I'm not here.

In an effort to bleed off excess mana as quickly as possible I keep my illusion of absence up. Which is more than a little tricky as I also try to do other things. First I have to do something about my arm. My right humerus is gravel, something that will take even my trollish regeneration a noticeable amount of time to fix. So for the moment I have to do something to keep it from getting worse as I move around.

Looking around, the only thing I can find that could serve to keep my arm immobile, is the cord from the mo'o's fighting rope. Doing anything with that will be awkward as hell with only one arm, but I don't have an abundance of other options.

I manage to cut the weight off the cord by standing on one end of the cord, putting the other in my teeth, and using my one good arm to use my knife to make the cut. The easy part done, I manage to wrap the cord around my fore arm and torso several times and tie a... I'll be generous and call it a serviceable knot that... sort of immobilizes my injured arm.

Honestly it sucks, but I can't think of how to do it better, and there are still two mo'o running around my friends' home that have appointments with my knife. So with the illusion keeping me silent, I sprint back into the village from the temple. I'm tempted to take a flying leap onto the roofs again, but at the speed I'm moving at, I'm afraid that I'll break something. Like a building. No matter how convincing the illusion, it is just an illusion, I am still here after all.

My illusion flickers at the thought, and I slow down to give myself a moment to refocus, I'm not here, and disappear from the senses of the world again. Illusion reestablished I take a moment to reassess. I'm next to the stream that cut through the middle of the village. Across and just upstream of me is the forge Vivain constructed next to the fish pond.

Standing in front of the forge, is the mo'o in the red cape. Opposite her in the doorway of the forge is Vivain. She's planted herself feet shoulder width apart filling up the doorway. In each hand she has a hammer, one resting on the thigh of her forward leg, the other hooked over her shoulder. Behind her I can just make out the small forms of children trying not to attract attention.

So glad I read her right. There wasn't much of a chance of her not protecting the kids being the fae responsible for Excalibur, but there's knowing and knowing.

I stop moving to see how things are going. No fighting yet, obviously, but if they're going to start, or headed in that direction I want to know about it before the fur... or scales I guess, starts flying. I make sure I'm still invisible, and listened in.

"...can not argue that removing our memories of this place is an aggressive act!" The mo'o is speaking loudly and passionately. Some part of me is surprised that they're speaking in English. Though I suppose that between an ancient English fae, and an old Hawaiian dragon, modern English might very well be the only language they shared in common.

"I argue nothing." Vivain's deep water and hammer on anvil voice sounds downright bored, and maybe just a little like she resents the mo'o for wasting her time. "I care not about whatever petty squabbles brought you to this village. I care not what you do to it while you are here. Or to any of the other villagers that you manage to find." Ouch, just in case you forget that the Lady of the Lake is a fae, "I only protect the children. The rest is not my concern."

The mo'o growls, "In spite of your claims to the contrary, you seem to be very concerned."

"With the lives of children? Yes." Vivain smirks, "Do not growl at me little dragon. I might take offense."

"Little!" The mo'o shrieks her hand flying to the shark tooth knife, "I'm over ten feet tall!"

"As I said," Vivain's voice dripped condescension, and from deeper in the village I hear the sound of running feet, "little. 'Asides I think you have larger concerns."

The red caped mo'o spins to look behind her as the sound of running becomes audible to her, and then is quickly revealed to be the last unaccounted invader. The new mo'o is pale and breathing hard, eyes wide, and the faintest scent of panic is carried to me on the ocean breeze.

The red caped leader quickly runs to meet her soldier, catching her as the newcomer collapses to her knees. The new mo'o speaks in Old Hawaiian, but panicked babbling transcends the language barrier to a certain extent. I think I may have been discovered. I haven't exactly been hiding the bodies after all. I figured that if they're found then the remainder would move slower from caution.

Frankly, I didn't think I'd get as many of them as I did.

I glance back at Vivain only to find the fae looking right at me. I panic for a moment, checking to make sure my glamor hasn't lapsed while I haven't been paying attention. It's still there though, I suppose a faerie of the Lady of the Lake's power and age seeing through my illusions isn't that unreasonable. Thinking about it, I'd be more surprised if she couldn't see through it.

Vivain winks at me with a pleased smile, then turns her attention back to the two mo'o when the red caped one surges back to her feet with a roar that's decidedly inhuman. The smell of rage fills the air, and the red caped woman spins and glares at the fae standing in her way.

