The Swamp Was Expanding, In Fritburg - #Fiction

 

The swampland was expanding, from the rotten forest. Crawling closer to the farms with every moon.

It was in particular when the moon was gibbous, that a thick, dense haze would lift from the waterlogged soil, and the twisted vegetation of the marshlands would sprout vigorously from the ground. As if invisible hands were at work, but doing the exact opposite of what farmers would do.

Elshbeth was playing as usual with Emmet and Fred, her cousins that acted as brothers since she was left with her aunt while the parents were away on some trip.

She wanted to enjoy this rare measure of freedom, since there was so little to do in the fields that even that bitch of an aunt could not find some stupid job for her or the two boys.

She enjoyed playing with the boys much more than with the girls. Tesya, Ilsegard, and Amhilde were older and passed the time gossiping about the village and knitting, while the three younger ones she could not even remember the names of, were just playing nonsensical games, way too close to the adults. Elshbeth saw absolutely no fun in either of the two groups’ activities. She was just happy that, unlike her “selfish” parents, as they were defined by the relatives, aunt Brigit had made her eight siblings for her to choose playmates from. Only two among eight were fun to be with, but still better than the ghost of her dead brother, kept alive by the sad stories of her already old (40 years old) mother.

With Emmet and Fred, she was indeed doing interesting things. And scary too: she was hunting monsters. Because there were monsters, even if the adults were making fun of their claims, if not making them take back their stories one slap at a time.

Just the other day they saw a thing that looked like a lump of moss and fungus, moving on stumpy little feet like a caterpillar. They ran away scared as hell at first, and when they came back with stones and sharp sticks, the damned thing was gone, probably inside one of the many holes that even brave Fred would not dare to explore.

But at least that monster seemed harmless enough. Another evening instead, at the brink of that noisy hour before sunset in which all the invisible frogs were starting to ribbit like devils, the trio found something (or someone) much worse. Already chased by the moron of the family, uncle Mortz, the prepubescent youngsters went armed to the teeth with sticks, stones, and even a rudimentary sling, to the limit of the swamp.

There they were killing worms the size of snakes, when from the high canes, they heard some rustling and they started paying attention to the shadowy pattern of sticks and leaves. After some silence, they saw something that nearly scared them lifeless. All of a sudden, emerging from the shadows, a face like the one of a giant frog, but with big evil eyes in the front of the head instead of the sides, looking straight at them, and a wide mouth with four sharp teeth visible both from the lower and higher “lips”, if those could be called so. The color of the monster was a sick green, while purple was the tongue that seemed to fall out of its mouth as a dead piece of meat, before it moved as if having life of its own, flailing out jerkingly before being sucked back inside the mouth.

It was just a moment, but for the kids it felt like a full minute of horror, in which they could not move at all. They then started screaming, throwing the stones while running away, without even aiming, and reaching uncle Mortz. It was them dragging him to the house this time, for a change.

At the house, the kids were still shaking and even the bullyish aunt Brigit and uncle Uskar looked concerned, at least before the three could regain the ability to speak properly.

Then they told the story, and that’s when Uskar in particular got red with anger, and took out his belt while Brigit, understanding his intentions, took all three of them with her big arms, and held them. It was ass-whipping time, while the uncle screamed at them, two words each lashing: “There are no monsters, you blasphemous little demons! Take your sacrilegious words back, you little shits!” - The kids didn’t even try to rebel much this time, accepting the pain as a much nicer alternative to what they saw before.

Up in the barn’s loft where they were sleeping, next to the caged pigeons, the kids talked about the monster, voices still trembling.

“I think it was a giant frog!” - Said Emmet. - “No, that was no frog!” - “It looked like one, Elshbeth!” - Fred sided with his brother - “And we better fight that thing before it eats one of the little girls with that mouth!” - “But didn’t you see it had teeth? Frogs have no teeth!” - Continued the girl, who was one year wiser, and far more tutored than the two boys. - “Whatever, if we can’t kill it, we better scare it away!” - “And how do you scare a monster!?” - “We will kill his family!!” - “His family?” - “Yes, we will find other big frogs, but smaller than him, and show him we kill his kin!” - “I’m telling you they are not his kin, Fred!” - “Whatever, I think Fred is right anyway! At least we will show we can fight. If we don’t do anything like our parents, who knows how close that monster will come next time!” - Emmet was the most scared of the bunch, being the youngest, and he shared the concern of the brother: protecting the little girls, like Uskar and Mortz taught them since they were even younger.

