<center><b>Fairy Hunters</center></b>
<b>Introduction -- One without Power</b>
In the beginning magic was a language known by all, a language that could only point toward the truth. All humans were sorcerers then, creating their own realities, and playing in the realities of others. The world was one of peace, understanding and infinite imagination. The sorcerers, also known as the magi, called their plastic realities 'dreams' (or rather we call our nighttime visions dreams because it is the closest approximation we have to their multifaceted existence). The fairy ended this, but their coming had been foretold.
The magi of old, as omnipotent to the dream-weavers as they are to today's sorceresses, prophesied that the arrival of one without magic would portend its end. This one, Arthos, was born as much a wonder then as a true mage would be now, though this was not due to his power, but his lack thereof. In addition to being born without magic, he was an exceptionally small and fragile boy. Had the dream-weavers desired his destruction they could have had it at anytime, with their bare hands no less. Despite the prophecy, however, the venerable magi doted on him, weaving whatever reality he so chose. They assumed if they showed him the all embracing kindness of magic through their actions he would understand without needing to experience it directly. They were wrong, at least, in their strategy, for Arthos grew into a hateful boy ever envious of the human gods and goddesses who surrounded him. Unable to lash out against those he truly despised because of their power, it is said he turned his cruelties upon the small animals of the world and his lust for dominion began there.
At some point Arthos realized what is common knowledge today, but was repressed taboo in those times. To kill a thing of magic and lust in that killing was to steal its magic. Even though the lives Arthos took were small, everything has a bit of magic, and it built up over time. When bugs were no longer enough he moved to mice, when they would no longer satisfy him he moved to larger animals, in the end he even dared ensnare small creatures of magic -- imps and cockatrices. But like every true wizard, Arthos's magic was not his own, so he remained deaf to the <i>voice</i> which might have quelled his hate. Finally there came a day when Arthos had absorbed enough magic to begin making his own changes in reality. He hid his talent from the sorcerers thinking they would kill him if they knew of his growing abilities.
Arthos learned early on that his brand of magic was different. While the dream-weavers felt the universal energy washing through their entire body, his magic (that is to say what he'd stolen) seemed concentrated in his head. In other words, to effect change in reality he had to <i>think</i> it. This made the process much more difficult and necessitated the development of a language. Arthos created it in secret, printing those first runes out in the blood of a tortured Aurhee (what are now called 'fairy-dragons'). He called it Enochian and it is the language used by wizards even to this day. Ironically many now claim it was handed down by angels; nothing could be farther from the truth.
When he'd progressed far enough in his art Arthos, the first wizard, plotted his strike. He knew that were he to kill but one magi, the others would surely unite and destroy him even if he managed to absorb the energies of the first. He was simply not strong enough for open warfare, yet. So he called five of his guardians to his dream-home feigning a request for a new weaving that would require the power of more than one of them. The five came and dutifully went about their sorcery. What they didn't know is that the cunning boy had placed a trap for them in the dream. Once triggered it caught their magic and bound it leaving them as helpless as the wizard had been at birth. This was, of course, what he wanted, for them to know what it felt like to be powerless; his torture of them is beyond recording. What <b>is</b> known is that afterwards he pinched off his own dream so that it touched the solid world at only a narrow juncture, a spiritual isthmus technically known as a <i>rath</i>. This allowed him to strike the magi at his leisure fleeing back to his dream when they managed to mount a counter-offensive and growing ever stronger.
The war was slow fought lasting over a hundred generations. Most human births during that time came from descendants of the many Arthos had drained of magic but not slain. As powerless as he and untrained in wizardry, they presented no danger so he mostly let then be, focusing on the true threat -- the magi. Arthos's power grew gradually but relentlessly and he began more and more often to merely drain his prey, realizing that with each one let go he diluted the potency of magic in humanity all the more. Because of the dwindling sorcerers and the propagation of those made in Arthos's image, the first wizard eventually eclipsed all who remained.
At this point legends say he appeared to the surviving magi in the form of a great wyrm its coils twice as thick as the greatest wizard's tower.....
"You who have come to be devoured," the foul dragon fumed, acid drool fountaining with each word, "come into my maw and I promise you a slow death in the churning of my bowls instead of the carnal one you would receive beneath my shearing teeth." Now the great serpent bore his fangs to the pitiful army of magi who stood before him and many shrunk back seeing skeletons of their kinsmen still lodged between them. "Come forward <b>now</b>," the wizard-in-dragon's-scales commanded, slamming one of its coils upon the countryside for emphasis. Several farmhouses disappeared beneath its mass no doubt flattened into two dimensional rubble along with their innocent inhabitants. "Come forward magiiii," the dragon drew out its voice in a hiss, his hate dripping from his fangs, "come forward or more innocents die, more of these, who can not even defend themselves."
