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Being hauled around in a wicker basket totally sucked. Instinctively, Stephi knew Ron was right. Being seen by people in town would draw attention and mess up their chances of pulling off that manipulative pawnshop owner’s job.
People might be curious—at first. But deep down, they’d mistrust and fear her, just like any fairy. Total stupid ignorance.
Still, being a fairy, Stephi held deep-rooted distain for mortals. Those weren’t her feelings. They were the stupid game’s feelings of every single fairy and elf. She fought the revolting racist feelings as an elf but, as a fairy, suppressing them was ten times harder. Keeping away from the gawking peasants helped. Well, it didn’t help, just kept her from constantly confronting the sick thoughts.
Deep down, in her real life, she’d looked down her nose at some people. People who got into college through grants and scholarships, and then wasted the chance. Flunked out. Things like that cried hypocrite, and ate at Stephi’s thoughts, when she allowed. Luckily there was always something new happening, or some danger to distract her. Or, she told herself she was making a mountain out of a mole hill.
The sooner she got back to being herself, well, her weird game-paper elf self, the better. Her real self? That hope was on some mountain a millions miles away.
If she ever got to meet the narrow-minded idiots that created the stupid game, she’d kick each of them in the balls—twice. The dice rolling and paper game to the actual game world connection didn’t make sense. Maybe the misogynistic men that wrote the game got some vibe, or unconsciously connected with the parallel universe that held this screwed up world, and just wrote that? Maybe stupid dreams influenced them? Wet dreams were probably more like it.
At that moment, all reality versus parallel world stuff didn’t matter one pretty pink-poodle bit. She’d rather be a tall, gorgeous elf with ginormous boobs that everyone gawked at, like she was some supermodel porn star, over a hide-in-a-basket Tinkerbell. Despite having the looks and a chest that’d make Peter Pan forget pretty girl Wendy in two seconds flat.
Stephi sighed, feeling the wicker basket’s bounce. Like she hadn’t thought what it’d be like to be home, with her mom and dad, back with her sorority sisters, a hundred million times.
Lying on her side, she ignored the basket’s swing. Glenn did an okay job, but Ron carried her with the most care.
The elf-turned-fairy took a steadying breath and mentally contacted her blue jay familiar. Petie, slow look.
After a few seconds, the blue jay responded. <Me-us slow look.>
One of the first things Stephi trained her familiar to do was to slow down while she observed the world through his eyes. The bird flicked his head sharply from view to view, working to get a different perspective. He’d done it so fast that the rapid-fire snapshots left Stephi with a headache, and little to show for it, other than a vague recollection of images. Even with slower, more deliberate views, adjusting to the shifted hues her familiar’s eyes drank in, and the unfamiliar optics formed by the bird’s different shaped eye and lens combination, was challenging. It was like wearing tinted, malformed goggles. A weird thing was, Petie, a blue jay, didn’t pick up on the color blue all that well.
Stephi closed her eyes and focused on the connection with her familiar.
Petie was on a roof, about a hundred feet ahead of Ron and Glenn. The pair strode down the empty street. Petie’s vision after sunset was worse than a human’s, and Stephi—if she allowed herself—could feel her familiar’s intense apprehension over flying at night. His fear of flying into something unseen, or misjudging a landing, or being surprised by a night hunter.
Cats and owls were high on the ‘flying around at night’ list, but it took a while for Stephi to figure that out. As a bird, Petie’s thoughts relied on images and emotions revolving around survival. To his mind, cats were hooked claws and bites, created from an amalgamations of feline encounters. The imagined cat’s eyes, teeth and claws were large, out of proportion. A curved avian beak and claws, and a sensation of shadowy silence formed the owl threat, with anticipated piercing pain, usually along the neck or spine.
Petie warned Stephi. <Me-us fly.>
The warning was a throwback from before Stephi’d become a fairy, which had subsequently brought an internal ease when it came to flight. The magic user didn’t want to break the warning habit ingrained into her familiar. She didn’t plan on being a fairy forever. Or an elf forever. That thought did pinch her heart—she’d miss Petie.
