You inquire of the catgirl if this Fae lord has the Great Fairy's permission to gather sungold from her land, or to leave the guardian there to watch over it the rest of the rest.
She shakes her head. "Don't know. Stay away."
Ah. Well, that's disappointing, but it would be the sensible course of action given the difference in power between her and the greater Fae, especially if she really is as young as she appears to be.
"ARE YOU AWARE OF ANYTHING ELSE IN THE AREA I MAY HAVE TO FIGHT TO FINISH MY TASK?" you inquire.
"Mmmm..." The catgirl tilts her head to one side, thinking. "Goddess copper, probably safe. Never heard of people fighting over. Moonsilver, attracts spirits at full moon and new."
"WHAT SORT OF SPIRITS?"
"Changes. Full moon, singers, dancers; friendly, but always want you to join the party. Fun, but tiring; also, wake up in weird places." She scowls briefly, cheeks pinked as if recalling something embarrassing, but then her expression turns grimly serious. "New moon, dangerous. Dark spirits, hunters; don't kill right away, but test. Pass, and keep passing, and stay alive. Fail once..."
And you're a couple of days into the waning moon. Definitely something to make a note of for Navi.
You're about to advise the girl to go back into hiding when a lupine howl echoes through the trees.
"Also, Ulfr," the catgirl adds with a calm nod.
"...that sounds like a VERY big wolf, Alex," Briar says after a moment.
"HOW BIG ARE YOU THINKING?"
"I'm thinking less Wolfos, more Raging Boar."
!
Suddenly, a bright-eyed catgirl is in your face - and she's actually tall enough to look you in the eye, though she's also fairly skinny in the bargain. Now that she's clear of the bushes, you can see that she's wearing light leather forester's gear over a simple white blouse, pale green skirt, and darker leggings. There's no obvious indication that she has fur anywhere else except the sides of her head, the backs of her hands, and the tail that's waving eagerly behind her, and if it is present, it must be fairly fine, because otherwise her choice of clothing would get uncomfortably warm.
She's also got a spear in one hand, an unstrung bow tucked into a quiver on her back, and a couple of knives on her belt. You can't be sure what the arrowheads or the sheathed blades are made of, but the business end of the spear, at least, seems to be made from metal.
"Boar!?" she asks eagerly. "Where? How big?"
The abrupt growl of her stomach makes her interest clear.
In your head, the Boar grunts, unimpressed.
"It's not actually-" you begin, leaning from the abrupt and unexpected presence in your personal space. Then you quickly clear your throat. "I MEAN, IT'S NOT HERE. MY SPIRIT GUIDE TAKES THE FORM OF A REALLY BIG BOAR."
She slumps, ears drooping. "Awww... no boar?"
Erk.
While you are seriously considering giving your new... friend?... some food as a way of repaying her for the information she's provided you, you have to admit that you're more concerned about the major predator running around this next of the woods.
"PARDON ME FOR SAYING IT, BUT THERE'S A BIG, POSSIBLY BAD WOLF OUT THERE; IS THIS REALLY THE TIME TO BE TALKING ABOUT FOOD?"
The catgirl blinks, and then smugs at you, in the way that only cats can.
"Ulfr, friend," she tells you.
Of course it is.
"...DOES HE LIKE BOAR BONES? BECAUSE I HAVE A CELLAR FULL OF PRESERVED BOAR PRODUCTS FROM A BIG HUNT A COUPLE OF MONTHS AGO."
"Products?"
"BONES, MEAT, HIDES; THAT SORT OF THING."
The sparkle in her eyes tells you you've got her attention. "How much?"
Ah-ha-ha. You're not going to give away that much that quickly, miss.
"ENOUGH," you reply evasively. "THE ONLY PROBLEM IS, I'M NOT SET UP TO TRAVEL THERE FROM HERE UNDER MY OWN POWER, OR TO SUMMON THE STUFF."
And you're reluctant to try; between the planar borders in the way, Bali Ha'i's wards and spiritually rich environment, and the amount of solid, spiritually charged stone that lies between the door to the Stone Cellar and the contents, there's plenty of room for things to go wrong. Or just weird. It'd be a terrible waste of excellent pork.
The Gate Spell might work, although there'd be some finagling necessary. You don't have a planar focus for Faerie yet, so you'd have to leave the portal open; you know from your lessons with Batreaux that this would require you to concentrate on the spell the entire time, meaning you couldn't use other spells yourself, and hence wouldn't be able to get into the Stone Cellar with its Stone Shaped entryway. But sending Shadow Alex through to fetch the stuff while you "hold the door" would be doable, assuming you could get the Gate open in the first place.
If you're going that far, you could also summon Batreaux, both for an impromptu "lesson" in Gate-casting, and to make a food run himself if your efforts fail.
Then again, either of those approaches would eat up a certain amount of either time or mana, if not both, and you've really only just started this fetch quest. It might be wiser to save your energy for now, wait until Navi picks you up at the end of this phase of your quest, visit Bali Ha'i to get the meat, and then entrust it to the Postman.
While you are tempted to have another go at bending the fabric of reality to your will, you have to admit that this isn't really the time or place to be making with mad magical science.
Even leaving your minor concerns about time and/or mana costs aside, holding open a Gate between Earth and Faerie is the sort of thing that could have Consequences - and the other end of the portal would be on Bali Ha'i.
Seeing as how you'd rather not have Kahine annoyed with you, you let that idea go, and instead offer to have the Postman make a delivery later on.
The catgirl frowns, both wary and puzzled. "Postman?"
...right, a postal service probably isn't a thing in Faerie. If you don't have the power to send a message yourself or to make someone else do it for you, you're basically out of luck.
How to frame this so that she understands...?
"A ONCE-MORTAL MESSENGER, NOW ASCENDED TO THE SERVICE OF OUR MUTUAL GODDESSES," you explain.
"Ah."
Not only does your description clear up her confusion, it also causes the suspicious cast to fade from her features-
"Meet?"
-although she's still wary enough to want reassurance that you're not going to run out and leave her hungry.
Fortunately, you have no trouble with summoning the Postman; it will actually help, since meeting the catgirl once - even via summoned echo - will make it much easier for him to find her again later.
A few minutes of chanting later-
"I SUMMON YOU: POSTMAN!"
*POOF*
"Ooooh," the catgirl intones in wonder, as she politely claps.
"Uh, thank you?" the Postman replies, tipping his cap with a look of confused appreciation.
-and you get on with sorting out the particulars.
"SO, WHAT'S ULFR LIKE?"
You ask the question during the negotiations.
"Who's Ulfr?" the Postman asks. "And why are you talking like that?"
The catgirl gestures for a moment of your patience before facing away from the three of you, cupping her hands together in front of her mouth, and letting out a fair approximation of a lupine howl.
It's promptly answered by the wolf you heard earlier.
The Postman sighs. "Let me rephrase the question: WHAT is Ulfr?"
"I think we'll find out in a minute," Briar tells him.
"...maybe I won't still be here?" the Postman muses.
The fairy's guess is good; a little over a minute later, a massive midnight-black wolf emerges from the trees behind the catgirl. It's a monstrous specimen of the sort that could only be found in Faerie's primordial environs, easily six feet tall at the shoulder and twice as long, and that not counting the head or tail. Its coat isn't entirely dark, with the paws, muzzle, belly, and the tips of the ears and tail all colored a pure, pale white that almost seems to glow in the shadows of the trees, while its golden eyes glint menacingly.
"Nope, still here," the Postman groans. "Also, EEEE-!"
Ulfr's ears shift his way, followed by a glance from those fearsome eyes.
"-eeee-!"
The catgirl smugs at your summoned compatriot's reaction, and reaches up to scratch her canine companion's conveniently placed chin.
"...BETTER MAKE THAT AN EXTRA-LARGE PORTION OF MEAT."
Ulfr's ears straighten up in interest at the word "meat."
"Please," the catgirl says.
Eyeing the wolf's white-furred jaw and the teeth therein, you muse, "NO SMALL BONES, EITHER?"
Once again, Ulfr shows that he recognizes a word in Sylvan, tail wagging at the word "bones."
"Big bones, best," the catgirl agrees.
Ulfr barks in what you presume to be either agreement, encouragement, or a demand for bones.
His feline companion frowns, taps him on the nose, and says, "Later," in a chiding tone.
Ulfr huffs once and looks away, but he settles.
"You have your partner well-trained," Briar compliments the girl.
Really, Briar? Did you HAVE to phrase it exactly THAT way?
"Ufufufu." The catgirl puffs herself up proudly. "Impressed?"
You consider her and the wolf for a moment, then shrug. "MY BOAR IS BIGGER."
"Oh no," the Postman and the fairy groan.
The catgirl regards you for a moment, before giving a dismissive shrug of her own. "Meh."
"YOU DON'T BELIEVE ME?"
"I can guess where this is going," the messenger sighs.
"Yeah, you might want to vamoose," Briar agrees.
"Trying to... come on magic, run out! Run out!"
"Ulfr, here," the catgirl points out. "Boar, not. Ulfr best."
"YOUR FUZZY LOGIC HOLDS NO SWAY WHEN A SORCERER IS INVOLVED. I COULD SUMMON THE BOAR IN AN INSTANT, IF I SO WISHED!"
"I'm just going to go hide behind those rocks over there," Briar says, before she flies off.
"Wait for me!" the Postman calls as he moves to follow.
Ignoring those two, the catgirl leans forward, stares you dead in the eye, and delivers the ultimate intellectual challenge: "Oh yeah?"
"YEAH!"
"Yeah?"
"YEAH!"
"Prove it."
"ALRIGHT, THEN; I WILL!"
Gathering your magic, you weave a Spell of Summoning Magic potent enough to accommodate the might and majesty of the Raging Boar as he travels from the dream-plane to the Realm of the Fae. Given the Boar's nature as a spiritual entity rather than a corporeal one, you know that you could summon greater and lesser incarnations of him, depending on how much magic you put into it.
A fifth-circle spell would be sufficient to bring forth a material incarnation of the Raging Boar that was in the same weight class as Ulfr. Some people would say that ought to be plenty to win your little argument.
Such people do not understand the Way of the Boar.
You won't be satisfied by narrowly outweighing the competition; you must overwhelm them entirely, making it clear that there is no comparison between the white-pawed black wolf and the furious majesty of the Raging Boar.
There is only one possible option to ensure that: the Raging Boar must be made manifest in his full glory.
You raise your hands above your head, glyphs of power whirling around them. "WITNESS, AS I UNLEASH THE HAM! I SUMMON YOU: RAGING BOOOOAAAARRRR!"
Your call is answered by a deafening bellow - and the splintering of at least one unfortunate tree - as a mountainous mass of muscle materializes above and around you, forelegs planted astride your position like gnarled trees or pillars of living stone. There is space enough between the top of your head and the Boar's fat, powerful belly that you think you might be able to walk underneath the porcine colossus in your adult form without hitting your head; that distance, however, does nothing to ameliorate the sheer overpowering SMELL of the beast, a melange that is part animal musk, part bloody battlefield, and part walking natural disaster.
Struggling not to spoil the dramatic introduction by choking on the reek, you take in the sight of the catgirl's slack-jawed expression as she stares up, and up, and UP at the enormity of your incarnated totem. Behind her, Ulfr the wolf hunkers down with a whine, looking like he'd prefer to snatch his friend-slash-master and make a run for it.
"HIS HIDE IS TENFOLD LEATHER, HIS TUSKS ARE LIKE BIGGORON'S SWORD, HIS BRISTLES, SPEARS, THE SHOCK OF HIS BELLOW, A THUNDERBOLT, HIS CHARGE, AN EARTHQUAKE, AND HIS WRATH, DEATH!"
Above your head, there is a tectonic rumble. You think it sounds vaguely pleased.
"WHAT SAY YOU NOW?"
"...b-big pig," the catgirl stammers.
"THE BIGGEST," you concur.
The Boar grunts his own agreement.
Then, from behind the rocks where Briar and the Postman took shelter, your partner calls out: "Congratulations, Alex; you just made the Postman faint."
You blink. "HE DIDN'T HURT HIMSELF, DID HE?" You know it's just a summoned echo, but still.
"No, he was kneeling behind the rocks, and kind of... lurched backwards and to one side with his eyes rolled back in his head. I'm more worried about what he was babbling before he blacked out, though."
"OH?"
"Something about 'Oh Goddesses, oh Goddesses, the Dark Beast, I don't want to die-!'"
...
Um.
Now that you think of it, did you ever get around to telling the Postman about your status as the reincarnation of the Demon King of Evil? Has he not been filled in by the Goddesses? Or was this just his shock at seeing the Boar in person, and experiencing its power as more than an intellectual data-point?
Regardless, you've got a couple of minutes before the Spell of Summoning that manifested the Raging Boar lapses. Is there something in particular you'd like to ask the Boar to do while he's here, besides just loom menacingly, effortlessly win arguments, and crush unfortunate plants?
"I'M GOING TO OWE HIM EXTRA FOR THIS JOB, AREN'T I?"
"Yeah, probably," Briar agrees. "But look on the bright side."
"...THERE'S A BRIGHT SIDE?"
"Between the shock of the experience and the normal division between summoned memory and true memory, there's a chance that the real Postman won't clearly remember what just happened."
"WOULDN'T THAT JUST MEAN HE MIGHT FORGET ABOUT THE ENTIRE SUMMONING?"
"No, I think meeting the cat was separate enough from seeing the Boar that he'd be able to remember her."
Here's hoping, you guess, as you mentally dismiss the Spell of Summoning that was holding the Postman's projected presence upon this plane.
Although you are tempted to try and leverage the presence of the Raging Boar in your inevitable dealing with the guardian of the local sungold deposit, it's a notion you can't really bring into play at the moment. The sungold is on the order of fourteen miles from your current position, and the spell you used to summon this incarnation of your totem will only last a couple of minutes.
Even with his stride being as long as it is, the Boar couldn't cross fourteen miles in under two minutes on the most favorable terrain - and this forest definitely isn't that, as the creaking and cracking of branches and at least one entire tree displaced by the Boar's emergence made clear.
Stepping out from under the shadow of the beast, you walk to a point where the Boar can clearly see you.
"HEY, BIG GUY."
The Raging Boar grunts.
"I HAVE WORK TO BE GETTING ON WITH, SO I THOUGHT I'D LET YOU KNOW: THE SPELL I USED TO CALL YOU WILL LAST ANOTHER MINUTE OR TWO. YOU'RE FREE TO DO WHAT YOU WILL UNTIL THEN."
The bristly beast turns thoughtful at these words, bleary red eyes looking about. Then he opens his tusked maw, leans forward, and-
*CRACK*
*CRUNCH*
-takes a bite out of the branches of another unfortunately placed tree.
"We should probably get out of his way before he starts digging for roots and grubs," Briar advises you, having rejoined you upon the Postman's departure.
"DON'T WANT TO GET BURIED ALIVE, HUH?"
"That, and I'm a little worried he might actually find grubs big enough to satisfy him." At your look, she reminds you, "It IS Faerie, after all."
...that's true. "Giant bugs" aren't the first thing that comes to mind about this plane, unless one has a particularly uncharitable point of view regarding fairies, but Faerie does have something of a reputation for housing animals of primordial proportions - just look at Ulfr - so why WOULDN'T there be giant insects lurking here as well?
Speaking of Ulfr, he and the catgirl began backing out of the Boar's range in a hurry when he made his intentions for this visit clear. If there's anything else you mean to say to the catgirl, this is probably your last chance.
You spare the catgirl a wave of farewell when she glances in your direction, and then put her out of your mind as you make for the next batch of Goddess copper, which lies just over the next hill.
Behind you, the Raging Boar continues to sample the culinary delicacies of Faerie, providing a certain reassurance as you begin jotting down a description of the site of the second ore deposit - at least for the minute and change that the sounds of the great beast's presence persist. After your magic has run its course and the Boar falls silent, there is a long pause, as if the forest and its creatures are waiting to see what happens next.
When nothing out of the ordinary manifests, the regular background noise of the forest gradually comes back.
You finish making notes, take on a short-lived Earth Elemental Body, and then get out your sample container. A minor dispel on the current set of notes, and into the box they go, with one of the local rocks.
Gained Elemental Sense F (Plus) (Plus)
Gained Ore Sample
This process repeats itself three more times over the next hour, adding to your sample selection for Goddess copper without issue. You haven't seen or sensed the catgirl, her giant wolf, or any other large animals since then, only the occasional bird, an average selection of normal-sized bugs, and one overgrown colony of spiders spanning the branches of half a dozen trees. While the only web-spinners you could see were normal-sized, said webs were thick enough to form their own canopy over the area and stretched from crown to earth besides, blocking what light there was and leaving the trees in question more than a little bare of greenery.
After your encounter with the Gohma nest, your instincts are telling you that there has to be at least one arachnid of unusual size hidden somewhere in that maze of musty silk, though given that the catgirl didn't list "giant spiders" as a local threat, what's in there is either relatively small, lacking in numbers, and/or shy enough to only be dangerous to the fool that went blundering straight into its web.
Because giant spiders. Yeesh.
With a total of five samples of ore gathered, you now had a choice to make. You could keep going a few miles to the northwest, visiting the remaining deposits of Goddess copper in this part of the Great Fairy's domain, or you could venture slightly east and a couple of miles north, following a riverbank that seems to lead to the only source of moonsilver in this area.
You're about to turn around and leave the colony of giant Fae spiders in peace when you abruptly recall how, months earlier, you thought to mystically analyze and copy a sample of Gohma Webbing, to serve as a template for future efforts at conjuring silk. It came in handy when you created your Formal Spider-Silk Suits, so why not grab another such template for comparative purposes?
If nothing else, spider-silk imbued with Fae energy will give you a different perspective to work from, and likewise be more appealing to certain prospective customers, than similar material produced by demonically descended Hyrulean arachnids.
You walk over to the nearest of the cobweb-covered trees, assessing the silky substance that clings to it. Most of the webbing has been hanging in place long enough for its original signature to be muddied with the ambient energies of this part of the forest. The bodies of the insects and odd bird caught in the trap don't help in that regard, tainting much of the net with necromantic decay.
After several minutes of inspecting the perimeter, however, you find a comparatively fresh patch of web, devoid of captured prey. The little spiders scurry out of the way as your hand approaches to touch the threads, conveying the energy of your analytical spell.
Gained Faerie Spider Webbing Template
As you pull your hand back from the tree, dragging a sticky tangle of threads with them, you become aware that you are being watched by a more significant presence than the ordinary arachnids scattered about the trees. Glancing up, you restrain a start as you spy a spider about the size of a housecat perched atop a branch on the far side of the nigh-leafless tree you just laid hand on. Aside from its mass - which is a pale shadow of any but the Gohma hatchlings you encountered in the Memorian Outpost - the most interesting thing about this one is the vivid green color of its exoskeleton, and the gossamer wings that rise from the back of the thorax and fold over its abdomen like a cape.
So it's not just "giant" Faerie spiders, but giant FLYING Faerie spiders.
You decide to go after the moonsilver next, and shift course to follow the river, a channel some ten feet across and perhaps two feet deep in places, though it seems to average closer to half that.
At first, you go by foot, making your way along the south bank, but before long the whole area becomes soggy enough that you decide to fall back on your Spell of Flight to spare yourself some aggravation, and your shoes the muck.
A mile on, the flow you were following joins up with two more of similar size - or rather, since you were going against the current the entire time, this is where the river splits. Some four times wider than before, the river also becomes significantly deeper, and you can see shadows moving around under the surface. They're not big enough to be a problem for you - not unless flying piranhas are a thing in Faerie, which you're not going to bet against - but given Briar's presence, you fly a little higher just to be sure.
Before long, you reach the site of the moonsilver, where you discover bad news, good news, and suspicious news.
The bad news is that the moonsilver deposit is right out in the middle of the river, where the water is deeper than you are tall and the current strongest.
The good news is that the water is clear enough for you to see almost right to the bottom of the river, where a large clump of worn stone glints in places.
And the suspicious news is the presence of a group of a dozen or so fish with silver-blue scales circling the site, each of them bigger than your arm and radiating enough Elemental Water and Spirit for it to register clearly through the interference of the river.
"Catgirl didn't mention the big fish," Briar notes, as the two of you peer into the river from a safe altitude.
"I SUSPECT SHE CONSIDERS THEM 'LUNCH' RATHER THAN 'DANGEROUS,'" you note.
"Mm. So, on the basic assumption that the magic fish are guarding the site and will do something if you try to take any of the moonsilver..."
You meet the green spider's unblinking eight-eyed gaze for a moment, and then bow politely.
"YOU HAVE A VERY NICE WEB," you state in Sylvan.
"If you thought so," the spider chitters back in annoyance, "then why did you wreck part of it?"
