Fairy War

Chapter 10

When we teleported to where the army was gathering we saw Neszra already waiting for us, Finarae having gone ahead to warn her we were coming. We met on a small mound that looked down over the camp full of Pixies, Sidhe, and other fairies we'd never seen before, all of them milling around a series of small fires.

"You'd better be sure about this," Neszra said forcefully. "If this is wrong, the Sidhe may choose to desert rather than help anyone they feel disrespected by. You sure you can prove this?"

"I'm pretty certain I can," Nara replied. "I think my mother had met creatures like him before – she gave me an amulet that counteracts their morphing magic and forces them back to their true form. I tried asking her where she got it from but she wouldn't go into any details."

"Fine," Neszra said, "but if it turns out you're right you leave the interrogation to me; my kind have special... talents... for getting prisoners to tell us what we want to know."

We made it into the camp, Finarae stopping to talk to some of the Pixies as the rest of us spread out. Me and Niana ended up with Nara, who apparently felt more confident having us two with her since she still hadn't entirely recovered from her previous ordeal. We kept an eye on our surroundings, but struggled to see anyone acting at all suspiciously among the horde of fairy soldiers.

"Can't the amulet help us find him?" Niana asked, one of her hands resting close to her sword. "There are hundreds of fairies here, and even if there weren't, he can change his appearance – he could walk past us undetected multiple times."

"It doesn't work like that," Nara replied, shaking her head. "Believe me, I wish it did. On the plus side, I'm assuming he thinks I'm still incapacitated, at the very least. He's not going..." She stopped suddenly, looking over to her left where a group of young fairies were playing a game of cards. One of them was looking noticeably uncomfortable, and when Nara caught sight of the unusual tattoo on his arm she whispered, "We were looking in the wrong place," as she pointed at the tall, lanky fairy. "That's him – someone stop him!"

A stone thrown in the fairy's direction missed him as he ducked deftly underneath it before sprinting for where his dragonfly was positioned at the edge of camp. His desperation to keep an eye on those pursuing him from behind, however, meant that he missed Neszra stepping into his path, who then flattened him with a punch to the chin.

"We'd better take him somewhere a little more secluded," Nara said. "We don't want him being able to slip through the crowd unseen."

"So that's what he really looks like," Neszra said as she stared down at the prone fairy; we'd moved the captive to a small clearing in a nearby forest that was just out of view of the camp, and he'd now been revealed as an incredibly thin, ragged-looking fairy with unkempt blue hair barely stretching below his forehead, his thin frame covered by bits of torn fabric. The only sign of the Sidhe disguise he'd taken before was the pair of thick leather boots on his feet. "Are you sure that will work?" she asked, pointing to the charm that had been placed around his neck, which was currently glowing with an eerie white light.

"Like I said, my mother faced his kind before," Nara explained. "They call themselves Fae'lin. She said one of their own created this charm many centuries ago to stop the Pixies from being attacked by one of their armies without warning. I don't know how the magic works, but the last time I saw her she said it would work whenever I needed it to."

"Wh... what happened?" the fairy asked as he woke up, looking down at his body. Evidently he was trying to change, but the only thing happening was the faint glow appearing around his body for a moment before vanishing. "What have you done to me, Sidhe?"