The plan was decided. The three went to sleep, but Elshbeth could not stop thinking. That thing could even eat her one of these days. Mom and dad, old like they were, might have died of heartbreak knowing they lost their only remaining child, and she would have lived her life without ever trying… What it feels like to be a woman. She watched Brigit and Uskar sometimes, when waking up because of those weird noises they made. Their room was next to the barn, so she could even peek into their window sometimes. And what she saw made her feel a strange heat inside, and made her want to try the same.

Exactly while these guilty thoughts were swimming inside her head, provoking the same kind of heat, Fred appeared next to her, nearly scaring her, and making her exhale that hot breath she was keeping in, producing a faint moan in doing so. The cousin looked at her with different eyes. And before they knew any better, the two were kissing and touching each other, far more than what they used to do as younger kids, years before. Far more, and far better. Or was that worse? Elshbeth didn’t even want to think about it. She silenced her mind, and focused only on the sensations. She didn’t even know what exactly she was doing, but somehow the moves were coming naturally to both.

Only after Fred abruptly stopped, she felt dirty and uncomfortable. She shoved him away from her and heard him slither back under his blankets, while she was left with her guilt and sense of dirtiness. It felt good at first, but not at all at the end. After some time, she cried: something extremely rare of her. And then finally she fell asleep.

She dreamt that night. Maybe elaborating on that hot sensation of before, she dreamt of catching fire like a torch, and screaming. Fire would shoot out of her mouth, and light up shadowy figures in front of her, producing a macabre dance of burning silhouettes.

When she woke up the next day, she wanted to avoid Fred at all costs, but also couldn’t let the two brothers  go alone in the marsh to try and execute their plan by themselves. So she avoided Fred’s gazes as much as she could, and after their usual breakfast of stolen food from the kitchen, they set out running towards the northern reaches of the swamp.

There they stayed the whole day hunting for frogs. Every time they would find one, they would impale it on a stick, on a place that was as visible as possible from afar, and cut the belly to let the guts out. “This way they will see we are not scared!” - Fred proclaimed. Elshbeth was not particularly impressed by that, but she was helping them anyway, although far less active than usual, still thinking about what she did with her cousin, the fiery dream, and the face of the monster.

After a while, they found a really enormous toad. It was jumping away from them in high and long leaps, and Emmet was afraid of it, but Elshbeth hit it with the sling she had built and a very sharp stone, exactly after it landed from a jump, opening a gashing wound next to its big head, and disorienting it: the amphibian started to roll, more than jumping, and soon Fred could catch it with its spear-stick, and kill it, after numerous hits.

This time even tough Elshbeth was grossed out about the killing, and she didn’t want to look when the boys impaled the lifeless body on a cane, and cracked open its belly with their wooden knives, making the intestines gush out.

The brothers instead were ecstatic: drenched in the blood and ichors of the animals, they shouted angrily at the monster (which meant in every direction, to them), that they were not afraid, and they would have killed all his family if he would have come closer to the farm.

Elshbeth just went after them keeping a distance, trying not to feel sick, and trying to hide all her worries and emotions that the killings could not extinguish.

A week passed, in which no monster showed up. Just a few more big worms and leeches, sometimes one of those “walking shits” as the brothers called that strange creature they saw before the monster, but in general nothing to worry about except the violence at home.

Uskar was growing more angry every day, saying that the farm was going to hell, and that the family should have worked hard on the fields, even if they were rotten and nothing was growing. “TOMORROW YOU WILL START WORKING, OR I WILL FREAKING BEAT ALL OF YOU LIKE NEVER BEFORE!” - He shouted, before throwing away his empty soup bowl and leaving the table. Silence didn’t last long. Uncle Mortz, stupid as he was, started laughing. At first it looked like he was laughing without any reason as usual. Then Elshbeth noticed he was staring at the same spot while laughing, for too long. She tried to follow his empty gaze through the dirty glass of the window, and then she felt petrified.

