by Pirateaba
A leather harness for her skeleton, a sled for Erin and Lyonette—and they were speeding across the winter landscape with quite commendable speed. In truth, Toren could only pull the sledge about as fast as Erin could jog at the best of times, but it was a pleasant ride, and most importantly, Erin was riding and not fighting through the snow.
Erin flapped the reigns again and Toren endeavored to run faster. She looked over at Lyonette and saw the girl had the same expression on her face as the Frost Faeries overhead had. A sort of slack-jawed stare with glazed eyes for the full effect.
“Isn’t it great?”
Lyonette stared at Erin. Her eyes were fixed on Toren. The skeleton was fighting his way through another thick drift of snow, his jaw gnashing furiously as he pulled the sledge up a hill.
“Go for it, Toren!”
From her position at the head of her ride, Erin stared across the open landscape. This, now, this was what she’d been missing. This was fun. She felt a song coming on, and began to sing, her voice carrying for miles around.
“Dashing through the snow, on a one-skeleton open sleigh, over the hills we go, laughing all the way!”
Erin’s voice echoed across the snowy landscape as the wind rushed past her head. She pointed.
“There! Go that way, Toren!”
She was pointing towards a cave opening in the distance. Toren change directions, and Erin whooped as she felt the sledge shift smoothly on the snow.
“Let us ride! We demand to join in!”
Erin looked up and Lyonette screamed as Frost Faeries flew down from overhead, laughing and pointing at Toren. They settled on the side of the sledge and for once Erin didn’t begrudge their presence.
“What song is this? We must sing along!”
“Sing! Sing for us!”
“Okay! Everyone join in!”
The faeries cheered and Lyonette stared at one as it landed on Erin’s head. The young woman thought of the few Christmas songs she knew by heart, and began to sing.
“You’d better not shout, you’d better not cry; better not pout, I’m telling you why! Santa Claus is coming to town!”
“Ooh, threats! Good!”
“Who is Santa Claus? Does he eat children?”
“Run faster, dead thing!”
Toren staggered as a snowball bounced off the back of his head. Erin looked at the Frost Faeries in surprise.
“Haven’t you heard of Santa Claus? Lyonette?”
No one had. And it was a bit too windy to explain about Santa, so Erin found herself switching songs.
“Oh, the weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so delightful! And since we’ve no place to go; let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!”
This was a song the Frost Faeries could get behind. They cheered and laughed and started singing along with Erin.
“Let it snow!”
“More snow! Let’s bury yon mountains, sisters!”
“What? Wait! Don’t do that!”
Erin shouted at the faeries as more snowflakes, heavy thick ones, began falling from the sky. The faeries looked at her. So did Lyonette.
“Who are you talking to?”
Erin pointed at a Frost Fairy.
“Her!”
Lyonette stared at the Frost Faerie, and then at Erin with the look of someone who clearly feared she was staring a seat with someone who was insane. Erin remembered Lyonette couldn’t see the faeries.
“They’re faeries! You can’t see them but—they’re little blue people! They’ve got wings and they speak to me and Ryoka! They make it snow, but I’m telling them to stop!”
The other girl edged away from Erin. But the snow had begun to fall and it had also stopped as soon as Erin had complained. The rest of the sleigh ride was filled with more Christmas songs, most of which the faeries sang with Erin. The only one they hated was Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, because they thought he was a freak.
As they reached the cave, Erin leapt off the sledge, still arguing with the faeries.
“He was not a freak! He just had a red…shining nose, that’s all! It was probably magic!”
“Bah! He was an abomination! ‘Twas right of the other reindeer to shun him!”
“How bright was his nose? Bright enough to light up the sky?”
“Who is Santa Claus?”
“Oh hey, this is one of the caves where Toren found all those mushrooms, right Lyonette?”
The [Princess] stared at Erin.
“Um. Yes?”
“Good! Let’s go get some poisonous mushrooms!”