"Very well, Arthos," said their leader Nalwhendine. Called Nalwhen by her people, she stood as vibrant and immortal as any of the true magi, but she was in fact Arthos's mother, centuries his senior. She strode up to the crest of a nearby hill coming within arm's reach of the transformed wizard's lowered snout. "But you must do us, your final opponents, the grace of draining us of magic instead and letting us live out our mortal days in peace."
This stopped the dragon for a moment. He had been sure that his mother, most defiant and powerful of all the remaining sorcerers, would opt for death before defeat. He recovered quickly, though, roaring and spraying her with a corrosive spittle that would have dissolved her flesh into liquid were it not for the flashing resistance of her magical shields. "You dare to request this of me, you my own mother. Twas you who lead the the magi that relentlessly hounded me. You <b>never</b> considered truce, from the beginning you never..."
"Murderers don't make treaties," cut in the woman's magically amplified voice. It prompted another roar from the dragon and a bite that consumed half the hillside but not her. The eldest magi had flown back, the legendary blue scepter, <b>xlythidar</b>, glowing sapphire. "I can fight you for many more years, my son. It is true you will likely one day win but after how many years, centuries; after how many wounds, for believe me, Arthos, I.. we can still hurt you."
Arthos considered this. The magi certainly made for challenging prey but after countless decades he was ready to move onto magical creatures like elves, unicorns, and, of course, dragons. Already he'd grown curious about how their flavor of magic would add to his expanded power, his expanded self. Arthos felt a pain in the back of his skull, but the wizard had been having headaches for many decades and was unconcerned. Through thought alone he incanted a quick curative and the pain receded. Then he turned his full concentration on Nalwhendine. "Very well, to prove to you how regal your new ruler can be I shall grant your request, but <b>you</b> Nalwhen, you <b>mother</b>." The wyrm's vertical pupils narrowed even more in focus until they became linear slits of shadow. "You will remain my prisoner always. I will make sure you <i>enjoy</i> your remaining mortal life. Perhaps.. I shall even extend it a bit through magic." And with this the dragon gave a great intake of air, sucking some of the unwary sorcerers up into his maw. Nalwhen's magic saved a few, the rest fell screaming into the pink chasm of the wyrm's exposed throat. As the vortex continued, everywhere across the field, the magi's auras were slipping away. Shadows of colored fragrance they wafted up from the sorcerers despite their bodies remaining anchored to the earth by grip or footing. Even great Nalwhendine watched with knowing sadness as the greatest part of herself which was not <i>herself</i> slipped its glowing tendrils from her body and began to drift with the other spirits toward the monster who had once been her son.
Strung-out souls spiraled into the wizard's waiting mouth, many snapping their bonds with their owners. Physically unharmed they none the less fell to the ground weeping, screaming or both, as if their head had just been smote from their body and they were alive to express it. Soon all were collapsed in grief, their magic torn from them, their souls split in twain, all that is except for Nalwhendine. Most powerful of all who remained she held onto <i>herself</i> till all others were trailing down the dragons esophagus. Then and only then did she let her spirit fly, saying, "with love, my son." Upon her words all the stolen souls converged upon her own forging a single lance of magic, which, already perfectly aimed by the dragon's intake, plunged into his skull through the roof of his monstrous jaw. But the spear was one of spirit not matter. It did not strike Arthos's brain but his mind. There, upon a weakening stress-point caused by his arcane over-eating and his mind's ceaseless swelling, the spell made of souls struck. Arthos absorbed it like all the rest but it was too much and too focused. The wizard's mind, already manifesting its degeneration through headaches, began to fracture for real.
The great dragon, as physically unharmed as any of its victims, writhed upon the surface of the world crushing entire hamlets beneath it's coils, involuntarily laying siege to cities with but the thorned tip of its tail. Then with a final spasm which cracked the earth below, the wizard's mind and all its warring facets broke apart. No human alive could see the spray of resulting shards for no human alive now possessed magic but the elves tell of a ' rain of hungry light'. Soul sundered between brain and body the wyrm went limp and fell through the crack in the earth it itself had opened in its death throes.
But all was not over, a light of spirit bright enough to be visible to all, magic or no, arose from Arthos's 'tomb' and flew to the now mortal Nalwhen. Upon its entrance through her breast she knew it for her own spirit. Its core, based in love, had survived Arthos's own hateful spirit which could absorb a thing of pure love as easily as a person could digest a stone. True, all else had been stripped away leaving her magic weaker, a shadow of its former power.