Fred, who never stopped looking at Elshbeth those days, to try and understand what the girl was thinking about him, noticed the horror on her face, and looked out as well. He shouted: “THE MONSTER!!” - “WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, YOU STUPID WASTE OF A SON!” - Replied his mother, after delivering a noisy slap on the back of his head. Then the three young women of the house, Tesya, Ilsegard, and Amhilde started laughing as well like morons, like uncle Mortz, and aunt Brigit asked them what was wrong. Emmet could only shake on his chair and stutter a call for his father, while pissing his pants. Soon after, the little girls as well started to giggle like crazy: it was unclear if at the older brother who soiled his clothes, or the thing outside of the window, but what Elshbeth knew was that they were doomed, when scary uncle Uskar came back to the table and started laughing as well.

In that cacophony of stupid laughter, something came down the chimney and soaked the fire dead in a second. The big room went dark, and the only light illuminating the moronic faces of Elshbeth’s temporary family was that of the gibbous moon outside, behind milky clouds.

She never looked at those faces though: she was still looking at the bulbous yellow eyes outside of the window. They were grinning, just like the monstrous mouth below them.
After some time though, in that surreal moment of laughter and dread, the monster’s face disappeared, and Elshbeth instantly knew: it was inside the house. THEY were inside the house.

It was Mortz again spotting the first one in the nearly pitch darkness of that awful dining room. He pointed up, and Elshbeth and the brothers already knew what he was pointing at. Emmet didn’t even want to look, preferring to run under the table, while Fred had the strength of grabbing a knife, reaching for Elshbeth, and then look up with her: together they had the strength that they were lacking singularly.

It was anyway difficult to understand what they were looking at, at first. It looked like a black spot on the ceiling, next to the chandelier, which only now they realized was put off by something, similarly to the fireplace. Then the amorphous black spot moved slightly, and another two grinning, enormous eyes popped out from an indefinite, inhuman head.

A stinking cloud of haze came out of the thing, right after Fred hit it with the knife he threw at it. The thick fog moved all over the ceiling and then down the walls, as if crawling. The rest of the family was still laughing, and it quickly inhaled the fumes. Elshbeth took a napkin from the table and covered her mouth, while running away towards the stairs. Fred wanted to follow her, but he was busy throwing more knives at the thing, and trying to get Emmet from under the table. Elshbeth suddenly felt sorry. She didn’t even know about what, but she was sorry. What did she do to this family? That strange question managed to break the sense of horror and entrapment, even if for just a moment.

Then something even more incredible happened. The laughing family members started to swell. Their bellies in particular, inflated like bubbles. While still laughing, they started to soil themselves, with loud cracking noises. Their laughter, from moronic, became completely psychotic, and they started to grab their excrements with their hands from inside their skirts and pants, and throwing it at each other, making the whole place reek like the pigs’ den in a matter of seconds.

Elshbeth felt like her mind was about to snap when even Emmet started shitting himself, even if he was not laughing and he was just looking confused. Fred was trying to drag Elshbeth outside, when the door opened all of a sudden and a big dark figure occupied nearly the whole space of the open door. Tendrils  came out of it and grabbed the sides of the wall, trying to push the rest of its mass inside the house. Fred screamed at it, and the thing squirted a substance at him, making him instantly go silent and stand still like a statue.

The last remaining family member with a mind of her own, and absolutely no idea of what to do, Elshbeth tried to go up the stairs while not losing sight of the monsters that had invaded the house. From the floor above, though, undescribable squishy noises and strange flailing shadows were proof that there was just no way out of that freaky mess.

Holding the wooden railing of the stairs, the girl screamed at the top of her lungs, the only thing she felt she could do.

She blacked out for a split second, in which she couldn’t even hear her own screaming.
Then, flames erupted from her. The whole railing caught fire from her hand, which seemed to not feel the heat at all, and from her mouth, a tongue of flames came out and hit the monster at the entrance, where Fred stood before and now he wasn’t. Did she kill him? This question was the last conscious thought in her mind, before she just completely lost it.

She woke up outside, in the field, hearing a loud crash in the distance. She opened her eyes to see the farm’s celing collapse, engulfed in flames.

A group of neighboring farmers approached the place running, and only after a while noticed her, and came closer. “What happened here? We heard demonic screams! What sparked the fire!? Where are your uncles and cousins!?” - Elshbeth could not reply to anyone, to any question. She looked catatonic, although tears were jerking off her eyes without her noticing.

