by Pirateaba
Anything else? Erin set up another table with the alcohol she’d bought. Almost all of the profits of the concert had gone into this. A keg of rum, and another of mead; by now, Erin’s arms were tired. But she had one last thing to do.
The shield spider’s venom was still in the little bottle. Erin stared at the clear liquid, and then placed it next to the toadstools and mushrooms.
There. It was done. Erin blinked, and woke from her trance of labor. She was in pain. Her arms were screaming; her back really hurt. But it was done.
Ceria looked around the room. A bright fire burned in the fireplace, and candles had been lit at each table, giving the atmosphere of the room a dim, intimate setting. Tables had been set up with different themes as Erin’s imagination had dictated.
A table of mushrooms and spider venom; a table of death. It sat on the opposite side of the central table with baked bread and fruit and sugary milk and whipped cream and everything Erin could make that was sweet and savory.
On the other side, she’d placed the special concoction. The cow’s first milk, mixed with the moonlight sugar water filled several huge bowls, and Erin had also added the special butter she’d churned and buttermilk as well.
Mead and drinks on another table—Erin had melted freshly fallen snow as well. It felt like a bit of magic; an innkeeper’s magic ritual to her. She stared around, and felt just a hint, just a glimpse—
Was this magic? Or just her imagination?
“Looks like all we need are the guests.”
Ceria stood to one side of the room, looking around as Toren entered, dragging in one last basket of bedraggled mushrooms. He hadn’t been allowed to touch most of the things in the room; only Ceria and Erin had done the arranging.
Half-Elf for purity, virgin for double-purity. It made sense in that old-fashioned sort of way. Faeries weren’t unicorns, but wasn’t there something to that story?
Erin didn’t know. But she knew it was time. Any longer, and she’d lose her nerve. She’d avoided thinking of the consequences of this all day. It had to work. It would work.
Believe. That was part of magic.
“How will you call them? I haven’t seen a single Frost Faerie all day.”
Ceria looked worried, but Erin wasn’t. It was the last part of the child’s story, the old fable.
Slowly, Erin walked over to the door. Now, how would it go? Oh, yes. The fair folk were special. They knew when things happened, didn’t they? So they would already know, at least in a story.
But they had to be invited. Erin had put all of the iron in cupboards, deep in the kitchen. She opened the door, and stared out into the night sky. Nothing moved in the snowy landscape. Her breath misted in the cold air as the warmth rushed outside.
The words. Erin raised her voice, only slightly, and spoke.
“Frost Faeries. Bringers of Winter. I invite you in. I open my doors to the Fey, and offer you this simple banquet.”
Her voice was lost in the darkness. Erin stared out, heart pounding. For a minute, she waited. Then two minutes.
Wait for it. It was how stories worked. It would work. It had to work. It—
Five minutes. Ten. The room grew colder.
“Erin.”
Ceria was at her shoulder. Erin sagged against the door. No. But that was how it worked, wasn’t it? She remembered making tea parties for faeries as a kid. They’d never showed up. Even when she’d turned her back, the little acorns had stayed in one place. The faeries weren’t coming.
Twenty minutes. In despair, Erin let Ceria pull her inside. She and the half-Elf turned—
And saw the faeries.
They hovered in the air, a shroud of them. A swarm—a herd. That was what a group of faeries were called. A hundred bright, glowing bodies. A hundred silent eyes and still faces.
Ceria went very still. Toren was standing, uncertain, staring up at the faeries. They were so silent. But then one flitted down in front of Erin. The girl recognized her from this morning.
“Human. Mortal. Ye have called us, and so we have come. For what reason do you summon the fey?”
Erin’s mouth was dry. She swallowed, and spoke.
“As guests. I offer you my hospitality. And I have made food which I hope will suit you.”
The faeries looked around. Some moved, swooping over the food and talking to each other. Yes—some were more excitable than others, and for some reason Erin thought of those faeries as younger.
“See what the mortal has made! Oh, see, see!”
“A first milking! And sugar mixed with snow in the moon. How strange, how odd!”
“Look! Poison she give us! A spider’s bite made drink, and mushrooms of every kind.”
“Death and life! Bread to eat and sweet creams and sugary treats!”
The first faerie raised her hand, and the others quieted and stopped in place. She stared down at Erin, and for a second, Erin thought she saw a smile.
“Strange. ‘Tis an odd banquet, but you have brought mead and made food. It has been thousands of years since we were treated to thus; and this place was built without iron. We shall accept.”
Ceria was wide-eyed. She stared at the faeries as they slowly descended to the tables. Erin paused. There was one last thing, and the faerie in charge seemed to know it as well. She flew over to an empty table.
“You offer us food, and we as guests must offer you a fair price. So do I give you the treasure of our kind.”
She flew around the table, once, twice. The third time, the air—Erin blinked. Something had happened. Where the table had been bare and empty, suddenly there was gold.
Gold.
A pile of gold coins filled the groaning table, stacked haphazardly but filling every inch. It seemed as though with each moment the pile of gold would shift and spill onto the floor, so full was it.