Fly, Stephi mentally replied.
When they first arrived in the stupid game world, Petie communicated exclusively through images combined with intense, instinctual emotions. Since then she’d taught him twenty-two words.
Petie referred to himself as Me-us, and Stephi as You-us. The blue jay familiar considered himself and Stephi pair bonded. Almost mates.
No way she’d ever share that with Derek. The jerk would use it to make mean jokes. Well, more of them.
The good thing was, Petie knew who was in charge of the pair bond—her—and did what she asked without question.
Her familiar spotted Derek standing in the shadows between two buildings, one of them abandoned. That one was boarded up. When planning the assault on the glass shop, Kirby insisted he could break into the boarded-up place so they could use it as a base of operations.
While the party formed the plan, after Derek and Glenn traded monster parts for a heat-protection lotion, Stephi demanded privacy for removing her leaf and bark dress and getting the magical lotion spread all over her body. She demanded Derek go back and get enough to fill a small washtub so she could bathe in the liquid, but goober-kid Kirby said, “That’s pretty much impossible.” Ron called it, “An inefficient use of monetary resources.”
Like either of them would want to perform a mission naked. Well, Ron might, if it would benefit the party. He was weird like that.
Derek made sure to remind Stephi, “The reason for this dumbass mission is to get the leprechaun’s coin, so you can be an elf again. So suck it up, Whiny Winged Barbie, and stop bitching.”
Pathetic thing was, the big jerk was right. Everyone was risking their lives for her. Ron reminded her, “It was what party members do, both out of friendship and obligation.”
The friendship part covered everyone but Derek. He wanted to be friends with her—more than friends.
Friends with the muscle-headed jerk, in any way, shape or form? No. She’d sooner make friends with that leering, old, part-goblin that everyone insisted on hiring.
That Blizz and his donkey, and the hired mercenaries were driving the wagons, getting a head start on leaving the butt crack-smelling town.
Stephi’s scattered thoughts returned to Derek. No. Even if he killed monsters and bad guys better than anyone in the party, obligation was the best she could stir up for him.
The thought about bad guys sent a cold shiver through Stephi. She clenched her hands into tiny fists and prepared to fly out into the night and cast her Slumber Spells. And it got worse after that.
Any moment, Glenn would open the basket lid and tell her it was time.
So much of her time as an elf—or fairy—involved life and death situations. Like, every other day she was like a modern-day city girl sprinting across the Roman Coliseum during a gladiator chariot race mashup. Always a desperate, erratic run that might end in success. Or complete disaster.
Through the basket, Stephi heard Ron say, “We have reached the launch point.”
Glenn stopped walking and flipped up the basket lid. “Marigold,” he whispered, “nobody’s on the street. Time to go.”
“Thanks,” she replied, stood, and allowed the fairy magic to flow across her wings. Within seconds they blended with the shadowy, moon-lit darkness. It wouldn’t make her invisible, but a lot harder to see. Knowing that, she jumped and flapped her wings, keeping near a brick building as she rose into the night sky.
Warn me of danger, she thought telepathically to her familiar.
<Danger watch> Petie replied, accompanied by an image of a bipedal cat with a human head and claws that resembled curved swords. Ron called them scimitars. <Us-me warn danger, Us-you.>
Thank you, Petie. Stephi waved back to Glenn and Ron. She rolled her eyes, realizing the two party members wouldn’t be able to see her, or her waving hand.
The fairy beat her wings faster, dipping toward the road before zipping across the street, and between the back of the boot maker’s and bakery. She didn’t see the guard who was supposed to be watching somewhere along the street. Not her worry—not yet. One guard at a time.
The fairy continued until she was between the rear of the pottery place and the glass blower’s shop. Kirby assured her that was the safest route to rise up and cast her spell. Taking her time, Stephi fluttered upward, hands touching the brick wall until she was able to grip the top ledge. She stuck her bare feet against the wall, stopped flapping her wings, held her breath and counted on her Camouflage ability as she peeked over the top.
