{b}Chapter 2 -- Trouble in Groutwood{/b}
Velana, the twisted branch of a witch, raised her bony fingers to halt the group. Though her pale face was a frozen sculpture of perfection, her thin body was without curve and lacking not but the barest mounds for breasts. A being not of life but of unlife, her age could have been anywhere from 15 to 30, it was impossible to tell. Surrounding her, an aura of cold made even the plants recoil with a shiver -- Velana, was no ordinary sorceress. She was a necromancer.
While the rest of her party waited behind -- out of sight in the forest's underbrush, Velana moved to the shadow of a nearby elm. She reached her long fingers tipped by black painted nails into a pouch hanging beside her nonexistent hip. They came out with something pinched between them, something weeping. The way it kicked its twig sized legs in revolt it appeared to be a large insect, but if so it was missing one pair of appendages.
"Silence," she hissed at her captive bringing its rebellion and its tears to a sniffled halt. Velana brought the fairy up to her face until her visage clearly dominated the little thing's world. Symmetrical black bangs scythed down along either side of her pale, flat cheeks while the rest of her hair hung limp and unanimated. Her lips, the only thing upon her face with any color were the hue of a drowned corpse -- bright, bloodless blue.
The little fairy, a nearly exact miniature of a tiny beautiful woman drew away from the cadaverous face, her gold locks shaking as she fought once more the giantess who held her. The deathless gray of the necromancer's eyes, put a quick end to her convulsions, and she waited fearfully between Velana's fingers to be addressed.
"You keep forgetting, little traitor," came her voice, silken and confident, "I can do more than simply crush you or eat you. {b}I{/b} can do things far, far worse." The five inch fairy terrified enough of those prospects now blanched an even paler shade than her captor. "That's better, now I can sense the presence of the rest of your wretched kin, but I need you to point out the rath." The fairy, having given up long ago, did so while she sobbed. Velana followed the course of her microscopic finger to a nearby ring of white mushrooms, one of many in the primeval forest of Groutwood. She gave her little slave a dull look, "very original..." For a moment she probed the pixie's eyes, but found there not the slightest shred of hope. "...Alright everyone, you can come out this is the portal."
Behind her four feminine figures (at least more feminine than Velana) stepped out of the dark. Even beneath the sparse moonlight they had the look of adventurers, heterogenous both in race and profession. The first to stride up was Shianta, the berserker, the only woman amongst them whose magic remained untrained, and in Velana's opinion, unrefined. Though a massively tall muscled woman the true trademark of her warrior path was her hair. Dyed the color of blood for reasons both practical and aesthetic, it trailed behind her in a long braid spanning nearly half of her considerable height. Some people claimed the renowned amazon was in fact a half-blooded giantess. Velana doubted that (Shianta could after all sense the fae, a gift only inherited by human sorceresses), though, she had to admit in all her centuries upon the earth she could not remember knowing a woman so large and yet so athletically sculpted. Perhaps it was swinging that cold iron great hammer about all the time than kept her in such good shape.
"Do you trust her?" came Shianta's husky voice. The pixie, noting the berserker's interest shrunk from her, eyes averted like an animal at the bottom of a {b}very{/b} tall pecking order. Velana pinched the pixies little head between her fingers and wrenched it around to face the question, being careful at the same time not to snap her fragile neck.
"Listen to your betters when they address you, insect," Velana suggested harshly to her prisoner. The necromancer looked up from the fairy's quavering expression to the barbarian's skeptical one. "Does she look like she could be anymore intimidated?"
"Give her to me and we'll find out," chimed the wood elf Razilly as she skipped up between her taller sisters. Her chocolate hair bounced as she came to a sudden stop, a chaotic mass of jagged angles, the only object even attempting to restrain it: a leather band wrapped around and behind her pointed ears. Her rosy cheeks puffed out playfully as she smiled. Then a thin pink tongue emerged, touching the tip of her upturned nose quizzically as she considered the little fairy below her. Suddenly the elf's green eyes lit up like a forest at dawn. "Hey, I have an idea, we could.." The fairy struggled more than ever at the sight of this new giantess; Razilly being, after all, the one who originally captured her and her now deceased family with the cruel net-arrows she fired from her long bow. Seeing the wood elf's cute but sanguine face staring in at her had been the perfect beginning to her ordeal. She'd spent her first night of captivity in the archer's possession and it was not an experience she had any desire to repeat.
Fortunately the other giantess's saved her by uttering a simultaneous, "No!" The wood elf put on a pouty face and receded into the background hungry eyes still on the pixie. She was replaced by a majestic woman, tall but still a head beneath Shianta. Her dark skinned arms clattered with exotic jewelry of various sinusoid shapes. "A goodly decision, my friends," she spoke warmly to Velana and Shianta after casting a disapproving glare back at Razilly. In response the wood elf stuck her tongue out from between her pert, pink lips her face miming a ten-year-old's rebellious smirk. The black-skinned goddess sighed and turned her attention to the little captive. "I apologize for my companion's lust; it is a fault of her people and not herself. Should we decide your life is to be extinguished I promise I will insist it be done in the most painless way possible. That I say under the watchful eye of the great Goddess, Lysaerra." Her eyes panned up reverently to a moon which just barely showed itself through the dense forest canopy. Then her eyes fell to the little creature full of divinely inspired compassion. Bracelets jangling, she reached down and petted the shaking pixie atop her head. Her fingers lingered a bit to long for the fairy's comfort however and began stroking and fondling her little locks of blond hair. Well aware of how many faeries die to feed Nala's Goddess, Razilly mimes the motion of someone dropping a little person into their mouth. Chomping and chewing the invisible fairy, her eyes remain on the girl-pixie, drilling the certainty of her fate into her.