...okay.
So, it's not just a giant flying Faerie spider, it's an intelligent, TALKING giant flying Faerie spider.
"This may come as a surprise to one of you soft-shells," the spider continues, forelegs waving as it scolds you in a strange, hissing accent, "but making a web isn't easy, or cheap. Every strand represents droplets of food to produce and minutes of effort to spin, and when one of you too-big-to-eat types goes blundering through, that's food and effort wasted."
"HEY, NOW," you object. "I DIDN'T BLUNDER THROUGH."
"No, you just poked at it because you thought it was pretty," the spider grumbles. "Really, if you wanted to show your artistic appreciation, why not throw me a sprite or something?"
"Oi," Briar protests. "Leave me out of your dinner plans, Eight-Eyes, unless you want that fancy web to go up in flames."
The spider hisses. "You wouldn't!"
"I might not, but my partner would!"
The spider shifts to glance warily at you.
"...what's your plan?"
A couple of ideas come to mind for dealing with the obstacle presented by the water.
The first is to use the Spell of the Elemental Body to take on the form of an Earth Elemental again, and pass through the riverbed to retrieve some of the moonsilver that way. It's a straightforward plan, with only the issue that you might walk directly into and thereby contaminate the buried ore to speak against it.
The other idea that presents itself is to cast the Spell to Control Water and lower the level of the river immediately around that submerged rock, which appears to mark the site of the moonsilver. It's just as straightforward a plan, and given the area you mean to "drain" would only need to be emptied for a few seconds, you wouldn't be spending any more mana on it than you would to assume an elemental form.
While you mentally debate which approach to use, you get out your pencil and paper and start making notes for this site, mentioning both the underwater position of the moonsilver and the presence of the suspicious fish.
In the end, it's the presence of your unseen audience and the novelty of using Water Elementalism that makes you decide to go with the second method. Flying to one shore, you touch down and gather your magic.
"BEHOLD, AS WITH A SNORT FROM HIS NOSTRILS, THE MIGHTY BOAR PARTS THE FLOWING RIVER!"
On cue, the running water opens up before you, a muddy pathway some ten feet across and twenty-odd feet long that leads from your position on the shore to the now-exposed boulder. If any of the silver-blue fish were caught in the sinking of the water, they managed to swim clear; you can see them now, moving back and forth along the "walls" of your new-made path. Briar eyes them distrustfully, but the gap between the lake's two new vertical surfaces is wide enough that you doubt even these large fish could leap across it.
And indeed, when you drift forward on the wings of your Spell of Flight to retrieve a sample of moonsilver, the fish don't try to bite or ram you.
*ZAP!*
Instead, they start sticking their heads just far enough out of the walls to spit jets of high-pressure water at you.
*ZAP!*
"Someone's been taking notes from the River Zora!" Briar declares, as she falls back to the safety of the shore.
For your part, you-
"BRIAR, STOP THREATENING STRANGERS WITH ME."
"SPIDER, STOP THREATENING TO EAT MY PARTNER."
Briar grumbles, and the spider hisses softly, almost like a sigh. However, neither says anything.
Nodding, you turn to the spider and say, "AS FOR THE DAMAGE TO YOUR WEB. THE REASON I TOUCHED IT WAS SO THAT I COULD DO THIS!"
You begin casting the Spell of Creation.
About half a minute on, the spider turns to Briar and says, "For the record, I'm pretty sure me and mine didn't bite him - and if we had, I've never seen this kind of reaction."
"No, I recognize the spell he's casting," Briar replies. "It just takes a while to finish."
"Oh, magic." The spider pauses. "Should I be worried?"
"Probably not?"
"You don't sound sure."
"I mean, I'm pretty sure that I know what he has in mind, but partner or no, I'd be silly to think I understood everything going on inside that head."
You finish the spell, reach out towards the slightly damaged portion of the web, and replace the broken strands of webbing with freshly conjured material.
Gained Magesmithing C (Plus) (Plus)
Gained Tailoring D (Plus) (Plus)
Gained Webweaving F
The spider chitters in surprise and scurries down the side of the tree to investigate your work, prodding at the new-made threads with its forelegs.
"I don't know whether I'm more surprised that a soft-shell could spin web, or that the work isn't completely terrible," the arachnid delivers its verdict a moment later.
"I HAVE SOME PRACTICE AT WEAVING SILK INTO CLOTHING," you admit.
"...oh, that's right," the spider muses. "You soft-shells do that sort of thing, don't you?"
"WE DO."
You'd considered conjuring some food for the spider as well, but the Spell to Create Food and Water is calibrated for humanoids and pack animals, both in terms of volume and composition, and you're not sure if the food so conjured would be of any use to a spider. That's not even mentioning how the smallest quantity you could summon up would be a human-sized meal for one, and hence likely to damage the web again.
Seeing as how the spider appears pacified by your patch job, you decide to save your energy and forego further spellcasting, instead making your goodbyes and continuing on with your quest.
While it appears that what the fish are squirting back and forth is only water, Briar's comparison to the aggressively territorial River Zora of modern Hyrule sticks in your mind. Those angry fish-folk can expel water with enough force to rival a stone spat by an Octorok, which is the sort of attack that merits use of a shield or just not getting hit to begin with.
With that in mind, you cast the Spell to Resist Water before diving into the trench.
*ZAP!*
*ZAP!*
*ZAP!*
You opened up enough space that, with the three-dimensional maneuvering capability your Spell of Flight affords, you're able to avoid the barrage while crossing the river. There are only about a dozen fish, after all, and once they've taken their shot at you, they have to fall back, reload, and reposition themselves before they can try for a second hit. Although they were clever enough not to put all their "firepower" in the same location, covering both sides of your temporary passage with their limited numbers means that there's a long stretch that has nothing to threaten you.
When you reach the stone, however, things get a bit more complicated. The fish begin emerging from the walls of water in staggered sequence, pairs and trios focusing their attacks over the space occupied by the boulder - where you have to go to collect the moonsilver. And while you do your best to dodge-
*ZAP!*
*ZAP!*
*ZAPLOOSH!*
-the lack of room to maneuver is telling.
Fortunately, your protection spell turns what might have been a bruising impact into merely a damp patch on your shirt. It's joined by a couple more when you reach down to snatch one of the loose bits of stone that contains the same Water/Spirit/Metal aura as the Chunk of moonsilver you retrieved from your pocket.
Gained Ore Sample
With your quota for this location met, you will your Spell of Flight to carry you straight up and out of the river.
All twelve members of your personal firing squad surface and take one last massed shot at you-
*ZAP!*
*ZAP!*
*ZAP!*
*ZAPLOOSH!*
-but then you're out of their firing range, with only small patches of wet clothing to show for their efforts.
Fish eyes stare up at you, dark and dead, before the small school sinks back under the surface.
...a surface, you belatedly notice, that is bubbling and frothing white, where before it was crystal clear.
You hover over the "boiling" portion of the river, moving in a circle and holding yourself ready to dodge as you wait to see what the Faerie fish have in store.
One second becomes two, becomes three, and the frothing foam builds rapidly with each passing moment, until-
*KA-SPLASH!*
Holy Goddesses-!
-with an explosion of spray, a huge fish with silver-blue scales and a snapping mouth big enough to bite you in half leaps from the river!
You evade on reflex-
*CHOMP!*
-and the fish's fang-filled maw snaps shut on empty air, just inches from your face!
Gained Flight (Magical) C
For a moment, the two of you hang there, one huge, dead eye glaring balefully at your own wide-with-shock golden gaze.
"YOU MANIACS," you intone, not without a certain amount of admiration. "YOU REALLY DID IT."
Then gravity takes over, and the Bigger Fish - which must be twenty feet long if it's an inch - falls back into the river with a tremendous SPLASH.
As the spray settles, you witness a literal case of "big fish in a small pond," for even without the trench your still-active Spell to Control Water has cut halfway across it, this stretch of the river really wouldn't be big enough for such a massive fish to call home; the fins on its belly and back are large enough that it can't fully submerge, even in the deepest part of the river. WITH your spell running, there's that much less room for the giant to use, and the way it continues to glare at you as it surfaces from its splashdown makes you think it is fully aware of that fact.
Then the monster's jaw opens, and with a sound like the world's largest firehose turning on, it begins to spray water at you. Where the smaller fish could only spit short-lived "bullets," the aura of Water Magic radiating from this fish indicates a greater capacity - something it demonstrates by projecting a continuous high-pressure stream of water after you!
The attack is scarily quick and accurate for something so large, and while your evasive maneuvers are enough to prevent a direct hit, you once again find yourself glad for the Spell to Resist Water, as the water spraying off of the jet batters against you like dozens of tiny fists.
Amid your evasions, you sense that Briar is keeping a safe distance from this encounter, so that's one worry off your mind.
How, then, will you respond to the Bigger Fish that has been summoned against you?
While you are tempted to declare your business here done and just fly away, or to exploit the great weakness of Summoning Magic and simply dispel the power that holds the giant fish here, you feel that either of these options would be too easy.
The inhabitants of this river tried to beat you with magic.
Your pride as a sorcerer demands that you answer them in kind.
"HEAR ME, O RIVER-DWELLERS, WHO HAVE DARED TO INVOKE THE ANCIENT RITE OF 'SUMMON BIGGER FISH!'"
And for a moment, the Bigger Fish's cannon-like water blast pauses, as the monster squints at you.
"LOOK UPON MY WORKS, YE FISHY, AND DESPAIR! FOR I NOW CAST: SUMMON EVEN BIGGER FISH!"
With that, the spell you had been shaping completes, and a great shadow appears over the river.
The Bigger Fish boggles, and tries to dive for cover, but the river is too shallow, and you aimed your spell so that the resulting monster would land downstream of the still-drained trench, trapping the Bigger Fish between them.
With the river's dimensions being what they are, there's simply nowhere for the twenty-foot flounder to go.
*KER-SPLASH!*
Once again, water erupts in all directions as a great mass crashes down upon the surface of the river. As with the Bigger Fish, your summon is too large to fully submerge, but fortunately, it wasn't so large or so high to begin with as to hurt itself from the landing.
"OOOOCTOOOO!"
Though the rubbery consistency of its reddish flesh probably helped, you muse, as the Great-Granddaddy of All Octoroks rises from the river with a warbling war-cry, standing a good twenty feet tall atop four of its thick, powerful tentacles, as it flexes the other four limbs in challenge.
Then the Bigger Fish spits at it.
*ZAPLASH!*
The size of your summoned ally is such that it can't hope to dodge, but that same mass, combined with the tough, elastic hide that made its dynamic entry a non-issue, now takes a blast that would have sent a human-sized target tumbling head over heels with heavy bruising - and more than likely, a few broken bones - with little more than a flinch.
Shedding water, the Octorok's snout puckers up as it glares at the Bigger Fish, which suddenly looks unsure of itself.
*PITTOO!*
And then the Octorok replies to the Bigger Fish's attack in kind, spitting out a rock the size of your torso!
Frantic fin-waving and a belly-baring roll actually manage to carry the Bigger Fish out of the direct line of fire, but one of its fins is caught and bent by the passing stone-
*KERSPLASH!*
-and then the waves kicked up by its impact with the water rock the injured fish around wildly. Before it can recover-
"OCTOOOO!"
-the Octorok wades in with another battle cry, tentacles as long as it is tall reaching for its enemy.
A tremendous wrestling match ensues between the overgrown aquatic monsters, the Bigger Fish thrashing wildly and sending water flying in all directions as it struggles to escape the Octorok's sucker-lined grasp. It also bites fiercely - something that costs your Octorok a bloodied tentacle, though fortunately, it has limbs to spare - and invokes its Water Magic to enhance its struggles, alternately trying to separate itself from the Octorok or undermine the Hyrulean monster's footing.
The fight is more even than you might have expected, but the Octorok gradually wrestles the Bigger Fish into the shallows, where its Water Magic becomes somewhat less effective. From there, the tide of the battle turns decidedly against the local champion, which finds itself dragged to the shore and cast upon the muddy, half-drowned grasses to flop and thrash weakly.
Then, with a puff of sparkling smoke, the Bigger Fish disappears.
The Octorok stands tall and raises three and a half tentacles in a pose of triumph. "OOOOCTOOOO!"
"THE WINNER!" you declare. "AND NEW RIVER CHAMPION! LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, PUT YOUR FINS TOGETHER FOR BIIIIG OCTOROK!"
Surprisingly, a number of the silver-blue fish from earlier appear in the river, clapping their fins together, leaping out of the river in backflips, and spraying water overhead in harmless salute.
"ROOOOK!"
While the Big Octorok is celebrating its victory and the smaller fish are busy applauding, you look around for your partner, sending an "all clear" signal through the familiar bond as you do so.
On cue, Briar pops up from behind a large rock a short distance back from the water's edge. She hovers there for a moment, taking in the whole scene, and then flies towards you.
"A Big Octorok," she says dryly, once she's gotten in range. "Really?"
"YOU KNOW THERE'S A RANDOM ELEMENT TO GENERAL SUMMONS, AND THAT MY OWN SUMMONING MAGIC DEFAULTS TO HYRULEAN MONSTERS IF I LET IT. BESIDES, CAN YOU THINK OF A BIGGER FISH FROM HYRULE THAT ISN'T OUTRIGHT DEMONIC OR DIVINE IN NATURE?"
Granted, the Big Octorok is a bit demonic, like all Hyrulean monsters - that's undoubtedly the reason why it was able to grow so large and develop the relatively high intelligence you've seen. But its aura isn't that of a genuine demonic entity, suggesting that, like many of the supernatural species on Earth, this Octorok's particular lineage has propagated on Hyrule long enough to begin the process of naturalization.
"...nothing comes to mind," Briar admits after a moment.
You nod, and then - seeing that the Big Octorok has calmed down a bit - gesture for your partner to wait a moment as you fly into the big red monster's field of view.
"OCTO?"
"GREETINGS, GREAT ONE. I AM YOUR SUMMONER, ALEX HARRIS."
"OCTO, ROK." One tentacle waves, and from the way the eyes crease over the sucker-like snout, you think it's smiling. Then the big guy flexes triumphantly. "OCTOOOO!"
"YES, CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR VICTORY. IT WAS WELL-FOUGHT. I WAS WONDERING..."
"ROK?"
"IT WILL BE A SHORT TIME BEFORE THE SPELL THAT BROUGHT YOU HERE ENDS. WOULD YOU CARE TO REMAIN UNTIL THEN, OR WOULD YOU PREFER THAT I SEND YOU ON YOUR WAY RIGHT NOW?"
The Big Octorok considers that, scratching the side of its bulbous head with one tentacle, while leaning what little "chin" it has on another two limbs.
"...OCTO." And with that, the monster settles back in the middle of the river, closing its eyes and slowly waving its tentacles to propel itself lazily along.
Seems like a pretty straightforward answer. And fortunately, your Spell to Control Water ran out in the middle of that clash of the titanic fish, so your cephalopod champion doesn't accidentally beach himself or something.
"ENJOY YOUR REST, THEN," you call.
The Big Octorok waves, as the silver-blue fish swim around it, one of them daring to leap over the larger water-dweller.
Gained Octorok F
Gained Sign Language D (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)
With that settled, you turn your attention back to the matter of collecting Ore Samples. You're torn between visiting the remaining deposits of Goddess copper in this neck of the woods, and saying that the five samples of the ore that you've already gathered are enough, and going after the sungold. For that matter, you're tempted to seek out another source of moonsilver - this one would be a bit difficult to get at for anyone who can't mess around with the water level like you can.
In the end, you decide to keep gathering Goddess copper. It'll take you farther away from the sungold, but Navi did tell you that Robin was going to need a lot of the more common metal to build the Fairy Death Machine. The more sources of the ore you investigate now, the less likely it is that the Fae smith will run into a supply bottleneck down the road.
Plus, you can always teleport back to the trilithon that marks your starting point for this quest.
The next hour passes without incident. Due to the distance involved, you only collect two more samples of Goddess copper in this time.
Gained Ore Samples
As you get further away from the heart of the Great Fairy's domain, the forest seems to grow darker than the combination of a thick canopy and Faerie's perpetual twilight can readily explain. Estimating that you're perhaps seven miles from the center, you use your Spell of Flight to clear the canopy and look around.
"BRIAR, IS IT JUST MY IMAGINATION, OR DOES THE FOREST AHEAD LOOK LITERALLY DARKER THAN THE REST?"
"I don't think it's your imagination, Alex," your partner answers.
It's nothing so obvious as the trees suddenly turning black or radiating an aura of Evil, but several miles ahead, it's like there's a shadow over a large swathe of the forest - maybe five miles across, maybe more, you can't tell without going higher than you're really comfortable with. Comparing the sight to the map in your mind, it seems that the three remaining deposits of Goddess copper all lie within or on the far side of the darkened wood.
You spend a moment considering whether or not to proceed on your current heading.
"EYES OPEN AND EARS PEELED, PARTNER," you decide, directing your Spell of Flight to take you forward. "WE'RE GOING IN."
"Even though it looks a bit like the Lost Woods?" Briar asks.
"EVEN THEN. THOUGH ON THE OFF-CHANCE THAT THE RESEMBLANCE IS MORE THAN JUST A PASSING THING, I WILL BE RELYING ON YOU TO HELP ME AVOID TURNING INTO A STALCHILD OR SKULL KID."
"Yeah, the last thing Faerie, Hyrule, or Earth need right now is a giant boar skeleton running around playing tricks on people."
You muse upon that as you soar across the treetops, en route to the shadows. "I SUPPOSE IT WOULD DEPEND ON THE TRICKS..."
As you noted earlier, there's no sharp divide between the rest of the Faerie forest and the darker patch; the ambient light simply grows dimmer and dimmer as you head deeper and deeper into the shadowed region, as it might in any forest where the trees are getting thicker. That said, simple pattern-recognition tells you that there's little if any actual change in the density of growth.
Gained Survival E (Plus)
At a certain point, you have to slow your flight, as it's become dark enough beneath the canopy that your Spell of Low-Light Vision is having trouble spotting things in your path in time for you to evade, and Briar's ever-present glow is simply too faint to lend assistance. You actually pause there, feeling out your surroundings with your various senses, but as far as you can tell, you're in a perfectly ordinary Fae forest. The trees all look and feel healthy, you can hear birds and other critters moving about just out of sight, and if there's a decline in the amount of flowering plants and moss in favor of molds and mushrooms? It's a natural consequence of the loss of light, the hints of bioluminscence are rather pretty, and none of the fungi have shot toxic spores at you or otherwise threatened your safety. Yet.
All in all, the only significant magical difference from the region you were passing through minutes earlier is that the level of Elemental Light has dropped, while Elemental Shadow has increased proportionately. The local amounts of Elemental Darkness have also increased, but it's a trifling thing by comparison, a mere byproduct of the decrease in physical light rather than a consequence of any true mystical phenomenon at work.
Gained Elemental Sense F (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)
Gained Fairy Sense D (Plus) (Plus)
"BY ANY CHANCE, ARE YOU FEELING MORE AT HOME, BRIAR?" you query.
"A bit, yeah," she admits. "It's closer to what the fringes of the Lost Woods feel like, where it meets Hyrule Field, rather than the depths of the true forest, but it's definitely similar."
You press on, floating along at the speed of a jog.
The shadows lengthen, and darken.
And then, as the aura of Shadow Magic abruptly intensifies, you stop, peering straight ahead. You'd swear that something on the edge of your sight moved just now...
"Hee-hee-hee..."
"Uh-oh," Briar says.
"WHAT'S WRONG?"
"Hee-hee-hee..."
"I know that laugh," the fairy sighs.
Before you can speak, you sense movement-
!
-directly overhead, and swiftly step back, arms and sword rising to guard as you look up.
Amid the branches, you see a pale light glowing within the bars of an iron lantern of a worryingly familiar design. Its handle is held in the right hand of a stick-thin figure clad in a tall straw hat, plain brown tunic, and pointy brown shoes. On its back, the skinny creature wears a cloak in the shape and hue of a giant leaf, while its left hand clutches a peculiar instrument that resembles a cross between a flute and a trumpet - only with four separate horns.
Glowing red eyes peer down at you from the sockets of a skull-like mask as the figure giggles again.
MISCHIEF OF THE LOST WOODS: SKULL KID
"Would you like to play a game?" the Skull Kid croons.
"THAT DEPENDS ON THE GAME."
"WHAT WOULD WE BE PLAYING?"
The Skull Kid laughs happily at your reply. "Well, since you ask so nicely..."
He raises his horn to his... mask?... and blows a long, four-toned note that sends a cloud of leaves flying, and resonates with Summoning Magic and the Elements of Wood, Shadow, and Spirit.
