat quick.”

The harpy then ducked out the entrance of the cavern and took off.

Jab took a deep breath of cool air, enjoying the way the wind flowed around her and ruffled her feathers. There was nothing like flying. She wondered how Calimn could possibly stand not having wings. Well, to each their own. The avian woman let herself descend a bit before catching a rising current, flapping once to aid the wind in carrying her upward. She hoped those two would calm each other down. Her food panicking or getting depressed happened fairly often, and it usually made her grouchy because in such cases they didn’t want to share their knowledge with her.

She already had to worry about Calimn. The mermaid was acting fidgety for some reason, like she was worried about something. Jab suspected she was having trouble with her friend, the one she had cried over some months ago. Jab hadn’t met him yet, but when she did she was going to give him a lecture over making Calimn cry and worry. She banked, following the curve of the Chordoni River, looking for the glint of a fish in the river, or movement from an animal. She wanted to finish dinner quickly, and start questioning the elf.

* * * * *

Quen sat down beside the human, cross-legged, with a sigh.

It seemed he had gone about all of this the wrong way. He had simply gotten too excited, and barreled off into the jungle without thinking of preparation. He had similarly forgotten all about the intelligent predators, and their diets. Now he was going to pay for it, with his life, no less. He turned to the woman, asking her what she was doing here. She tightened her grip on her legs and her eyes grew wide.

“This is crazy. I was just watching a movie. There wasn’t any static, even. I think I fell asleep. I must be dreaming. I can’t be dreaming though. Its too real. That random lightning bolt that arced out of the screen, maybe that did it . . .”

“Ah, you were redirected to Felarya due to a sudden dimensional disturbance and spatial distortion, then?”

The woman slowly tilted sideways, still curled up in a fetal position, and let herself fall on her side. Her hazel eyes became dull.

“It’s useless. I’m going to get eaten by a monster. I’m going to die. She’s insane. She says these horrible things with a smile, and she keeps asking me about all these random things. I can’t take it. No more. Just eat me, you horrible monster.” she begged, the last sentence obviously referring to the harpy.

Quen didn’t know what to do, or how to respond to such an announcement. He could only sit and wait. There was no way to escape the cavern, of course. A look over the edge revealed a sheer drop of some ninety meters, a jagged stone outcropping waiting at that point, and past that nothing but cliff all the way down to the basin below. There was simply no chance that one could climb down. Only wings or the inability to be hurt by a fall of more than a thousand feet would allow anyone to get down alive and uninjured. He felt vertigo grip him for a moment, then withdrew, going back to the corner where the woman was still curled up in a ball of depression and shock. She kept muttering tonelessly, ‘I’m dead, I’m going to be eaten.’ over and over.

Quen resisted the urge to join her. Surely this harpy could be reasoned with. He would just have to form a strong case against her eating them. There had to be something she would accept, whether it be a valid argument or something as an exchange. He had some paper and ink in his pockets, his journal . . . which were so small to the giant they would be useless. He had a few potions with him, one that improved healing, one for testing for poison, and an antidote, but none were strong enough to be of any significance to a harpy of her size. He had next to nothing more than that on him, besides the plant samples he had collected. He was going to have to simply convince her with words and that was all.

He sat down once more, rubbing his chin with one hand. He needed a sensible point. He needed a reason not to eat them that was good enough for the avian hominid to accept. Moral arguments probably would do little. Morals were subjective, after all. They had nothing to offer her, and Quen’s only talent was alchemy and an excellent memory. The human lady was unresponsive, and it seemed that she was going to be of no help in this endeavor.

A massive gust of wind drew his attention to the entrance of the cave, one hand rising to shield his eyes from the billowing dust that the harpy’s wings stirred up.

“Hello, spitwads.”

The gigantic predator came over to where the two sat, legs folding under her as she crouched down. Even so, she was a looming mountain to her two captives, and Quen had to halt himself from leaning away from the bird-woman as she bent over towards them. A long sigh washed over the two, warm and smelling slightly of meat, before the harpy leaned in further. Before Quen could even open his mouth to speak, could even register the fact, the harpy scooped up the human with her tongue, flipped her up into the air, and snapped her up, all in one fluid motion. The woman had apparently accepted her fate wholly, because she never screamed, or even uncurled from her fetal position.

* * * * *

Jab rolled the human around in her mouth, letting the flavor soak in.

She had given up on trying to coax any more information out of the woman. Now there was nothing left but the eating. A rather disappointing meal, not much of anything gotten out of it. She flicked the little morsel into her cheek, holding her there as she spoke to the elf. He was simply staring at her, thick glasses hiding his eyes entirely. He was wearing heavy clothes, despite the heat of the day, all of it shades of grey and brown. She was going to have a tough time getting any flavor out of him when the time came, with all that material covering him up. Well, first things first.

