by Max Jager
"Thank you." Estellese replied.
"Hey, it is the least we can do. You humans did a number on the rift from what I hear, and we are hoping you will join our soldiers in their second attack to finish it off." Rose said.
"Of course we will." Estellese smiled, "When will the elven healer be here?"
"Now." A familiar voice answered, right before Cora walked into the room. She gave Estellese a brief hug. Once she let go she stepped back "I am glad to see that you all are alright."
"Me too. How is everyone in the elven village?" Estellese asked.
"We lost a lot of good people, but I do not believe we lost anybody you know. Alicia, Adamus, and your leader are attending a meeting with the remaining fairy military leaders, Lillith went to help your scientist friend build another machine. And Emmei is probably taking a nap somewhere in the city." Cora answered.
"I do not know Emmei. But I am glad to hear that everyone else is okay, I am sorry about the people you guys lost." Estellese answered.
"Don't be sorry hon, that's life. It hurts to lose loved ones, but there is no avoiding it, they will someday die no matter what. We just need to enjoy our time with our loved ones while we have it, and keep those happy memories in our hearts when we no longer have any time left with them. Anyways, shall we get to work on fixing your arm? I will need to take some time to study your good arm, I don't know how the human body is built so if I just regrew one right now I'd end off giving you an elven arm. Which should work like any normal arm once your body accepts it, so if we can't figure it out we can just give you that, but I've never done cross species repairs like that so I do not know if there will be any side effects."
Estellese looked thoughtful. "You said before, that your mastery of nature magic could alter our bodies in any way? Right? And now you mention it even being able to do cross species changes." She asked, thinking back to her first encounter with the demons.
"Yes." Cora replied. "Did you… Want an elven arm? I believe our bodies age differently, so I would assume your arm would age out of sync with the rest of your body if it was an elven one."
"Well, no, I'd rather have my own arm if possible." Estellese replied. "But when we fought the demons together, you used that spell on me and it gave me wings. Along with other things."
Cora nodded "That is my signet, it does that to everyone I use it on." She replied, but then realized what was being asked. "You want me to give you wings?"
Estellese nodded. "I understand that we don't know the side effects, if any, and I know that is a risk. But I would like to try, and since I'm asking you to do an extra service I'm willing to pay for them. Even if it doesn't work out. But I'd like fairy wings, ones that can collapse or fold up in some way so that when I'm on foot they don't make me a bigger target, but can still let me fly at least a little."
Cora shook her head. "You have helped the elves a lot, and you are also helping our allies a lot. The wings are free, and I will do my best to make them work. Just understand, they probably won't work on the first try. I've never done anything like this, so it will be trial and error."
"We have two weeks, right?" Estellese asked. "I'm up for trying." She replied. She waved her hand palm-down in front of herself and opened her virtual keyboard. Pressing a couple buttons she opened the portal to her personal stash in the room's door. "Let me get my book, so I can study while you two do your thing." She said as she walked through the portal and disappeared.
The fairies and Cora watched with a bewildered expression. Rose attempted to fly through the portal, but the portal didn't take her anywhere. She just passed through it and ended up in the hallway on the other side of the door. Rose came back into the room.
Estellese stepped out of her stash with her fire element book. But as she walked out Rose spoke up "Um, using nature magic to grow limbs like this tends to be very painful. We usually put people to sleep for the duration."
Estellese smiled and shook her head. "That is alright, I don't need to be put to sleep I will be fine. I need to study this and can't waste a single second." She said.
"You don't understand." Rose started. "It is incredibly painful, you won't be able to handle it."
"Rose, hon." Cora started. "I've seen this girl get her entire body severely burnt and get impaled by an ice spike, and she still kept fighting. Plus she's lying here with a missing arm and by the looks of it she was still fighting after losing it. I've never seen anyone with pain tolerance like her. If she says she can handle the pain, she can handle the pain."
"If you say so." Rose replied. "Let's get started then?"
"Hey, guys." Kaden spoke up. "I'm feeling a bit unneeded, so I'm going to slip out and get some of my own training done. Good luck Estell."
"Thank you. Tell the others I am awake and okay." Estellese replied.
"No problem, I'll send them the message on my way out. See you later." Kaden said as he left the room. As he walked out of the building he opened his virtual keyboard and sent Mendelen and Zanath a message simply saying that Estellese was awake and okay. Once he left the building he climbed down the rope to get back to the ground. The city was beautiful with all the gemstones, colors, and the floating buildings but the simple fact that it was made for people who could fly made it quite difficult to get around.
He had to figure out how he was going to train and prepare over the next two weeks using the fewest number of stops by different buildings as he could to maximize the time he had to train. And he remembered that for some reason, their bodies were adapting and growing much faster in this world then in the real world. He planned on going to the library in hopes of getting some free spellbooks, then he planned to find something to use as weights in a shop, then finding a big empty building or area to train in. He knew he didn't need to fight monsters to get stronger, he needed to lift weights and run laps, with his body growing at this abnormally fast rate he knew this would increase his strength and speed a lot over two weeks of tireless training. That was one thing he knew he excelled in, he had the patience to just sit down and practice one thing for days on end. He looked around at the floating buildings and spotted what looked like a grocery store, or at least something similar to that, it had a big picture of what looked like milk in a window. He still had some canned food in his bag, so he needed to focus on getting some drinks, but he also knew he only had a hundred credits left.