In response to the spell, several bodies fall from the canopy, landing with a clatter of wooden limbs. Before your eyes, four life-sized puppets carved to resemble the Skull Kid rise from the forest floor, ball-jointed limbs twitching unnaturally as they briefly pose, and then begin to dance in place.
Although their not-quite-human shape and jerky motions are enough to put the puppets right in the uncanny valley, their true creepiness comes from the aura of Shadow and Spirit that surrounds and fills each of them. These puppets aren't mere animated objects; each one houses a soul. And if a spiritually sensitive individual such as yourself were to listen closely, they might hear the eerie, hollow laughter of children issuing from each of the puppets - which you do.
You also hear quiet crying from one of the puppets, whose wooden body looks to be of relatively recent construction. At the very least, it lacks the scrapes and chips that mar the surfaces of the other three marionette-like figures, and the colors painted on it have yet to fade or wear away.
"We could play tag!" Skull Kid offers. "Or hide and seek! Or Hero and Dark Lord! My friends and I are good at all of them!"
"I DON'T KNOW THAT LAST ONE," you admit, keeping your voice level as your mind grapples with the possible origins of the Skull Kid's "friends."
The forest creatures as a race don't have a reputation for the level of pure evil it would take to kill children and steal their souls, and this individual doesn't have the aura of corruption such actions would leave behind. Similarly, the puppets don't bear the taint of true undeath, merely of unquiet, lingering souls. Looking closer, however, a thick thread of Elemental Shadow winds away from each of the puppets, leading off into some unknowable distance. You can't see where the threads go, but you sense much deeper Shadows on the other end, and if you listen with your soul rather than your ears, you can hear a familiar clicking, clacking, clattering sound...
"Gasp!" Skull Kid exclaims. "You're a fairy's partner, and you don't know how to play Hero and Dark Lord?" He looks at Briar, scandalized. "What have you been teaching him?"
"How to use magic and fight monsters," Briar replies shortly.
"...oh, he's one of THOSE fairy partners. Never mind, then."
"Thank you." Briar then turns to you. "And Hero and Dark Lord isn't too different from tag or hide and seek. One player gets picked as the Dark Lord, and goes off and hides; another player is picked as the Hero, who has to find the Dark Lord; and everybody else becomes an Evil Minion, whose job is to stop the Hero from finding the Dark Lord. But because Dark Lords are cheating cheaters who cheat, the Dark Lord player gets to run away and hide again after being caught. He can do that three times, but if he's caught again-"
"There's a Final Battle, winner take all!" Skull Kid crows, doing a backflip.
"-the Hylians usually just say he loses," Briar goes on after a moment.
Skull Kid huffs and plays a sputtering note on his horn that sounds like a musical raspberry, making his opinion of THAT apparent.
"But some of the other races of Hyrule do end the game with a fight," your partner admits, ignoring the diss. "Especially if the players are older, or have been training as guards, knights, or the like. And Skull Kids like to play rough."
"We do, we do, it's oh too true!"
Gained Sylvan D (Plus) (Plus)
While you are legitimately concerned by the fact that the Skull Kid's puppets are apparently inhabited by the souls of lost children, the lack of malice and malignancy in all parties involved - to say nothing of BRIAR's lack of upset or even surprise at this situation, which really says a lot - is enough to keep you from immediately flinging accusations and breaking out the Fire and Light Magic.
But the sound of a crying child is something you find you just can't leave alone. Turning to that puppet, you gently ask, "Hey, there. Why are you crying?"
The puppet in question hunches in on itself, joints clicking and limbs giving off a dull wooden clack as they lightly bump against each other and the torso.
Softly, sadly, the voice of a boy somewhat younger than you sobs, "I miss my mom."
There is a sudden collective click and sigh from the other members of the wooden dance troupe, and when you glance at Skull Kid and his other friends, you find that they've all slumped forward slightly, as if depressed.
Feeling your gaze upon him, the Forest Mischief glances up and murmurs, "He's new."
You turn to Briar, wordlessly seeking an explanation.
Your partner quietly reminds you of the old legend that members of the mortal races who wander too long in the Lost Woods will eventually transform into monsters. This is true, as those who succumb to the dangers of the shadow-cloaked, Fae-haunted forest inevitably rise as some manner of Stalkin - in this specific and unhappy case, Stalchildren. The benevolent inhabitants of the Lost Woods do what they can to prevent such outcomes, but their numbers are limited, and the Lost Woods cover a large area; worse yet, not all Hyruleans can see fairies, while Deku Scrubs and Skull Kids are often considered monsters.
As a result, sometimes all they can do is try to keep a tragedy from becoming a horror story. Skull Kids contribute to this by crafting new bodies for lost souls to inhabit, and playing with them to take their minds off their troubles, until they either come to terms with their untimely fates and move on, or... don't.
Skull Kid and his three friends shudder at that last part, implying Bad Things about that option.
It can safely be said that this situation... IRKS you.
Speaking as an older brother, you have Certain Opinions when it comes to the happiness and well-being of children younger than yourself. And while Zelda is the primary focus of your feelings and actions in that regard, she's hardly the only one.
On top of that, you're currently contracting a certain humble shopkeeper to craft an artificial body to house the soul of a young vampire girl - and while this softly weeping soul has far less of a connection to you than Jasmine, it's impossible not to see parallels between them.
Even with all of that, some people would say you have no reason to further involve yourself in this matter.
Those people aren't you.
Out comes the much-used box of Gold Incense that you bought last year. It rattles, and when you look inside, you find you have exactly one stick of the stuff left.
You don't hesitate to take it out and plant it upright in the forest floor. It's for a good cause, and you've taken a Conjuration template of the Gold Incense anyway; you can always produce more if you need it.
Expended Gold Incense
...actually, you make a mental note to do that either later today or some time tomorrow, depending on the state of your mana reserves at the end of this quest. You can conjure semi-permanent, effectively real substances at need, and there's no reason not to take advantage of that fact to stock up on a much-used material component ahead of time.
You can't always afford the ten minutes it takes to create stuff from scratch using the Spell of Major Creation, after all.
"Watcha doin'?" Skull Kid wonders, leaning down to peer closely at the incense.
"MAGIC," you reply.
The Skull Kid pauses, and then snickers. "I walked into that one."
"You did," Briar agrees.
"BE SURE TO STAND BACK," you add, as you pinch the top of the stick between your thumb and forefinger. "THIS ONE INVOLVES A LITTLE BIT OF FIRE."
As one, Skull Kid and all four of his friends hop away; a moment later, you invoke a cantrip, lighting the stick.
The Forest Mischief regards the smouldering stick of incense warily, but as the smoke begins to lazily rise, you hear sniffing.
"Oooh, that's a new smell!"
While the puppets are clicking and shifting about, bumping into one another as if each was daring the rest to get closer to the "fire," you take out your Augury Sticks. Gathering mana, you begin chanting the words of the ritual, rubbing the sticks together and waving them about - putting on more of a show than is strictly necessary, for the sake of your increased audience.
"O GOLDEN GODDESSES," you intone at the climax of the spell. "THINE HUMBLE SERVANT ASKS OF THEE: WOULD IT BE SAFE FOR ME TO MAKE CONTACT WITH THE MOTHER OF THIS SORROWFUL CHILD?"
And then you throw the rune-carved Sticks, watching where and how they fall.
...
"SIGNS POINT TO 'WOE,'" you say after a moment. Looking up at the weeping puppet - who you note has stopped crying while you were casting - you ask, "IS YOUR MOTHER HYLIAN, BY ANY CHANCE?"
"...yes?" the boy replies in puzzlement. There is a double-clack as his carved cranium looks from you to his companions, and then back again. "I-is that a bad thing?"
"Not usually," Skull Kid replies slowly, giving you a sidelong squint of suspicion.
"IT'S A LONG STORY."
With direct summoning and/or indirect scrying of the child's mother off the table due to safety concerns, you have to fall back on intermediaries.
Luckily, you have an excellent intermediary to work with.
Mana blazes - and wooden figures yelp and leap away in clattering surprise - as you begin laying down the lines of a summoning circle.
"A little warning would have been nice!" Skull Kid yells.
"IT'S NOT FIRE, THOUGH?"
"Not the point!"
It takes ten minutes to perform the Spell of Planar Binding, and even with the dramatic flourishes you add to the proceedings, you're a little surprised when all five kids stay quiet and watch for the duration. They're not perfectly silent, mind you, but they keep the noise down to a murmur.
Did the Skull Kid warn them about interrupting spellcasters at work? Or do one or more of these kids have an interesting personal history?
Well, no matter. Whatever the reason, it benefits you now, letting you complete your spell without issue.
"TREMBLE IN AWE, FAERIE! FOR THE RISEN DEMON STANDS BEFORE YOU!"
"Wah!"
"AND THAT'S ALL I'M GOING TO SAY ABOUT IT."
Skull Kid and his friends regard you in silence for a moment.
"That's weird," Skull Kid declares. "You're weird."
"I'M A SORCERER. IF I WASN'T WEIRD, I'D BE DOING IT WRONG."
"Weeeeiiiird~," the possessed puppets chorus.
You just shrug and get on with your magic-making, summoning Batreaux.
As the Skull Kid and company shriek in surprise and fearful delight at the result of your spell, you look up at your sorcery tutor.
"HAIL, MY DARK MASTER."
"OOOOHHHH! Young Alex, it is rare that I hear you speak with such DRAMA in your voice! Whatever has happened?"
You quickly recount the objectives of your current quest, including the fact that a Great Fairy is watching and expecting some entertainment in exchange for letting you traipse through her territory.
"I see, I see. WELL THEN!"
*KRAKATHOOM!*
Lightning flashes and thunder rolls as your tutor raises himself to his full, intimidating height.
"FAR BE IT FROM BE TO SPOIL A GOOD SHOW! I SHALL ENDEAVOR NOT TO DISAPPOINT THE LADY WITH MY PERFORMANCE."
Briar sighs.
"THAT SAID," Batreaux continues, "I SUSPECT YOU DID NOT SUMMON ME MERELY FOR MY IMPROMPTU THEATRICAL SKILLS."
"INDEED NOT." And then you introduce the Skull Kid and his friends, and recount the unhappy state of affairs with the newest of the departed souls.
"Ahhh," Batreaux sighs, briefly breaking character in dismay. "I TAKE IT YOU WISH ME TO HELP THE LAD MAKE CONTACT WITH HIS MOTHER IN YOUR STEAD?"
You nod. "YOUR INSIGHT IS MOST KEEN, O MY MASTER."
Batreaux nods, and turns to the wooden ones. "AS A SERVANT OF THE GODDESSES, THIS IS A TASK I HAVE NO OBJECTION TO FULFILLING. HOWEVER!"
*KRAKATHOOM!*
"THE MAGIC REQUIRED FOR THIS TASK WOULD VIOLATE THE NATURAL ORDER, AND BEND THE FABRIC OF REALITY ITSELF! SUCH A WEIGHTY ACTION REQUIRES... PAYMENT."
Skull Kid looks at his friends before turning back to the Risen Demon. Warily, he asks, "What sort of... payment?"
With grave dignity, Batreaux declares, "WE MUST PLAY A GAME."
Wooden eyelids click.
"AS IT HAPPENS, O MY MASTER, WE WERE JUST ABOUT TO DO THAT. HERO AND DARK LORD, I BELIEVE?"
"AH, A MOST EXCELLENT GAME! THE ANCIENT STRUGGLE BETWEEN GOOD AND EVIL, RENDERED IN MICROCOSM! MIGHT I BE PERMITTED TO TAKE PART?"
"Of course!" Skull Kid crows. "The more, the merrier!"
You end up playing rock, paper, scissors to determine who gets what role.
Surprisingly, one of the non-crying puppets lands the role of Hero, doing a little limb-waving, joint-clacking victory dance.
As for the role of Dark Lord...
You stare at your rock fist, which smashed the scissors picked by Skull Kid and the last of his puppet pals.
Batreaux throws back his head and roars with laughter. "CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR VICTORY, MY STUDENT! HAIL TO THE DARK LORD ALEX!"
It.
Just.
Figures.
Well, then, O LORD OF EVIL. Are there any special preparations you wish to make for your REIGN OF TERROR, or are you satisfied with the services of three puppet-children, a Skull Kid, and Batreaux as YOUR LEGIONS OF NIGHT, and the bevy of buffs already in place as your DARK MAGIC?
You take a deep breath, and then let it out slowly.
And then you decide that if you're going to play this role, you're going to OWN it.
"I THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT, O DARK MASTER, BUT YOUR PRAISE IS SLIGHTLY MISPLACED."
"IS THAT SO?"
"IT IS! FOR I AM NO LONGER ALEX!"
You complete the simple Spell of Illusion, wrapping yourself in the remembered weight of iron, the imagined shade of a sombrero, and the curiously itchy image of a mustache.
"I AM BECOME: EL DOOM!"
Unseen trumpets and castanets play.
"NO!" Batreaux gasps, recoiling and clutching at his chest. "NOT EL DOOM!"
"Who's El Doom?" Skull Kid wonders.
A couple of his friends shrug, wooden expressions somehow projecting that they are just as lost and confused as he is.
"BUT ENOUGH TALK! GATHER ROUND, MY MINIONS, AND SERVE THE WILL OF YOUR MUSTACHIOED MASTER!" You point a (not-)gauntleted hand at the Hero Chosen by Paper Covers Rock. "HAVE AT YOU!"
You were told that Hero and Dark Lord is a bit of a rough game, especially as played by Skull Kids and their friends. Briar, hovering overhead in her role as referee and healer, notes that the Hylian version of the game is like tag, with the Hero and the Forces of Evil trying to catch each other without being tagged in turn: a minion that is "defeated" is out of the game, either temporarily or permanently depending on the rules; the Hero has a reserve of "healing potions," "Heart Containers," or "heroic willpower," and can be caught a certain number of times before it counts as a loss; and the Dark Lord, as you already know, is allowed to flee a lost battle up to three times.
Skull Kid and his friends dispense with the complexities and charge the Hero, trying to tackle or wrestle him down by sheer weight of numbers. The Hero of Puppets responds in kind, punching and kicking-
"Wooden Fist of Justice!"
*BOP*
"Splintering Kick of Power!*
*CRACK*
"TREE FALLS IN THE FOREST!"
*POW!*
-with accompanying enthusiastic exclamations.
The Hero is off to a fair start, having "slain" two of his peers and Skull Kid in short order, and leaving you to wonder if you've discovered the soul of a young Hylian martial artist, or perhaps a Sheikah?
"MONSTER CRUSHES HERO!"
Then Batreaux enters the fray, looming like a titan over the child-sized doll.
The Hero looks up, and up-
"DISCRETION IS THE BETTER PART OF VALOR!"
-and then bravely runs away, a cheerfully growling Batreaux stomping after him, and the last of the puppets floating along in the Risen Demon's wake, several inches above the ground.
While that is going on, you look upon your defeated minions. "EL DOOM IS CURIOUS, O SKULL KID. WILL THE FORCES OF DARKNESS RISE AGAIN UNDER THEIR OWN POWER, OR DO THE RULES OF THE GREAT GAME REQUIRE THE DARK LORD TO INVOLVE HIMSELF IN HIS SERVANTS' RECOVERY?"
"A bit of both," Skull Kid answers, not lifting his head from where he lies, defeated, upon the forest floor. "As soon as the Hero beats all the monsters, a second wave shows up to fight him, but if the Dark Lord tags a defeated minion, they revive immediately. Keeps the game interesting for everybody, you know?"
"INDEED."
And being the gracious OVERLORD OF EVIL that you are, you set about reviving your FAITHFUL SERVANTS-
"Leever Bursts From the Soil!"
-and then suddenly, puppet.
If you were a normal nine-year-old, the Hero of Puppets would have just scored a clean hit on you, no question.
But you're not normal. You are a kung-fu sorcerer, and though the Ki Enhancement you had running earlier has lapsed over the course of your, ah, "adventures" in the Great Fairy's realm, you still retain your active magical buffs - most relevantly, the multi-purpose Spell of Augmentation - on top of your well-honed danger sense and combat training.
This means that, as quick as the Hero's ninja-like leap from hiding is in reality, to you, it happens, if not in slow motion, then slowly enough that you have time to react.
There is a temptation to let the kid score an easy hit and win the "first encounter" between Hero and Dark Lord, but-
"IRON HAND BREAKS WOODEN BOARD!"
-you find yourself unwilling to make it THAT easy for him.
Rather than bruise your knuckles trying to punch out the puppet's wooden head, your illusion-armored right arm swings out in a knife-hand strike, which takes the Hero in the side of the head, at the level of the eyes.
It's almost like striking one of the practice dummies at Lu-sensei's, except for the manner in which the animated puppet-body lurches to the side - a reaction due more to the surprise of the blow, you think, than the force behind it.
"A MERCILESS STRIKE!" Batreaux moans. "AS EXPECTED OF EL DOOM!"
"The Hero is not defeated yet!" Skull Kid retorts.
"Uh... yeah, that's right!" the Hero proclaims. Joints click as he - at least, you think it's a boy, but the genderless body and youthful high pitch of the voice make you a tad uncertain - recovers his stance. "Using my Willow Bends In the Wind technique, I shrug off the touch of evil and-"
"RIGHT HAND OF EL DOOM!"
The open palm strike takes the puppet square in the chest. Between your proximity to the Hero and the at-best modest weight of his wooden frame, the simple act of fully extending your arm is all it takes to push him backwards the better part of a foot - and once he gets moving, renewed surprise and twice-broken balance carry him the last few inches, and several more besides.
"I-I fight on!" the Hero gasps. "Oak Plants Its Roots-"
Up comes your booted foot.
"CRUSHED UNDER THE HEEL OF EVIL KIIIICK!"
And the Hero of Puppets is launched through the air on a short flight that ends with him crashing down on his back, limbs popping from their sockets from the force of the landing and flying every which way.
You might have overdone it with that last one.
"The Hero has fallen!" Skull Kid exclaims, as the other three puppets flail about in dismay. "Oh no! Oh calamity! The world is doomed! Did you see where all his limbs went?"
"I HAVE THE LEFT ARM HERE," Batreaux announces. "IT SHALL MAKE A FINE TROPHY FOR THE LEGIONS OF EL DOOM! OR PERHAPS, LUNCH?"
"I got the other arm!" the not-crying puppet declares, waving the limb in question around.
"Got a leg!"
"Got the other one!"
Yeah, definitely overdid it a bit.
What can you say? The wooden "enemies" you normally deal with are weighted down to prevent precisely this sort of thing.
"Good, that's everything," Skull Kid confirms with a nod, as he squats down next to his friend. "Let's get you back together, bud."
"...please?" the fallen Hero sighs.
"Also, all those in favor of El Doom becoming the new Hero, raise your hands!"
The dismembered puppet shoots Skull Kid a look that, by rights, ought to set him on fire.
"...sorry, lost my hea- I mean, I wasn't thinking."
Batreaux has no particular opinion one way or the other, but Skull Kid and the puppets are all in favor of it, both of the ones holding their compatriot's broken-off arms raising them to add his vote.
You look around, taking in all the raised wooden hands.
"ORDINARILY, EL DOOM WOULD NEVER BOW TO THE TYRANNY OF THE MASSES," you proclaim. "HOWEVER, FOR THE SAKE OF GOOD SPORTSMANSHIP, EL DOOM WILL CONCEDE - JUST THIS ONE TIME."
"So... is that a yes?" one of the puppets wonders.
One of his peers reaches out and smacks him across the back of the head.
"Ow!"
"Yes, it's a yes! Dummy."
"I'm not a dummy!"
Well, technically...
"Ah, come on, guys," Skull Kid interrupts. "Quit arguing and give me a hand putting Robbie back together, will you?"
"...but I've got a leg?" the one who just said he wasn't a dummy replies in puzzlement.
There is some amount of facepalming.
While the wooden crew are getting their fallen friend back on his feet, you consider your attire. The illusion of El Doom's armor was entirely appropriate when you were playing the role of Dark Lord, but now that you've agreed to be the Hero, it no longer suits. You could just cancel the illusion... but where would the fun be in that?
Interesting thing about Illusion Magic? If it's one of the spells that require the caster to actively maintain it, and if said caster is skilled enough at manipulating the energies of the school, he can reshape an illusion on the fly, even to the point of making it look completely different. There are limits, of course - you can't make the "new" illusion cover a larger area than the first one, and you can't give the new illusion qualities such as sound, temperature, or texture that the old one lacked - but those won't get in the way of what you have in mind here.
Between one moment and the next, you stop looking like a Dark Lord, and start looking like a Hero.
And by that, you mean you appear to be wearing a green tunic and floppy hat over brown leggings and blond hair, respectively. The semblance of a Hylian Shield rests on your right arm, and thanks to a mischievous impulse on your part and the helpful magically conductive properties of the familiar bond, Briar starts glowing blue.