Erin gaped. The light of the candles shone off the gold, and illuminated the room. She couldn’t take her eyes away from the sight. Each coin seemed to have its own luminescence, and the sight was so beautiful—
The faerie hovered above the table, grinning broadly at the mortals’ stupefaction.
“Will ye accept this as just payment?”
Erin almost instantly said yes, but part of her had to go over and touch it, make sure it was real. She walked over to the table, feeling that each step was a dream. Carefully, Erin picked up one coin.
“Gold?”
It was gold. As Ceria picked up a piece, she stared at the coin. Erin knew it was gold too, but there was something different about these gold pieces, compared to the ones she used.
“It’s…pure gold. Pure.”
Ceria breathed the words as she held the coin up to the light. Her face was full of wonder. Toren glanced at the pile of gold, and to Erin and tilted his head. She didn’t pay attention; she was too busy staring.
“Well? Never let it be said the fey folk are not generous!”
The faerie laughed and swooped around Erin.
“Do you call it a fair trade, human?”
Toren clattered his jaw, and several faeries shot him dark looks. Erin quickly shushed him and nodded vigorously.
“Um, yes. Of course! Thank you!”
The faerie grinned. She raised her hand towards the ceiling, and suddenly the room was full of tiny cheers.
“You hear it, sisters? The bargain is struck! Fair payment, for a meal! Now, let us feast!”
It was as if she’d unfrozen time. The faeries immediately burst into movement. They descended on the food Erin had put out, chattering, laughing, so full of joy and lust for life that even Ceria and Erin were caught up in the sudden outburst of celebration.
Only one person in the room wasn’t happy. Toren. He clattered his jaw and jumped up and down on the ground, pointing to the gold coins. He swept some off the table, holding them up in front of Erin.
“What’s gotten into you? Stop it!”
She scowled at him. Toren dropped the coins and they clattered to the ground.
He looked around, seemingly frustrated, and then ran at the faeries, waving his arms. Was he having some kind of fit? A malfunction? Erin pushed him away as the skeleton ran at the faeries, and grabbed Ceria.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with him. Can you…?”
“Got it.”
Ceria nodded and Erin pointed towards the half-Elf.
“Go with her, Toren. That’s an order.”
The skeleton froze in place. Then, very slowly and obviously reluctantly, he nodded, and turned towards the door. The faeries laughed as he went.
Erin was relieved; she would have hated to ruin their mood. As Ceria left, Erin seized the small bottle of venom and began pouring it into small flower cups as faeries floated towards her. She felt like an awkward maitre’d, but she was determined to give the faeries the service they deserved.
She swept into the mood of the party in an instant, filling drinks, laughing, listening to the faeries chatter. Unlike when they spoke to her, Erin couldn’t make out a single word these faeries spoke. Their voices were totally incomprehensible to her—not in the way another language was. Erin had heard Spanish or French and could even guess some words because they shared the same ancestry as English. But even Mandarin or Arabic was more comprehensible than this. They were still human languages, but the faeries—
They spoke words Erin’s brain couldn’t even begin to process. But it didn’t matter. They laughed with her, and whirled in the air, drinking her sweet milk, quaffing alcohol out of the tiny flowers Ceria had brought, tearing hunks of bread out and eating them, despite the fact that it shouldn’t have fit int their stomachs.
And there was magic in the room. At some point, Erin’s bottle of spider venom ran out. She hadn’t even questioned how the faeries drank the deadly liquid like water, or how they were still flying even though some of them were clearly drunk. They were enjoying themselves, and so was she.
In a different way than the concert. That had been all noise and ceaseless energy, but this was different. Yes, the faeries could be raucous, but there was something else in the air that captured the feel of the room.
Magic.
Erin felt it in every wing beat, in the strange way the fire kept going without any fuel. She felt it was the faeries danced, creating wondrous patterns in the air that glowed as each candle slowly went out. And she felt it in her, as well. She had made this.
She had done it. Magic.
Look, she wanted to say. She wanted to run out and shout it to Pisces and Ceria and Ryoka and the world. Look, look! I can do it too.
And as the faeries danced through the air, Erin smiled and cried a bit. Out of happiness, out of relief. Out of joy and the wonder of it. And in her heart, she hoped these moments would last forever.
But all too soon her inn was deserted, and Erin stood among empty plates and discarded flowers. She stared around the inn, and felt in every bit of it how lonely it was. And she vowed it would not be this way ever again.
As Erin sat down slowly in a chair, every muscle aching, every bone weary, she looked at the table heaped with gold. And she smiled. It wasn’t all that was important.
But it did help.
Then her eyes closed, and the voice spoke in her ear as she slept.
[Innkeeper Level 25!]
[Skill – Inn’s Aura Obtained!]
[Skill – Magical Cooking Learned.]
—-
When Erin woke up, the magic was still in her. It lifted her out of a dreamless sleep, and back into the real world. She could be excitable and full of boundless energy later; but right now she still wanted to linger in this feeling of tranquility.
Erin breathed in the smell of the morning, and thought about last night. She’d leveled up four times, and gained two skills. Two…important skills. One was very important, she felt. She had no idea what it meant, but the word made her smile.