He climbed up to the store and walked in. The store, surprisingly, strongly resembled a human grocery store with the way there was shelves of food lined up and sorted by type. But then again, as he thought about it it wasn't too surprising, it was probably one of the most effective ways to sell a variety of food so of course another intelligent race would figure it out. He did face one problem though, the signs clearly were not originally written in English. While he saw English words when he looked at the signs, it was a noticeable that they were translated from another language because the grammar was wrong in several places. Noticeably, where the sign for the "Produce" aisle read "Production" which was probably a result of the translator magic getting the wrong definition of "Produce." Kaden chuckled and headed to the drinks aisle. He didn't recognize any of the drinks or brands there, a lot of them were named after flowers or sweet things, but eventually he found what he was looking for. He spotted something that was labeled "Milk" and it looked like it was about a gallon, maybe more he wasn't really sure and he did not understand their measurement system. The color of the milk was a little off though, it looked more tan than white. He also spotted what looked like a cup with a cap on it, the description on it said it was four somethings of water but it was just a normal-sized cup. He assumed it was saying that the cup held more water than it appeared to. He picked up two of the cups, and three of the jug-ish things of what looked like milk and headed towards the counter.
The counter was just a plain wooden counter, the fairy behind it was a young man with bright orange hair and eyes, and his wings were mostly see-through. He was muscular, which stood out be
cause he wasn't wearing a shirt. He only wore what appeared to be a skirt with the store's name on it. The clash of cultures was a little weird for Kaden, this seemed to be the norm since all the other fairies in the story also had similar attire, and it was apparently obvious that he was confused when the fairy commented on his perplexed expression.
"Everything alright sir?" He asked.
Kaden placed his things on the counter "Yeah, I'm just not from around here. This place is very different from my home." He answered. "I wanted to ask, these cups say they hold four cilys, I do not know what that means."
"Oh no problem" The fairy laughed. "It is enchanted, it will summon more water inside itself until the enchantments run out, which will be after summoning four cilys worth of water. I can scan the items and make sure the enchantments are working if you want. It will be thirty crystals with the cups, ten without."
"What is a cily?" Kaden asked
"One cily is thirty cilies worth of liquid." The fairy answered.
That didn't help at all, Kaden knew he would get nowhere asking. "I'll take it all, thank you." Kaden took out his crystal currency and split it into two, one containing thirty smaller crystals and one containing seventy. He then paid for the items and put the rest of his money back in his pocket. The fairy then put everything in a bag and Kaden started to walk away, but then he stopped. "Hey, you can check the enchantments on things?"
"Yes, why?" The fairy replied.
"What is this?" Kaden asked as he pulled the chalice they had found back in the dungeon out of his bag.
The fairy took the chalice and brushed his hand over it, as he touched it his eyes lit up for a moment. "It is enchanted to summon drinks, like the cups you got. It will summon water, but has an added bonus of changing the taste of the water to the taste of a chosen drink from your memory. It will run out in twenty cilys." He then hesitated a moment. "You… Want to return the things you bought?" He asked unsurely before handing back the chalice. "You don't really need them if you have this."
Kaden thought about it for a moment, then shook his head. "No, I appreciate the help so I won't do that.
"Phew, good. I'm not supposed to examine items from outside the store like that while I'm working, I woulda gotten in serious trouble if my actions made you return the stuff. But I noticed you were one of the humans helping us with the demons. Rumors spread fast, you humans are probably much weaker than even civilians like me and yet you're on the front lines trying to save us from demons that aren't even your problem. That's really honorable, and I wanted to do my part to help, but I'm not brave enough to go fight. I'll probably get scolded for it, and for talking instead of working, but I just wanted to say that what you humans, and the soldiers, are doing is really appreciated by a lot of us. And I wanted to help a little." He rambled, stumbling over his words a little as he rushed to try and explain himself before his boss noticed he wasn't working. "Uh, to the point, thank you and be safe. Send my thanks along to the other humans and soldiers please, if you have time."
Kaden wasn't really sure how to respond. So he smiled back and said "Um, thank you. It is nice to hear and I will pass the message on to everyone else. The help is appreciated too, good luck." He said, a little awkwardly, as he turned and left. He looked a bit strange, with his bag of canned food over his shoulder, two swords in sheaths on his hip, and another bag with the milk jugs and water that he was struggling to carry in his arms. He hadn't quite thought of how he was going to get down from the floating store and back onto the ground but eventually he figured out a way to balance all the bags and equipment while he slid down the rope. Once there he spotted Mendelen and Zanath talking in the distance and headed over to them.
Mendelen turned to Kaden as he approached "Oh good you got my message, I was concerned you didn't get it when you didn't respond." He said.