She accepted it with joy.
<center>*****</center>
When the swollen ego of Arthos finally burst, shattering into fragments of magic, each in some way shape or form conserved a tiny reflection of the first wizard's tyranny. Overtime they chose and stabilized into shapes, becoming the fairy races we know of today. They took many forms though all retained their masters lust for magic except with them it became a need. The fairies were formed of pure spirit and had not the solid matter of other lifeforms on which to anchor. In fact, they had to generate the flesh of their bodies from magic continuously or face dissipation. This is one reason all faeries remained small, some infinitesimally so.
The fairies were and still are a plague on mankind and their continued existence keeps humans from reaquiring their status as enlightened dream-weavers or even arising above the 'brute' power of the 'magical' races. There is one hope, however -- Arthos's mother. Her essence, that part which had been absorbed, shattered along with the first wizard's mind thus entering into each shard. The bonds of spirit are not easily broken and Nalwhen could sense the presence of the original fairies for each bore in them a bit of her own power, that which had been taken by the wizard. So too could her daughters, for they alone, not her sons, inherited her sorcery. Since the fairy, like their Father, took to hiding in pocket dimensions (the so called 'fairy-land'), it fell to such gifted women, the descendants of Nalwhendine, to track down and destroy them before they drained the world of all the magic it had left.
<center><b>1- Dark Fate of the Deep Sleeping Sorceress</b></center>
The fiery haired sorceress, her profession evident from the magical jewels studding her black robes, slouched into her room and slung her elaborate costume on a ready hook. Beneath was the supple leather armor worn by many an arcane adventurer: strong enough to stop a goblin's arrow, flexible enough to allow for the most refined gestures of spell casting. It clung tightly to her body, too tightly. She hastily flicked a finger uttering a single word, "dolo," and a nearby wick shot up into a small blue flame. The light was dim but strong enough to show the tired sorceress the way to the bed.
Sinking her rear into its creaking springs she began to slowly unwrap, unhook, and unfasten her armor. Each bore tiny scars that could have been inflicted only by the smallest of weaponry and they were so numerous that it looked as if she'd engaged armies of such foes. She pulled the last particularly ravaged strip from her right calf and held it before her eyes observing it nostalgically for a moment before tossing it in a heap along with the rest. Next came her laces which she unwound from her tall boots like a pair of constricting garter snakes. Shoes and socks peeled off like layers of skin. She tossed the former into a corner by the door and after giving the later a distasteful sniff she spoke the same magical word, only louder, incinerating them in an instant.
Naked except for her narrow undergarments the young sorceress slipped her curves under the inn's standard ragged blankets . Her head hit the pillow hard spilling her red hair over her face, but before she could sleep one last thing remained: a ritual each sorceress must know lest they risk loosing their magic forever. It was the first spell any such woman learned past simple cantrips and the only one they had to cast each and every day.
Groggily she raised one bare arm up from the covers, fingers spread wide. "Utati, verilitis tuatha slolaree..." As she spoke the incantation her hand danced to the incomprehensible words pulling arcane energy through dimensional pores and sending it out across the floor in coruscating lines. Brilliant serpents, they twisted and intertwined spelling words which would not stop their shifting and finally encircling all in a band of bright blazing red. Then with the last word all flashed and vanished leaving only a faint glow to be reignited by blinking. But the sorceress wasn't even watching. She'd fallen back onto her pillow, the strain of the magic helping send her to sleep. Within moments her snores filled the chamber with their own droning incantations.
Meanwhile below her bed a quite curious mess stained the inn's floor. It looked as if some fool had spilled an entire cup of salt (a valuable commodity) and done so not in a pile but in a perfect circle. "Gribble-declik noor," a tiny voice crackled up between the floor boards. "Kriven jetch foodoo." Without warning, a tiny trapdoor tilted into view above the rim of salt. A rat-sized shadow, humanoid in shape, followed; then another, this one holding a lantern which revealed the creatures and their dusty surroundings. The beings looked much like tiny humans, heads no bigger than meatballs. They wore clothing scrapped together with random household items: napkins, socks, clothespins, and their faces bore the suspiciously genial wrinkles of extreme old age overtaking an avid lecher. Apart from this only their funneled ears growing out to points on either side of their head betrayed their fairy nature.
"Blash-thee," the first to emerge chided the second and he turned down his lantern transforming all to shadow again. Above, the snoring of the sorceress all but snuffed out the scurrying sounds as the fairies moved out from under the bed and began a clumsy ascent of one of its posts.