Right before some of the men could grab the girl, angry due to her silence, a big man showed up, head covered in what looked like bandages, which also covered his enormous arms. The villagers spread out to let the towering man pass, and he crouched down next to Elshbeth, opening his hands as if welcoming her in his embrace. She sprung up and slammed into him, crying. “Don’t be scared, little one: there’s always hope. You will see…”

He smelled of something she couldn’t quite identify, something woody and spicy. Nice. She couldn’t think of anything, but she did feel sad when he gently pushed her away.

Soldiers were approaching on horse. Inquisitors.

The man caressed Elshbeth with a heavy, big hand, that felt hard but at the same time caring, and then went away quickly, although with the gait of someone who was either injured or cripplied, surrounded by the hostile grumbling of the farmers that he had scared away before.

Before she lost sight of him, Elshbeth shouted in his direction: “MY NAME IS ELSHBETH, IT WAS NICE TO MEET YOU!!” - The man smiled behind the bandages, like he hadn’t done for years. But kept going. He would have not been able to help her if the inquisitors would have gotten a hold of him.

Thus, the knights came, dispersed the crowd, and after bringing Elshbeth to the contsable, where they told her what had happened at the farm (according to them), they brought her to another farm, where another family lived. She stayed there terrorized for another week, before her parents came back, apparently rushing their trip. Her life had changed forever.

And the farms of Fritburg with it.

Carwyn & The Revelthanes Of The Feywild - ][

The garden of delights had turned into a hellish landscape.
While it was the bodies and blood of nymphs and hags making for the macabre visuals, the tormented souls were the ones of the living, or so it seemed.

Red Mane, as they called him when his long hair was undone, sat on the deformed stump of a tree that someone or something had fell with multiple savage strikes. His head cupped in his hands, the shaman seemed to be crying, but it was impossible to decipher which emotion made the tears well: sadness, melancholy, or some more profound disturbance of the soul.

Blyrdian wailed like a true tortured soul, walking aimlessly, alternating the tormented screams to hysteric laughter.

Delsevas was busy digging some resemblance of tomb (or hiding) to dispose of the bodies and limbs, chanting some sort of mantra in Ancient Elven. It could have passed for a mourning dirge, but was really more a meditation to recover the expended spirit essence.

Thyrona also performed some sort of funeral, although it would have been sacrilegious judged by almost any religious metric, save for some twisted goddess of death like the Raven Queen, which she sometimes mentioned, even if she despised the non-fey divine beings, like most inhabitants of the Feywild.

Carwyn, finally, managed to be the most melodramatic and twisted of all, crying over the bodies while caressing them softly (although only the ones of nymphs).
He finally took the initiative for a speech, like everyone was expecting him to do.

"Oh, companions!
Oh, dear comrades in arms, and in sadness!
What is the meaning of such a wasteful bloodbath, you must be asking yourselves. Because I am!
And let me tell you once again, it's clear to me: the meaning is far from what would give us peace in this torment.
The meaning is far from what would satisfy our heart's thirst.
The meaning is far from... Our reach.
And in our reach instead there is form.
The form that all this took before our eyes: take it in!
Try, if you can, to see the beauty of this bacchanal that turned onto itself.
For whatever reason the nymphs went mad and wanted to rip us apart, they craved blood. And they got it.
What beautiful deaths!
Look at their faces: satisfied of the carnage even in their final crazed rictus.
Love, I tell you.
Love was probably responsible.
Terrible, drunken, elated love.
But don't dwell too much on this!
Don't let such waste weight on your soul and deprive you of your rightful joy: we are thanes of revel!
Our joy shall never be taken from us!
Nor our freedom!
So hide these ruined bodies well: none should know of what happened here.
None would understand!
Don't tell this to your best friends, even less to your families.
And rejoyce that none of us lost their lives.
That none of us lost this fated battle.
That all of us won!
Like destiny dictates!"

"What about the hags, my jarl?" - Said Thyrona with her usual boldness - "What was the beauty of their bodies twisting lustfully with yours, before the blood spilled?"

Both Blydrian and Delsevas sounded the discord they felt at those words, as if trying to show the shame that the little pixie didn't, sure that Carwyn wanted to hear about those details the least.

"Nepenthean wine, my dark baroness! I remember little if at all! For my mind, soul, heart, and even body: this never happened."

"Oh but it did." - Continued Thyrona in a stinging mood.