"Your message?" Kaden asked, then he opened his virtual keyboard to see that he had a message from Mendelen asking him to meet everyone on the ground near the center of town. He figured he must have missed it while talking to the fairy or climbing down. "I guess I did" he murmured.
"It would seem Estellese isn't out of the hospital, or wherever they took her." Mendelen started "But we can have this discussion with just us, I'll fill her in on the rest later. We have two weeks, have we started to think about what we will be doing to prepare?"
Kaden held up the bag he was carrying "yep" he replied.
"Grocery shopping?" Mendelen tilted his head and raised an eyebrow in confusion.
"I don't know if the fairies have a gym or anything of the sort, so I just bought these. Two of the milk jugs can work as weights, and the rest is for drinking throughout the weeks. I'm ready to just nose to the grindstone exercise until the fight" Kaden replied.
"That will actually do more harm than good" Zanath interjected. "You'll damage and tear up your muscles if you don't take regular breaks and if you work yourself too hard or every day."
Kaden thought about it for a moment, "You seem to know a lot about this, can you set me up with a schedule?"
"Sure." Zanath answered. "Anyways I will be working with the elves on the technology needed to close the rift, I do not know if I will have time to train much, but I am sure I'll be fine."
Mendelen nodded "And I will be working with Alicia and Adamus to plan out this battle. I'll train with the soldiers and if I have free time I will check out the magic sold here. Of course contact each other via PM if anything comes up or if anyone needs help. So are we all set?"
Kaden and Zanath nodded.
Mendelen hesitated for a moment, unsure of what to say now. "Well, good luck everyone. I don't know what else to say. If we survive this,"
"When we survive this" Kaden interrupted.
"When we survive this, I believe the conflict with the demons will finally be over for good. So we need to think about what we are going to do with our lives after that." Mendelen corrected himself. "Anyways I have another meeting with the soldiers in an hour, I'm going to go check on Estellese before I have to go to that. Good luck."
Estellese shook her head as another attempt at growing wings failed. Just like the other failed attempts she was unable to move them naturally, they felt awkward and out of place. It didn't help much that the pain was so intense that she couldn't think straight. It wasn't bad at first, but rapidly and repeatedly growing then removing wings on her back was straining her body.
Cora looked exhausted and out of breath, "let's take a short break, for both our sakes." She suggested. "You have a visitor who has been waiting quite a while to get in anyways."
"Someone's been waiting to see me?" Estellese sat up, curious about who would have been waiting for her. It probably wasn't Zanath, he didn't seem like the type of person who would come to check on her, or to wait on her. She didn't think badly of him for that, he was just someone who was always busy and he seemed like someone who would just trust the hospital to take care of her. So she wondered if it was Kaden who had returned, or Mendelen coming to check up on her.
Rose took a seat on a nearby chair and her assistant sat on the ground beside her. Cora walked over to the door and once Estellese had pulled the blankets up to cover herself, a move that gained her a questioning look from Rose, Cora opened the door. As soon as she opened the door a green blur darted into the room and nearly tackled Estellese into the bed.
"You're okay!" Pex was a bit louder then she really should have been, considering it was a hospital and others were likely trying to sleep. She hugged Estellese tightly, only letting go once she received a gentle hug back.
Estellese was a little shocked by the fairy's enthusiasm, and lack of knowledge of personal space, but she didn't mind it. She still found it odd being the same size as the fairy but it was something she needed to get used to. "Yeah, just lost an arm. They were eventually able to grow me a new one." She said as she held up her arms to show Pex. "I am glad to see that you are also alright, I'm so sorry I got you hurt."
"Totally not you
r fault!" Pex replied in her usual cheerful tone, despite discussing how she was nearly crushed to death. "I was watching for a while, are you trying to become one of us? I saw them trying to give you wings. I knew you were different and so much more interesting than the others."
Estellese sheepishly rubbed the back of her head, pausing for a moment while thinking about how to answer that. "Well, I'd say that's part of the reason. Since I was little I've always wished I could fly and I've always had a fascination with magic and fairies. Plus, Mendelen has been telling us all since we reached the elven village to think about what we will do with our lives once this war is over. This place is beautiful, and with how strongly tied it is to magic I think I'd like to live here, or at least stay here for a while so I can study magic." She explained. "I do also want to explore the world, those are the only two things I've really settled on, I don't know what else I'm going to do with myself when this is all over."
Pex's face lit up in a huge smile as Estellese spoke "I knew it! You can stay with me, we can be like sisters, I have space in my home and I can help teach you all about this place, and the world, and maybe a little magic too." She started. "If my- When my father comes back I am sure he won't mind." Her voice wavered a little as she spoke about her father and her butterfly wings kept nervously fluttering behind her. "The room… It… It belonged to Eyrus." Her body was beginning to shake a little and it was clear that she was trying very hard not to cry. It was a reality slap for Estellese, to see the fairy who was usually always chipper so upset. "Eyrus was a close family friend, so they set a room aside for him for when he visited. So-"