Monster Party Book 6: Only mortal trust of faerie dust….
Chapter Five: Near a tree by a river there's a hole in the ground...
Once Florence had completed her rituals of absolution and regrowth the group continued on their way. They kept their eyes peeled for any trace of Kian's sister or the White Lady she'd gone out seeking. After another two hours or so of trekking Alexander caught sight of their first real clue.
It was a slender coil of gray smoke rising up above even above the tallest of trees. There was no scent of any nearby wild blaze which suggested whoever had created that fire had done so on purpose and had it under control. Its sheer slimness suggested that it might even have come from a chimney of some sort!
After relaying this information to the group they picked up their pace, grateful to finally have a concrete destination (of a sort) in mind. As the group's spirits rose even the forest itself seemed to change for the better.
Somehow the Wytchwood began to feel somewhat less threatening and oppressive, the pervading sensation of being observed by some foe who was always just out of sight faded more and more with each step they took..
Then with a soft "ooph" Alexander was suddenly brought to a halt as he struck a great deal of nothing. The section of the forest he'd been walking through didn't look too greatly different than any other, and yet it felt as if there was suddenly a gigantic stone wall in front of him that he couldn't see.
"This is new..." Alexander admitted, taking a deep breath and standing very still, looking ahead intently.
As he did so and left his eye adjust to scene before him no longer constantly changing as he walked forward, slowly he was able to pick out details that he'd original missed.
He wasn't exactly sure what he was seeing, but he was sure he was seeing something. Whatever this strange barrier was, it shimmered faintly, like bits of moonlight reflected in unseen glass.
"Florence is this magic?" He asked as she took up position standing beside him.
She rested her wooden staff against the invisible barrier, said a few words faintly and then nodded in agreement.
"Yes. Powerfully magic. If that smoke comes from the home of the White Lady she must not be fond of uninvited visitors."
"Well if we can't go through it we'll just have to try climbing over it..." Mirri suggested.
She pressed her hands carefully against the barrier, searching for even the slightest depression, dip, crack, or other imperfection that she could exploit. She sought them in vain however because the barrier was completely and utterly smooth to the touch without the slightest imperfection.
In irritation the dark haired woman hopped up and down a few times pressing her hands against different sections of the barrier still unable to get a grip.
"Oh this is just… cheating! I could climb up a stained glass window, but this thing, nothing..." She admitted in irritation.
"Mirri circle around and try to find out how wide this barrier is." Alexander suggested.
As he did so he subtly rested his hands against each other, thumbs touching, palms out, and repeatedly flexed his fingers up and down about ten times. To young Kian it probably looked as if he was simply working a few kinks out of the digits in question but he knew Mirri would understand exactly what he wanted her to do.
"I'll get right on that Sir." She promised before retreating back into the forest.
"Florence any possibility of us going under it?" The blond haired man considered next, trying to formulate another possible way to get through the barrier.
Florence rested her staff against a nearby tree and walked to the very edge of the barrier.
There she concentrated and her body began to transform.
Her skin grew became brown and mottled like tree bark, her hands grew thicker, as did her feet which root like plunged into the ground. Kian could only watch in amazement as Florence Bastien transformed into a tree.
The entire process only lasted for about a minute and then she returned back to normal. Well 'normalish' her skin now had a strange greenish tint to it.
"The barrier extends several feet down. If you really wanted me to I could keep pressing, but whoever designed it is proving quite thorough so far." She admitted.
"Cal, Florence will need some of your ointment again when you get a chance. That issue aside... okay going under it is out of the question also.
So what is left besides waiting for Mirri?" Alexander muttered.
Just to make sure the most obvious approach had been attempted her drew Wolf Claw and dealt the invisible barrier a few firm blows, but sure enough even the mighty blade bounced off harmlessly.
Eventually Mirri did return, shaking her head sadly.
"There's no going 'around' this thing, it goes on for quite a ways 'left' from what I could find." She admitted in a sulk.
"Okay, I am officially out of smart ideas for this one.
Lets start from the very beginning and work from there. This time we're all going to search this area and see if we can find anything that stands out: disrupted sections of the forest, foot prints, animal scat, anything." He insisted.
The other five nodded and got to work.
XXX XXX XXX
"Kian can I see your boots?" James Firecat suddenly asked apropos of nothing in particular to the boy.