The fairy's rapt attention on the elf's charade was only broken by a new shadow falling over her. She didn't have to look as far up to see the youngest and shortest of the group. Mildreth, the precocious young sorceress, watched the pixie through the thick glass of her spectacles. Magnified violet orbs never leaving the fairy she suggested in a voice that sent shivers up and down her restrained body, "why kill her when we can keep her?"
Velana gave the girl a glare that made her look like the child's long dead mother returned from the grave to rebuke her. "We've already let you keep five and how many are left alive as of now?"
"Well," Mildreth admitted tilting her witch's hat, a conical item nearly half as tall as she was. "I need experimental subjects if I'm going to master the art of transmogrification... and.. its not like an error free art.. especially at the outset," she added in a whisper, more to herself than the others. None of her fellow sorceresses looked convinced by her excuse. Razilly repressed a giggle, then winked at the captive as if sharing a private joke. "How was I to know there was a cat in the building when I changed that gnome into a mouse?" She pointed to the berserker, "why, Shianta's allergic to cats. It shouldn't have even been in there, Velana told the innkeeper as much.."
"And what about that {i}innkeeper{/i}?" Nala spoke up, her goddess face frowning, "did he really deserve what you..."
"Enough," the necromancer's voice cut off the debate with more finality than Death's sickle. "There's magic and a reward waiting for us on the other side of those toadstools and I'm tired of waiting."
"I believe that's my line sister." All five women looked around at the unexpected masculine voice. They found facing them a line of ready crossbows, held by cunning thugs in dark leather. The one who spoke held a saber in one hand and a miniature crossbow in the other. "Thanks for leading us to fairy-land, girls, now I believe its time for us to collect the prize."
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Marlex, the bandit leader was used to watching women cower in terror. In fact, he specialized in robbing the carriages of noblewomen -- they held many more treasures than just jewels. These five might be sorceresses but under the point of a crossbow they were as weak and powerless as any other female. He was already envisioning them on their knees begging for their life, when cold laughter dispersed his sadistic thoughts. The pale one, obviously their leader, was just standing there mocking them by neither pleading nor cowering but by actually ridiculing them. Even the others seemed to be holding back smirks, all except the cleric, who was looking off into the forest as if averting her eyes from something best left unseen. 'How dare they! Laugh at us? the Venom-Point Gang? Terror of Groutwood!?' Now she even stepped forward toward them still chuckling in that disturbingly hollow voice.
"Put a bolt in her, Landon," he called to his mate beside him. "Lets see how funny she thinks that is." A twang announced the weapon's firing and true to the gang's reputation it hit with unerring accuracy. Velana stumbled back a step, a feathered shaft sticking out from her flat chest. "You like that, bitch," Marlex taunted, "we harvest the poison from a local tree-spider, but lucky for you you'll die before..." The woman looked up, grim smile slaying the leader's good humor. "...Um.. must of hit a rib bone, give her another boys." Two more bolts flew. This time she didn't budge despite the fact that one lodged in her skull. 'The poison should paralyze her at least...,' but she started forward again steps unfaltering. "Fire men, bring her down!" A flurry of bolts erupted as all fifteen bandits let fly their poison points.
With more a look of boredom than fear, the woman waved a pale ghost of an arm before her, "aleosinzri-krath." A dark fire shot from her spread fingers, urged by the spoken runes. It arched out, in fourteen separate lances striking each and every bolt and then leaping to the arrows' owners. All disappeared leaving naught but piles of dust upon the ground and faint clouds of ash upon the air. Marlex looked open mouthed at the remains of his gang, not even able to tell which pile came from which of his men -- not so much as a scrap of their clothing had survived. Behind him he heard the woman's cold voice say, "you can have the leader, Mildreth." Marlex didn't know who this Mildreth was but from the woman's tone he intuited that his fate with her would be worse than his disintegrated companions. He started running, his mind too locked in terror to note the speech of magic behind him or even the bright green flash. When he started hopping instead of sprinting, he didn't care either. All he wanted was to get away. A great leap carried him over many blades of grass (grass that looked strangely tall), but he never came down. A pair of hands, gigantic in size had him, fingers wrapped painfully tight around his squirming middle.
His new owner turned him about and Marlex looked up into her giant glasses. In their reflection he saw a frog, but he couldn't see himself. Realization came to him slowly; he was, like most men, unlearned in the ways of the arcane. When it hit him he tried to scream. All that came out was a frightened croak.
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Velana sighed at the child as she squeezed her new pet making it kick its long legs. "Alright already," she said pulling one of the crossbow bolts out of her bloodless body, "you'll have plenty of time to play with your new pet later. Now lets get across the barrier before the pixie realize we're coming, you know how annoying they can be when they have time to form armies."
Shianta shrugged, "I sort of like it when they form armies."