Disclaimer: I do own and Cael agrees with me. All arguments to the contrary will result in your incineration. ;D Oh wait, that's 3DO's place, not mine. No I don't own.
"Do you believe?" Abeia whispered to Nysali through the bars of her cage. She didn't need to say what. The whole warehouse was practically buzzing about the stories of the supposedly free dragon Cael and his one dragon war against the orc bureaucracy that held them all prisoners.
Nysali gave Abeia a long, cynical look. Rumours were like dreams. Easy to have, but with no more substance than a sprite's breath. There had been plenty of rumours in her long life here. Far too long life here in fact. And all of them had failed to materialise.
"Abeia, it's just another stupid rumour. Now keep your voice down, you know Glasha hates being disturbed," Nysali finally said and Abeia's face fell. Glasha, their orc supervisor slept on undisturbed on a chair in the corner and she muttered something about pork.
"But-but-but-" she stuttered as tears began to form in her eyes and Nysali felt a twinge of guilt. As the oldest sprite in this dim and depressing warehouse, the other sprites looked up to her for advice and guidance. Abeia was barely out of childhood, a mere two years old. In the old days, before the orcs claimed Xeen, she would have been courting young male sprites as they competed for her favour. With her short brown hair and deep grey eyes, she was certainly unusually attractive by sprite standards.
Nysali was certainly not in the same league, her short dirty blond hair and muddy green eyes were a far cry from beauty.
At least, that was what the old stories said. In her darker reflections, Nysali suspected that those times may never have existed.
A loud snort from Glasha made both sprites jump for a moment, but the supervisor continued to snore and Nysali leaned through the bars of her cage.
"Listen Abeia," she whispered quietly through the bars, "You're young and inexperienced and full of hope," Nysali gave a bitter chuckle. "Rumours like that have arisen again and again and again and every time sprites hope that they're true," she paused for a moment and a grimace crossed her face. "Hope just gets you killed. I've never seen a good rumour come true, just bad ones."
"But-but-but what's the point if we don't have hope?" Abeia asked as her face fell. "We don't deserve to live out our lives in these cages!"
"Shhhh!" Nysali hissed at the younger sprite and there was a grunt from Glasha. For a moment, there was a tense silence, but the orc soon fell back to sleep.
"A pretty young nymph like you will probably end up in the breeding pool, popping out the next generation of sprites. They've got more freedom to move around and flex their wings. They get much better food. And then," Nysali paused and smirked at Abeia. "You get to have sexual partners. That's more than most sprites get."
"But…" Abeia began, but Nysali carried on.
"Or you could become a messenger sprite," Nysali continued as though Abeia hadn't spoken. "I hear that they get bound to their masters and the orcs use surgery on you to stop unauthorised breeding," both sprites winced at the thought of orc surgery, a cruel mockery of the word in truth. Even when the patient survived treatment, they were damaged and the orcs only reserved anaesthesia for their fellow orcs. "But if you make too much noise, be too much trouble or show too many signs of being possible trouble, you'll be processed with the next shipment," Abeia gasped, but Nysali pressed on regardless. "I've seen it happen so many times. That's why they took Nikalia away. We're lucky, dead sprites aren't anywhere near as good at producing Zeenium as dead dragons, but that doesn't stop those orcs using us anyway."
"That's horrible!" Abeia exclaimed out loud in shock and Glasha suddenly sat up. She glared at the two sprites and stormed over.
"Hmph!" she grunted in annoyance and she quickly stomped over and grabbed Abeia's cage. "You're being too loud," she shouted, shaking the cage. Abeia simply covered her ears in a desperate attempt to protect them from the volume of Glasha's voice. "You're too loud and we can always top up our latest shipment of Zeenium."
"No, please, I won't do it again, I'll…" Abeia pleaded as tears ran down her cheeks. Glasha simply grinned sadistically.
"Hey, leave her alone!" shouted out another sprite from another part of the shelf and Glasha stormed over. "She didn't mean to wake you up!"
Glasha said nothing and simply swiped up the angry sprite's cage into her arms and she stormed over to her workbench and placed Abeia's cage in her own personal hand operated Zeenium extractor. She could have used a larger mechanical one, but Glasha appeared to prefer the personal touch, crushing each sprite individually in her foul machine.
She should say something, Nysali thought to herself. She should offer to take the younger sprite's place, do something, anything to save the younger sprite. They all looked up to Nysali in the warehouse. She was a full twelve years old, an old lady.
She did nothing.
She sat down in her cage, closed her eyes and placed her hands over her ears, just like she had done with the countless other times a sprite had been processed. Watching and listening to it happen while you watched helplessly on was not something she wanted to do.
There was a sudden and violent explosion and the building shook, almost as though it were under attack. Then another. And another. Nysali opened her eyes and looked around uncertainly.
Glasha on the other hand, was looking around with a look of pure terror. That was definitely a new one. Nysali had seen Glasha scared of an angry superior before, but never this scared.
Suddenly, the roof came crashing down and Nysali's cage was sent flying, along with dozens of others. They cracked open and shattered, releasing their tiny prisoners in a flurry of activity. Dozens of sprites spread their wings, many for the first time in years and took to the skies through the gaping hole that had been the roof. Moments later, the wall followed the roof to smash into the ground, leaving nothing but a pile of rubble and broken cages.
Nysali however was not one of them. After all these years as a captive waiting to be harvested, it seemed almost surreal, dream-like even. She gingerly put her hands against the damaged frame of her cage. It felt real. She stepped gingerly out over the rubble. That felt real and solid. She could even feel the stones pressing into her feet.
There was a deafening roar from above and Nysali looked up with a gasp. It seemed impossible. It SHOULD have been impossible. Everyone knew that their powers were long gone and crushed by the mighty Orc Empire.
But she was equally certain her eyes were not deceiving her. Hovering in the sky was a dragon. A huge red dragon. In front of him, telling him something or another, was a sprite with short vivid red hair who Nysali recognised as Vidia. It seemed impossible, it seemed almost dream-like, it seemed…
A groan snapped her out of her reverie. Lying under a not inconsiderable amount of rubble, was their orc supervisor Glasha. Then she gasped in terror as she looked up at the dragon above them, shrinking back as though she could vanish amongst the rubble. Fortunately for her, the dragon did not notice her and swiftly flew away.
"Get over here and help me out sprite!" Glasha snapped at Nysali and Nysali realised that Glasha was looking at her in what was meant to be an authoritative glare. And normally it would have worked, but with Glasha half buried under the rubble, it was anything but. There was also something else, something more interesting.
A large pile of precariously balanced rubble sat on a ledge that had somehow managed to avoid falling down. Nysali smirked and with an experimental flutter of her wings, she took to the air and settled down on the pile. Glasha's eyes widened in fear as she realised what Nysali was going to do.
"What are you doing!?" she asked, her voice tinted with a hint of panic. "You'll be killed. The orc bureaucracy will hunt you down! You will b-"
There was a slight rumbling sound as Nysali gently pushed the top of the pile. It wasn't much, she was a sprite and not endowed with great physical strength, but it was enough. Soon it was followed by a cracking sound and a sudden rush as the entire pile collapsed on Glasha, killing her instantly and burying her in one fell swoop.
Nysali looked down at the corpse of Glasha below her and felt…nothing. After all those years as a captive to that orc and now she felt absolutely nothing. It was…strange. With a flutter of her wings, she took to the skies.
AN: With the exception of Vidia, (Which I borrowed from Disney's Fairies series) all the sprite names were originally created as Siren names.