"Why?" He couldn't help but respond tilting his head to the side slightly in confusion.
In response the red clad man got down on his hands and knees and began to carefully brush aside some broken twigs revealing a series of markings in the dirt. It looked like several creatures had passed this way recently, the larger sets of tracks were all barefoot, but a smaller one was wearing boots.
"You think Arla came this way?" Kian gasped.
At a nod Kian eagerly pulled off his left boot and awkwardly balancing himself on one foot handed it over.
James compared the markings on the underside of Kian's boot to those he'd found on the ground. Assuming that Kian's parents had picked out a similar style of footwear for both their children, the prints matched pretty closely.
Handing the boot back he slowly stood up and began to follow them a little further.
"Okay, those barefoot tracks, they're a little too small for full grown humans, and…. and….." He suddenly paused and knelt down in the ground again sorting carefully through the dirt.
James pulled out a yellow snaggletooth holding it up proudly.
"Recognize this Alex?" He asked a touch hesitantly.
"Goblins." Alexander declared after only a few moments of consideration.
"She was being followed, chased by goblins. One of them must have run into the invisible barrier moving far too fast for its own good." He surmised.
"But her tracks keep going beyond the barrier. She got through…." James reflected, and though the news brought some relief to Kian's heart (that his sister hadn't been captured by the vicious monsters) it still didn't explain how Arla had pulled off what none of them had been capable of.
"Those prints… I know how she did it." Devi Skye declared as she inspected the markings in the dust.
Half a dozen confused expressions turned in her direction.
Devi walked up to the edge of the barrier, and pressed a hand against it to show it was still as strong as ever. Then she turned around, and walking backwards passed right through it.
"Look at how the direction of the heel changes. She was being chased, she found herself 'cornered' against the invisible barrier. So she turns around to at least try and make a brave stand with her back to the wall, except once she has her back to it, the wall wasn't there anymore." The brown haired woman explained.
James Firecat eagerly twisted himself around then walked backwards and passed through the barrier as easily as Devi had.
Seeing the process work more than once the others did it as well, and silly as it seemed they met no resistance.
"A mystical barrier that's only there when you're looking at it, even if you can barely see it when you do… fairytale fey magic for sure." Alexander reflected.
Not even Florence could disagree with him on that point.
XXX XXX XXX
The group pressed onward beyond the strange barrier and soon enough came upon their second obstacle.
Spread across their path was a wall of boiling vapor. As white as newly fallen snow, it rippled and churned with every breath of wind but seemed unwilling to drift away or dissipate.
Dark shapes appeared to move slyly within the miasma, but they might be nothing more than shadows and currents in the landlocked cloud. Alexander took a deep breath and approached the cloud slowly and cautiously.
He stuck his right hand into it up to the wrist, held it there for a few seconds and then slowly pulled it back.
"Well the gasses aren't caustic, that's one fewer thing to worry about. Don't think they're poisonous either. Mirri didn't you once say that there was no one in your village who could defeat you in a breatholding competition? Time to put your money where your mouth is and find out for us what's on the other side of this cloud." Alexander insisted.
The black haired woman spared a quick glance in Kian's direction shrugged and sighed.
"If you really insist Sir." Making a great show of taking a deep breath she vanished into the fog.
After about thirty seconds or so her voice called out to them.
"There's a lot more boring woods on the other side of this fog bank, that's what there." Her voice announced.
"Think the fog bank might have some sort of weird spell on it that copies of voices of those who go into it to lure in still more prey?" Cal worried, still clearly less than enthusiastic about pressing forward.
"Really? REALLY?" Mirri's voice cried out.
There were more sounds of shoes stomping on the ground and soon she emerged out of the cloud completely unchanged by her experience crossing through it.
"Now do you believe me when I say I didn't have any trouble alchemist?" She snorted derisively.
Before Cal even had time to answer she stormed off back through the cloud of strange mist for her third journey.
"I'll try next." Alexander insisted before stepping into the mist.
He was gone for about ten seconds, then emerged more less exactly where he first gone into the fog bank.
"Well, that could have gone better. I got a couple of steps, but then it was like my mind went blank, couldn't even tell left from right." He openly admitted.
Devi began to reach into her bag of holding and pulled out a coil of rope with a sly smile on her face.
