Vessamer-Minia

By: Vessamer Posted on: February 27, 2010

Chapter One: The Imp Lord

I spend a lot of time looking up at my peers. I barely come to five feet, myself, which means that most denizens have a few inches on me, and adventurers are regularly a foot taller than I am. So it was that when I was before the throne of the most powerful Lord of the land, commander of the strongest of armies it had ever seen, sitting atop a mighty and impressive throne, I was looking down at him.

Imps, you see, are very small.

"She's rejected me!" the Imp Lord was saying, "Me, the Lord of the Ember Tower!" It's a good thing I wear hooded robes, because if my face wasn't obscured, the Imp Lord might've noticed me smirking. It isn't hard to see why someone would want to reject this ranting, power-hungry lunatic. "I'll make her pay for it, though," he went on. "I'll burn her entire village to the ground, and then I'll have her finished off while she mourns! Oh, how she'll regret it then..."

The subject of his lengthy rant, to which he appeared to be about ready to finish, was the Pixie Queen who lived on the other side of Minia. I hadn't really been paying attention for the past ten minutes as he explained how he had tried to woo her only to be rejected time and again. It sounded incredibly juvenile, and I wondered more than once if perhaps this Imp Lord was much younger than he claimed. Of course, this petty little conflict between the Imps and Pixies had been going on for centuries, but perhaps this latest development was more recent. I certainly wasn't going to ask.

"So that's where you come in," the Imp Lord said, stirring me from my thoughts. "I want you to lead the attack on the Pixie Village. We're under almost constant siege from would-be heroes, and I can't spare many guards from the defense. So you'll be doing the bulk of the fighting."

"And the payment?" I asked.

"Per corpse," the Imp Lord said, "Should be about a thousand gold for the whole village. I don't have the numbers memorized."

I nodded. "When and where shall I meet the Imps to be assisting me in the attack?"

"This is my finest captain," the Imp Lord said, gesturing to an armored Imp at his side, "He'll be leading Imp forces in the attack."

"I'll be leaving in five minutes, so you'll be ready and waiting just outside the Tower by then, understood?" the captain barked. I nodded, then left. Behind me I heard the two talking to each other.

"I don't like these adventurers," the Imp Lord was saying, "They're too quiet."

"Hrmph," the captain said, "They're just too terrified to say much, for fear they'll start stammering."

"Really?" the Imp Lord said.

"Of course! I could see it in his eyes," the captain responded.

"You could see his eyes?" the Imp Lord asked, "I couldn't see through his hood."

"You were too high up, my lord," the captain said, "But I could see the fear in his eyes, and trust me, he's scared."

Chapter Two: The Pixie Village

A pair of adventurers were discussing butterflies with Vellis. They gave us a quick glance when I and the Imps arrived, but immediately returned to their conversation. I'd met with the Imps and walked in silence with them to the Pixie Village. No one had yet discussed any plan of attack as of yet, and now we were moving along the path towards the Pixie Village, probably within earshot of us, and still no one had said a word. I can only assume our plan was "charge!"

"Charge!" the captain said as we reached the Pixie Village. The Imps rushed forward to the Pixies, who, taken by surprise, rushed to meet the attack. As the Pixies flew to meet the Imps in battle, I reached a fist out and clenched one gloved fist before one of them. Instantly, the Pixie doubled over in pain as bulges grew and burst across its tiny form, soon leaving it as an unrecognizable pile of gore on the ground.

This did not daunt the remaining Pixies in the slightest. I can only assume I'm not the first Occultist to blow into town. They did immediately identify me as a greater threat than the Imps, and a half-dozen of their guards flew towards me, pricking at my skin with their tiny daggers. My concentration was broken as they swarmed over me like hornets. I began swatting at them, trying to knock them away long enough to regain concentration and start warping them, but there were too many. I ran and stumbled through the village, finding a pond somewhere along the way and jumping in.