<center>*****</center>
Griblt, Kobold boss rank 34, poked his ugly face over the edge of the mattress and observed the dark swells in the covers before him -- feet. He licked his chapped lips and rolled up onto the bed followed by Kibber, boss rank 31. Grilbt made a 'ssh'--ing gesture as if it were necessary so close to one who eats fairies as snacks. Then he turned and sliced a suitable doorway in the blankets. They both slipped inside and the second reignited his lantern. Light fell instantly upon two wrinkled soles the size and shape of row boats. The kobolds stood in awe for a moment then, drawn by the almost palpable smell they bent down toward the curled toes and took reverent inhales. Kibber began to angle down further, his beady eyes focused on the inviting crease between the witch's sweat-slicked toes, but his boss's grip stopped him. Griblt, face twisted into jealous contours, pulled the eager youngster back. "Get your chops 'way from them nibbles," he snarled and shuved the other fairy up between the feet in the direction of the sleeper's crotch. "Its your job to make sure the bitch doesn't wake up and turn us into a midnight snack."
Kibber backed away, his rage and envy carefully hidden between the deep folds of his wrinkles. One didn't get very far as a fairy without respecting hierarchy, at least outwardly. Griblt's face followed his lesser into the dark with a satisfied smirk. Then he lowered himself over the toes, the largest of which was nearly the size of his chest. Carefully, for Kibber had yet to administer the potion, the kobold fitted his fat fingers between the woman's toes and pries them apart. "Yeeessss," the vile little thing hissed, admiring the dark wad of toe-jam her foot had nurtured. With four pudgie fingers he grabbed a bunch of the gunk, soaked not only with the beautiful sorceress's foot sweat but also her magic. His hand moved to a sac slung over his shoulder made from an old tea-bag, but it stopped halfway and went to his mouth instead. The kobold sunk his teeth in and chewed the soft wet lint, a sensual expression rippling through his wrinkles. It took the creature a while to finally swallow, then he licked up the stinking bits still stuck to his fingers. The rest, he knew would have to go back to the Big-boss for rightful distribution to all employees or else...
Kibber approached the sorceress's sleeping face, creeping across her pillow with all the concern of a soldier moving over a mine field. Her steady intake and outflow of breath was a hypnotic call lulling him forward and so were her lips -- red luscious, ever so barely parted. Kibber stopped within arms reach and it was everything the little fairy could do to resist leaping toward the sexy but dangerous cavity. 'First thing's first,' the kobold thought reaching for his belt with one grubby little hand. It returned with a test-tube, which when uncorked issued a strange aroma somewhere between that of ginger and stale beer. He brought its fuming mouth to hers and tipped it over top where her lips parted releasing a stream of sparkling green liquid. When the last drop had passed down into the sleeping giantess's gullet the little fairy shrunk back and waited.
No doubt Griblt had already begun to harvest her toes for <i>residue</i>, but Kibber despite being a lower rank was more patient, that and he had the added advantage of looking straight at the woman's jaws. Probably in her early twenties, thousands of fairies had by now met their grizzly fate behind those lips, beneath those crushing teeth. Kibber did not favor being next so he waited, waited until her breathing became deeper, more rhythmic. 'Now,' he thought with relish and crept forward retracing his steps to her lips. This time, however, he didn't stop but crawled right up to them. Fingers pinching on her bottom lip without fear of waking the sleeping beauty, the fairy yanked back exposing her gumline and the saliva filled trench below. Like a thirsty goat at a horse's trough, Kibber very nearly dove in, his mouth slurping up mouthfuls of her strawberry flavored saliva.
On the other end of the bed, Griblt had stuffed his sac nearly to the brim with toe jam and he had yet to search her second foot. He was taking a peek in the last crevice left, between her little and fourth toe when a grunt from behind brought him to attention. In through the slit he'd made with his knife trudged an old kobold so dry and wrinkled that it might have taken a stomp from a giantess to squeeze but a drop of fluid from him. He wore a tea strainer as a crown of sorts and sported a regal robe spliced together out of varying colors of faded cloth. Standing arms crossed beside the elder were two younger bosses though both were still quite pruned and owned ranks far beyond Griblt's measly 34. They were armed with toothpick-sized short-spears and shields fashioned from cup coasters.