"Enough! For a few instants during the heat of the revel, I almost felt the love I was craving. The hags gave me that? I don't want to know that, and I won't! But that special sensation, that special state of the heart: I think we all felt it at some point. Some from others, some from within. That's the meaning you can get, if so much you want to find some, because I know you in particular have this fetish for meaning, Thyrona: the deaths's meaning was for you to feel that special moment. Those fragments of eerily infinite satisfaction: save them in your memories forever, and enlarge them. Let them cover and delete the memory of all this bloody waste. Let your spirits be sated with beauty, and rid of hideous death!"

"Well, hideous for you, maybe: death is just as beautiful to me as those half-forgotten, delightful..." - Continued shockingly the pixie.

"You evil-on-wings! What else can that tiny stomach of yours digest?" - Interrupted Blyrdian nearly scandalized, but also envious of the tiny lady's guts.

"More than yours for sure, green fleck." - Delsevas didn't miss an occasion to bully the gnome. The careless wickedness was coming back to him at last.

"I dare you to say that again!! I FEYDARK-DARE YOU!!" - Retorted the gnome after jaunting in the eladrin's face, ensorcelled blade all but cutting at his neck. The elementalist monk didn't even flinch, and actually grinned slightly

Red Mane seemed to mirror that grin, losing his sad face for the first time.

"Please, my friends! Quiet your arcane fires... But YES, keep them alive!! ...This is the spirit! Let's restore this place to a verdant haven, my red friend, and let the necromancer deal with her specialty, while we reason together of novel and ambitious plans, other than necessary and useful contingency plans! Such as those we should employ should word of this as much as get near the Teal Tower of Autumn, were the lady you know rules sovereign."

"HAH! That I wanted to hear! That's what troubles you, right, oh our fearless leader!?" - Blyrdian appeared in front of Carwyn this time, blade in hand, to which the fey knight responded with an arcane flourish of his mithredain long-sword, and a jaunt-blink of his own, appearing behind the gnome, followed by another blink of the duelist, who appeared on his head, to which Carwyn replied dive-rolling onto some bushes, to then disappear again: a faux-fight resembling that of ermines or weasels, an adult and a cub, chasing each other's tails in jumps and spins.
"I tell you: you should be even more afraid than I am, of the witch of Teal Tower! She could make sure you will all only dream of revels, from bleak prisons of air and shadows!"
"That is fairly true." - Commented Delsevas, who knew the capabilities of this phantomatic lady, since he came from a related eladrin house, making him a distant cousin of Carwyn.

"Let us move on."

Red Mane spoke.

Silence followed.

Carwyn & The Revelthanes Of The Feywild - I

"ARGH!" - The cry of Carwyn was not of pleasure anymore, but it went unheard, absorbed by the densely misty night as if the Feywild itself would have wanted to silence it. 
His most unwise companions were near but distant at the same time, embowered as they were in their concubines' gardens of delight. Lost in Feywilds of their own, rather literally.
Red was the only friend to hear the knight's pain, but couldn't do much more than replying with another dire howl, which resonated in the soaked air as if piped through an organ, to the cheers and inane replies of the three unaware companions, and their apparently frivolous lovers.
The willowy firbolg was pinned to the ground by four nymphs, which proved extremely strong, making him enraged for not having seen through the illusion before. Although at last he did pierce it. The same could not be said of the others.
Red managed to free his mind enough to call his loyal companion: a vortex of wind and primal spirit, which carried moss, dirt, leaves, and anything else it could carry from the ground, to which it appeared vaguely tethered.
The elemental came bobbing up and down like a pouncing predator made of zephyr and roiling anger. It took one of the berserk nymphs in its bludgeoning currents, freeing him from her grasp.

Carwyn in the meantime had recovered a measure of consciousness: the nepenthean mead was the only lymph animating his thinking tissues, but since that matter must have been rather vegetable in nature, the sweet sap was strangely capable of making the cogs of his thought turn.
In that instant of clarity, Carwyn touched one of the nymphs while pronouncing a word of power that not even oblivion could delete from his mind. Suddenly, the being changed under his very nose, appearing like a twisted knot of bones and sick flesh of a vaguely human form. Carwyn's mind probably didn't register the horror of having been intimately touched by that being, but it was for the best: he absent-mindendly flicked a finger and the monstrous humanoid crouched into a ball of claws and hair, and then jumped like a rabid toad onto a nymph that was about to replace the lost grip of the magically fooled sister. Sister? Carwyn's mind was drifting in the astral sea, and yet it perceived more truth then when it rode the horse of sober judgement.