Magic. She had it. She had magic, and the favor of faeries. What more could she ask for?
And the gold—
The gold. Erin looked over, but instead of the shining pile of pure gold coins, she saw…flowers.
Flowers? No. Erin’s heart stopped. But yes, that was what sat on the table. Not a heaping pile of gold worth a king’s fortune, but a mountain of bright flowers, bright and cheerful in the sun.
Yellow flowers. Golden, really, but flowers nonetheless. They were small, and piled together nearly on the table. They were quite pretty, really.
But they were flowers.
Erin’s brain came to a complete standstill. She staggered out of her chair, and stared around the empty room, looking at all the expensive, hard-to-gather things she’d made. The empty bowl of cow’s milk, the crumbs left over from the bread she’d made, the butter, the empty bowls that had held mushrooms, spider’s venom, sugar…
She noted the complete absence of any faeries, and then stared at the table where her gold was supposed to be.
The magic ended. Erin stared at the wilting golden flowers. Her left eye twitched. She took a deep breath.
“What the fu—”
2.00 K
When Gazi saw the castle’s spires in the distance, she knew she was close to her destination. She had travelled long and far across these arid lands, alone, tired, wounded and hungry. But she had never slowed her pace, barely paused to rest.
She was nearly home.
The city was much as Gazi had remembered it, but it was a mix of two memories. She remembered once, when she had returned in confusion and defeat to her liege, to beg him to reconsider. The city had been deathly quiet then; full of scared people listening to the sound of an empire’s collapse.
But the streets had been smooth, the buildings soaring high and each stall in each shop stocked with exotic goods from around the world. The citizens had been hearty and hale—some trending towards fat even—and surely no other city in the world had been greater.
Then. But Gazi also remembered when she’d left. She had ridden out, out through a broken place filled with empty-eyed people whose gaunt, vacant expressions bore no hope for tomorrow, let alone the future. The pavement had been cracked, and the first signs of decay had begun to touch even the magnificent structures Drevish had built.
Then, and then. But now was different.
As Gazi moved through the gates she heard a call from the battlements. She looked up with her four good eyes and grinned.
In truth, the walls had crumbled so much that there was little point to manning them. But someone did stand on the walls! Young boys and old retired veterans; hardly the ideal soldiers, but they stood anyways, wearing salvaged armor corroded by rust, or exquisitely maintained heirlooms.
They shouted down to Gazi, a person they recognized. She waved at them, but her feet did not stop moving. She sped through the city, and saw the faces of the people.
Theirs were gaunt, yes, and they were even thinner than when Gazi had left. But their eyes were different. They held what had been missing. Fire. Hope. That spark of life that could never be extinguished. It was that, more than anything that hastened Gazi’s steps even more, and told her the time had come at last.
Her King had returned.
Gazi looked with each of her four eyes, one watching the road while the other three looked in every direction, trying to assess the city, the bustling people. Everyone was moving with purpose, which told her that much work was going on. And more work would need to be done, if the ruined buildings she saw were any indication of the state of the city.
It was such a shame she couldn’t look further than the street she was on, though. If she could she would be able to look into the palace ahead of her, and see—
Well, perhaps her blindness was good for one thing. Gazi was conscious of her closed eye as she made her way down the street. It was attracting as much attention as her presence itself was. It made people hesitate.
For why would Gazi the Omniscient close her eye? It was her greatest weapon and defense; the gift of Gazers which Gazi had in turn honed and made ev
en stronger than normal. While her four peripheral eyes could still see at great distance and even through objects at close range, they were nothing compared to her main eye.
But it was still damaged, still blind. Gazi still remembered the girl, standing in front of her, and her teeth ground together in fury, and her hand reached towards the sword on her back unconsciously.
But only for a moment. And even the pain and shame of defeat couldn’t take away the feeling in Gazi’s chest. She was at the massive gates of the palace. They stood open, and the guards there did not dare block her way. She was close.
“Gazi!”
A crowd of people stood at the entrance, waiting no doubt for a sign of her lord. But they cheered her loudly, as well they might. She was one of the Seven; her return was a herald of the times.
Gazi waved once, and then her armored feet were crossing marble, rather than dusty brick. She walked through a palace just as worn down as the rest of the city. True, this place had been better maintained than the rest of the city, no doubt thanks to Orthenon and those who had stayed. But even this place was in need of repairs.
And they were underway. Gazi walked through rooms bustling with people cleaning, rushing about with supplies, arms, parchment—it was a sight that moved her heart. This is what she had longed to see all these long years! But even so, she couldn’t stop. She had to see for herself, with her own eyes.
“Lady Gazi!”
“The Omniscient has returned! Tell the Steward! Bring word to the King!”
“Lady Gazer, do you need a drink? Food?”
Gazi waved or nodded at them all, not slowing, not stopping. No one stopped her either, and many wisely got out of the way since Gazi was moving at a speed few creatures—humans, Gazers, or otherwise—could hope to match. They knew that she had returned, and they knew where she was going. Where she had to go.