"We'll tie a loop around your waist. Then we let it out a little at a time, if you feel it going slack then it means you've started retracing your steps." She suggested.
Alexander approved of this plan and soon one end of the rope was tied around his waist in a knot while the other was held in Devi's hands.
He headed into the fog bank for a second time and they began to slowly let out the rope. About twenty seconds later he emerged a few dozen feet to the left of where he had entered.
"That didn't work." He admitted redundantly.
"What happened to the rope?" Devi asked even as she tugged at her end.
Alexander gave a few quick pulls on his own and soon enough they both reached the exact same conclusion... Something had cut the rope in the most neat and perfect a slice any of them had ever seen.
"You know, some days it feels like magic is just screwing with you on purpose." Cal reflected at the implausibility of such of a perfectly designed bit of conjuration.
"Kali's Kneecaps do I have to do everything myself?" Mirri's voice sighed.
A short while later she emerged from the fog bank yet again and took Alexander by the wrist.
"Just don't let go, think you can manage that Sir?" She suggested.
At his nod she lead him forward. When she returned a while later she did not have Alexander with her, and instead guided Florence into the strange mist.
One by one (except for Kian and James, she did those two together with the former riding on the latter's shoulders) the black haired woman shepherded all of her companions through the mystical fog bank.
No matter how the strange substance tried to choke their lungs and confuse their senses, Mirri Cattwarrior's grip remained firm and so did her own sense of direction.
"Hope I don't have to do all the work for the next problem we run across also..." The dark haired woman grumbled to herself.
"You say that now, but give you a 'problem' that bleeds..." Alexander replied playfully before continuing on his way.
XXX XXX XXX
The group pressed ever onwards toward the smoke plume. The air became sweet with the scent of a blazing hearth and baking bread as if to reward them for their dedication.
Then came the sound of running water and they discovered a wide but shallow stream. The bubbling water flowed quickly and was almost musical in its movements. Even at its center the crystal clear brook couldn't have been more than a foot deep, though from shore to shore was a gap twenty five feet across.
Curiously it was possible for a keen eye to just barley catch sight of something metallic embedded in the thick soil beneath the sparkling water about eight or nine feet from the shore. It looked like a sword, but was impossible to tell for certain.
"What is this supposed to be? A surefire defense against people who can't stand to get their shoes wet?" Cal mocked the shallow brook.
Alexander abruptly grabbed the Lamordian by his shoulder and dragged him several paces away from the stream. That done, he bent down, scooped up a handful of dirt and tossed it into the water.
The water rippled slightly but otherwise did nothing at all unordinary.
"Florence, is the water magical?" Alexander asked still not ready to trust it.
It was but the work of a quick cantrip to for the druid to discover the answer.
"Yes." She confirmed at once.
"You heard her Cal, and this isn't just magic, this is fairytale fey magic.
You can either take it seriously, or you can spend the rest of your life, which could either be excruciatingly short, or agonizingly long, transformed right and proper. Here is the plan, we're going to dig up this perfectly ordinary dirt, and toss it into that brook until we've create a bridge we can walk across, or better yet a damn that stops the flow of water completley. I don't care how long it takes, we're not going to..." Alexander began.
He never quite got a chance to finish because as he was speaking Florence Bastien finished casting a spell.
Her body suddenly became an insubstantial outline that zoomed across the brook, flying easily above the water and needing only a scant few seconds to complete the trip.
"Or we could do that." Alexander admitted.
A few moments later Cal and Devi caught onto what had she'd done and transformed to gaseous versions of themselves and flew across the river as well.
"What are you doing?" Kian asked timitldy, not sure what to make of the transformations even after Florence transformed back into a being of flesh and blood.
"We're out thinking the magic water. That's how the brave knight always defeats the evil fey in stories isn't it? They out think them." Alexander insisted.
"Am I I supposed to do it also? I'm not sure I want to..." Kian admitted, worried he wouldn't be able to figure how to undo the magic, assuming he could trigger it in the first place.
His worries weren't helped when James Firecat promptly transform and flew across the river.
"No I've got something else in mind for you. It be easier than magically transforming, though it might be best if you close your eyes." Alexander warned him as he walked to the edge of the brook holding Kian's hand.
"What are you going to do?" Kian couldn't help but ask.