The Pixies hovered above the water, their gossamer wings preventing them from chasing me beneath the gently rippling surface of the pond. They hovered there angrily for a moment, before I reached out and clutched a fist in front of one of them, reducing him to a pile of flesh and bone. The others fled. I waited a few moments, my lungs slowly burning for air, and once I was sure they were gone, I swam ashore, coughing up water, gasping for air, my clothes soaked and heavy.

I looked around for a moment, getting to my feet. There were no pixies to be seen. The path branched off into two different directions. I picked one at random and followed it. At the end, I found two things. To one side was a building with lots of Pixies, short even for their kind, playing outside. Presumably a school. To the other side were several Pixies gathering dew in buckets. I wondered briefly how lucrative a job "dew gatherer" was in Pixie society before turning around and leaving. I had other things to worry about right now.

As I travelled back past the pond I'd jumped into, I discovered several Pixie warriors resting from the main fight, which I could now barely hear in the distance. The Pixies were gathered in, around, and beneath a great tree, but though they were scattered across a wide area, their numbers were few. I reached out a hand and began warping, and they turned towards me, alarmed, and began flying to attack me. This time, however, I had distance on my side, and none of them reached me alive.

Having just warped about a half-dozen-odd Pixies in rapid succession, I was feeling mentally drained. I walked towards the tree numbly, slumped against it, and slid to the ground, closing my eyes and driving all thought away. Slowly, calm focus returned to my exhausted mind.

Chapter Three: Kyren

My meditation was interrupted by something cold, metal, and sharp. It drew a line of blood across my cheek, and I jolted into full awareness of my surroundings, jumping to my feet. A tall, lithe man had his blade pressed against my throat. He was about six feet, brown-haired, blue eyed, and dressed in a manner that can only be described as "dashing." I scowled. Tall, handsome, and heroic. This was the stereotypical adventurer, the standard everyone always held me to since I came out of the Trial. And as far as looks were concerned, I didn't measure up. It didn't matter to me. But denizens were quick to comment on it. "Oh, really? You're an adventurer? I hadn't noticed, most are much taller than you!" Every time I walk into town.

Of course, I wasn't about to start spouting out how much I hated this man's good looks while he had a sword pressed to my throat. "You've gotten yourself into a nasty little habit of killing my friends," he said with an odd combination of cheer and menace. "What am I going to do about that?"

I considered several answers, but ultimately decided it would be best to ignore his question and respond with my own. "Who are you?" I asked.

"I'm Kyren the Bard," he answered, "Partner of the Pixies, student of storytelling, composer of...I admit, I haven't got anything alliterative to go with that last one, but you get the point."

"A ministrel, then?" I said, stalling for time. If I waited long enough, the Imps might catch up with me and distract Kyren long enough for me to get to a safe distance and warp him.

"Listen, mate," he said, ignoring my question, "I realize Captain Genocide back there had a duty to perform whatever idiotic, ill-thought out course of action his Lord could dream up, but what've you got against the Pixies?"

"I'm in it on moral grounds," I responded, hoping to prolong myself. I didn't like how he referred to the Imp captain in the past tense. "The Pixie Queen cares only for her own people, and is abominably cruel to all others, especially the Imp Lord when he was pining after her."

"Oh, the Pixie Queen's the cruel one, is she?" Kyren said, "Because an opening line of 'be mine or die' seems like pretty good grounds for rejection to me."

"How would you know how things went?" I asked, "How do you know the Pixie Queen's telling the truth?"

"I was there," Kyren said.

Bugger, I thought to myself, I was just about out of conversation topics.

Fortunately, just then an arrow shot out from the distance. Kyren dived out of the way of the arrow, which thudded into my shoulder. I grimaced in pain and dove away from Kyren. Once there was a safe distance between us, I grabbed the arrow and ripped it out, pulling a vial of health elixir out of one of my many pockets and taking a sip, the wound from the arrow sealing itself up as I did so. Then I turned my attention to Kyren, who had engaged the Imp forces that were now pouring in from the south.