The faeries cheered and Erin walked into the cave. She ran out a few seconds later.
“Bear!”
It was a sleeping bear, but that was more than enough for Erin to retreat back to her sledge. She pointed at Toren. The skeleton had paused to squat in the snow, probably to take a break from the efforts of pulling the sled, and the jingling harness she had put on him.
“Toren, there’s a bear! You go in there!”
The skeleton brightened up considerably. He reached for his sword—Erin had made him leave his armor behind so he would move faster. She scowled at him.
“Don’t hurt the bear! Just get those mushrooms! And be quiet; don’t wake the bear up if you can help it!”
As she and Lyonette sat in the sledge, Erin listened to the faeries laughing overhead. Lyonette eyed the fuzzy blue shapes she identified as the dangerous and unpredictable Frost Sprites and ducked whenever any of them come close.
“Are we just gathering mushrooms?”
“Well, to begin with. We’ll visit all of those caves Toren found and see if we can’t find something cool, okay?”
Lyonette shrugged and sniffed. She wiped her nose, and eyed Toren as the skeleton skulked back out of the caves, holding two handfuls of discolored mushrooms.
“Are we going to take all of the mushrooms with us? How will we carry them?”
Erin snapped her fingers.
“You’re right!”
She waved at Toren and hissed at him.
“Toren! Get the rest of the mushrooms quick, will you? We’re going back to the inn! We need jars! Lots of jars! Ooh, and I can make us lunch!”
The skeleton twitched.
—-
“Are those…bees?”
The third cave Erin and Lyonette found after a hearty lunch harbored a strange sight. Erin cautiously peered into the depths of the large cavernous hole in the side of the mountain and stared at the shapes moving around in the darkness.
Lyonette hung back. Erin beckoned her closer, and the girl reluctantly approached. She was holding a ball of light—it turned out she knew the spell, even though she didn’t have the [Mage] class.
“I think those are bees. What do you think, Lyonette?”
The girl hesitated. She flinched as one of the shadows flew closer.
“They’re—they’re bugs! I didn’t think any were alive in the winter! Why do you even care? They’re horrible!”
“Yeah, but are they bees or wasps?”
Erin frowned at the bees. She thought they were bees. She could vaguely make out a certain fuzziness about them, and hornets looked different. More evil. So. Bees in the winter. It was certainly something she hadn’t expected to see, especially in a cave. But then, she supposed bees had to live somewhere. They didn’t migrate, after all. Or did they? Were these special winter bees?
The last three caves they’d visited had been uninhabited except for some plant life and mushrooms. Erin had made Toren scrape mold and fungi and pick mushrooms and put them into glass jars. She really doubted she’d do anything with the mold, but she was feeling scientific. And adventurous, which was why she hadn’t immediately run when she’d seen the flying insects in the darkness of the cave.
One of the faeries that had decided to make her own nest in Erin’s woolen hat hissed at the insects. It seemed to hear this and buzzed closer. As it’s features became clearer Erin and Lyonette backed up fast.
It was
a bee. A big bee. In fact, it was the biggest and most terrifyingly large bee that Erin had ever seen in her life. She’d heard of the Japanese Giant Hornet which could grow longer than a human finger, but these bees were in a different category altogether.
They were as big as her entire hand—no, bigger. The bee buzzed closer and Erin saw a huge stinger and long legs, and the familiar yellow fuzzy patch around the black carapace of the bug. She froze in place as it approached, seemingly staring at the Frost Faerie on Erin’s head.
And it wasn’t alone. As if they had sensed the intruders, suddenly a swarm of bees began flying over towards the invaders. They were coming out a huge nest that was actually blocking a good part of the cave. The massive hive was anchored to the stone walls and Erin could hear a thrumming from within.
The lead bee buzzed closer and Lyon and Erin froze in place as it approached. Toren stared at the bee curiously, but without a hint of fear. In a situation like this, Erin considered the best move to make was not to aggravate the insect. Any sudden moves could make it angry, but fortunately Toren didn’t seem inclined to attack and Lyonette was scared stiff. They could back away without triggering—
“Wretched insect! Know your place! Begone!”