You wonder how long it'll take her to notice that.
You slightly awkwardly draw your Blessed Blade, taking a few slow practice swings to try and get used to wielding the blade with your off-hand. It quickly becomes clear that, while you can sort of manage for the sake of this role - due in large part to the physical enhancement spells you still have running - using your left hand robs you of much of your skill.
True ambidexterity will take a lot more training.
Still, it should suffice for the act.
Speaking of which, Skull Kid and his friends have finished repairing their buddy, and all of them are now looking at you, their postures radiating the surprise their wooden faces are too inflexible to give away.
"That is so awesome," one of the puppets murmurs.
Briar just sighs.
"I could make myself look like the Hero if I really wanted to," Skull Kid mumbles.
"Yeah, but he's got a real sword!"
"...yeah, that's a nice touch," Skull Kid admits. "Especially with the divine blessing and all, however faint it is." He chuckles. "Wow, I'd hate to be the Dark Lord who has to deal with-"
"Not it!" the four puppets chorus.
"ALSO NOT IT!"
Skull Kid stops and looks around at his friends and (ex-)teammates. Then he slumps. "I hate you guys."
"Good luck, Dark Lord Skull Kid!"
"Yeah, we're all behind you!"
"Way behind you!"
Wordlessly, you raise your sword and point at the new Dark Lord.
"Hate you all soooo much." Then the Forest Mischief gives himself a shake, and rises to his full height. "Fine, then! If we're going to do this, we're going to do it right! Minions, TO ME!"
He sounds his flute-trumpet-thing, and the puppets leap into action - literally so, as they jump higher than grown men are tall, crossing the distance from their locations to yours in a single bound, and landing so that they circle you.
"Get him!" Dark Lord Skull Kid commands.
His loyal minions advance-
You check your grip, set your feet, and then SPIN.
"HAAAA!"
-and go flying in all directions as you pull off the most rudimentary, unpowered version of a Spin Attack possible.
Gained Crowd Control C
Gained Spin Attack E (Plus)
"He got me!"
"Blargh, I am slain!"
"Ow!"
"Whoaaaa!"
Skull Kid and Batreaux take this in, as puppets rain from the sky.
"GOODNESS," Batreaux muses. "DOES THIS EVER TAKE ME BACK."
"This is going to suuuuck," Skull Kid groans.
Then he turns and runs for the shadows of the forest, as fast as his little wooden feet can carry him.
"Defend me while I make my escape, O Great Demon!"
Batreaux looks down at you.
You look up at Batreaux.
What sort of a Hero would you be, if you ignored a lesser Evil in favor of pursuing its Dark Lord?
...actually, you'd be a fairly typical example. Your average Dark Lord has a vast army of mortal recruits and slaves, monstrous thralls, and unholy summons at his beck and call, forces altogether too numerous, too powerful, and in too many places for a single champion or small party thereof to stand any realistic chance of defeating each and every last one of them in direct confrontation.
That's why heroes - both the capitalized and lowercase versions - tend to focus so heavily on defeating their opposite number, as the death, banishment, sealing, or disempowerment of a Dark Lord usually ends whatever magical control he has over his forces, resulting in a wide-scale breakdown of the Legions of Doom. His less-than-willing minions are freed, while conjured and contracted extraplanar horrors are forced back to whatever dark realm they crawled out of, leaving any remaining mortal loyalists too busy dealing with sudden outbreaks of internal politics (rebellions, power grabs, assassination attempts, etc.) to continue menacing the rest of the world.
Even the Green Beast of Murder generally doesn't try to hunt down every last monster in Ganon's army, but he also doesn't allow the boss monsters to get away, once he's found them.
You'd say Batreaux definitely counts as a boss monster.
And since you're wearing the Floppy Hat of Doom Heroism, it behooves you to play the role right.
"HA!" you cry, as you take a swing at your tutor with the flat of your Blessed Blade.
"HUP!" the Risen Demon replies, hopping backwards and sucking in his gut to avoid the swing. "HA-HA, YOU MISSED! NOW-"
With a wordless grunt, you step forward and bring the sword back around low, forcing Batreaux into an awkward jump to save his lower legs.
"-FEEL THE WRATH OF MY COUNTERATTACK!" And using the advantage of his great height and long arms to the fullest, Batreaux reaches over and past your weapon with both clawed hands, bellowing, "CLAWS OF DARKNESS!"
Reflexively, you bring up your shield to block-!
And then both of you pause, Batreaux's thick fingernails hovering just at the point of contact with your illusionary defense.
"...UM," he says. "HOW DO WE SCORE THIS?"
You shrug, not entirely certain of it yourself.
"It's a hit, right?" one of the puppets comments.
"But he took it on the shield," another argues. "That shouldn't count."
"But the shield's an illusion."
"And we're playing a game of pretend."
"What's your point?"
"Ref!" the crying puppet calls out to Briar. "We need a ruling!"
"Hmmm..." Briar muses for a moment. You get the sense of arms crossed and a head bowed in thought, followed by an abrupt nod. "I'll allow it. Pretend shield counts as real!"
You have the best partner-
"BUT he can't use it when he's attacking."
-you have a good partner.
Nodding at the ruling, you raise your blade and swat Batreaux's arms with the flat sides.
"ARGH!" he cries, staggering backwards with his hands in the air. "I AM WOUNDED!"
You step forward, Pretend Shield Bash him in the stomach-
"BLARGH! MY LUNCH!"
-hastily dodge the imagined consequences of that as Batreaux doubles over, and then lay the guard of your weapon across the back of Batreaux's thick neck.
"GUH! MY HEAD! I AM SLAIN!"
And then he staggers around wildly for a moment, before freezing and falling over with a crash that shakes the nearest trees.
Some of the puppets applaud the death scene.
You take off in search of Dark Lord Skull Kid.
Tracking him is out of the question. Your survival skills are barely good enough for you to try following a mortal being, and would offer no guarantees of success. Skull Kid is Fae, and tracking a Faerie creature through the woods - at least, without magic - is an exercise in futility at the best of times.
And this is a forest within Faerie itself. In this place, surrounded not only by the rich strength of unspoiled Nature but the wild and free life-essence of countless generations of Fae, finding one particular individual would be a tall order even for most Divination Magic.
Plus, as the puppet-boy just said, it IS just a game. Do you really want to bring more magic into it than you already have?
As you consider your options, you hear an unfamiliar but cheerful song playing in the distance. With the way it echoes through the trees, you aren't entirely sure which direction the source lies in.
You decide to put your trust in your keen sense of hearing, and move to follow the music.
After all, it's entirely possible that the source of that light is something other than Skull Kid's lantern: you did see some glowing mushrooms on your trek into this shadowed wood; fairies glow as a matter of course; and weird lights are one of the classic tricks of Faerie creatures, along with a great many other supernatural mischief-makers and stealthy predators. But while you don't recognize the song being played, the individual notes sound a great deal like Skull Kid's instrument, so much so that it seems reasonably likely to be their source.
And so you move deeper into the woods, pausing every so often to see if the music has grown louder or softer. Thanks to the way the echoes in this place distort the sound, you have to stop and double-back a couple of times, and you briefly lose track of the song-
"There he is!"
"Get him!"
"Acorns Fall Like Arrows!"
"Watch out for-"
"HAAAA!"
"Aaaarrrrgh!"
"Not agaaaain!"
"Dandelions Scatter In The Wiiiind!"
"-that."
-when the puppets drop from the branches above you in ambush.
But those incidents merely delay your progress; they don't stop it.
The music soon leads you to a thicket of bushes whose mostly leafless branches bear an abundance of long, sharp-looking thorns. Peering through the tangle, you can make out another source of light - a subtly different shade from the one you spotted earlier - bobbing around on the far side of the "wall."
Traditionally, this is the point where the Hero would circle around and look for a way in.
You just call upon your Spell of Flight and rise high enough to peer over the top of the bushes.
And there, dancing about in an open patch in the center of the thicket, playing that curious tune, is the Skull Kid. From your vantage point, you can't see an obvious way in... wait, check that. There's a natural tunnel of sorts over to one side, large enough to allow a child-sized figure to enter without getting cut to ribbons by the thorns, provided that they crawled.
For a moment, you wonder what that other light-source was. Fungus? A fairy? A fungal Fae creature? Something else entirely?
Dismissing those idle speculations, you-
Skull Kid blows a single long note.
Puppets rain from the trees.
"We gotcha now!"
"Vengeance!"
"Acorns' Fall Redux!"
"Yeah, he can't Spin Attack in mid-air!"
"HAAAA!"
"We don't gotcha!"
"I will have vengeance for my vengeance!"
"Dandelion Two: Seedhead Boogaloo!"
"That's cheeeeaaaatiiiing!"
-take a moment to show the puppets that you can, in fact, perform the physical motions of a Spin Attack while under magically powered flight. At least while you have these enhancement spells up and running.
Skull Kid shows a certain agility himself, as he keeps playing the song while side-stepping the falling body of one of his buddies, not missing a note even when said puppet-friend hits the ground hard enough for his limbs to pop off.
From the clattering noises and complaints coming from the other three puppets, he wasn't the only one to have a bad landing.
"Time out!" Briar calls. "Too many limbs on the field!"
Skull Kid plays a final note that sounds a bit like a drawn-out groan. Lowering his instrument, he sighs, "I need to get you guys better bodies, or something."
"THE DEMON RETURNS!" Batreaux thunders, as he catches up with the rest of you. "NOW, WE- wait, I think I stepped on someone's arm."
It takes a few minutes to find all the limbs, figure out who they belong to, and get them back in place. Once that's done, the game of Hero and Dark Lord resumes, with you tapping Skull Kid with your Blessed Blade before he can dive back into his citadel of thorns.
Grumbling, the Forest Mischief takes off for his next hiding place.
The pattern you set for your first round as the Hero plays out again and again. Although they've clued into the dangers of the (Non-Ki) Spin Attack and stop trying to mob you all at once, the puppets can't stop you when all it takes is one good swat from your sword to send them flying. They do eventually work out how to delay you for as long as possible, attacking in a staggered formation from different directions, but that's all it is; a delay.
Towards the end of the game, they've got the timing down to the point where they can hold you long enough for Batreaux to catch up, but that doesn't accomplish much.
You DO take a hit from the Risen Demon during one of these "boss battles"; his reach is really very impressive, and he definitely has prior experience at Not Getting Stabbed While Trying to Claw Somebody, though he's terribly out of practice.
The real challenge of the game is finding Skull Kid, and you manage that without too much trouble the second time around. The third round throws you a curveball, as when you follow the music again, it leads you to a Poe playing a flute of bones. Briar invokes her authority as referee and borrows a little Goddess-Chosen menace from you to chase off the interloper, and once the ghost has blown a raspberry at the two of you and disappeared in a puff of ectoplasmic smoke, you're able to track Skull Kid unimpeded.
The final battle takes place in a kind of natural arena, where large boulders, old trees, and older stumps give the Skull Kid all kinds of different vantage points. He summons his friends to distract you while he teleports from place to place, flinging "Dark Magic" in the form of Deku Seeds, pausing every now and then to play a few notes of his song or to revive his defeated minions.
For their efforts, they manage to land another hit on you.
Then the Hero smites the Dark Lord Skull Kid, bringing an end to his reign of wooden terror.
With that, Batreaux declares that his "price" has been met, and that he can begin the summoning ritual at any time.
The crying puppet immediately asks if he can start right away, and none of his friends have the heart to argue the point.
For your part, you shed your Heroic illusion, take Skull Kid aside and let him know that you're going to go do a little prospecting while Batreaux does his thing.
Red eyes regard you for a moment, before the Forest Mischief declares, "Weird, but whatever. One thing, though; this forest can be a little tricky to find your way around."
"HOW TRICKY?" you ask. "IS IT JUST A DEEP, DARK, SHADOW-HAUNTED FOREST, OR ARE WE TALKING SOMETHING MORE LIKE THE LOST WOODS?"
"A little closer to the second one," Skull Kid says, grinning. "Try not to get lost~."
Between the magical map still filling your mind and your connection to Batreaux's summoned presence, you think you'll be okay. Worse comes to worst, you can just use your Spell of Flight to get above the trees.
Skull Kid's "warning" bears out; though the nearest of the two Goddess copper deposits isn't all that far from where you were playing Hero and Dark Lord, it takes you most of half an hour to reach, thanks to the way the woods around you get increasingly darker: the trees grow closer together, until they form impassable thickets; cobwebs begin to appear again, growing in size until you suspect there must be a small colony of cat-sized spiders lurking somewhere nearby, if not Skulltulas or Gohma; and the auras of Shadow and Spirit grow steadily stronger, until the click-click-clicking of Stalchildren, the clink of chains, and the ghostly glow of Poe lanterns seem to surround you.
Despite all that, you reach the first deposit unchallenged, take your notes, and gather a sample of the ore.
Gained Ore Sample
The next site of Goddess copper is even deeper into the darkened wood, right in the heart of whatever it is that's causing this stretch of forest to be so dark and creepy. The energies swirling about are strong enough to have seeped into the Goddess copper you just sampled, and while you don't know what a shot of Shadow and Spirit will do to the usefulness of the ore, you don't think the former will be helpful for Robin's purposes. And if THIS deposit is contaminated, the one at the center of the forest is likely even more so, not to mention how it will probably be actively dangerous to get at.
Gained Elemental Sense E
Although you do briefly consider skipping the likely Shadow-tainted deposit of Goddess copper, in the end, you figure it's better to be thorough about this sort of thing. After all, you only have suspicions about the quality of the metal; you don't actually KNOW whether or not Robin will be able to use it for the Fairy Death Machine, or for that matter, if he might find the stuff useful for something else.
Quite aside from that, you're curious about the shadowed state of this neck of the woods. The tainted ore deposit lies right at the center of the darkened region, suggesting that whatever is responsible for the prevailing conditions should be somewhere nearby.
And so you forge ahead, into the heart of not-quite-darkness.
About fifteen minutes on, you feel a pulse from the Spell of Summoning you used to call up Batreaux; recognizing the nature of the energy, you hover to a stop, and wait.
A moment later, your tutor in DARKEST SORCERY appears next to you via teleportation.
"GOOD NEWS, I HOPE?" you inquire.
"As much as can be expected from such unhappy circumstances," the former demon replies, before giving you a report on the event.
It appears that the soul of the child you mentally referred to as "the crying one" died just a little over a month ago, after getting lost while playing in the forest near his home with some friends. When you question if people in modern Hyrule no longer warn their children about the Lost Woods, Batreaux assures you that they do, but also explains that the forest where the boy was playing wasn't the Lost Woods - at least, not exactly.
Your tutor explains that, during those periods when a Dark Lord is active, all the land becomes tainted by the increase in Dark Magic and monsters. As the energies involved infest the forests of Hyrule - many of which, Batreaux and Briar remind you, are home to fairies, if not Kokiri and Skull Kids - they become that much more like the Lost Woods, and if that similarity becomes strong enough, the Law of Sympathy kicks in, helped along by the pre-existing dimensional weirdness of the Woods themselves.
It's true that Ganon has been dead for decades, now, that the Triforce is restored and in the hands of the monarchy, and that the power of the Goddesses once again flows bright and clear over all the land as their faithful go about the long work of rebuilding and renewing. But even in such times of recovery and growth, the deep woods are not often visited by mortal men, being a refuge for Hyrule's natural monster population as well as many of its Fae inhabitants. And so the Demon King's taint lingers on there, much as it does in the ruins beneath Death Mountain, the half-collapsed tunnel complexes of the Underworld, or anywhere a Lynel has managed to stake a territorial claim and not been hunted down by Link.
The long and short of it is, if you lose your way in any sufficiently shadowy forest in Hyrule, you may well end up in the Lost Woods. And that is exactly what happened to the unfortunate child in question.
Well. That's mildly horrifying.
Gained Local Knowledge (Hyrule) C
In any event, the boy's mother was still alive and at least physically healthy, meaning that your decision to have Batreaux be the one to contact her was wise. The reunion between mother and child was enough to ease the grief and bring a sense of closure on both sides - so much so, in fact, that Skull Kid now has only three friends to play with.
He's okay with that, incidentally.
Gained Hecate's Favor F (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)
Gained Nayru's Favor C (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)
Batreaux offered to help the other puppet-bound souls out the same way, but was told that not only had the three of them been dead for decades, they'd lost their families before that, having fled into the Lost Woods ahead of a pack of rampaging Moblins. Meeting the unquiet ghosts of their slain kin wouldn't be a helpful experience for those kids, and neither would summoning a relative who'd managed to move on - they ARE still kids, and jealousy is a thing that kids, the mostly dead, and the undead are all prone to.
Plus, the trio claimed to be at peace with their fates. The might-have-been-Sheikah kid may have even been honest about it.
Regardless, Batreaux let the matter lie.
"AND WITH THIS, MY WORK HERE IS DONE," the Risen Demon proclaims. "UNLESS THERE WAS SOMETHING ELSE YOU NEEDED, MY STUDENT?"
"NO, MY DARK MASTER," you reply. "TRULY, YOU HAVE EXCEEDED MY EXPECTATIONS FOR THIS REQUEST. I HUMBLY THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME AND EFFORT IN THIS MATTER."
"YOU ARE MOST WELCOME, MY STUDENT. I BID YOU FAREWELL! ...FOR NOW."
And with that final ominous proclamation, Batreaux vanishes, leaving you and Briar alone under the eaves of the darksome forest.
"...NO THUNDEROUS REPORT TO ACCOMPANY THE VAGUE TIDINGS OF DOOM?" you muse. "I FIND MYSELF DISAPPOINTED, O MY DARK MASTER."
"He was probably trying not to do anything that might draw attention our way after he was gone," Briar notes.
At that, both of you pause and take a moment to scan your immediate surroundings, but no, your tutor's exit doesn't appear to have drawn attention. At the very least, none of the assorted auras you can pick up are reacting as if shocked, intrigued, or ticked off by a noisy territorial intrusion.
"AH. IN THAT CASE, PRAISE BE FOR THE WISDOM OF THE DARK MASTER. SHALL WE BE ON OUR WAY?"
"Sure, why not?"
"WELL, THERE IS THE INCREASING EVIDENCE OF SPIDERS-"
"It was a rhetorical question, genius."
Rhetorical or no, the question of the spiders becomes relevant some minutes later, as their ever-more-common and -heavy webs end up forming veritable walls between the impassable thickets (which are, themselves, largely wrapped up in spidersilk). After your earlier interaction with that talking Fae spider, you're reluctant to try clearing a path through the sheets of sticky silk by sword or spell, but you may not actually need to; for whatever reason, the spiders who wove this web-structure appear to have left passages through it, large enough for creatures rather bigger than yourself to move through without issue.
From where you stand just outside the entrance to this... structure... you can see several cocoons of differing sizes strung up. A couple are fused to the walls, several more hang from the ceiling, and there appears to be a large mass of them clustered together on one darkened corner of the floor.
One of the cocoons hanging from the branches quivers, as if whatever was wrapped up inside it can sense your gaze.
If you weren't already hesitant about venturing into a maze of almost assuredly intelligent design, which has arachnids ranging from mundane to hand-sized creeping about in large numbers, the aura of undeath hanging over the entire place would have ensured it. The witchfire glow of Poe lanterns and the click-click-clicking of Stalchildren are almost constant presences, now, and you can feel unseen eyes watching you, waiting for you to make your next move.
"I really don't want to go in there," Briar says.
You can't blame her.
Part of you wants to just walk inside the maze of spiderwebs and see what happens.
A larger and dare you say it, more sensible part recalls the hassle of dealing with the Gohma that had infested the Memorian Outpost, and would much prefer to skip all the drama and just go straight to the deposit of Goddess copper, whether by flying over the trees and dropping down from above, or using a Spell of Earth Gliding to do the reverse.
But a third little voice points out that it was only a couple of hours ago that you had a chat with a sapient Fae spider, noting that the odds are in favor of one or more such creatures calling this place home. Barging into someone else's dwelling uninvited would be bad enough, but if there really is a Fae spider in this colony, their reaction to such an intrusion is likely to be... unpleasant.
You could save yourself a lot of hassle just by knocking first, or rather, tapping on the web to get the attention of the residents.
But first, given the concentration of undead within the nest, you decide to cast the Spell to Hide From Undead. It won't help you if things come down to a fight, of course, and the Poes might be able to see through (or around?) the protection anyway, but it should at least spare you the tedium of having to deal with a bunch of Stalchildren.
As the spell settles into place, you step towards the entrance.
"Alex," Briar murmurs, "what are you doing?"
