Fairy War

Chapter 2

"You shouldn't have brought him here. How do you know you weren't followed?"

"What choice did I have? If I hadn't brought him here they would have got him. This is the only safe place for them now."

My head was swimming as I tried to make sense of the conversation I could just about hear through my drowsiness. The second voice was unmistakably Prince Naarin's, of that I was certain, and while the other voice was female, it was far too high-pitched to be Crystal's.

Suddenly I felt a weight on my stomach, as though a pair of hands were running across my skin, and a very small pair of hands at that. I was just beginning to wonder if I was having some bizarre dream when the voices continued.

"He's lucky you did bring him here; Nightstalker poison is deadly to humans..."

I stiffened upon hearing those words; at least, I would have if I could move. I was still too scared to do anything.

"I hunt creatures like this for a living," Naarin said, a note of frustration in his voice. "You aren't telling me anything I don't know already. Can you save him or not?"

"You really need to ask me that?" the female voice laughed. "I could heal him with my eyes closed."

Suddenly I felt as if water was being flushed through my entire body, cleaning out any nasty substances that might have been lurking within, and thinking I could no longer ignore what was happening around me I opened my eyes for the first time since the attack.

I immediately found myself looking into the face of a red-headed girl, whose ice-blue eyes shone in the sunlight filtering through the trees around us, a faint smile crossing her face as she noticed I was watching her.

"Crystal..." I said, confused at the presence of this strange figure.

"Here I am," she said, appearing to my right, a look of relief spreading across her face. "I was... we were worried you wouldn't make it."

"What happened?" I asked, trying to think back. "I only have a vague memory of the attack."

"What happened is your friends and that fool of a Prince may have just saved your life. You should at least thank them for it," the red-headed girl said sternly.

"Wait...who are you?" I asked, now feeling a lot less drowsy.

As my eyes adjusted to the light I realised that what I'd assumed to be a human girl was in fact a fairy, dressed in long red robes that stretched far enough down to hide her feet. The surface of her wings seemed to glitter with diamonds, shining even brighter because of the amount of sunlight in the clearing. She had a little pouch slung over one shoulder, with some kind of plant poking out of the top, and over her other shoulder there rested a small bow. She was standing on my chest and peering at me intently.

"This is Nikkela, one of my kind's best healers," Naarin said, out of my eyesight but still easily audible. "By luck she was out foraging when we brought you here."

Nikkela rolled her eyes. "What Naarin forgets to tell you is that I'm one of the few remaining healers we have left," she uttered. "Most of the others are apprentices, trying to learn from me. If I die before they're ready then our kind is doomed."

As Naarin's light form landed on my chest next to Nikkela, he visibly winced at the last statement, causing Nikkela's smile to widen at his obvious discomfort. As his wings twitched slightly, I could just about make out a tear on the very tip of one wing. A war wound from earlier.

"Anyone want to fill me in as to where we are?" I asked, looking around me. "I mean, this doesn't look like my back garden anymore... unless someone's planted a load of trees while I was asleep."