Exiting the roaring fire, drunk of flames more than alcohol or passion, Delsevas finally focused, perceiving the ugliest of beings next to Carwyn, clawing at one of the nymphs.
All but enraged, he leaped in supernaturally high bounds, accumulating momentum like a topspin about to be played with by a cloud giant.
Arrived at the scene showing the meaning of haste, he released a flurry of rotating kicks and spear slashes, igniting the air with each stroke: he HAD to save the NYMPH!
The deformed hag screamed in pain, looking back at Carwyn as a a surprised wife witnessing betrayal (she was in fact unable to see Carwyn as anything else than a lover after he placed the eldritch spell on her). She then turned to Delsevas joining his dance of pain with crazed moves of her own, clawing and biting at the eladrin. Notoriously hard to catch, Delsevas was nonetheless left bloodied by the onslaught, and redoubled his efforts in a defensive position, calling for the others, who were now pinned by nymphs themselves.
Carwyn was trying to tell Delsevas about the nymph behind him not being what she appeared to be, but while remembering magic words of power easily, he could not speak high elven for the death of him.

While tiny Thyrona was unable to escape the strong hands of a nymph, even if she was starting to understand in her mind what was happening, Blyrdian was much more agile, and managed to free himself, and watch the degenerate bacchanal while hiding in the undergrowth.

Red in the meantime was trying to push aside the beings to reach his staff. Unable to do so decided to resist, healing his multiple lacerations with primal words of regeneration, and sending the elemental to retrieve the unassuming weapon, which it did quickly in a series of mad low flights.
Once the firbolg had the staff in the grasp of just one of his reaching hands, he unleashed the power of Shillelagh, becoming a force to be reckoned with. The false nymphs got hit one by one and forced to exit the reach of the mighty magic wood. Then from the ground emerged a new spirit called forth by Red: a spirit of the earth which threatened to entangle the unseelie fey into the roots of Yggdrasil itself.

Blyrdian was still thinking how to save the nymphs from the hag, when he witnessed the nymph behind Delsevas join in the flesh-eating just like the monstrous annis.
Seeing how the two companions had a chance of surviving (Delsevas not as much, but he never liked him anyway), he went back to the bower were Thyrona was held, not in lustful bondage as he thought, but as true prisoner.
The scene on his arrival was a mire of skeletal hands raising from the ground and holding the screaming nymphs. 
Thyrona's playful mood had ended. In fact, she then unleashed a spell of darkness and death so great, that Blyrdian got lost in its arcane shadows, even if his eyes had been used to the pitch black of the feydark for most of his life. Or maybe exactly because of that.
Memories of his sad childhood of slavery mixed with the narcotic effect of the faerie wine and the disheartening necromancy: the gnome started crying desperately, but that didn't stop him from throwing knives into the darkness, wherever he remembered the enemy to be standing.

The bacchanal raged on into its deathly crescendo, until some annis hags were lying lifeless in the bower.
Their blood coagulated hastily, forming mockeries of berries on the bushes where it had been sprayed.
The turn of the tide came when Carwyn had started singing drunk, while engaging in confused swordplay, raising the spirits of his wounded or deeply upset friends to the point of making them even more deadly than the crazed hags.
Strangely, though, not all the downed creatures turned to their ugly forms. Some stayed nymphs, golden and silvery fluids mixed with blood on their sprawling bodies.
What was happening? None of the companions really cared, since Carwyn's song had started: they had to WIN. Win against any attacker. Possibly chasing down those who escaped the battle, too. Which Delsevas and Red were happy to do.
When the wild chase brought the two noble fey outside the reach of barely-conscious Carwyn's elating song, though, they lost their will to fight, exhausted and wounded, and went back to the camp.
They found their noble half-elf friend sleeping half-standing, his sword impaling a nymph to the ground, and forming a grim and cold pillow for his limp body to rest on.
Blyrdian was throwing knives at the bodies while still crying like a shaken toddler.
Thyrona was the only one in her right mind, as much as her studying of the corpses in detail could be right in the minds of the two disgusted friends.

"Some of them were nymphs. The rest were annis hags. I have no idea what they were doing together, but they nearly took our lives. Of you two in particular. The mage tended their wounds, making sure none of the hag's taint remained stuck in them. Red Tail did the rest of the healing, the earth spirit helping in replicating it for all the nearby allies, sleeping and bloodied Carwyn included.