"I'M A BIT TROUBLED BY THOSE COCOONS," you admit, as you extend your senses towards the nearest of the various webbed pods. Though it's not your most developed sense, you focus mainly on your Mental Sight, trying to get an idea of whether or not there are sapient beings caught in this spider's web.
The first cocoon doesn't register any mental presence at all. That's... good-ish? The next few either have the same lack of a mental aura, or a very dull one, such as you'd find in less-than-clever animals, and you start to relax a bit.
Then you turn your attention to the cocoon that twitched when you looked at it. It does so again, and you do the same, as an aura of greater awareness registers.
"Problem, partner?"
"THERE IS A SAPIENT BEING TRAPPED IN THAT POD," you note, pointing at the cocoon in question.
"Yeah, I'm not really surprised to hear that," Briar sighs. "Before you get all up in arms about it, though, keep in mind that most of the 'animals' in Faerie are more self-aware than their mortal counterparts. Plus, Fae don't exactly die when they're killed."
You give Briar a funny look at that last bit, wondering if she hit her head or something.
Your partner explains that when a Faerie creature is killed while on its native plane, its essence and identity don't leave the plane the way a mortal creature's normally would. Instead, they retreat to some safe, familiar haven and spend time resting and recovering their strength, before they're reborn - usually in the same form as before, but sometimes in a different one, whether out of personal curiosity or because the circumstances of their temporary death inspired (or enforced) a change.
Gained Local Knowledge (Faerie) E (Plus)
"...THIS HAS SOMETHING TO DO WITH WHY YOUNG FAIRIES ARE TYPICALLY IDIOTS, DOESN'T IT?" you finally say.
"Part of it, anyway," Briar admits. "It's hard to take 'danger' seriously when part of you knows that death is only a temporary inconvenience. More so than it actually is, I mean."
Yeah, once you've accepted the existence of afterlives, reincarnation, and the various forms of transcendence, death loses a certain amount of its sting. So long as you aren't an evil jerk scheduled for a stay in Hell, it's really only the lack of a continuity of consciousness suffered by most people - not you, but most people - that makes it frightening.
"BUT THIS... AUTO-RESURRECTION... DOESN'T HAPPEN IF YOU DIE OUTSIDE OF FAERIE?"
"Nope."
"THEN WHY DID ANY OF YOUR ANCESTORS EVER LEAVE?"
"I figure most of them didn't realize the risk until a few of their friends ran into something nasty enough to put them down, and then failed to revive on schedule. Some would have gotten scared by that and run home, while the rest were probably having too much fun exploring the mortal planes and daring the Reapoe to take a swing at them to give up their new game."
"AH. SO IT WAS THE FAE EQUIVALENT OF SKYDIVING OR BUNGEE JUMPING, THEN?"
"Something like that, anyway. I am just guessing, though; this was a REALLY long time ago, and all those first-generation Fae explorers and colonists are either long dead, have been through Faerie's cycle of rebirth so many times that their memories are fuzzy, or have grown into the sort of beings that even Mom would have to walk lightly around - and that sort don't exactly spend their days telling stories for the kiddies, you know?"
You nod, and turn your attention back to the task at hand.
That one twitching cocoon isn't the only one that registers a sapient mind: there's another stuck in the far wall; and when you turn your attention to the pile of pods over in the corner, all of them glow with a measure of above-animal self-awareness. Looking a little more closely at that group of cocoons, however, you realize that they aren't trapped prey, but eggs - and from the way a couple of them quiver, eggs close to the point of hatching.
At a glance, you'd say there are twenty or so eggs in that cluster, most of them about the size of softballs once you account for the thickness of the web around them. This implies that the spider which laid them was probably about the size of one of the larger Gohma-spawn you faced in the Memorian Outpost, something that is borne out by the size of the chamber and the "doors" that lead into and out of it.
On the bright side, at least you're not dealing with another full-grown Mother Gohma. Right?
Letting out a breath, you use a cantrip to conjure a small, temporary piece of wood-
"Dare I ask what that's for?"
"GIVEN THE ODDS THAT THIS IS SOME ONE'S HOME, RATHER THAN SOME THING'S LAIR, I THOUGHT I WOULD BE POLITE AND KNOCK BEFORE ENTERING."
"...eh, I suppose it can't hurt."
- which you tap against the least sticky-looking part of the outer wall of webs. You give the vibrations a moment to make their way through the maze of silk, and then call out, "HELLO? IS ANYONE HOME?"
There is a pause.
And then, you hear skittering.
Faint with distance at first, the noise rapidly grows louder and closer. Many little spiders swarm up along the walls or descend from the ceiling, regarding you with hundreds of dark eyes that range from the size of pinpricks to as big as your thumbnail.
A moment later, a large shadow becomes visible through the walls of webbing, and a voice calls out in a warning tone, "If this is you again, Skull Kid, I won't be held responsible for my actions."
Huh. That sounded like a woman's voice - a very lovely one, at that, for all that she's threatening the absent Forest Mischief.
She draws closer at a fairly rapid pace, shadows of all too many legs rising and falling around a body that is as big as any two of the horses you've seen in the Drakes' stables - but then, between one many-legged stride and the next, the looming presence falls away.
The figure that appears in the door on the far side of the room reminds you greatly of that dark elf girl you faced back at the World Tournament. What was her name, Amae?
There are differences, of course. The shape-shifted spider-being that stands before you now has taken the form of a full-grown drow rather than a child, and where Amae's eyes were like red jewels - angry jewels, most of the time they were looking your way - this person's gaze is nearly as dark as the midnight hue of her skin. Her hair is as pale as moonlight, and she wears it long, almost to the floor, instead of in the braided, eartip-hiding style Amae favored. Also, where Amae was dressed for a fight like the rest of the Under Tens Division Finalists, this spider-woman wears a gorgeous silk dress in shades of dark green, ruby red, and streaks of silver and gold.
Beyond the purely physical, her aura is also quite distinct from Amae's. That shadowy, silky energy you could only describe as "inhuman" all those months ago, but which you now recognize was a much watered-down, mostly mortal Fae essence, is present here in greater quantity and purity.
The spider-woman regards you for a moment, dark gaze sliding over to Briar and then back to you.
"Well, now," she says. "This is unexpected. What brings a young sorcerer with a fairy friend and the touch of the Golden Goddesses on him to my humble door?"
Aside from introducing yourself and explaining your purpose here, is there anything you want to say to or ask of this elf-like being?
Seeing as how you're dealing with a Fae creature of non-trivial size, intelligence, and power in her own home, you call upon the full force of your diplomatic charm, and bow politely.
"MY NAME IS ALEX HARRIS, MA'AM. THIS IS MY PARTNER, BRIAR OF THE LOST WOODS."
"Hello," Briar says.
"AND TO ANSWER YOUR QUESTION, I'VE BEEN SENT ON A QUEST BY A GREAT FAIRY - ONE NAVI OF THE LOST WOODS, IF THAT NAME MEANS ANYTHING TO YOU - TO RETRIEVE SAMPLES OF VARIOUS ORES FROM THIS REGION."
"After the Goddess copper, are you?" the pseudo-drow guesses.
"AMONG OTHER MATERIALS, YES."
"And what interest does Navi of the Lost Woods have in some unrefined ore?"
"HER CHILDREN WERE RECENTLY REMINDED THAT MOST OF THE INTELLIGENT RACES OF HYRULE HAD CONSTRUCTED SOME SORT OF MAGICAL DEATH MACHINE AT ONE POINT OR ANOTHER, WITH THE FAIRIES BEING A NOTABLE EXCEPTION. IT WAS, UH, 'SUGGESTED' THAT THIS MIGHT BE PART OF THE REASON WHY NOBODY WHO HASN'T MET A GREAT FAIRY TAKES THEM SERIOUSLY, AND SO... WELL..."
"They're building a fairy death machine?"
"AT THE MOMENT, IT'S STILL IN THE DESIGN PHASE, AND THEY'RE ACTUALLY PURSUING THREE DIFFERENT CONCEPTS, ONLY ONE OF WHICH IS PROPERLY MECHANICAL... BUT YES."
There is a pause.
Then the Fae woman starts laughing.
Around her, the spiders collectively chitter in what you hope is good-natured amusement.
It goes on for a short time, before the metamorphed spider gets control of herself.
"Oh my," she chuckles, wiping a tear from one almond-shaped eye. "I just HAVE to see this." Straightening up, she adopts a formal pose and tone as she says, "You may call me Liantiel. If all you are interested in is obtaining some of the Goddess copper, then be welcome in my home."
Despite the invitation, you hesitate to cross the threshold. "WELL, ACTUALLY..."
"Yes?"
"I WAS WONDERING IF I COULD HAVE PERMISSION TO STUDY YOUR WEBS."
She blinks at this, and for a second, you think you see six extra eyes around the two that are physically present. "Whatever for?"
You summarize your history of encounters with supernatural spiders, your efforts at mystically emulating the differing properties of their respective forms of silk, and the results of your own attempts at silk-weaving.
"Show me," she says at once.
"...IS THAT THE SILK, OR A SAMPLE OF MY WORK WITH IT?"
"Both," she says bluntly. "I want to see if magic makes up for you having only two limbs and no meaningful instincts for spinning or working with silk."
"...ON BEHALF OF ALL NON-ARACHNID TAILORS, OUCH."
She ignores that, and snaps her fingers. "Hurry up, then."
Well.
It's the work of a moment to summon a copy of your Spidersilk Suit, which you hand over to Liantiel. While she's examining that, you conjure a collection of small, strictly temporary examples of the different types of spider-thread you've learned how to copy.
You see no reason not to provide examples of all the different types of spider silk you're currently capable of conjuring, and so, in addition to the mundane material you've already provided a sample of via your summoned suit, you conjure one sample of the Faerie Spider Webbing that you analyzed earlier today, and then turn out several different types of Gohma Webbing.
First is the "neutral" version of the stuff, or what Gohma silk looks like when it's not spun from Conceptual Chaos and Evil. Second is the "purified" version, where you tried to weave in Good energy; given the still-imperfect nature of your divine magic, that doesn't go as well as it could have, but as the stuff is really only here as a "proof of concept" for what your magic allows you to do with silk rather than for production purposes, it'll serve. Third, since you're dealing with a Fae spider entity, and Fae as a whole are typically at least of a mildly chaotic nature, you weave a type of Gohma silk that still retains its Chaotic composition; perhaps because it's largely just re-creating (approximately half of) the original form of Gohma Webbing, this turns out noticeably better than your Good-aligned version.
You take the opportunity to try your hand at weaving the stuff into actual webs as you create it. This goes... well, it goes.
Gained Webweaving F (Plus)
You consider attempting to include a Lawful equivalent, but between how the Good version turned out and the fact that you are dealing with a Fae, you decide that you don't need to be quite THAT much of a completionist. And you're definitely not going to throw together a pure Evil version of the stuff - although after discussing it first with Briar and then with Miss Liantiel, you DO conjure a sample of unmodified Gohma Webbing, strictly for comparative purposes.
Each little patch of spider silk takes about a minute to conjure, and lasts a little over twice as long as that. You hand each one off to Miss Liantiel as you complete it, moving straight on to spinning the next sample into existence; at the peak of your productivity, this gives the spider-woman three distinct samples of your work to compare and contrast with each other, something she takes full advantage of while growing an extra pair of arms to help her juggle all the materials.
Though she does ask you to keep hold of the unmodified Gohma Webbing, evidently not wanting to dirty her own hands with the stuff.
You can't say that you blame her.
The transformed Fae spider's final assessment of your work?
"It's not bad," she says. "For a two-legs, that is."
"A KINDER ASSESSMENT THAN THE FLYING SPIDER GAVE ME."
"Oh?"
"I BELIEVE THE EXACT WORDS WERE, 'THE WORK ISN'T COMPLETELY TERRIBLE.'"
"You did break part of his web," Briar notes, drawing a frown from your current hostess.
"BUT I FIXED IT, TOO."
"Good to know," Liantiel interjects, frown easing slightly. "Well, then. Based on what I've seen of your work, I wouldn't object to you taking a sample of mine to play around with-"
You perk up.
"-though I would expect to be compensated for it."
Ah.
"So," Liantiel asks, folding two of her arms across her chest, while the other pair settle on her hips, akimbo. "What are you offering in exchange?"
You ponder that question. Liantiel has already as much as said that she's letting you take a sample of the Goddess copper in her domain in exchange for watching the fallout of Navi's kids' shenanigans, so that's off the table as a bargaining chip. You also don't know her very well (read, at all), so you can't really say what sort of thing she'd be interested in as compensation.
You WERE considering asking if Liantiel worked as a tailor. If you were to ask now, and the answer turned out to be yes, it's possible she'd be interested in having you introduce examples of her work to new markets, or taking commissions from certain select clientele you could introduce her to via Summoning Magic. Perhaps this would work?
Or should you live a little dangerously, and just ask the strange Fae creature you've even barely met what it is that she wants?
"I WAS THINKING..."
Two possible methods of payment come to mind: taking a page from your earlier dealings with the catgirl and offering food; or going with your original intent, and asking if the spider-woman is interested in doing some tailoring on commission.
You bring up both options, and Liantiel considers them. On the one hand, she doesn't really NEED extra food, as she, her children (some of the larger spiders hanging around), and their swarm of pets/minions are doing well enough at feeding themselves. On the other hand, for all that her natural form is that of a giant animal, she's more than intelligent enough to appreciate the novelty of different foodstuffs, as well as the benefits of having more food available for a time.
And on the third hand, it turns out that she IS a tailor - and weaver, seamstress, web designer, and probably a few other related jobs - albeit one whose work has previously been limited to outfitting herself, her home, and her family. The prospect of broadening her horizons and gaining some new clients who'd actually PAY for her time and products is not unappealing, just somewhat intimidating to a lady who's never worked professionally before.
While you think it's fairly likely that some of your friends would be interested in quality clothing and accessories made by a Fae spider, you can't offer a guarantee that there will be enough work to make the whole endeavor worth Liantiel's while - especially not if you were to be taking a modest cut as her middleman-slash-partner. With that in mind, she's willing to trade you that Webbing Sample you wanted, plus a few examples of her more "humanoid friendly" work to show off and see if there's a viable market for her services within your circle of friends and family. She also consents to being summoned to meet prospective clients, although only in the lesser sense, via Spells to Summon A Monster.
"LET ME GUESS," you say at this point. "IT'S NOT THAT YOU DON'T TRUST ME, IT'S JUST THAT YOU DON'T TRUST ME."
"That, and I have to keep a few eyes on my children," Liantiel says wryly, glancing at the spiders in question, who immediately straighten up and try to look innocent and cute.
They're disturbingly good at it.
In exchange for what she's giving you, Liantiel would like to be paid with that food you offered, with long-term payment for her work to be decided when and if it turns out that there is a genuine demand for Fae spider-silk garments.
"I FIND THESE TERMS ACCEPTABLE."
Agreement reached, you ask Liantiel where she'd like you to put the access portal to the Magnificent Mansion, in the process giving her a quick explanation of how large said portal is - the size of a large doorway, so easily fitted into any room worth the name - and how while the entrance can't really be closed - at least not without you personally going inside - it won't affect the internal conditions of the extra-dimensional space, which only those beings you designate at the time of casting will be able to enter.
Where the second admission makes the spider-woman frown, the last part has her perking right up.
"In that case," she says, gesturing at the front room, "you can just set it up right here."
You do that, but not before inquiring what sort of architecture and decor the lady would prefer for this addition to her living space. She professes a preference for wooden structures over stone ones, a desire for "plenty of room to move" but also for "as many surfaces to climb over, hang from, and string webs along, between, or from as possible." As far as interior decor goes, she is unsurprisingly fond of tapestries, curtains, carpets, and other woven fabrics.
The food provided by the Spell of the Magnificent Mansion is already fine enough to be considered a banquet, and so doesn't really need further improvement in terms of quality. Since part of the reason Liantiel agreed to this was for the novelty value of trying new foodstuffs, you figure the variety of meals could stand to be tweaked, and you redirect mana normally used to invoke the spell at range towards trying to expand the "menu," as it were.
With all decisions reached, you cast the spell, walking over to one unoccupied corner of Liantiel's front room and holding out your hand.
Empty air shimmers, twists, and unravels to reveal a foyer that combines elements of an old English house - inspired by your visits to the Drake residence - with those of a forest cabin - drawn from your experiences at the family cottage, before that ghoul turned up and you started avoiding the place. Carpet-covered hardwood floor and paneled walls adorned with various colorful hangings give way to exposed rafters, an incomplete floor with a whole other room's worth of space between them and the ceiling. There are also elements of that larger-than-life design philosophy that turns up in temples and other structures of Hyrulean make, as though the room and the "building" it stands within were built to accomodate beings twice as tall as mortal men.
You think this provides enough space for Liantiel's true form to move around "upstairs." And if you're wrong, she's a shapeshifter, she can figure something out.
You take the lady on a short tour of the Mansion, getting her up to speed on how to command the servants drifting about; rather than the Gerudo staff you conjured back on Bali Ha'i, this lot look decidedly Fae, with sharp elfin features and long, tapered ears that go beyond even classical Hylian features.
All in all, your magic seems to go over well, with Liantiel taking a bite of the food on display in the dining hall and making noises of appreciation.
When the brief tour ends, the spider-woman declares that she is quite satisfied with your payment, and escorts you and Briar towards the center of her domain to uphold her end of your bargain. The central corridor of her home is not straight, but rather coils about itself in a spiral pattern, and as you follow it, you pass a number of rooms whose doorways have been filled with funnel-shaped webs. You spend some time wondering if those are supposed to be permanently closed off, or if there's a way to open the doors without destroying them.
The ghostly moaning and skeletal clicking coming from behind some of the sealed portals makes you wonder.
Liantiel eventually stops in front of one of these doors and reaches out with all four of her arms, doing something to the web you can't follow. This causes the funnel to open up kind of like the iris on that Stargate show, leaving a roughly circular opening that measures a good eight feet across.
"After you," she says, holding one side of the large door with three hands, while gesturing for you to preceed her with the fourth.
Under different circumstances, you might hesitate, but there's a large, web-covered rock in the room ahead, and when you focus on it, you can make out the signature of Goddess copper underneath the silk.
While you start taking notes on the local conditions, Liantiel excuses herself, saying that she's going to go get those clothes and web sample she promised you. When she pulls back her hands, the funnel-door stays open for a moment, threads quivering, before something gives and the aperture closes, looking rather like a stretched rubber band snapping back to normal.
Liantiel's presence ventures back up the coiling passage, your senses registering a shift from drow-like to wholly spider-like that is accompanied by her shadow suddenly looming much larger, before she moves out of your effective range. She doesn't return until you've finished recording information and are wondering if it would be rude to tear away the webbing on the stone, and by then she's returned to her drow state, although this time she's got six arms, two of which have clothes folded over them.
You quickly sort things out from there.
Gained Liantiel's Silk Clothing
Gained Liantiel's Web Sample
Gained Ore Sample
Gained Sylvan D (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)
With that, your business with the lady is concluded... right?
You still have over half of your maximum mana remaining, which is more than enough for you to afford indulging in a little generosity and magical exercise. As such, when you cast the Spell of the Magnificent Mansion, you employ the ritual method, raising the magic to the level of a ninth-circle spell and extending its duration from around thirty hours to fifteen days - give or take.
Liantiel gives you a startled look, obviously noticing the sheer potency of your spell, but either she isn't familiar enough with Conjuration and Summoning Magic to grasp what you just did, or she doesn't feel it proper to ask for details.
As you stand once more on the threshold of Liantiel's home, about to make your departure, two questions occur to you.
Turning back to the spider-woman, you ask first her if there is a particular rate - or for that matter, a currency - that she would prefer to set for her work, and also how long it took her to create the products she's handed over.
The latter detail, Liantiel is able to provide easily. She has you take out the silk clothes she gave you, and goes over each garment in turn, indicating the amount of time it took her to spin and weave. While she can't create things as fast as magic would allow you to conjure them, the fact that the spider-woman brings eight legs, uncountable generations of instinct, and who knows how many years of personal experience to bear when weaving means she's pretty darn fast all the same. She cites so many minutes for a child-sized shirt, several times as long for an adult-sized dress of relatively plain design, and a few times longer again for a fancy outfit like she's currently wearing.
That's assuming ideal conditions, of course. Even the small and simple shirt took the better part of a day, what with all the distractions that come with being a single mother to... at least half a dozen curious spiderlings.
Again, the larger and more obviously Fae members of the swarm of spiders that have been following Liantiel about contrive to look innocent - but somewhere deeper inside the spiralling house of webs, you hear chittering laughter.