“Yo. You know some good stuff?”

“What . . .?” asked the elf, staring at the bulge in her cheek.

“Good shtuff- geh, sorry. Hard to talk with my mouth full.” apologized the harpy, using her tongue to shove the woman farther back in her cheek as she wiped a bit of drool away with her wing.

The elf’s face turned even paler than before. Both his hands went up to fiddle with his glasses repeatedly, fingers shaking. Jab had worked nearly all of the flavor out of the human, and tilted her head back in a jerky motion similar to a bird downing a crumb as she swallowed. The elf didn’t even see the action, though; he had taken his glasses off, and was now incapable of seeing anything not a few feet from his nose. Mouth freed up, Jab continued her explanation.

“Yeah, so, anyways. I want to see what kind of useless drivel you have stored up in that pea of a brain of yours. If you don’t, I’ll make sure you die a horrible, horrible bloody death with your eyes plucked out and guts up your nose, okay?”

“I . . . I believe I am suffering from the symptoms of shock.”

“Well, laze around all you want, you listless slob. I’ve got nowhere to be. Phew, keeping my accent down is damn hard.”

“Ah . . . thank you?”

“I’ll eat you if you don’t start spouting garbage within a day or two, you sluggardly bum.”

“Yes . . . I just am not thinking in an organized manner at the moment.”

“Mmhm.” the harpy accepted, nodding congenially.

She folded her wings properly to her sides as she eased into a sitting position and leaned back against the wall to get comfortable. She waited patiently as the elf polished his glasses, over and over, small, watery blue eyes finally seen. He kept at this for nearly an hour, staring at a point just past Jab’s left foot, before he replaced the thick lenses. He pushed them up on his nose and started.

“There are several million plant species known in Felarya thus far, and the vast majority are not known beyond having been given a name and description. It is estimated that there are millions more to be discovered. Many species are either medicinal or poisonous, and there are large selections that are carnivorous-“

The triade went on like this for hours. Jab found herself leaning forward more and more as it went on, soaking up the facts, statistics, and speculations. He went from botany to history, a river of dates and names that Jab just ate up, every scrap of information he offered up for her. The history slowly spilled over to geography, the words coming with surprisingly elaborate and accurate maps drawn in the dust with a thick fingernail. Finally, he stopped, unable to speak any more with a bone-dry mouth and throat. By the time he finished, the harpy was practically breathing down his neck, staring intently at the map he had sketched in the powder.

“You’d better &*^%ing keep going, you blathering chunk of rotten cud, or I will absolutely disembowel you with a rock and tie you up with your own entrails.”

“I can’t.” came the hoarse wheezing.

“Okay, you take a break. I’ll get some water for you. That was a buttload of useless snot and vomit that came out of your mouth just now, and I want to hear some more just so I can tell you the level of your stupidity accurately.”

With that, the harpy shot out of the cave. In a few minutes, she came back, the tip of one wing wet and dripping water. She had strafed the falls, collecting the mist on her feathers, and on landing she tilted the limb so that the moisture collected at the tip. She proffered the liquid, but the elf had retreated somewhat, and it took several tries and soft threats to get him to take some water in his cupped hands. After a draught of that, he coughed a few times.

“Now, the rest.”

“I . . . I can’t think of any more right now.”

“Oh?”

“Miss, the threat of being eaten alive is generally not conductive to decisive thought processes!”

“Who said I was going to eat you, mucus pit?”

“Well, I assumed-“

“You think I’d eat a complete retard like you? With all that crusted slime and snot in your empty head? Hah! I’m gonna cut you a deal. You give me the rest tomorrow, and I’ll let you go. Hell, I’ll fly your worthless hide anywhere you get it into your puny head to go. You know what? You and me, we could share info. Here’s what we can do . . .”

* * * * *

Quen was set down just outside of the Isolon Eye’s range, and he moved off towards the city at a walk. There was a blast of wind against his back as Jab took off again, with a last shout of ‘remember our deal!’. He nodded, half to himself and half to the harpy, as he headed for Negav.

He had agreed to meet the harpy at that clearing once a month to exchange anything they had learned. It was a blessed opportunity for him; he had learned over the past week that the harpy was filled to the brim with ludicrous amounts of practical knowledge about any number of things in any number of subjects. She could give insights to predator culture and habits, as well. It was a scholar’s dream.

He was going to have to read a lot more to keep her appetite for knowledge satiated.


Finally, finally finished this next piece. Jab makes a deal with Quen and appeals to his thirst for information to keep both of them happy with knowledge that the other can’t get.

Felarya is Karbo’s

*Reference to Vivian - Vivian is also Karbo's

*Refrence to the Venmys-Pieaug Library - the library is Moonlight-pendent13's

Named characters are mine unless otherwise stated.