"Mele, forget the rest of the village. Find where the Ke'Kua'Okolani are hiding!" She hisses. Why the hell is she talking in English? This is the first time any of the mo'o have spoken anything but Old Hawaiian to each other.

"Ae Nalani, but how will we get them out?" The other mo'o's voice still shakes slightly, and her accent is thick, "Their refuge will be well warded."

"Simple." Red cape, Nalani I guess, I really don't want to know the names of the people I'm killing. Afterwards, sure, but when I'm trying to do it I don't want anything humanising them, making what I'm doing harder, "They will come out on their own, because we will have hostages." She snarls.

That's why she's talking in English. She wants Vivain to know what she has planned, wants her to worry about the other villagers, and what they'll do to the kids as hostages. She still thinks that the fae cares about the rest of us, in spite of what she's been saying and the mo'o is trying to take advantage of that.

Vivain really doesn't care about the rest of the village. The implied threat won't bother her at all. I care though. I care a great deal, but they don't know I'm here. So all they've done is give me a heads up.

My internal mana pressure has finally evened out. My body is still swamped with excess mana, but it isn't pressing on the inside of my skin any more. The tears in my skin are no longer glowing and have rapidly started to pull themselves shut. Some small part of me absently notices that the wounds hadn't bled at all.

Looking up from my self assessment, the last remaining mo'o aside from the leader has started off into the village. Right, I'll follow her out of sight of her boss and ambush her like I did the others. Then...

I glance back at where the red caped mo'o is stalking towards Vivain snarling. She said she was more than ten feet. That's over a story tall. Sure the female troll I killed was bigger, but trolls are dumb. Really really dumb, and don't have anything but brute strength and staying power to work with. Mo'o on the other hand are dragons. They're smart, very smart, and they have power beyond the physical. Sure they're small for dragons, but to a certain extent that hardly matters.

Dragons are dragons.

I have no idea what the Lady of the Lake can do with her power, but given the intensity of the mana radiating off of her, it has to be significant. Any fight between the two will be spectacular, both in terms of spectacle, and collateral damage. I'm sure that Vivain will protect the kids, she said she would after all, but fighting a dragon and shielding almost fifty panicking kids? That's a risk no matter how you look at it.

On the other hand if I can draw the mo'o off...

I'm not here...

With nothing more than a thought to reinforce my glamor, I clear the stream with a single bound and sprint for the mo'o heading back into the village. God damn it... someday I'll stop doing stupid things.

Some day.

Not today though.

The mo'o is moving at a walk, a fast walk, but still a walk, allowing me to catch up almost immediately. I pass her on the right side, my knife in my left hand, I drive the sharp iron blade into the mo'o's back with all the force of my body weight and sprint behind it. After doing this three times I have a pretty good idea where to aim to get the little dragon in the mo'o's chest.

Still best to be sure.

I ride the body to the ground and slam the knife into her back a few more times, just to be sure. Sitting back I examine the mo'o under me for a moment to see if I actually killed her. After a few seconds of no movement I let out a large breath. Another breath fortifies me for what's coming next, and I turn back towards the stream, the forge, and the last pissed off dragon.

Vivain is watching me with an expression I can only call pleased, but it's hard to pay attention to her when she's standing next to the red cloaked mo'o. That one is looking at me in shock. Shock that's quickly being replaced by fury.

"You." The mo'o hisses. Actually hisses, what looked like steam is leaking from between her clenched teeth, "You killed my friends."

I cock my head to one side, "You brought them to attack an enemy village, essentially to war, what did you think was going to happen?" I'm beginning to think that this is not an official attack given how this one is talking and how young they looked, how shaken the one I just killed had been. They aren't really warriors, more like some clever teenagers that snuck out to do something they thought of as really fun, and is actually really stupid, and had no idea what they were getting into. Of course these particular teenagers think that mass murder is fun, so my sympathy is limited. "I'd say you're at least as responsible for their deaths as I am. I may have stuck the knife in, but you're the one who dragged them in front of that knife. I mean, how many of them did you have to talk into coming here? How many would have been here without you? How many would be dead if you all just stayed at home?"

Normally taunting an already pissed off supernatural powerhouse, like a dragon, is a terrible idea. It probably still is, but I want her pissed off and focused on nothing but me. Pissed is stupid and if she's fighting me she won't be trying to get at the kids.