The Frost Faerie on Erin’s head flew up and smacked the bee on the head. Frost spread from where she’d touched the insect and it recoiled. The bees suddenly became agitated, and the Frost Faerie flew at them, screaming insults.
Erin didn’t need to see any more than that. She turned.
“Run!”
Lyonette was already gone. Toren watched as Erin ran out of the cave screaming and the Frost Faerie retreated, shout insults at the bees as they swarmed after her. The skeleton leisurely walked out of the cave; the bees totally ignored him as they chased the two Humans and one immortal outside.
Erin flung herself into the snow and tried to bury herself deep. Lyonette was doing the same. Above her, she heard the rest of the faeries shouting in outrage and a horrible, terrifying buzzing overhead.
After what seemed like an eternity of tinny voices shouting and buzzing confusion, Erin dared emerge from her snowy cover. She found several dead bees littering the snow around her—all of them frozen, and triumphant faeries laughing and chasing the few remaining bees into the hive.
“Take that, ye craven fools!”
“Trouble not the fae!”
It seemed like there was some definite antagonism between the species. And even as Erin watched, the faerie began eating one of the bees. They tore it apart and—
It took Erin quite some time to pull Lyonette out of the snow. The other girl just screamed and tried to wriggle further into the snow bank when Erin touched her. When she finally came out she was red-faced with the cold.
“I am not going in there again! You can’t make me! I won’t!”
“Don’t worry Lyon, we’re not going in. I promise.”
Erin tried to soothe Lyon. At last, the other girl subsided, and Erin took a few deep breaths to steady herself.
“Well, yeah. Those are some scary bees. And even if the Frost Faeries can beat them—”
“Anytime!”
“We fear no stingers!”
“Bring out your Queen! We’ll duel her!”
“—I really don’t want to get stung. So. Toren!”
The skeleton looked up. He was gathering up dead bees and stuffing them into a glass jar, a measure Erin wasn’t sure if she approved of. Well, she probably would have told him to do it anyways, but the bees were even more horrific crammed into the jar.
Erin found a big jar and tossed it to Toren.
“Go into the nest and get me some honey! And honeycomb. Don’t do too much damage to the nest and don’t hurt the bees—if you can. Okay?”
Her skeleton stared at Erin with what almost looked like an aggrieved air before he nodded and walked back into the cave. Erin settled back into the sledge and looked at Lyonette.
“He’ll be fine. I think. I mean, he’s dead and a skeleton. They can’t really hurt him, right?”
Lyonette just stared at Erin. She wasn’t hurt, but she was still breathing heavily.
“You are insane! I thought you were just unnatural, but you are clearly—insane!”
“No I’m not.”
Erin was hurt by the accusation. Lyonette shook her head. Erin turned back to the cave and listened.
“Wow. You can even hear them buzzing from here.”
The buzzing from the cave was indeed an audible thrum that could be felt even from here, like a bass beat coming out of a speaker. Erin and Lyonette waited for another minute, and then heard the buzzing change in quality. Suddenly, it grew much, much louder and there was an audible note of menace to the sound.
“Uh oh. Looks like Toren’s at the hive.”
“S-should we hide?”
“Why? He’s the one getting the honey.”
Erin felt rather smug. Even Pooh Bear couldn’t do as well as she could with a skeleton helper. Lyon shook her head.
“But even if he’s unharmed, what happens when they follow him out and find us here?”
Erin stared at Lyonette. The girl stared back.
“Run for it!”
In the sledge, the Frost Faeries laughed as the two girls jumped into the snow and began trying to cover themselves again.
“Hah! Foolish mortals! Let the buzzing things come!”
“Yes, we’ll freeze their wings. We won’t run from any overgrown flies!”