The other half of your question is harder for the Fae woman to answer. As she said before, she's never done work on commission, and isn't sure what would be a fair price, what would be greedy, and what would be undervaluing her creations. As for the currency, while it's true that mundane gold has value even among the Fae and would be an acceptable form of payment, it's not really an ideal one for Liantiel. Markets, malls, and shopping districts such as you're used to on Earth don't exist in Faerie; if you can't make or otherwise acquire something for yourself, you have to make a deal with someone who can, and Fae bargains are more likely to come down to an exchange of services and favors than they are to a few coins changing hands.
Payment in food would be acceptable, but only up to a point: Liantiel may be feeding a small army, but the members of said army are quite small themselves; and while she has a larder to store extra, it's only so big. The prospect of food sitting around long enough to rot is one novelty the Fae woman would just as soon do without.
"If I really thought I could get away with it," Liantiel admits, "I would ask for books on the lore of Faerie and the mortal realms, or even a tutor for the same."
"For yourself, or for the kids?" Briar asks.
"...both," comes the reluctant admission. Picking up one of the smaller oversized spiders and stroking it gently along its fuzzy-shelled back-
The spider in question waves its four front legs in the air and makes a weird sound you assume is either a sign of happiness, or Spider for "Aw, Mom, put me down, not in front of people-!"
For that matter, it might be a bit of both.
Gained Spider F
-Liantiel continues, "I can teach them everything a spider needs to know, and a bit more besides, but I know my limits. And I'd rather not see my little ones falling in with the Skull Kids or worse crowds if I can avoid it, let alone get taken advantage of by a lord."
From the scowl and sharp tone that accompany that last bit, you think she may be speaking from personal experience.
Skull Kid honestly didn't seem that bad to you, but you guess it's normal that a mother would want her children to do better for themselves than hanging out in the woods playing games and pranking travelers for the rest of their lives. And yeah, there are definitely worse crowds out there than the Forest Mischief and his kin - see all the Gohma and Skulltulas ever, for starters.
"SPEAKING OF FAE LORDS," you say, "WOULD YOU HAPPEN TO KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THE FAE LEFT TO GUARD THE DEPOSIT OF SUNGOLD THAT LIES TO THE SOUTHEAST?"
Liantiel blinks at you, while the spiderling in her hands stares.
"Only rumors," the eight-limbed matron answers. "It's been here longer than I have, and I've never tried to investigate in person - it sounds quite nasty, and I have too much to lose."
You nod. "WHAT DO THOSE RUMORS SAY?"
"Most of the people I've spoken to on the subject agree the guardian strikes from ambush," Liantiel replies. "Largely because none of us have ever seen it, or heard of anyone claiming they had. Some of my sillier or more dramatic neighbors say that's because it's killed everyone that's ever seen it or entered its domain, conveniently ignoring how the lord that commands it must know what it actually is, and brings a small troop of guards and servants with him when he visits each year." The spider-woman shakes her head, snowy tresses billowing about. "And then there's what it does to the bodies of its kills."
"YES, I HEARD ABOUT THAT FROM ANOTHER LOCAL. HANGING THE CORPSES UP WHERE EVERYONE CAN SEE, TO SCARE OFF INTRUDERS?"
"On the edges of its territory, about a mile from the sungold, yes." Liantiel sighs. "It's behavior like that which makes me almost positive that the guardian is one of the greater Fae indulging a streak of sadism and so-called 'showmanship.' No proper predator would leave all that meat to rot."
...right.
Gained King of Fairies C (Plus)
Thanking Liantiel for her time, you see yourself out.
As you depart Liantiel's residence, you consider what your next move should be. In the end, you decide that having gathered samples from nine out of twelve potential sites of Goddess copper ought to be plenty for Robin to work with; more to the point, it would be a better idea for you to deal with the unseen guardian of the sungold when you have as much mana as possible remaining.
While you haven't exactly been wasteful of your power today, you still managed to use up over a third of your reserves during this Faerie field trip. And although you do have a goodly supply of restoratives on hand, you'd be happier to get the job done without needing any of them.
Not that you'll hesitate to *glug glug glug* a potion or drain a mana crystal if you need to, but every material resource you spend today is a resource you won't have on hand for tomorrow - or more significantly, when June 17th rolls around.
With your course decided, you begin ritual-casting a modified Spell of Teleportation, drastically reducing the range so that you can dump a couple of spell levels.
Three minutes later, the world around you blinks, and you find yourself back where you began your quest. You take a minute to get your bearings, make sure Briar didn't get left behind-
"Thank you."
"YOU'RE WELCOME."
-and sweep the area for other presences, but everything appears to be in order. Satisfied, you set out for the east, following your magical mental map and the aura of the sole source of sungold you detected within the local Great Fairy's territory.
By your estimate, the Spell of Overland Flight will need about an hour and a half to carry you to the sungold deposit - though based on what Liantiel told you about the guardian, you'll want to stop before you cross into its territory, so more like an hour and twenty minutes.
Time enough to figure out how you're going to deal with the mysterious, murderous guardian of the gold.
Sneaking past the guardian might be an option, especially if you turn invisible and just fly right to the sungold. The main drawbacks are that you don't know what sort of senses the unidentified Fae has, and the possibility that the Fae lord who charged the creature with guarding the gold in the first place left other defenses in the area.
Briar notes that the greater Fae are rather skilled at working wards into natural environments, and while you won't be looking at any sort of active defense, such as forcefields, monster summoning, or just straight-up blast-you-to-bits evocations - such things would be too likely to contaminate the sungold lessen its value - spells of detection are not only possible, but highly likely.
One other issue with the stealthy approach is that, assuming you secure a sample of the sungold and it passes Robin's quality control tests, someone's going to have to come back to actually mine the site. Hiding a minor mining operation would be tricky, to say the least, verging on impossible if you're not involved. Worse, if the guardian realizes someone got past it and stole a bit of the ore-
"It probably will notice," Briar admits. "Fae guardians are like that."
"WELL, THAT'S ANNOYING."
"Yeah, they're like that, too."
-it'll likely connect that with the next bunch of people who show up looking to collect some of the stuff. And then it'll get CREATIVE about expressing its displeasure.
If you decide not to go with stealth, negotiations might be viable. Perhaps not with the guardian itself - though depending on just what the terms of its assignment were, there might be a loophole you could exploit - but if you were to make contact with its lord, drop Navi's name, and offer a small service, you could probably talk your way into being given permission to gather an Ore Sample. Getting the gold Robin would need to build the Fairy Death Machine would require a second and larger favor.
The downside of this approach is that you'd be dealing with a Fae lord. Which, really, says it all.
Option three would be to leverage your mastery of Summoning Magic to get help. You might still end up owing someone a favor, depending on who you call and how they deal with the guardian, but at the very least, you wouldn't be going into debt with a Fae lord.
Then there's the old fallback of treating the guardian like you would a Hyrulean monster: hunt it down, kill it, and loot it. Judging from your conversations with the catgirl and the spider-woman, the locals would likely thank you.
And finally, you could call upon your Divination Magic and try to get more information about just what sort of creature you're dealing with. Though the Goddesses have been remarkably quiet since you started this trek...
You fly on, considering your options.
"SPEAKING FROM EXPERIENCE?" you ask.
"Eh, not quite," Briar replies. You get the sense that she's waggling one hand as she says it. "I've never had to get around a proper Fae guardian before, but Mom's kind of an unofficial one where the Master Sword is concerned, the Great Deku Tree is responsible for the whole Lost Woods, and I've heard stories of others."
You nod, and then innocently add, "SO THE ANNOYINGNESS ISN'T JUST A LITTLE FAIRY THING, THEN?"
"No, it- wait, that's not what I-!"
"TOO LATE, YOU ADMITTED FAIRIES ARE ANNOYING, NO TAKEBACKS!"
"Oooo-! So help me, Alex, one of these days I will shave you BALD in your SLEEP!"
Yeah, no. You're trying to plan a strategy based on nothing but rumors and general Faerie lore. That's just not going to work; you need actionable intelligence before you try taking on something as aggressive and deadly as this guardian has been made out to be.
Fortunately, you are a master of Divination Magic. It's just a question of which spells to employ.
Of the various priestly Divination Spells in your repertoire, the one most useful for this situation would seem to once again be the Spell of Communion. The only issue is that, given how quiet the Goddesses have been since you started this fetch quest, you think they might choose to constrain themselves from the longer responses you've received in past castings of Commune, sticking to the standard one-word answers.
You'd have to pick your questions carefully, and even then...
The arcane side of things seems more promising. You know enough about the guardian that you could attempt to cast a Spell of Scrying on it, to find out what it looks like and where it is, and perhaps talk to it. Of course, since you haven't met the thing and don't have access to any of its possessions (or body parts), there's a fair chance the magic might not take; you ARE dealing with one of the greater Fae, and they tend to be somewhat magic resistant. If you found one of these grisly totems it's supposed to have staked out to ward off intruders, could you use that as a focus...?
...actually, if you find one of those bodies, you should cast the Spell to Speak With the Dead. Even if the guardian's Fae victims don't have the same outlook on death that a mortal would, they should still hold a certain amount of negative feeling towards their killer. A promise on your part to get back at the thing would probably convince even the most human-hating or indifferent Fae to loosen its tongue. You could also learn a few things about how the guardian fights and kills by examining the wounds on the body, though you'd need a fairly fresh corpse to be sure it was the guardian's work you were looking at, and not that of opportunistic scavengers or simple decay.
There's also the Spell of Literary Vision, though given how you only have rumors to work with at the moment, you might want to hold off on casting that one. The more solid data you have when casting that spell, the more accurate the results.
"NOT THE MANE!"
You recoil from your partner, one hand rising to your hair in a protective gesture.
"Yes, the mane!" Briar retorts in the same dramatic tone. Then she pauses, looks you over, and asks frankly, "Does it actually count as a 'mane', though? I mean, you do keep it fairly short, and it hardly covers any part of your neck at all..."
"...THIS IS A FAIR QUESTION," you admit, hand shifting from shielding to tentative patting as you ponder the details. "THINKING ON IT, I BELIEVE YOU ARE CORRECT; I WOULD LIKELY HAVE TO GROW MY HAIR OUT TO REALLY QUALIFY FOR THE TITLE OF 'MANE.' CHIN-LENGTH AT LEAST, AND MORE LIKELY SHOULDER-LENGTH, FOR THE FULL EFFECT."
"Sounds like it would take a while, unless you've got a spell that will grow hair faster...?" Your partner trails off.
"NOT SPECIFICALLY," you reply, after another moment's thought. "I'D BE ABLE TO PUT SOMETHING TOGETHER FROM THE SCHOOL OF AUGMENTATION EVENTUALLY, AND VARIOUS SPELLS OF TRANSFORMATION WOULD LET ME CHANGE MY HAIR IMMEDIATELY, BUT ONLY ON A TEMPORARY BASIS."
Well, temporary unless you allocated enough mana to make the effect at least semi-permanent. But burning a seventh- or eighth-circle spell just to grow your hair out faster seems kind of excessive, even by your standards.
Thinking about this, you wonder: should you try growing your hair out? True, you'd be taking a cue from Ganondorf, but from what you can recall, the guy had a truly GLORIOUS head of hair. It'd be kind of a shame to just let that potential languish, and as long as you avoided Gerudo hairstyles and didn't dye it red...
On the other hand, between Cordy, Kahlua, and Altria, you've heard plenty of grumbling about what a pain long hair can be to take care of, especially for the martially inclined. Some of that could easily be offset with magic; you may not have spells specifically to GROW hair, but grooming it would be well within the bounds of Least Wi- that is to say, the Spell of Prestidigitation.
You WOULD have to watch out for people trying to grab it in a fight, though. That could be tricky. And if the ladies figure out that you have magical hairstyling powers and have been holding out on them all this time...
You decide to go with a minimal-power version of the Greater Spell of Scrying, which will bring the spell's maximum duration down to just over a minute and a half.
Ninety seconds isn't a long time in absolute terms, but it's enough to give you a good look at the guardian of the sungold. Although your personal knowledge of Fae creatures is far from complete, there's still a chance you might recognize this thing once you've gotten a good look at it, and Briar is even more likely to be able to put a name to the guardian's face, at least in general terms. Even if both of you draw a blank on what kind of being you're looking at, you'll at least be able to figure out what sort of weapons it's carrying, how it moves and is likely to fight, and maybe a few other details if luck and the Goddesses are with you.
Keeping the spell short will also reduce the odds of the guardian noticing your attention and going on guard or trying to strike back at you through the connection. It won't completely eliminate the risk, but it strikes you as much safer than leaving the spell active for a quarter of an hour.
Even with all of that having been decided, you don't break out the Divination Magic just yet. With nothing more than rumors to guide you, even a perfectly ordinary child back home would have... better odds of dodging your scrying spell. Not good odds, no, not even close to being even, but three chances out of twenty is about three chances too many to your way of thinking. And the thing you're going after now is, by all accounts, stronger and more magical than most of the extraordinary kids you've met, not to mention one of the Fae, for whom magic comes as naturally as breathing.
You need something to help you shorten those odds, something that will guide your spell to your intended target, and from the accounts given by the catgirl and Liantiel, there is something that ought to serve.
And so you fly on in silence, contemplating how to adapt a Spell of Scrying to use a corpse to track a killer.
Your flight continues uninterrupted for the next half hour. You and Briar discuss your plan for a bit, and while your partner is a little put off by the not-quite-necromancy you have in mind, she agrees it's not a bad idea, and certainly preferable to using ACTUAL Necromantic Magic on Fae corpses.
Zipping along the top of the forest canopy as you are on the wings of your Spell of Flight, you aren't making much noise, and as such, you catch glimpses of a number of locals that you might otherwise have missed. Most of these look and act like larger, healthier, and more vividly colored versions of familiar mortal animals - though occasionally with glittery, insect-like wings - leading you to pass them by without stopping.
At one point, you find yourself sharing airspace with a bird whose body is almost as big as your own, held aloft by rainbow-feathered wings large enough for a small airplane. You don't recognize the species, and while the shape of its beak doesn't suggest a hunter, the brief gaze it regards you with is intelligent enough to make you wary.
Fortunately, the bird either deems you harmless or just thinks better of picking a fight, instead banking away and soaring northwards with a long, musical cry.
The entire time that you're flying east, one particular sight dominates the skyline: a particularly massive and ancient-looking tree, easily three times taller than its largest neighbor. Given that the average tree in this Fae forest hovers around the forty-foot mark, this makes for a tree of considerable height. It's not just tall, either; the base of the trunk looks like it would fill the entire property where your family home stands, and that's not taking into account how the roots spill out in all directions, rising from the ancient, moss-covered loam like sea serpents frozen in time. You're not even going to talk about the spread of the branches.
The verdurous titan is still several miles off, far enough away that your Elemental Sense and Fairy Sight are entirely useless, but after half an hour in the air, you've gotten close enough that your much more developed Ki Sight and Mage Sight can just make out an aura of raw life-force and mystical energy surrounding the huge plant. In fact, looking around, that "aura" seems to be part of a great web of interwoven energies, spreading out through the forest in multiple directions.
A wordless sense of recognition rises up from the depths of your soul as your inner Dark Lord briefly stirs.
You turn the idea over in your mind a few times.
"HEY, BRIAR?"
"Yes?"
"DO YOU THINK I'D LOOK GOOD WITH LONG HAIR?"
Your partner pauses, looking you over again as she ponders her answer.
"How long are we talking about, here?"
"I WAS THINKING SHOULDER-LENGTH." You cast a minor illusion, making it appear as if you suddenly grew about twelve extra inches of hair. "LIKE THIS, ONLY, YOU KNOW, FOR REAL."
Briar hums in consideration. "It would depend on whether or not your hair actually grows out that way, and what style you went with, but as long as you were taking proper care of it, you should be fine."
You spend a couple of minutes shifting through different illusory hairstyles, ranging from the wild, untamed look to various tied-back styles to the sort of looks that would require some sort of hair gel (or magic) to maintain.
Then you let the spell lapse, and make a mental note to talk about this with Mom when you get home. As with so much else that lies in the realm of personal grooming and style, she has final say when it comes to haircuts.
While you are understandably wary of poking your nose into matters that make the echoes of your past life louder than usual, you think that, in this case, the risk is minor. It doesn't take a genius to understand why the sight of a giant magical tree (or tree-like entity) in the heart of a Faerie forest would prompt a sense of recognition from Ganondorf's sleeping soul, but as long as you don't place a horrible death-curse on the tree to gain a mystical treasure in its keeping, you should be fine.
As you adjust course and start closing in on the giant tree, a nasty little thought wells up in your mind: what if THIS is the guardian of the sungold? What if, instead of a creature roving the forest, part of the forest ITSELF was called upon to drive off intruders upon the Fae Lord's claim? The great tree doesn't stand at the site of the ore deposit - it's still several miles too far west, and a couple of miles south besides - but if its roots extended far enough, THEY could be the unseen killer that has been stalking the woods, spreading out beneath the soil like the tentacles of a truly gigantic Octorok, laying in wait until they sense movement before bursting from the ground to attack...
You consider that for a moment, and then shake your head. The concept of an unnaturally flexible and/or predatory plant is nothing new to Faerie. While the only example of such that you've encountered in person was that twigjack hanging around the Memorian Outpost, you've read or been told of numerous other examples in your studies, not the least of which are the mighty treants, literal walking trees with the strength to tear down mountains, given time.
It's far from impossible that a particular native of Faerie might yet be surprised by such a thing, not expecting it to be where it was, when it was, but to not consider the possibility of its existence? Very unlikely. Even more so, given the number of deaths that the tales told to you by the catgirl and Miss Liantiel imply. You could understand a few ignorant or arrogant fools being led to a bad end by their own thoughtlessness, but a score? A few dozen? That starts stretching credulity.
Putting your darker speculations aside for now, you focus on the tree.
It takes another quarter-hour for you to reach your new destination, and the arboreal titan just keeps getting more impressive with every minute that passes. At a certain point, you're close enough to see how the network of Fae essence and magical power centered on the giant growth spreads out in all directions from the towering trunk, following the massive roots as they tunnel downward and outward, gradually splitting off in smaller branches. Here and there, the root system comes back to the surface, giving rise to smaller growths that initially appeared to be independent trees; each of these offshoots stands at the center of its own sphere of normally invisible energy.
For all of that, it doesn't look like a designed system. While the lesser growths didn't pop up at random - you can dimly sense a pocket of elemental energy buried underneath the nearest of them - the directions in which the roots grew is too disorganized, too ORGANIC, to have been the result of intelligent direction. And in spite of the large amounts of mystical energy coursing through the whole, there's no indication of actual MAGIC at work, at least not in the terms you're used to thinking of it in. There is no structure of spell formulas or ritualized prayer, here, no channel of belief or agreement to shape the raw essence of nature and spirit that you can sense all around. It's all just... there.
Existing.
Living.
Gained Elemental Sense E (Plus)
The good news is, you're probably NOT flying into a ward system.
The bad news is, you're flying to a face-to-face meeting with what is basically the god of the local forest. The ENTIRE forest.
"I THOUGHT YOUR MOTHER SAID THIS WAS A GREAT FAIRY'S DOMAIN?"
"She did say that," Briar agrees. "She just didn't say it was somebody else's domain, too."
"AND I DIDN'T ASK," you conclude.
If you were dealing with another type of Greater Fae, you could chalk this up to Faerie honesty at work and move on. Navi, though, has a lot of experience dealing with mortals, and not only knows how NOT to be a dick, but actually follows through on that. If she didn't mention this tree-god, she must have felt it wasn't necessary to.
Sensing the power moving around and through the green behemoth, you find yourself doubting the Great Fairy's reasoning. Just a little.
And then suddenly, fairies.
"Look, look! Strangers!"
"Halt, in the name of Mom and Dad!"
"Oh hey, look at that pretty blue girl!"
"Wow, he's a big one, isn't he?"
"Do you think they're... partners?"
As the chatter and squealing of perhaps two dozen little light balls washes over you, Briar speaks up.
"Alex," she says sweetly, "why are these kids saying I'm blue?"
"IT'S CALLED A COSTUME."
"I KNOW RED IS THE BEST," you continue, "BUT SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO MAKE SACRIFICES IN THE NAME OF ACCURACY."
Briar stares at you for a moment. Before she can say or do anything-
"Wait, she's wearing a costume?"
"A disguise? Suspicious!"
"Did someone throw a party and not invite us? Mean!"
"Are you saying she's not really blue?"
"You heard the big guy: red is best! Hahahaha!"
"Heresy!"
-the other fairies interrupt, drawing her attention and your own their way.
"...TALK ABOUT IT LATER?" you offer.
"Yeah, later," Briar agrees. With a faint pulse of magic and a sound like the ringing of the tiniest bells, she shimmies in mid-air, her artificial blue color falling away in favor of her usual reddish pink. Once restored, Briar addresses the fairies. "Alright, kiddos. Which one of you is in charge?"