Granted I'm shooting blind for my taunts, but if she's anything even vaguely resembling a good leader, she feels responsible for the people who follow her. Even if I'm way off base for why they're here, she had to be feeling guilty. I hope at least.

Hope not in vain, something I said must have struck a sore spot. The noise that she producers is somewhere between a scream and a roar. Her chest dragon erupts through her rib cage in a spray of blood and bone fragments. This one grows in size almost explosively, going from cute little hand sized dragon to horse sized in the space of a breath.

Then the dragon wraps itself around the human body, and eats it in three large bites.

I'm stunned, I mean what the fuck? So glad I didn't take that shape shifting.

After eating her own body, her growth increases in speed again. I blink and the horse sized dragon is the size of a single story house. The look of the thing isn't anything like European dragons, but wasn't the classic Asian snake dragon. Though more like the latter than the former. Just not nearly as long.

A wedge shape head leads into a long sinuous body that's covered in sea green, and foam white scales. A fur crest runs from head to tail, which has a tuft of fur on the end. No antlers but bird-like feet dig into the ground with talons that are worryingly long and sharp. Overall she looks like something from a Miyazaki film.

The entire transformation, from beginning to end, takes maybe the space of a few heartbeats. Which is the only reason I see any of it, because as soon as I register what's happened I spin on the ball of my foot and run like hell.

There is no way I can fight this thing. I can't fight them in human form, the armored supernatural tank behind me is way out of my league. Of course I don't have to fight her, I just need to stall. I have to believe that Pua and Ku are on their way back here just as quickly as they possibly can. So all I need to do is keep in front of this thing until they get here.

Behind me comes the sound of huge lungs pulling in air quickly. I fling myself behind the nearest cover, a tree on the edge of the open space around the fish pond, failing to hold in the scream from jarring my still shattered arm. Deep breaths plus dragon only equals one thing. I'm proven right when a moment later the air is filled with high pressure steam.

The steam curls around the tree trunk, which is only barely large enough to provide any cover at all, and burns any exposed flesh it can find. Which means the outside of my arms and legs, my face and neck manage to escape with nothing worse than a mild first degree burn. Blisters are already forming on my arms and legs though.

I force myself to get ready to keep moving through the pain, which is fortunately temporary. First the taught too hot feeling on my neck and cheeks fades, then the blisters covering my limbs swell, and start shrinking again just as fast.

Troll healing for the win. So far definitely the best investment I've made.

A moment later the blast of steam stops and I take off running again. Behind me a roar indicates that the dragon is still pissed and focused on me. The stream runs through the middle of the village, so it only takes a few moments at my sprinting speed to get in among the buildings for cover. It'll no doubt cause some property damage, but better that than child damage.

Behind me I can hear the air rushing across scales, and the occasional foot fall that's both too light and too large. The angry dragon noises, and my bat enhanced hearing, let me form a pretty detailed image of what's behind me.

The sinuous dragon flows like water through the scattered trees, flying across the ground rather than running on it. The dragon's only nod to gravity is the occasional foot pushing against the ground. The sound behind me changes, and there's another large inhale, which prompts me to leap to one side behind a house. Moments later another rush of steam clips the house and I wince.

I don't know what a high pressure steam will do to the building, but it can't be good for the paint job. With more cover to hide behind I don't suffer any injuries, which is good. I'm not about to run out of mana, but I just don't have the experience to know what I have left will translate to practically. Especially not with my arm in its current state.

After what feels like an eternity, but can only have been a few moments, the roar of the fast moving steam stops.

I hold my breath, listening as hard as I can to try and determine which way the mo'o is moving so I can keep running. The human shape of one of these has kicked my ass with a casual back hand, the dragon is utterly beyond me.

With a sound like the world ending the dragon smashes through the house and sends me flying. Why I thought some wooden walls would slow down the house sized dragon, I have no idea in retrospect. I twist in mid air using everything that years of gymnastics have hammered into my muscle memory to avoid landing on my shattered arm. I succeed, but landing jarrs the injury anyway, squeezing a strangled shriek from between my clenched teeth.

For just a moment I white out from the pain, or I think it's a moment. I reengage with the world just as something slams down on top of me, pinning me to the ground and pressing down on my arm. The pressure on my mangled limb fills my vision with stars, when they clear I'm staring up at the face of a dragon.