"Just close your eyes and count to fifty. Remember, we've driven off the dancing men, their beasts, and the redcaps also. I'm trying to help you." Alexander insisted, getting down on his knees so that his left eye could look directly into the young boy's.
Kian took in a deep breath and then closed his eyes, even going so far as to cover them with his hands.
"One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty..."
At the count of "twenty" Kian felt himself being pulled from the ground.
He wasn't sure what by, it didn't feel like Alexander's (or anyone else's) gloved hands. It was too large, and there was a sense of countless miniscule hairs brushing up his body.
"Twenty one, twenty two, twenty three, twenty four, twenty five, twenty six, twenty seven, twenty eight, twenty nine, thirty..." The young Tepestani continued to count.
The next thing he knew he was sailing through the air at a tremendous speed.
"Thirty one..." He struggled to do any more counting after that, the force of the wind sailing past him was quite distracting and mangled whatever words he did manage to get out.
All Kian could think about that when he stopped moving, he wasn't going to like it. Unless he landed in the brook itself, but he doubted its shallow waters would do him any good….
Then before he knew it, he didn't stop, but he did slow down. He felt countless twisting things entwining themselves around every part of his body all at once. They tugged and pulled at him, but in doing so helped distribute the shock of him slowing down all across his body.
The strange embrace bled off his momentum, and drew him slowly, safely to the ground.
"You can open your eyes again." Florence Bastien promised him.
Kian hesitantly did and to his relief and amazement found that indeed he was now on the other end of the brook, and so was Mirri Catwarrior!
"I made it!" He cheered happily to Alexander who was still on the far side.
"Told you I was trying to help! Now, just give me a moment..." The blond haired man promised.
His body became an insubstantial reflection of itself and he zoomed over the water so quickly the brook didn't even have time to ripple at his passing before he was over solid land again.
He then reformed himself and took a moment to pat down his outfit smiling to himself proudly.
"The invisible wall, that strange cloud, and now this brook. That makes three. I don't know anywhere near as much about magic as you do Florence but I know fairytales. Three is a powerful number in fairytales." He insisted.
Then as if realizing exactly what he was saying took on a much more stern tone.
"Not that we're going to just blindly rush ahead and hope that there isn't a fourth sort of magical barrier awaiting us." He warned the others.
"Meanies! What are you doing with my brother? You better let him go or the White Lady will make you sorry!" A young female voice suddenly shouted at them.
In the shade of a nearby tree stood a young girl with orangish red hair and green eyes pointing an accusing finger at the group.
"Arla!" Cried out Kian who at once recognized his sister.
End Chapter.
AN: I am a horrible, horrible, horrible, HORRIBLE person. Not only am I using a line from a song I've used before, but I'm using the EXACT SAME LINE! Okay you know what, since the adventure books that books five sand six are based on are linked together, I'll give myself a pass for this link over here.
Sorry it's just that that line from "The Riddle" by Nik Kershaw fits too perfectly in this situation since the three challenges our groups face are set up to be more about lateral thinking and riddles than normal magical barriers than you can just solve by raw power, the last one of which being a river/stream (and really REALLY nasty stuff happens to you if you do anything that leads to getting your feet wet) meant that it was just too perfect a chance to miss up.
So it's not me running out of ideas for song lyrics, I'm just homaging myself/creating links between this story and its predecessor… you guys believe that right?
The first barrier is directly said to be immune to spiderclimb thus why Mirri can't climb it.
The second however is directly tied to people breathing, so she passes through it effortlessly. Though it does have exactly the effect shown in this story if anyone tries to get "smart" and use a rope line to get through it.
As for the brook…. If you get at all wet in its waters you transform into a water elemental enslaved for the purpose of transforming anyone else who tries to cross the brook. Yeah. There are also a bunch of water elementals waiting to manifest and attack if you try and do anything that seriously disturbs the water like using stilts or a bridge that touches the water. Double yeah. Fairytale Fey magic, it doesn't matter how innocent it might look, take it seriously!
Florence is using her Wind Walk (last seen back in Book 3) which is a great Druid Spell for traveling quickly if you want a little more flexibility in where you go than transport via plants. Also pay attention and draw your own conclusions about how Mirri got across the stream, but it was probably for the best that Kian didn't see it.