"My venerable employer," Griblt mumbled as he scurried forward on his knees toward the chief boss. In supplicating style he held out the bag of the girl's foot lint open before him as he hung his head. The rank smell drifted up almost visibly out of the bag, but the old kobold turned his bulbous nose up at the offering and hobbled straight up to the source. With motions so slow and stilted you could hear his bones creaking the old fairy bent down beside the gigantic toes of the untouched foot. The two guards, slow to react, hurried nervously when they realized their superior was waiting for them. Kneeling next to her big toe they did the work of pulling it out to the side. Boigle, Boss of bosses, rank 7,694, grinned a grin that split his already entrenched face into a vast fault-line of wrinkles. Lechery incarnate, he crawled up craning his head down between her toes, forcing it into the tight crevice of flesh until his lips met the sweet untouched glob of lint caught within. All could hear a hungry slurping sound from where their employer's face had disappeared. It was a slowly eaten meal, the old fairy obviously savoring every gooey bite. By the time he finished, the two guards, brawny by kobold standards, were beginning to tire from holding back the toe. Gladly they released it once the boss arose. He turned to Gribilt, a bunched strand of lint dangling from the corner of his smile. "Return to the Pocket and tell the court, we harvest tonight, we harvest all of it."
<center>*****</center>
Blaire, the young inn-keep was washing dishes merrily when he noticed the sorceress emerge from her room and start across the loft. With all the subtlety of a nineteen year old he pretended not to notice his beautiful customer, focusing on the pot below him instead. He thought the red head had made eyes at him last night, but it was a dangerous mistake, misreading a sorceress. She would be well within her rights to polymorph him or worse should she suspect disrespect. Blaire decided it would be best to let her approach him. Witches were different from normal women, and if what he was told was true, she would take the first steps. He heard each of her footsteps upon the stairs as an individual note; she sounded even more tired than she was last night when she trudged up those same steps.
When she reached the ground floor, the inn-keep felt confident enough to turn around. He did so bearing a well practiced smile, but it vanished as soon as he saw her. Something was different. Her hair seemed... less red than yesterday, duller and her eyes, something undefinable was missing from her eyes. Blaire reached into his bag of pleasantries and found a chipper thing to say, "good morning, my Lady, what sort of magic do you have in store for us today?"
The sorceress looked up suddenly as if surprised by the question, her eyes straining at a memory that wouldn't come, "what.. is.. magic?" Shock only stopped Blaire for a moment, then he very nearly dove for the bell. It hung above the back of the bar, black iron and full of dread. Upon a board behind it the words 'Ring in case of Fairies' was printed in ugly slashing brush-strokes. The inn-keep grabbed the cord in both hands and pulled frantically deafening the customers with the loud gong and sending all but the confused sorceress out in a panic. He rang and rang, for several long minutes. Finally a strong arm gripped his forcing him to stop and turning him around.
He faced the swelling chest of Grustov, the town sheriff. Three militiamen, eyes warily watching the floors and corners of the room, stood on the far side of the bar. The sorceress had stumbled over to a recently emptied table, where she sat, her expression that of a ghost lost in its own haunted mansion. Grustov looked to her and then back to the young inn-keep. Though she was badly dressed, her buttons mismatched and her cloak disheveled, her attire left no doubt as to her abilities (previous abilities that is).
"Last night?" the sheriff asked from beneath his mustache.
A bit startled by how much the lawman had already pieced together, the boy took a second to reply. "...Yes... I mean I think so.., sir."
Grustov gave a gruff nod. He turned to one of his men who immediately snapped to attention as if animated by the sheriff's gaze. "Take her to Nerrith, she may have the spark left in her." Complying without question, the soldier gently guided the confused women toward the door, consoling her with soft lies as they left the inn. Grustov turned back to Blaire, "board the place up, you're not to have another customer until the pests are eradicated."
"But... sir...," Blaire could only mouth as his worst fears blossomed before him, "I still haven't been able to get the place above the red-line since my father..." Something about the sheriffs black mustache and the hard gaze riding atop of it silenced his argument. "You're right, I'll do it."
The sheriff showed the faintest hint of a smile. He reached out and clapped the youth on his shoulder.
"You're a good man, Blaire, much like your father. Your inn is a major source of income for our little town, not to mention its the only place we have to get away from our wives." One of the men behind the sheriff gave a short lived laugh. "I'll tell you what, I just so happen to know of a band of professional fairy hunters. Came through Erenbin not to long ago. They had brownies infesting their enchanted peach orchards, couldn't get so much of a basket at the harvest. When those women were done you couldn't so much as hear a fairy fart amongst them trees."
Again another laugh, silenced once more by the sheriff's stern backward glance.
"But sir, don't sorceresses like that charge for their services. I could never afford it..."
"Doesn't need to work like that my boy. Ya'see most of these girls have been hunting fairies for so long they've gotten to become... dependent on'em. If you agree to let them keep the ones they capture, they'll do it for free, least that's how they worked the deal in Erenbin."
"So where are they now and how do we get a hold of them?"
The sheriff gave the lad another friendly clap on the shoulder, "you take care that no one steps foot inside this place and I'll see to the exterminators."