The Sprite & The Fairyhunter

The Hunter & The Hunted

 

The Sprite (Part 9)

 

    They ducked into the next private room and waited a few moments for the smoke to reach the main room, then Turlock bellowed, "Fire! Everybody out!" Neena could hear a mad scrambling to exit the building and headed up to the front just as the majority of the patrons ran out the door. She could hear the sounds of swords clashing against each other, then felt Adrian running. He stopped, then pulled a rod out from the pack on his shoulder and waved it at something she couldn’t see. The look on his face suddenly became surprised and he turned away quickly “Alright, all of you, go! Come on, hurry!” She looked up at his face, which had become bright red. He looked down at her briefly and said, “Turlock is making sure that the guys that work here aren’t making it out alive. I’m just trying to figure out how to get the sprites out of Fairyland so they don’t get caught up in the fire, but they don’t seem to realize they’re free of the magic yet.”

            “How’d you do it?”

            “Uh, their…clothing was magicked…so…uh, they don’t have it on…anymore,” Adrian said uncomfortably. “Really, you guys are free to go…!”

            Neena sighed. “Just pick me up,” she grumbled. “I’LL make ‘em go.”

            Adrian reached into his pocket and she crawled up onto his hand. He pulled her out and extended his palm in to the huge box that was Fairyland. Now that she could see, she noticed several sprites huddling in terror inside the mini-city. Without hesistation, she bellowed, “GOOOOO!!!!”, then zoomed down to zap at them. Squeals of indignance and pain erupted from the confines of the little town until every winged person had zoomed out of the burning guild in a panic. “Okay, you can look now.”

            Adrian turned back around and waved the wand over her with a grin. Her djinni outfit melted away, leaving her completely nude. She gasped up at him as he laughed. “Had to get the evil magic off ya, babe,” he smirked, his eyes not leaving her until she magicked herself up her own clothing. With a mock sigh of disappointment, he kept her in his hand and ran from room to room, opening cages and releasing winged folk all throughout the building until no rooms were left. The building was on fire properly now and as the two raced back to the main room, Turlock joined them, the heat from the flames becoming apparent.

            “I think it’s time we cut our losses and run, lad,” said the breathless Highlander. “There’s not another soul left in the place but us and a few bodies that ran into me claymore.”

            “Don’t gotta tell ME twice,” Adrian nodded. “Let’s make for the back door, just to be on the safe side.” The two ran back toward the back of the main room through another set of special rooms. Turlock shouldered open the door at the end of the hallway and they continued out, but the moment Neena’s body crossed the threshold of the doorway, she felt a gut wrenching pain in her ankle, enough to make her scream out. Adrian looked down at her in a panic. “Mothwing?” he gasped, but she suddenly felt a yanking, as if someone were pulling her by her leg in the direction of the center of the guild. She was literally whisked from his hands and dragged by an invisible force back into the blaze. In a panic, she tried to fly toward him, then used her amulet to grow back and run toward him, but to no avail. When she skidded to a stop, she was on the main stage in the center and couldn’t move her feet an inch, almost as if they were nailed to the floor.

            “What’s happening???” she cried out.

            Adrian ran back into the room, dodging the beams that were starting to fall around him. “What the hell are you doing? We gotta get outta here!”

            “I can’t move!” She tried again and again to pull away from the center, only to snap back with a mind bending pain in her ankle.

            Turlock rushed in and shouted at them both. “What are ya doing, lass? This is no time for games!”

            “I can’t move!” she repeated. “Something’s hurting my ankle!”

            Almost at the same moment, Turlock looked hard at her feet while Adrian reached in his pocket for a magic ocular and stared at her legs. Even she bent down, feeling about for something on her, but only felt a strange sensation as she went across the area with the pain. “What IS that?” Turlock demanded, suddenly running toward her and feeling about her ankle in the same place.

            “Oh, damn,” Adrian said, scrambling over to her and lifting her foot as much as the pain would allow. “It’s a magic manacle. They use it on the girls they want on the main stage so they can be out of Fairyland and not try to escape. It looks like a cuff on your foot until it blends with your magic, then it goes incorporeal. We can’t touch it, but I know there’s a thing around her somewhere that the magic is tethered to. If we can find that…”

Turlock turned immediately to check the area around them and Adrian got up to do the same. In a sudden panic, Neena grabbed his arm and pulled him down next to her. She was being held prisoner and the thought of it was already starting to chill her blood. “Adrian, I can’t stay like this,” she began.

“I know, hon, just stay calm and we’ll find it.” He tried to leave again, but she held him tight.

“No, don’t leave me! Stay with me!” she said, her eyes wild as the flames began to lick into the main room.

“Neena, I HAVE to find his for you! If I don’t, we’ll BOTH be burned alive in here.” She started to protest wildly again, clutching both his arms, but her held her to him tightly for a moment. “It’s going to be okay, we’re gonna get you out, but you have to let me help you, okay? Okay?” He rocked her gently for a moment, then pulled away and looked her right in the eyes while still holding her hands. “I’m right here, okay? I’m just gonna look around the stage area, okay?”

Smoke stinging her eyes, she nodded, clutching her own knees for comfort as he pulled away. Her eyes followed him all around the room as he dodged flames and chairs and any number of items trying to locate the source of her tether. She closed her eyes to keep the smoke out, brought her thumbs together to rub and tried to regain her focus. It had been ages since she’d felt this kind of raw panic, but she remembered the moment vividly…

 

Her father held her up so she could see as the fairy empress passed by with her entourage. She had never seen anything like it. Even the guards had spidersilk jackets and beautiful elven thinblades in their hands. Neena giggled, pointing at the ridiculously large nose Empress Reina had and looked up at her father. “Why is that fairy’s nose so big?”

The entire entourage came to a halt as the empress screamed, “STOP!” She had stepped down from her tulip carriage and stalked over to Neena and her father with a smile that made Neena’s tummy hurt. Why was the fairy lady walking mad, but smiling at her. “What did you say, child?”

Neena had been too worried to answer, but her father said, “She’s just a child, empress. She meant no harm.”

“Then, as her father, you should know better than to allow her to speak of her betters in such a way,” the empress said, her smile growing wider. “Or do they teach no manners at all in these backwoods?” Her father had no chance to answer before the empress had taken the staff in her hand and thrust it toward him. A bright light left its tip and surged into Neena’s father, causing him to let her go and fall to the ground. “Let that be a lesson to you, child. Never speak in the presence of royalty unless you have the proper respect to give.” And with that, she turned, got back in her carriage and left, leaving Neena tugging at her father’s hand trying to make him sit up. He had smiled up at her and taken both her hands tightly.

“It’s okay, little one. I have to go right now, but I’ll be alright and so will you. I want you to go straight to the elder and stay there, do you understand?”

Neena had nodded tearfully, then zoomed away to get their elder’s help. By the time she had returned, more sprites had come to help move the crystal statue that was once Neena’s father Merim out of the way of the last of the fairy empress’s entourage…

 

Her focus and her very heart broken with the memory, Neena opened her now streaming eyes and couldn’t see past the smoke and flames anymore. “Adrian!” she yelled out, getting only the painful heat and smoke into her lungs…

 

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