It has a fore claw pressing me into the ground. Above me hoveres a narrow muzzle filled with serrated shark like teeth. Solid black eyes manage to project focused hate in a way I've never experienced before. It's long fur crest thrashes and snaps as though caught in rough seas.

Worst of all? It's too far away for me to punch in the eye.

It growls something in old Hawaiian, and after a moment or two of my uncomprehending stare it loses patience with me. I frantically scramble for anything that might be able to save me as it leans in close, still too far to punch, and begins to inhale deeply.

I inhale with it, an unconscious action caused by the expectation of painful death, readying myself to scream...

Scream...

As fast as I can using my crude control of my own mana, I channel as much as I can in what little time I have to my throat. I force as much as I can, for as long as I can, to the part of me that represents what I stole from the sirens. Then I don't have any more time, the mo'o above me having taken in as much air as it can. I expel all that mana through my voice box, and I scream.

Every pain of glass in range shatters, exploding into jagged shards. Then the stone follows it cracking, popping apart almost like it's been heated too far too fast. Then the wood that I can see comes apart into splinters. The scales on the dragon's leg holding me down crack, and the mo'o rears back letting out the air it had taken in, in a high pitched almost metallic shriek of pain.

The leg pinning me down goes up with the rest of the dragon and I gasped for air. With the weight off of me, and having emptied my lungs with the scream, my throat is sore like an overworked muscle. Rolling over I try to push myself back to my feet with my one working arm so I can keep running.

I manage to make my knees when the sound of thunder fills the air. Looking up I find Pua striding across the grass looking thunderous. She has almost a dozen gourds of various sizes hanging from her belt and wrists. What really makes me nervous though is the gourd strapped to her back, it's the size of a steamer trunk. In her hands she carries a gourd that she holds with its mouth pointing at the mo'o. From it pours lightning, filling the air with the smell of ozone. The python of actinic white lightning strikes the dragon right in the thick banded scales along it's chest. The bolt of lightning splits apart into tiny arcs of electricity that crawl across its body, causing its mussels to spasm and twitch visibly under it's scales.

Seeing how much lightning is in that small gourd makes me wonder idly what she has in the others.

Next to his sister Ku walks with purpose. As they approach, a faint white aura collects around Ku's body. When the lightning runs out Ku moves. He vanishes in a burst of red mist, the only sign of his passage a rapidly dissipating trail of the same.

Turning to follow the trail I find him standing at the mo'o's back leg, an open palm pressed against the dragon's scaled hind leg. The mo'o roars in pain again as the leg collapses dropping the dragon to the ground. For a moment it looks like the mo'o will catch itself, but it's still twitching muscles can't take the impact, dropping it face first into the ground.

The displaced air from its landing almost knocks me on my ass again, but Pua catches me, helping me to stay upright. When I manage to blink the tears the sudden rush of wind forced from me, Ku stands at the dragon's head, his hand pressed flat against the side of it's skull. Blood pours out of its nose and mouth, and leaks from its eyes like bloody tears. Though there isn't any visible damage to its scales that I can see.

Ku steps back, the faint white aura around him fading as he shakes out his hands, flexing them slowly. As soon as her brother is clear of the dragon corpse Pua eyeballs the body, uncorks another gourd, and pours a carefully measured amount of black and red flickering energy on to it. The energy dissolves the body like Hollywood acid until there's nothing of its body left, by which time the energy had been used up.

I stare at where the giant lizard that had been kicking my ass until a few moments ago has just vanished. After a few more moments I turn to the tiny kahuna, "What was that?" My voice is both flat and incredulous. I know what I think it was, but that would be ridiculous.

"Power of Destruction." She answers as though that's a perfectly normal thing to just keep in a gourd, and that's in fact exactly what I thought it was.

What the hell?

Literally!

I can't do much beyond stare at her for a few moments longer as I try to process that. While I reboot she starts to examine my crudely immobilized arm making very unhappy noises. After a few moments of this I can't restrain myself any longer, "What's in the big one?"

"You mean this?" She glances up at me and jerks a thumb over her shoulder at the huge gourd on her back. I just nod, and she winks at me, "A hurricane."

###

It takes three days for everything to be sorted out. Not for the village to get back to normal. That will take a while just from the damage done by the mo'o while I was looking for them, not to mention the house that had been barled through by the last dragon shaped mo'o. What my scream had done to the surroundings didn't bear mentioning. There isn't an intact piece of glass in the village, stone and wood suffered within a good few hundred feet. Things are running as normal as they can though.