The Revelthanes had survived another revel, which turned into another fight. But at what cost? This is the question none of them asked themselves. A question they never asked themselves.

Carwyn & The Revelthanes Of The Feywild - Intro

In my latest installment of "Playing a *Twisted* Fey Knight" I confirmed I would go on and finally write Carwyn in some fiction of his own, as I had also said as a comment to the last of the "ancient posts" I rediscovered about him.

I already said it twice, and even more times outside the blog, so the time has now come.

I will totally improvise this, and as the title should suggest, it will be nothing serious, but will try to be something fun.

I will still continue the old series with some goodies such as the character profiles of the "Revelthanes Of The Feywild" (Carwyn's companions), and my usual ramblings on game mechanics, but will keep the fiction separate, in a series bearing this post's title.

No more boring introductions then, and let's get going!

_____________________________

   "Hello, I am Carwyn Sidherfein, jarlet of the Teal Tower domains..."
*Nymphs swooning coquettishly.*
   "Me and my Revelthanes will be off hunting dragons till third dusk, but we would love to share the spoils of the hoards with you, at evening-star set, if you would be so friendly inclined..."
*Nymphs' swooning intensifies.*
   A tall gnome sporting a shiny mithril breastplate, and dazzling green hair styled like a frozen flame, jumped on a big moss-covered stone idol next to Carwyn, to reach his ear: "Great job, mate!!"
   Carwyn ignored the companion and let out a sunny smile to the group of scantily clad fey ladies, probably as a diversion so they wouldn't listen to the gnome's blather.
Their sparkly eyes welcomed the gesture.

Carwyn and The Revelthanes were after this fabled circle of nymphs for months.
The rumors they gathered feverishly had entangled them in a confused ball of threads, weaved by the likes of easily-offended sprites, frivolous boggles, less-than-bloodthirsty redcaps, and love-crazed coures, which all lead them astray.

A love-crazed coure

In the end, it was a strangely romantic colony of myconids to guide them to their quarry, having left a trail of spores in the wind, revealing their bashful thoughts on the fair ladies they spied from underground.

A romantic myconid

After kisses blown to the wind, long rhymes of good bye, and painfully prolonged prancing of their rides, the band of fancy adventurers galloped off in style on their mage-bred steeds, never to return to the fairy circle before having killed "at least two" dragons.
Or so they bragged to the nymphs.

   "So what's the plan, my tall jarl?"
Magnifying the noble title on purpose to attract his attention, pixie mage Thyrona, only female member of The Revelthanes, interrogated Carwyn with inquisitive eyes.
Clearly, she knew they wouldn't kill two dragons by third dusk.
   "Don't stress, my little dukess," the title repaying the wizard's humour in kind, "I know of a stash of rich-looking trinkets made by lousy humans that should not be guarded. If you will be so kind as to perform that little magic of yours on them, you might manage to make them look like the hoard of an ancient red dragon, at least."
   Thyrona expressed her disdain in an exaggerated pout, before replying. "Excuse me?? I am a necromancer!! Dabbling in the alchemical nonsense is the stuff of swindling gnome artificers! No offense, Blyrdian."
   The green-haired fey replied instantly: "None taken: no gnome artificers here... Only a gnome duelist sorcerer-extraordinaire!"
   The rest of the regular-sized band laughed at the gnome's hat flourish, with the bare-chested Delsevas quick to add his sarcasm: "If you can call yourself a duelist wielding that tiny dagger, then I am a lancer of the court with my-"
  "Gentlefey! Come on now, let's not spoil the thrill of this wild hunt with images we won't be able to un-cairvoie..." Sober Carwyn did not fancy jokes on male anatomy, even if when drunk he was quite liberal about them (the jokes and the parts, his and others').
  In all of this, Red Tail was silent as usual, although smiling absently. Slim to the point of gauntness for a firbolg, his presence still commanded respect because of his tremendous height, and the aura of blissful calm he emanated. Sunset-winged butterflies often frolicked around his namesake long red hair. The eye of the storm that was The Revelthanes, Red Tail could actually bring and become a storm of his own when need be, and was no less of a crazy reveler when the tall order of emotion needed to move his spirit was reached.