They laughed as the buzzing sound turned into a roar, and then the faeries paused as the bees emerged from the cave. Not just one or two or even a hundred; thousands of bees poured out of the entrance, engulfing something in the center which waved and struggled wildly.
The faeries stared at the thousands of bees congregating around Toren—a swarm so huge that they began to blot out the sun overhead. They exchanged a glance and then dove into the snow with Erin and Lyonette.
Erin peeked up as the bees swarmed angrily. She couldn’t see Toren among all the bees. Where was he, trying to get back to the sledge? But then her eyes widened as she saw him.
Her skeleton was in the center of the swarm of bees. And he wasn’t on the ground—he was in the air! They were lifting him up! The angry bees lifted the struggling Toren off the ground, ignoring his flailing, until he was a speck in the sky. Then they dropped him.
Erin and Lyonette and the faeries saw Toren falling to earth. They felt the thump he made as he smashed into the ground, the snow doing nothing at all to cushion his fall. They saw his bones scatter into the air, and all ducked as the bees flew back into their hive.
It was a long time before anyone dared to move. Then, Erin got up and stared at Toren, or rather, the scattered bones that were Toren. They were wriggling towards each other, over, say, a radius of about fifty feet.
She cleared her throat several times, and looked at Lyonette. The girl had found the jar of Toren had extracted, safe where he had dropped it in the snow. A massive chunk of honeycomb floating in a huge pool of honey. A maggot—or rather, a baby bee was wriggling inside the sticky liquid.
Erin stared at the maggot. She looked around, and found Toren’s head in the snow. The skeleton stared at her reproachfully. The faeries stared at the bee larvae and licked their lips. Lyonette threw up.
“Um. Well, good work everyone. Let’s take a five minute break, okay? And can you look around for Toren’s bits? I think that’s his hand over there.”
—-
Aside from the bees, though, it was really a pleasant ride through the snowy plains around Liscor. Once Toren was reassembled and the faeries had…eaten…the bee larvae, he pulled them onwards and Erin and Lyonette could relax and try to warm up. The honey was delicious, and all things considered, they felt good. Even the Snow Golem attack didn’t bother them much.
“Aaah! Help!”
Lyonette screamed as Erin found herself pulled off the sledge by a snowman twice her height. Erin hit it with her frying pan repea
tedly, but the packed snow resisted her blow. The Snow Golem opened its maw—sticks for teeth snapping at Erin as she struggled—and then bit down on her midsection.
“Ow!”
Erin screamed in pain and punched the Golem in the head. His bite didn’t hurt—well, it didn’t hurt half as bad as it should have. His ‘teeth’ were just fallen branches and sticks after all, so while they drew blood as they pierced Erin’s winter clothing, they didn’t do much more damage.
“You jerk! Toren, help!”
The skeleton attempted to rush to Erin’s aid, but two more Snow Golems were blocking his way. They smacked at him with blobby hands made of snow, and tried to bury him with their bodies. And that was it. That was all they could do, really.
Erin raised her fist and punched the Golem in the face. Her [Minotaur Punch] reshaped the Golem’s face a bit, but again, her hand wasn’t exactly the best weapon to use against a creature made entirely of snow.
What she really needed was a shovel. And once Erin realized that, she just dug herself out of the Golem’s grip. Toren was busy slicing the other two Snow Golems apart with his sword, but Erin had little trouble disassembling her own Golem. The only dangerous moment came when he tried to smother her with his body, but by that time she’d realized he had a brain—a core of beautifully white—and cold—snow. She punched that and made the Golem’s head explode into powder and the Golem collapsed.
Panting, Erin got back in the sledge as Toren put his foot through one of the Snow Golem’s heads and tried to get it loose while the other one bashed him repeatedly with a rock. Lyonette offered Erin a towel.
“Thanks.”
Erin stared at the Frost Faeries reproachfully. They were laughing and placing bets on whether Toren would kill the Snow Golem now or after it had knocked his head off.