Pua treated my arm while extracting my account of what had happened while they had been away. She'd wrapped it in a cast/bandage made of coconut fiber cloth and some large fresh green leaves that I don't recognize, then put it in a sling and gave me strict instructions. I'm not to touch or disturb the bandaging in any way, and use that arm as normally as I can, which isn't very. The thing will fall off when I'm done healing, and until then I'm mostly one armed.

I just shrug and go with it. I know from exposure that Kahuna healing magic is all about how to get warriors back to fighting as quickly as possible without weakening them. Never mind whatever else Pua's managed to find scattered about the world.

I also manage to extract some of what happened to Pua and Ku wherever they'd ended up. Apparently Ku had spent several hours trying to coral some half dozen belligerent shark mo'o in the water, while Pua had gone to find and have a talk with Kamohoaliʻi. Kamohoaliʻi as I then learn is the king of sharks, and a major sea deity of the Hawaiian pantheon. With no small amount of work they manage to get the mo'o and Kamohoaliʻi in the same place at the same time. After a lot of yelling from the shark king, they learn that the sharks had been put up to everything by some dragons.

Pua and Ku knowing a setup when they see one immediately came sprinting back to the village just as quickly as they could. Arriving just in time to save my ass from the rampaging dragon mo'o. What happened to the sharks is conspicuously not mentioned, but from what I've managed to dig up on him, as Pele's big brother Kamohoaliʻi isn't the nicest of people when you get him riled up. I rapidly come to the conclusion that I really don't want to know.

I also spend a lot of time talking to Pua about what I did. I've killed people before, even if you don't count the vampires, which some folks don't, the Sidhe definitely counts, as does the rapist. For some reason the mo'o bothers me more though. The nightmares of stabbing a human shaped mo'o to death and turning them over only to find I've stabbed myself to death makes sleeping hard. Pua does what she can, but this doesn't seem like something that can be fixed quickly. Time will be required, and I'll just have to live with poor sleep until my subconscious does it's work.

On the third day though, Pua and I are told that Vivain wants to speak to me in her forge. Pua isn't included in the invitation, but neither of us care much, and she comes along anyway. I haven't been in Vivain's forge before, so I'm somewhat eager to look around.

What I find isn't that exciting. A forge, unlit at the moment, tools of various sorts that I can't really identify beyond 'hammer' hang on the walls. Under the tools are bins with ingots of various metals waiting to be used. Next to the forge are several large tanks filled with several different fluids. I think one is water, and another is oil. What the other seven are, I have no idea. All of this in easy reach of the anvil that stands in the middle of the space. The anvil is raised up to about waist height on a log of some sort, and is currently being used as a table or desk by Vivain, who is seated behind it on a simple wooden stool.

As we enter I have the jarring experience of expecting the space to be dim. It isn't, and why I thought it would be is a mystery since one entire wall of the space is open. It still throws me enough that I don't notice the two additional stools standing on the opposite side of the anvil from her, until Vivain gestures for the both of us to sit.

It isn't exactly comfortable, but comfort isn't really all that essential. Honestly the simple surroundings and lack of typical host behavior make me more comfortable with the situation. My last encounter with a Sidhe may have left me more than slightly paranoid.

The three of us sit quietly, Pua studying Vivain, Vivain studying me, and I study the surroundings, for what feels like forever.

"I have decided that I will arm you." Vivain finally breaks the silence, "I have seen you in battle, and in peace, and know what you need. I have also determined my price, negotiation will determine exactly what you get for that price. Once negotiations are complete, you will swear to me thrice to pay my price, and you will receive what is agreed upon."

That's unusual, I'm pretty sure. Pua's raised eyebrow indicates that she agrees with me, "Negotiations will determine more than just that, but first what is your price?"

Vivain leans forward rising half out of her chair planting her hands on the anvil, and suddenly any pretense that the being in front of us is in any way human vanishes like smoke. Her hair turns a deep blue, and floats around her head as though she's underwater. Her skin tinted just slightly an attractive shade of green, even as her eyes are consumed by light like the moon reflecting off water. Her fingernails carve divots in her anvil as The Lady of the Lake leans forward and hisses, the inhuman qualities of her voice rendering her almost unintelligible.

"I want my Excalibur back!"