  Carwyn commanded silence by taking the word yet again, ending the boasting and bickering of the unlikely party in the only way possible: by catering to their egos.
  "Thyrona! You... Are our key to the arcane secrets of creation! True, your art is that of darksome puppetry of death, but sometimes the lower kind is needed, and you are so kind as to provide..."
  The tiny raven-haired lady smirked with a flash of her violet eyes.
  "Blyrdian! Yours is no dagger, but ensorcelled rapier, to which many a foul creature paid tribute in currency of blood! May it become ever-richer! By the taxing will your wrist imposes!"
  The gnome didn't understand much, but seeing the approving motion of Thyrona allowed himself to chuckle boastfully.
   "Delsevas then, our master of graceful and fiery pain by hand... And kick, and elbow, and spear! Your dance of summer flame has bewitched hearts from Winterfell to Everspring... And left burning reminders on flesh and bones of our unworthy opponents!"
  The Summer Eladrin's pointed the chin up as much as his vein-riveted neck allowed, in pride.
  "And our Red friend, finally... Your mastery of the Great Spirit is the anchor keeping the caravel of OUR spirits steady, in the rocking waves of youth and l...ove. May your guiding bliss always be with us!"
  The willowy firbolg gently swayed using his long staff as a crutch, as if to avoid falling from the saddle. Smiling without baring the teeth, his crimson hair and slow motion made him look like a true tree dressed for autumn.
   The band cheered, and stirred their steeds to speed: another stolen prize was nearly in their grasp.

Worthless treasures were uncovered, magic rituals unraveled, vats of mead unsealed, and the revel in the faerie circle soon got stoked into a dire bacchanal.

Carwyn sung his songs of serendipity and dragon-slaying with a voice broken by pleasure, while his ornate plate armor was replaced by a chainmail of entangled, thirsty nymphs.

Thyrona buzzed madly like a bug around too many lanterns, diving from one nymph to another, giving free rein of her usually rational mind to her peculiar appetites.

Blyrdian jumped on the pixie's preys when they were most distracted by the tiny surprise on wings, using her as a diversion to sneak into the fun, barely noticed.

Delsevas didn't need company: he engaged in a dervish dance around the fire, which later continued inside the fire: his elemental-attuned body burning of passion but not flame.

Finally, shrouded in a whirpool of primal spirit-wind while standing on a statue's severed head, Red Tail howled like a beast-daemon of Brux, voicing the unfathomable inside him.

That was the last thing Carwyn saw, before giving in to the oblivion of the nepenthean mead.

ABU HELL - Auras

- "Mom, mom!"
- "What's up, baby?"
It took a few seconds for Ryan to reply.
- "Look outside!"
- "The clouds?"
- "The... Birds."
- "Where are they, Ryan?"
- "... There... No, th... There..."
- "I can't see anything, honey, are you playing with me?"
She was still in a good mood, although something in the way the kid was talking was a bit unsettling.
- "..."
- "Ryan?"
- "..."
- "Oh my God, Ryan..!!"

At the special training, they were quite specific: treat the stratospheric ascent as a normal take-off, and avoid walking in the cabin, unless extremely necessary. But the attendant calls were sounding like crazy, and a handful of people, especially moms, were also calling outloud. Some directly for help.
After purser and flight deck approval, the crew began walking, not without difficulty, around the cabin, to see what was going on. Many kids were having strange symptoms. Their muscles were extremely tense, breathing was powerful but rare, eyes unblinking, very difficult to move, especially neck and head.

ABU HELL - Flight FZ001

Early morning. A very well known aerospace hub. February. Already 27 degrees Celsius.

The immense, shining-new, world-record-breaker airliner is taxing towards the runway for its very first flight with passengers. It's a historical day for the company. And for aviation.

Three thousand passengers distributed on 3 decks. There's no economy class. There is a lower class but it's not called economy. It's either Silver, Gold, or Platinum.
And to accommodate the changes and underline even more the already apparent will to separate this beast from the other aircrafts of the company, a new sub-company's flag is on it. "FAZL". Strange name. Apparently a possible transcription of Arabic for "grace, generosity".
Some strange marketing decision, along the one of painting the whole aircraft red, leaving only tail and part of the wings white. Some said it looked cheap, others appreciated the pioneering vision of it.

The aircraft seems too big even for the airport, literally. It towers over the terminals. A new one is in construction, but making the first flight was a priority. Insiders opinions are divided. Some say things were rushed, others say an unprecedented amount of work and care has been put into the whole thing.