"I AM!" four separate voices declare in unison.
"You are not!"
"I am too!"
"Liar!"
"Mom put me in charge!"
"Dad put ME in charge!"
It takes a few minutes to get this sorted out. Eventually, the largest of the arguing fairies - who is, incidentally, still smaller than Briar - succeeds in cowing the other three. It may have something to do with the fact that he is carrying a tiny wooden spear and wearing a just barely visible suit of armor, which appears to have been crafted from acorns or something.
Not that he hits his siblings or even threatens to; the quasi-uniform just lends a certain air of authority, which he seems to know how to leverage.
Thus, it's "under guard" that you and Briar are escorted to meet the masters of the forest, the Great Fairy and the Great Tree, otherwise known as Mom and Dad.
If nothing else, you now have a fair idea as to why Navi didn't feel the need to mention the other god-like entity holding dominion over this region of Faerie.
Your fairy guards lead you towards a spot at the base of the towering tree, where several massive roots and the lesser growths atop them have circled about to form a protected hollow. Nestled inside this sheltered area is a sparkling spring, where half again as many fairies as are in your escort drifting about or taking it easy on little benches and seats that appear to have been grown right out of the living wood of the great tree. Several of the young Fae gathered here are larger than Briar, though even the biggest of them is only about a foot tall.
That one's a guy, incidentally, and he blinks in surprise when he sees your group flying in.
"Who-"
"Big Brother Moss!" the guard-fairy calls out, flying ahead of your group and snapping to attention in mid-air. "Guard Newt, reporting two prisoners taken into custody!"
Moss looks from his little brother to you. He says not a word, but his expression makes it clear he has doubts about how much of a prisoner you actually are.
"LITTLE SIBLINGS. WHAT CAN YOU DO?"
You mirror Moss's reaction, looking from him to his brother and then back again, before shrugging and saying your piece.
There is a moment of empathy and mutual understanding that crosses all lines of biology and metaphysics, one big brother to another.
Then Moss faces Newt. "Well done, Guardsman Newt. If you'll allow me to take custody of the 'prisoners,' I will keep things in order here while you go let Mom and Dad know."
"Yeeees sir!" Newt salutes and then flies off, a few of his siblings chasing after him.
"Hey, Newt! Wait up!"
"What? Go away!"
"But I wanna tell Mom and Dad the news!"
"You can't, that's my job!"
"I can if I get there first!"
"Oh, you little-!"
Then they pass beyond earshot, heading over a bump in one of the huge roots that's about as high up as your bedroom window.
"So," Moss says. "It's probably a bit late, but welcome to the Fairy Fountain of the Great Tree. I'm Moss, the oldest, and on behalf of my parents, I'd like to apologize for Newt dragging you here, and to thank you for going along with it without making a fuss."
"ALEX HARRIS," you reply, nodding. "THIS IS MY PARTNER, BRIAR OF THE LOST WOODS OF HYRULE-"
"Hello, miss."
"Hiya."
"Hi, Briar!" comes the collective call from a bunch of the little fairies.
"Hi, kids."
"-AND IT'S ACTUALLY NO TROUBLE. WE WERE COMING TO INVESTIGATE THE TREE ANYWAY. PLUS, UNLESS THERE'S ANOTHER GREAT FAIRY WHO CLAIMS THIS DOMAIN, WE ALREADY HAD YOUR MOTHER'S PERMISSION TO BE IN THE GENERAL AREA."
"Oh!" Moss's expression brightens. "So you're the one Miss Navi talked about? How goes the quest?"
"A quest! A quest!" the little ones cheer.
"IT'S GOING WELL ENOUGH. AT THE VERY LEAST, NOTHING'S MANAGED TO EAT ME, I'VE MADE A COUPLE FRIENDLY CONTACTS, AND I THINK I'VE GOT ENOUGH SAMPLES OF GODDESS COPPER TO SERVE."
"Miss Navi mentioned something about her oldest son needing materials for a forging project...?" Moss inquires leadingly. Apparently, he didn't get the full story.
From the way a dozen or so of the larger little fairies are leaning forward, they're curious, too.
You break off as two presences appear to your senses, accompanied by a sound similar to but not exactly like wooden boards bending under a load. Looking up, you see two figures walking through an opening that wasn't there a moment ago, a circular passage ringed by leafy branches, vines, and smaller roots that are just finishing pulling themselves out of the way.
The first figure is a Great Fairy. She's a bit taller than Navi, and seems to be in her youthful late thirties or early forties rather than a truly young twenty-something - whether that means anything beyond personal preference, you have no idea. Her hair is a brilliant green and reaches clear to the backs of her knees, woven through with ribbons of gold that likely keep it from reaching its full length and dragging on the ground wherever she goes. Her aura is a similar hue, while her eyes are a deep, clear blue. The Great Fairy wears a fancy dress of fine white material, trimmed with golden threads, and a little crown of twiglets that bear living leaves and bright red berries sits atop her head.
The second figure is male. He's very tall, closing in on six and a half feet, and is broadly built in the bargain, with the sort of shoulders that you recall having in prior lifetimes, and can probably look forward to having again in a few years' time. His hair is about waist-length, as is his matching beard, and both are a rich, earthy shade of brown, shot through with streaks of green - and that's not just color, you realize, but patches of living moss. What you can see of the face is brown and lined as if from exposure to the elements, and seems somewhere past your father's age but short of Lu-sensei's venerable years. Fifty-ish, maybe, although the sharp lines of his face, the elf-like airs, and the aura of pure Fae essence would tell you he's a lot older than that even if you didn't know who and what he really was. He wears robes of green and brown, and has a little crown of his own to match his lady's. For a second, you think his eyes are black, until he steps out of the shadow of the wooden tunnel and a beam of sunlight reveals them to be a dark, dark shade of green.
"Presenting their forest majesties!" Newt declares from shoulder-height to his father. "Mom and Dad!"
"HAIL!" a bunch of little fairies cry.
You're tempted. You are so very, VERY tempted to tell Moss and his siblings about Project Fairy Death Machine, and how the Ore Samples you've collected today will (hopefully) lead to sources of suitable metal for building a mystical battle automaton to uphold the dignity and reputation of the fairies of the Lost Woods among the other races of Hyrule.
But if the greater ranks of the Fair Folk and the deeper mysteries of Faerie itself are as yet a mystery to you, you KNOW what little fairies are like. If you tell this lot the truth, they're going to start pestering their parents to let them try to build their own Fairy Death Machine - because clearly, anything another bunch of little fairies can do, they can do, too. If not better.
And from there, rumors will spread to other family groups in Faerie, until at last, the whole PLANE will be buzzing with fairies trying to build their own battle machines, likely so that they can pit them against all the rest in some kind of inter-planar robot fighting tournament.
Goddesses only know how the rest of Faerie will react to something like that, but you suspect that your current hosts would be a little put out with you for your part in things.
After all, Navi must have told them SOMETHING about the purpose behind your quest to get their permission for you to wander their territory, and whatever it was that she said, they chose not to pass it on to their kids. That's a pretty good indication that they'd like to keep the excitable little ones from finding out the details as long as possible, perhaps in the hopes that they'll forget about it, as young fairies so often do.
You'll take your cue in this from the adult Fae. Instead of revealing the details behind your quest, you simply say, "SOMETHING LIKE THAT, YES."
There is a collective, "Awww," of disappointment.
"Come on! You can tell us..."
"Yeah, we want to know!"
"Pretty please, with a ginger beetle on top?"
You pause at that one.
You can tell that this isn't a formal audience even by Fae standards, just from the fact that a little fairy is being allowed to announce the new arrivals. That's not even getting into the nature of the titles.
Even if it were a formal audience, you wouldn't kneel. You aren't Fae, you don't reside in Faerie, and you aren't sworn to any of the Big Folk except possibly Navi, and then only in a roundabout, secondhand manner thanks to your bond with Briar. Such a show of fealty wouldn't be at all appropriate, and could get you in trouble.
But the Great Fairy and her husband ARE the local authorities, you ARE in their domain on their sufferance, and you are as yet not their peer, so a show of some respect and deference would certainly be appropriate.
As such, you greet them with a bow.
And then, once again, fairies interrupt.
"Mom! Dad! Look, look, look! It's another fairy, and she's got a partner!"
"That's so neat!"
"I want a partner! Can I have a partner, please?"
"What would you even do with one?"
"Silly! Take him on ADVENTURES, of course!"
"Mom, they know what's going on! And they won't tell us!"
"So mean!"
"So unfair!"
...you may be in for a bit of a wait.
Once the Great Fairy and the Great Tree have sorted their kids out, what exactly do you want to say to or ask of them?
"WHAT IS A GINGER BEETLE?"
It is with some trepidation that you ask the fairies this question. Your concern is quickly proven valid by their various responses.
"It's a tiny little beetle that tastes like ginger. Hence the name."
"They make great snacks! And garnishes!"
"Crunchy on the outside, chewy on the inside!"
"It's like meat that comes pre-spiced!"
"Except you can eat it raw, and wriggling!"
"Mmmm... the best!"
Yeah, you could have lived without knowing most of that.
Though you suppose food that could be safely eaten without needing to be cooked first - and hence, without fire - WOULD be an important consideration for little fairies.
Still... "I BELIEVE I SHALL PASS."
"Awww..."
"Are you sure? You don't know what you're missing."
"I'M SURE, THANK YOU." You look around for a distraction, and the two adult Fae graciously choose that time to make their appearance.
Once they have their kids sorted out - without revealing Project Fairy Death Machine in the process, you note - you introduce yourself and Briar to the Great Fairy and her husband, who respond in kind. Her name is Chloe, and he is known as the Great Raka Tree, or just "Raka" when using this humanoid avatar.
"ANY RELATION TO THE GREAT DEKU TREE OF THE LOST WOODS OF HYRULE?"
"Distantly," the tall, burly man admits with a frown that causes his thick eyebrows to furrow intimidatingly. "A seed from one of our mutual ancestors somehow managed to cross between the worlds, long, long ago, becoming the first of the Great Trees to take root in Hyrule. Though the Great Trees growing there would claim it was the other way around," he adds in a grumbling undertone.
Sounds like there's a story and perhaps a bit of a family grudge there. Before you can inquire after it, however, the lady of the... house?... speaks up.
"So, Alex," Chloe interjects smoothly, "what brings you to our family home? Were you in search of a short break from your quest, or was my husband just too impressive to pass by without a closer look?"
You decide you should probably take the Great Fairy's lead in this, and let that one question lie.
"INITIALLY, THE LATTER," you admit, "ALTHOUGH NOW THAT I KNOW YOU'RE HERE, WOULD YOU MIND ANSWERING A FEW QUESTIONS?"
"That would depend on the question," Raka answers. "There are some secrets in these woods that we are sworn to keep, and others that aren't for outsiders to know." He looms impressively while saying this.
"But you've provided us with a rather amusing afternoon so far," Chloe adds, "so at the very least, we can promise to hear you out without taking offense."
"WELL, THEN... ON THAT NOTE, ARE THERE ANY PARTS OF YOUR DOMAIN, OR PERSONAGES RESIDING THEREIN, THAT YOU WOULD LIKE ME TO STAY AWAY FROM?"
"...as a matter of fact, yes. Dear, if you could provide us a map...?"
By way of an answer, Raka turns to the nearest root and places one hand over the exposed bark. The wood creaks and pops as it shifts about, forming an image of this region about the size of a dinner table meant for six. It lacks a scale or indications of latitude and longitude, but sports a number of tiny images that include - among other things - the trilithon where you first arrived, a pair of cat ears, a fish leaping out of a particular bend in the river, a small puppet-like figure, and a large spiderweb. Also included are all the ore deposits you've visited so far.
"Now, then," Chloe says. "How many other stops were you planning on making today?"
"PERHAPS TWO MORE."
In response to your gestures, two more of the rock-pile symbols that designate ore deposits crackle into existence on the map, one faintly yellow, the other pale grey.
Fairy and tree-spirit trade glances over the map, and then turn back to you.
"You are aware of the danger here, correct?" Chloe asks, as she indicates the area around the sungold deposit.
"IF YOU MEAN HOW THERE IS APPARENTLY SOME FORM OF GUARDIAN ASSIGNED TO THE SUNGOLD, THEN YES, I HAVE BEEN WARNED ABOUT IT," you reply. "WOULD YOU HAPPEN TO KNOW WHAT IT IS?"
"We do," the Great Fairy replies sourly. "Have you ever heard of a banaan?"
You glance at Briar.
She shrugs.
Turning back to Chloe, you say, "PLEASE, GREAT LADY, ILLUMINATE US IN OUR IGNORANCE."
She does.
More commonly known as a grimstalker, the creature in question stands somewhere between the Little Folk and the Big Folk, having the physical stature of the latter, but lacking the raw power found in members of the Fae Courts. It has the same sort of elfin appearance found in so many other Fae, save that it is hairless, has skin the color and texture of tree bark and thorny claws that drip poison, and wears simple garments woven from leaves and vines. As its common name implies, banaan is precisely the sort of stealthy killer that the rumors you've heard to date suggest, exploiting its inherent resemblance to living trees to simply vanish into any forested area. Not only does the murderous thing strike from ambush whenever possible, it has a fondness for traps, ranging from snares and pits to carefully cultivated giant carnivorous plants, which the banaan has some ability to control through magic.
And yes, they do like to hang their kills up as territorial markers, though most banaan simply leave the skulls of their victims hanging from trees, not the whole body.
Gained Faerie Lore C
Then again, this banaan has proven unusual in more than one way.
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY THAT?"
"As you might guess," Raka rumbles as he takes over for his wife, "grimstalkers aren't known for their ability to work well with others. You might find a pair or a small group willing to band together to hold a larger territory than they could manage on their own, but each resides separately from the rest and keeps its own counsel - and if one of them happens to fall into another's traps and die, well, too bad."
"They're even worse about working with those not of their kind," Chloe continues. "On rare occasions, a banaan might ally with other malicious Fae for a particularly nasty purpose, or sell its services to an outsider, but they much prefer short and direct assignments, and they HATE leaving their native territories for extended periods. I've never heard of one taking on a long-term task like this before." She scowls. "Likely that's half the reason why its master chose to put it here. If I'd known how long the murderous little wretch would hang around, I never would have agreed to let it come here in the first place."
Ah. And since she agreed to its presence - most likely in the course of a deal with the lord that claimed the sungold - Chloe can't remove the banaan herself, no matter how much its presence vexes her. Her husband is likely bound by similar oaths, and none of their children likely have the power.
How convenient for the two of them, then, that a mortal sorcerer not bound by their agreements has been wandering their territory, collecting rare metals and challenging various locals to contests of skill and (controlled) violence.
"HYPOTHETICALLY SPEAKING," you muse to no one in particular, "IF A RANDOM DISASTER WERE TO AFFLICT THIS 'BANAAN' - SAY, FOR EXAMPLE, IT TRIED TO AMBUSH A MORTAL SORCERER, WHO TOOK OFFENSE AT THE ASSAULT AND WROUGHT GREAT AND TERRIBLE VIOLENCE UPON HIS WOULD-BE ASSASSIN-"
"Purely in self-defense, of course," Briar notes.
"-YES, TRULY. BUT IN THEORY, SHOULD SUCH A THING TRANSPIRE, WOULD YOUR LADY- AND LORDSHIP BE BOUND TO COME TO THE GUARDIAN'S AID IN ANY MANNER?"
Chloe's smile is bright, lovely, and Not Nice. "As a matter of fact, no. We actually took a vow of mutual non-interference, so even if we succumbed to a sudden bout of mutual insanity and decided that we WANTED to help the grimstalker, we would be forbidden to."
You return the smile in kind, as best you are able. "DO YOU HAVE ANY PREFERENCES FOR HOW THE BANAAN IS DEALT WITH? PURELY SPECULATIVELY, OF COURSE."
"At this point, if it meant getting rid of that vile little monster, I'd almost be willing to see that stretch of the woods burned down."
Raka winces at his wife's words, and adds, "But I would hope that a sorcerer seekingly purely to defend himself would be a little more cautious about the magic he throws around?"
"INDEED. SUCH CARELESS MISUSE OF POWER WOULD BE MOST UNBECOMING, AND TERRIBLY UNGRACIOUS TOWARDS HIS HOSTS."
Which isn't to say that you WON'T use fire, if it comes to that, just that you're not about to burn down a section of the forest to get at one evil Fae.
Leaving aside the matter of the now-identified sungold guardian, Chloe moves on, telling you that you'll want to be careful about how you approach the moonsilver deposit to the southwest.
"This part of the forest is more of a swamp, you see." She points towards the river you crossed earlier, illustrating how it joins up with a second river to the southwest, and how the conjoined flows spread out around the site of the moonsilver. "A large number of biting insects live there, and while they'd typically be little more than a nuisance on a mortal world, here in Faerie, they tend to be more problematic."
"GIANT FAE MOSQUITOES?" you guess.
Chloe nods. "As well as giant Fae gnats, biting flies, midges, and a few other things that I don't think actually have direct equivalents on Earth. At least not anymore. The spiders do a good job keeping them contained TO the swamp, but they have trouble living there themselves: Liantiel and her brood don't care for the damp; a tribe of boggards keep trying to domesticate them for silk and food; and there's a giant in the area who smashes spiders on sight, because he doesn't like having to pick webs off himself."
"WHAT IS A BOGGARD?"
"Kind of like a humanoid toad," Moss pipes up. "Aggressive, really well adapted to living in swamps, and usually hostile to anything prettier than they are - which is most things."
To sum up, if you mean to retrieve some of the moonsilver, you'll want to take a bit of a roundabout course rather than flying straight to it. Chloe points out what she thinks would be a reasonable path, which ventures almost directly south from the trilithon, before cutting sharply to the west. She says it would minimize your time in the swamp, and avoid most of the more territorial residents, though you still might run into someone or something that was out hunting.
Gained Local Knowledge (Faerie) E (Plus) (Plus)
Gained Sylvan C
You thank the Great Fairy for her advice, and turn to leave.
Making a mental note to consider "uglifying" yourself and Briar if and when you go after that second moonsilver deposit, you thank Chloe and Raka for their time, and turn to leave.
Then a thought hits you, and you turn back.
"Was there something else?" the Great Fairy asks.
"ONE THING. WHEN I MET THE YOUNG CATGIRL AND HER GIANT WOLF FRIEND EARLIER-"
"Cat and Ulfr?"
...is that seriously her name? Man, somebody wasn't even trying.
"-SHE SEEMED... BOTH INTIMIDATED AND EMBARRASSED BY THE MERE MENTION OF YOU."
"Yeah, she said something about a 'scary fairy'?" Briar chimes in.
Chloe seems to wilt in place. "I-I swear, I really wasn't trying to scare her..."
Around her, her children alternate between giggling and making noises of protest.
"It's kind of funny, actually."
"You're not scary, Mom!"
Chloe perks up slightly-
"I mean, she CAN be..."
-and then wilts again.
"That silly cat's just way too impressed with herself."
"Thinks she's so great, being a hunter and living on her own."
"Mom thinks she's cute, and hugs her every time she sees her!"
"With headpats!"
"I wish I were big enough for hugs and headpats..."
"She always ends up purring!"
Ah.
"...WELL, THAT EXPLAINS THE EMBARRASSMENT," you admit.
Less so the fear, but then again, if you were a proud young hunter that lived by your wits, skills, and keen situational awareness, the idea that somebody could reduce you to the sort of boneless heap of fur that you've seen happy cats become under the hands of expert head-patters and chin-scratchers MIGHT be more alarming than it seems from the outside.
Maybe.
Or maybe it's just a cat thing.
Anyway, question answered and curiosity mostly assuaged, you once again thank everyone for their time, and begin making your way out of the Great Tree's shadow-
"WAAAAIIIIT!"
-only to pause and turn around yet again, to find the little fairy guard, Newt, barrelling at you.
"YES?" you ask.
Newt stops short of an actual collision, straightens out his armor, and snaps to attention once again.
"As a guest of their forested majesties, leaving their territory, you require an escort!"
"An escort! An escort!" various of his brothers and sisters cheer.
You cast a cautious glance at the Great Fairy and the Great Tree, to see what they think of Newt's insistence on seeing you out of the area.
Chloe's smiling sigh and Raka's chuckle hastily covered by a cough suggest a distinct lack of parental objection.
You step to one side, and gesture for him to go first. "LEAD THE WAY, GUARD NEWT."
Newt puffs himself up and flies off-
"Yeah, we're guards now!"
"ONE-two-three-four, HUP-two-three-four..."
"CHAAAARGE!"
"Wait for meeee-!"
"Eagle One, this is Eagle Five, I have the ball, over."
"What are you on about? And what's over? We haven't even left, yet!"