A clean-shaven man in leather armor, with a sword on his belt and a crossbow leaning against the front ledge, squatted, looking over the building’s front, down onto the street.
Stephi prepared to loose one of her two memorized Slumber Spells on the man. Something, a quick motion off to the right caught her attention. A small, furry creature was perched on the brick ledge. It rose to all fours, then on its hind legs, head shifting from left to right, eyes searching her direction.
A memory raced to the forefront of Stephi’s thoughts. A trip to the county fair with Grandpa when she was a little girl. She had a nickel, and cautiously walked forward to hand it to a small monkey wearing a red and white-striped vest and miniature cowboy hat. The monkey’s jolly owner, wearing an identical outfit, sent a tiny tug on the organ grinder monkey’s leash—that’s what Grandpa called the cute little animal—and the funny little monkey took the coin and tipped his hat.
Concern raced through Stephi’s head. That carnival monkey had worked for somebody. And the one now moving along the ledge, toward her, worked for somebody. It had to be a familiar!
Doing her best to remain calm, Stephi slowly lowered herself below the ledge, then shot away and flew in a tight right-hand turn around the corner. As she made her way between the glass shop and the bakery, Stephi had to find Kirby. Her Slumber Spell should’ve worked on both man and monkey. But, if it was a familiar, she remembered Ron saying they saved against magic spells at the rank of their master. If the magic user was over 4th rank, the whole deal would be blown. Even if the master wasn’t over 4th rank, if his familiar all of a sudden fell asleep, he might come running. If that happened to Petie, she’d know, and do whatever it took to save him.
Stephi flew down the street and in between buildings and through an unboarded window in the abandoned building. Kirby squatted next to Glenn, both looking between slats, out onto the street.
The half-goblin sense something behind him and spun with cutlass ready.
Stephi fluttered back, up toward the ceiling’s dusty rafters. “It’s me.”
“You forgot to say the password.” He sheathed his cutlass and prepared to leave so Glenn could help coat Stephi with the magical lotion.
“Wait,” she said, doing her best to keep her fairy voice down. “There’s a monkey up on the roof.”
“Did you slumber it too?”
“No, Gurk. What if it’s a familiar?”
Glenn didn’t say anything, but looked up at his half-goblin friend.
“Yeah,” Kirby said, dragging the word out in thought. “Could be trouble.”
He grabbed the sack Glenn was holding and carefully emptied it of the boxes holding the bottled lotion. “I’m gonna sneak my way between the buildings and use this rope to climb up.” He pulled a coil of thin rope from another sack that had been sitting under the opened window. It had a metal hook attached. Stephi remembered the rope was part of a backup plan.
“You’ll have to haul this hook up and stick it over the ledge so I can climb up. Slumber the guard and the monkey. If either of them don’t fall asleep, use your Dazzle Spell. That should give me time.”
Kirby rubbed his hands together, forming the rest of the plan as he spoke. “I’ll gag the monkey. Tie its hands and stuff it in the sack.” He grinned wickedly. “Then I’ll climb down, wake the monkey and take off running. If it’s a magic user’s familiar, he’ll figure out his monkey’s on the move—not at the building.”
Then he frowned. “That means time’ll be shorter, Marigold. You’ll have to do the whole mission, uhhh, naked—which means you’ll have less time protected to sneak in.”
The thief made his way to the window. “I’m gonna let Lysine and Kalgore know the change in plan.”
He began climbing out the window, stopped and grinned playfully. “Change places with me, Jax?”
“You wish, you little perv,” Stephi said, a wide grin on her face. She had to admit, sometimes the kid was funny.
“I’ll be waiting between the cobbler’s and bakery,” the thief replied to the fairy. Then he said to the gnome healer, “Good thing you got a high Luck Score, dude,” and ducked out.