With a smirk, I began to warp him, horrific growths appearing all over his lithe body. He turned around and dived toward me, hitting the ground and rolling to his feet while taking a sip from his own vial of health and flicking his rapier deep into my stomach as he rose. I must admire his coordination, but a quick sip of health healed the wounds. I held out my fist to warp him again, but he smacked it with his rapier, breaking my concentration, before driving the blade into my shoulder. I took another sip as the Imps caught up, one jumping onto Kyren's back and plunging its spear into him.

I flung my hand out haphazardly towards Kyren and a chill came across him. He began to shiver uncontrollably, and the precise jabs with his rapier became wild slashes. He skewered the Imp that had jumped onto him and flung it off into the distance. I prepared to freeze him entirely, but he saw where things were going and jumped up into the tree above. From there he backflipped over all our heads, landing on the opposite side of the Imps and making a break for it.

Chapter Four: The Pixie Queen

The Imps let him go, moving past me towards the dew-gatherers and the school. I took another sip from my elixir of health, healing my wounds again, and stepped back into the main area of the village, before the hut of the Pixie Queen. Imp and Pixie corpses littered the area, and a few Imps still fought inside the hut itself. I moved inside and warped the Pixies quickly, then stepped into the chamber of the Pixie Queen herself.

Tears ran down her cheeks, but she stood tall as the Imps entered. With her scepter, she bashed one Imp across the room as it charged towards her, and then brought it down atop another Imp's head, sending him crashing to the ground. The final Imp hesitated, thought better of his decision, and turned around and ran. I stepped forward. "Why?" the Pixie Queen asked, "Why all this?"

"All's fair in love and war," I answered, reached out my hand, and clenched my fist.

She doubled over in pain, but immediately afterward sprung towards me, her wings carrying her up to meet my eyes, where she smacked me across the face with the scepter. The blow carried an alarmingly large amount of force for such a small creature, and I staggered backwards. I raised my hand to attack again, but she smacked it aside and flew towards me, attacking me again with, and this time sending me to the ground. I rolled to my feet and reached out to warp her, and this time she was sent to the ground, her skin bubbling and giving off a sickening odor, her wings now uselessly mutilated. She crawled towards me, all but dead, and I warped her again. She fell to the ground, unmoving, her body now all but unrecognizable.

I knelt down besides the body, examining it. It was warped to the point that any anatomical study would've been useless. "This right here was probably flesh at one point, and I think maybe there's some bone in there, too" does not enlighten one much as to the inner workings of the humanoid body.

Chapter Five: Aftermath

When I stepped outside the Pixie Queen's hut, the area immediately outside was deserted. I smiled to myself as I looked over the scene. Dead bodies littered the area, smoke rose from the Pixie school in the distance, and there was absolutely no sign of life in the area beyond the grass and trees. There was an odd tranquility to the scene. The peace of oblivion. The calm knowledge that nothing here could possibly threaten me, because nothing here was alive. The triumphant knowledge that my knowledge of the occult had overcome its first challenge. This was a feeling second to none, not even to the wonderful thrill of unlocking new secrets, I decided.

A while later, the Imps returned, informing me they'd killed every Pixie they could lay their hands on. Casualties were high, but morale was higher as we returned to the Imp Lord to inform him of our success. There was more talk this time, mostly between the Imps over what they were to do with the rewards they imagined they'd receive once the Imp Lord heard of the extent of their victory.

I walked with them, ignoring their conversations. Something still troubled me. The bard, Kyren. If it were not for the timely intervention of the Imps, he likely would have killed me. He was unprepared for my Ague, but I doubt he would be the next time we met. He was also unlikely to waste much time on chit-chat. The next time we met, it would be immediate combat, ending in either his death, or mine.

I couldn't wait.