-with a few of his less serious-minded siblings trailing after him.
Wondering if you've made a mistake in accepting this "escort," and how to make sure that none of these little goofballs try to follow you when you set out to retrieve a sample of sungold from its deadly guardian, you take to the air once more.
"Eagle One, Big Bird is in the air, moving to escort position, over."
"No, seriously, what bird? And what's over?"
From your long association with Briar, you're aware that a small fairy's usual flight speed easily outdoes your Spell of Overland Flight. Given how easily distracted they are, though, much of the distance this lot should be putting between you is instead spent wandering off to investigate some distracting terrain feature, before zipping back to rejoin the flight. Only Newt stays on a consistent flightpath the entire time, and he shows a surprising amount of forethought and memory in the process, keeping to a steady pace that keeps him just ahead of you and outside of your armed reach.
Someone takes their self-appointed job remarkably seriously, and for a moment, you wonder how much longer Newt will be as small as he is - or for that matter, WHY he's so fixated on the idea of being a guard.
Then you get an idea.
"MIGHT I HAVE A MOMENT OF YOUR TIME, GUARD NEWT?"
Newt responds by falling back a bit, to where he doesn't have to shout at you. "Yes?"
"WE ARE BOTH AWARE THAT MY COURSE TAKES ME INTO DANGER."
Newt grunts. "If you mean to ask for my aid-"
"I APPRECIATE THE OFFER, BUT THIS QUEST IS MINE TO COMPLETE, THAT I MIGHT REPAY A DEBT OWED TO THE LADY NAVI. NONE OTHER BUT MY PARTNER AND THOSE I CALL FORTH THROUGH MY OWN POWER MAY ASSIST ME."
Newt nods sharply. "Then what is it you wish to speak of?"
"THOUGH I HAVE EVERY INTENTION OF TRIUMPHING OVER THE BLACKHEART THAT LURKS AHEAD, I MUST ACKNOWLEDGE THE POSSIBILITY, HOWEVER FAINT, THAT I MIGHT FAIL IN MY TASK, AS WELL AS THE GREATER LIKELIHOOD THAT I WILL SUCCEED, BUT THAT THIS 'GRIMSTALKER' WILL YET FIND A WAY TO SURVIVE AND MENACE THE REGION IN THE FUTURE."
Newt considers that.
"SHOULD EITHER MISFORTUNE COME TO PASS, YOUR COURT WILL NEED A STALWART AND LOYAL GUARD TO WATCH OVER IT, JUST ON THE OFF-CHANCE THAT THE VILLAIN LEARNS OF THE HOSPITALITY I HAVE BEEN SHOWN HERE, AND TAKES OFFENSE."
The little guard puffs up. "The wretch shall not pass the borders unseen while I stand the watch!"
And he didn't say "while I live." That's good; it would have been inviting trouble.
You nod. "THAT IS ALL I CAN ASK."
A few minutes of flight later, Newt starts to slow down. You take that as your cue to decelerate as well, and the rest of the fairies follow suit-
"Wait, why are we stopping?"
"Aw, is it over already?"
"Eagle One, I've lost sight of Big Bird!"
"Start making sense, already!"
"Company, HALT!"
-in their own way.
"This is as far as we go, sorcerer," Newt tells you. He indicates a patch of trees that aren't growing from a giant root. "Our lord father's great shadow does not extend beyond those lesser trees, and such is the border he and our lady mother have set for us."
"Not that it stops us."
"Yeah, there's some really nice berries just a little ways on!"
"In fact-"
"Uh, guys? Isn't Mom watching him?"
In that moment, you swear you hear a maternal, "Ahem," from empty air.
"-we were just about to turn around and go home, weren't we, guys?"
"Like I was saying, there's some really nice berries back at the fountain!"
"Yeah, we'd never break a rule that Mom and Dad made!"
Newt regards his siblings with a dead-eyed expression.
"Occasionally sucks to be related to idiots, doesn't it?" Briar asks him, with great empathy.
"Do they ever get any less annoying?" he sighs.
"Nope."
Newt groans.
Your partner drifts over and gives him a comradely hug. "Stay strong, little guardian."
With that, the two of you are off once more, back on course for the banaan's marked-out territory, and the sungold at its heart.
You've got a corpse to find.
By chance or some active intervention, the rest of your flight towards the sungold passes without any further diversionary encounters. You see more birds and giant insects flying about, and spot the occasional landbound critter through the gaps in the canopy, but none of the fliers are as big, brave, or curious as that rainbow-colored bird you crossed flightpaths with earlier, and none of the latter appear to notice your passage.
For your part, you spend a good part of the trip re-reviewing your options with Briar. Now that you know what sort of creature the guardian of the Faerie gold actually is, your Divination Magic will have a bit more to latch on to, making your plan to use the corpse of one of the grimstalker's victims as a focus for the Greater Spell of Scrying more likely to work.
Technically, you probably have enough information about the Fae killer now to scry it without the added focus, at least once you get to the fringes of its established territory, but after running the variables through your head a few times, you decide to stick with your current plan. The corpse may not be a NECESSARY element of the spell anymore, but using it will add another level of connection to your intended target, making the magic that much harder for the banaan to resist even on a passive level.
Another half-hour or so after leaving the shadow of the Great Raka Tree, you once again will your Spell of Overland Flight to slow down.
"Are we there already?" Briar asks, sounding a little surprised.
"NOT YET, BUT I FELT IT WAS BETTER TO FALL SHORT OF THE TARGET AREA THAN OVERSHOOT AND LAND IN THIS BANAAN'S MARKED TERRITORY."
"No arguments here." Your partner looks around. "I don't see any dead things hanging from the trees, though. What about you?"
You do have the keener senses between the two of you even before taking your still-active magical enhancements into account, but after a moment of searching the area below and ahead of you, you have to shake your head.
"NOTHING YET."
You ponder your next move.
While you could simply fly ahead, trusting on your altitude, magically heightened reflexes, and protection from all things chaotic to keep you safe from the banaan even if you do accidentally cross its border, even if the Fae killer couldn't touch you itself, if it saw you poking around, you'd lose the element of surprise.
Granted, you could just cast a Spell of Invisibility to deal with that, but there's another reason why forging ahead is unappealing, and that's the amount of time you might end up having to spend looking for a body. You have magical options that would let you sweep the perimeter of the banaan's territory much faster than you could alone (you will, naturally, NOT be sending Briar off by herself as a scout).
The option that immediately comes to mind is the Spell of Prying Eyes, or rather a modified version that addresses a couple of the shortcomings of that particular magic.
First is the range limit. One mile isn't all that much in the big scheme of things, especially when you're not sure just how far you are from the grimstalker's territory. You can deal with this by increasing the amount of mana and extending the range, but that feeds into the second issue: namely, mana concealment.
Prying Eyes is fifth-circle magic to start with, which makes it too powerful for your otherwise excellent skill at Mana Concealment to reliably hide. The additional mana necessary to increase its effective range increases that to "completely impossible to hide," meaning you'll need to trim some of the spell's other parameters or take the risk that the grimstalker is close enough to notice you. The standard Spell of Prying Eyes has a fairly generous operational lifetime, so you can afford to trim it back down to fifth-circle, but reducing the power as far as fourth-circle just isn't possible under these circumstances; the Eyes would run out of power before they'd covered a full mile.
The third issue is one of visibility. Prying Eyes are very small, fast-moving, and somewhat translucent, all of which make them very hard to spot, but "very hard" isn't the same thing as "impossible." While there's no way to directly modify the spell to make the Eyes invisible, you could just have them wait for you to cast a Spell of Invisibility over them before they take off. Or you could trust the Eyes to be good enough to avoid notice as-is.
The final issue is mana cost. Since the Spell of Prying Eyes is already a ritual, you'll have to pay the full price for it, plus the added cost of the Spell of Invisibility (assuming you cast it, and don't defray the added expense via the ritual method). You've still got more than half a tank of magical gas to work with, and restoratives besides, but when you're going into a dangerous situation, every drop of power counts.
Thanks to your skill at ritual-casting, making the Eyes invisible would cost you nothing except a few minutes and some careful wording of your orders to them. You run through the latter, counting words off on your fingers, and quickly find what you want to tell your construct spies.
Then you make with the magic.
Between the calm circumstances, the minute-long ritual required to call the Prying Eyes into existence, and your already-excellent skill at suppressing your magical signature even while casting, you think you do a fair job of dampening the aura of this spell.
Gained Mana Concealment A (Plus)
All around you, invisible eyelids "open" to reveal your scouts, which hang in mid-air at the level of your head, almost exactly at the point where you could reach out and hold any of them in the palm of your hand without effort.
Eighteen Prying Eyes stare unblinkingly at you, awaiting their orders.
You respond promptly: "WAIT FOR INVISIBILITY, THEN ADVANCE AND SPREAD OUT ALONG THE PERIMETER. IF YOU FIND A CORPSE IN A TREE, ONE OF YOU RETURN."
One of the nice things about the Spell of Prying Eyes is that the Eyes know what you know. They're unable to properly act on that knowledge without being told what to do, but once they have their orders, they'll carry them out as you intend. This is a marked advantage over some more powerful forms of constructs, which often require very precise instructions, and have a tendency to follow the literal wording of their commands even in situations where they shouldn't.
To put it another way, the Eyes wait the whole five minutes you need to put together a suitably modified Ritual of Invisibility without budging from their spots in your personal orbit.
Illusion Magic being one of the schools in which your talents are more "average" - at least by your own standards - you suspect that you'll need to perform the ritual a second time to make all of your Eyes invisible, but as you reach out and begin touching the glassy spheres, you find it surprisingly easy to extend this extra bit of magic to them. You manage to make half of the Eyes vanish, and when you turn around, Briar is just finishing up with the last two of the nine that were hovering behind you.
As your final probes fade from sight and fly off, following slightly different paths from all those that went before them, you ask your partner, "DID THAT SEEM ODDLY EASY TO YOU?"
"How so?"
You explain how you weren't expecting to be able to affect all eighteen Eyes with a single casting of the Spell of Invisibility. By your calculations, the scaled-up magic ought to have only affected half a dozen Eyes.
Briar considers that. "Invisibility can normally affect a target weighing hundreds of pounds per casting, though, and those Eyes probably weighed about as much as I do. Plus, since they were all manifestations of the same spell AND functionally identical, they were kind of, sort of all the same object."
Law of Sympathy in action, then, meaning that you may (or may not) have wasted a couple of minutes buffing up a spell that didn't really need it, beyond the increased duration?
...eh, you can live with that.
You also make a mental note to poke at this discovery later. Even if you can only affect tiny, identical objects created by the same casting of a given spell, it's a useful thing to know going forward. If it turns out you can affect a greater range of things, well...
But best not to get ahead of yourself, and now is not really the time for experimenting.
Since you've got two and a half hours before the Spell of Prying Eyes runs out, you cast about for something to do to occupy yourself until your probes return.
The idea of tracking down some of the locals and questioning them about the banaan and its territory comes to mind.
...actually, thinking on it, maybe you should have done that before you sent your Prying Eyes out? So that they'd know where to start looking?
You facepalm. "D'OH!"
The main argument against trying to make like Dr. Doolittle is that you'd have to find an animal first, which would involve a certain amount of wandering around. The combination of your Spell of Overland Flight and the magical map you've been carrying in your head all this time make it pretty difficult for you to get lost out here, but you still don't want to venture too far from your current position, because you don't know when your Prying Eyes will start to return to make their reports. Given the limits of their speed and operational lifespan, you can't really afford for your magical probes to have to roam around at random trying to find you; that's how information gets lost.
Since you won't be going anywhere for the next little while, you decide you might as well get some meditation in. You've been flying around this Faerie forest for a few hours, now, and while you haven't been injured or physically fatigued in the process, mentally, you could do with a bit of a breather.
Plus, a spot of meditation might help you shore up your mana reserve slightly. It depends on how long you have before the Prying Eyes get back.
Looking to the sky, and your Fae audience, you state, "WE ONCE AGAIN APOLOGIZE FOR THE DISTINCT LACK OF ACTION THAT IS ABOUT TO ENSUE."
"How's that, again?" Briar asks.
"I'M GOING TO MEDITATE FOR A WHILE."
"What, in the middle of the woods? In FAERIE?"
"IN THE MIDDLE OF THE AIR ABOVE THE WOODS IN FAERIE, WHILE UNDER A SPELL OF PROTECTION FROM CHAOS," you reply a touch defensively. "BUT YOUR POINT IS TAKEN. DO A PARTNER A FAVOR AND KEEP AN EYE PEELED FOR ANY PREDATORS OR OTHER ILL-WISHERS?"
"...fine," Briar sighs, as she settles on your head. "But I reserve the right to do nothing and laugh at you later, if some random pixie pops up and draws on your face while you're being all zen."
Following that exchange, you assume the lotus position, close your eyes, and sink into a trance state.
Conscious as you are of the risks that come with doing this in an environment like Faerie, the process is slower than usual, and not just because something or someone might come up and do Fae Things to you while your guard is down. The background noise of the extraplanar forest is quite unfamiliar to you, and you keep getting distracted by distant bursts of impossibly beautiful birdsong, the shimmering sigh of leaves in the wind, and other otherworldly sounds.
By the same token, though, trying to meditate in these circumstances is good practice, and with the reassurance that your partner is on the lookout for actual dangers, you eventually succeed in putting your discomfort aside.
When you emerge from your meditation, it's due to a sudden prodding through the familiar bond. There is no sense of urgency to Briar's contact, so you take a second to glance at your reserves and consult your inner clock, to get a sense for how long your attention was elsewhere.
From the look of things, it's been perhaps an hour.
Mentally shrugging, you open your eyes and look around.
Visually, there's nothing.
Mystically, you can sense one of your Prying Eyes hovering a few feet away, waiting patiently for you to claim whatever intelligence it's gathered in its short existence. Half an hour to find a corpse hanging from a tree, half an hour to return, factoring in the speed at which Prying Eyes can move, and making allowances for brief periods of slower movement, on account of the Eye being a fragile object moving through a thick forest...
Hm. You may have been a bit closer to the grimstalker's territory than you realized.
"FAIR ENOUGH," you reply to your partner's... hm. Warning? Ultimatum? "BUT ON THE OFF CHANCE THAT HAPPENS, I RESERVE THE RIGHT TO SEEK VENGEANCE IN KIND ON THE PARTIES RESPONSIBLE." You pause for a moment, and then look up once. "ALSO, LADY CHLOE, IF ANY OF YOUR CHILDREN ARE WATCHING, THAT WAS NEITHER AN INVITATION NOR A CHALLENGE."
You think you hear a faint sound, as of many tiny voices groaning in collective disappointment.
You REALLY hope it's just your imagination.
Slowly, but without hesitation, you reach towards the invisible Eye, following both your sense of the energies bound up in its form and the connection you have to the probe as its creator. A surface neither flesh nor glass comes to rest in the palm of your hand, and you close your eyes again as you will the Eye to make its report.
Images flash past of the construct descending into the trees ahead, leaves brushing over and past as it "slowly" weaves through the branches, before emerging from the bottom of the canopy. This part of the forest isn't nearly as dark as the shadowed wood where you met Skull Kid and Liantiel, but it is dim enough that the Eye couldn't see quite as far as would normally be the case. That said, the loss of visual range is less of an issue than it might have been in different terrain, as the close-growing trees and underbrush would have presented a solid barrier to vision regardless.
The Eye picks up speed as it progresses, shifting now and then to avoid a branch here, a trunk there. After a what you estimate to be about twenty-five minutes of uninterrupted flight, the probe pauses, having caught sight of an object hanging from one of the trees at the end of a length of rope.
Ew.
Gained Iron Stomach E (Plus) (Plus)
There is no mistaking the corpse for anything but what it is, that being the body of a humanoid Fae perhaps two feet tall. Dessication and decay have advanced far enough that you can't be sure what species the body was, but the breadth of the shoulders and the lack of any wings make you think it wasn't a fairy, the comparatively diminutive height and lack of sharp teeth argue against it having been related to Cat, and it doesn't have enough limbs to have been a spider. True, some bits have, uh, fallen off, but the rotted husk is still uncannily intact, showing basically no sign that scavengers have been at it.
Your Eye's point of view circles around the hanging body, inspecting it from multiple angles. This reveals that the "rope" is actually a vine, though like the body it's holding up, it doesn't appear to be a living specimen any longer. You also notice a distinct lack of insects buzzing or crawling about the body, which is both a relief - as you didn't really want or need to see something like that - and honestly worrying.
What the heck did the grimstalker do that would scare off even the carrion bugs?
Whatever the cause for the lack of things gnawing on the banaan's grim totem, your Prying Eye failed to find any evidence. After making three full sweeps of the body and the surrounding area, the probe's visual record shows it coming right back to you, with its final image being of you floating in mid-air meditation.
As you open your eyes, the feeling of a small sphere in your hand vanishes, the magic sustaining the Eye's existence ending now that the construct has served its purpose.
One down, seventeen to go.
You only need the one corpse to help focus your Greater Spell of Scrying on the grimstalker, and now that you know where one is - and the one closest to your position, at that - there's little point in waiting around for your other Eyes to return with news of others.
Little point, but not NO point. Seeing what sort of creatures the guardian of the sungold has been stringing up, as well as what sort of wounds they bear, could still give you some useful tactical data on the Fae killer, namely what kind of beings it considers to be "trespassing" on its turf, and what kind of weapons and attacks it likes to use.
Granted, you're not a coroner. If the cause of death is subtle enough, or the Fae in question just plain weird enough, you may learn nothing useful. But a chance at acquiring some information is still better than a certainty of getting no information at all.
With that in mind, you decide to go fetch the corpse you know about, and return to this location. Not only will this let you retrieve information from your other Eyes when they return, or after the fact, the added distance from the grimstalker's territory will reduce the odds of it noticing your spellcasting.
You let Briar know your plan and leave an Arcane Mark glowing on one of the nearby tree-tops to help you find your way back here, while giving any Prying Eyes that return in your absence a rallying point.
Then you descend through the canopy, following your inherited recall of the Eye's flight path through the forest.
Thanks to the Spell of Low-Light Vision, you're able to see farther amid the trees than your probe could, which allows you to make greater use of your speed. Your Spell of Overland Flight doesn't let you travel quite as fast as the Prying Eye could have if it were going all-out, but since the construct was effectively limited to half-speed, you're able to outpace it, and reach the location of the grim totem in just over twenty minutes.
Once the hanging body comes into view, you slow to a halt, carefully looking the area over with senses your probe didn't have. Mage Sight, all clear. Mental Sight, clear. Fae Sight, minor interference from the trees, but nothing else to speak of; clear. Spirit Sight...
...well, the corpse isn't undead or haunted, but from the lingering spiritual energies, the soul that inhabited it definitely isn't happy about what happened.
After a moment, you cock an ear at the background noise of the forest.
...
It's quieter here, on the border of the grimstalker's domain, but not so quiet that you feel nervous.
Seeing as how you (probably) aren't about to be ambushed by the banaan, you turn your attention to the matter of cutting down the body and hauling it off.
...
Um.
How, exactly, were you planning to carry this half-rotted, three-quarters intact corpse, again?
Oooo, that'll work.
With a minor ritual and no more than the faintest of shifts in the local mana flows, you conjure a Floating Disk to carry the body for you. This has several advantages, not the least of which is that you can direct the construct to follow you at such a distance that you won't be troubled by the sight or smell of the corpse. It's quieter than summoning a creature to do the lifting for you, it'll keep your hands free in case you need them, and it's more dignified than, say, stuffing the body in your pocket or dragging it around the forest on the end of that vine.
In the middle of directing the Disk underneath the hanging corpse, you pause, that last thought echoing in your mind. Refocusing your Fairy Sight, you examine the vine for a second time, suddenly worried that it might be a living trap - but no, it's definitely dead, and follow-up checks with your other senses reveal no magical or spiritual energies that might be animating it.
But your Gerudo instincts tingle, warning you that it could still be a mechanical trap!
"Problem, Alex?" Briar inquires softly.
"I THINK THE VINE MAY BE PART OF A TRAP," you reply in a hushed tone.
Briar considers that, looking from you to the grim totem. "It WOULD fit what Ms. Chloe said about banaans," she admits, before landing on your shoulder. "Let's take a look. A very careful one."
"ROGER."
Holding your robe close about your body, you call upon the wings of magic to carry you up to the branch from which the vine hangs. At first, it just looks like an ordinary, albeit dead bit of growth, but as you float closer, you can make out a twist in the vine that COULD be a well-hidden knot, of the sort that's loose enough to, well, come loose altogether if someone pulls too hard on the dangling end. Cautiously, you follow the other end of the vine as it runs along the branch, around to the far side of the tree, then down the trunk to...
...ah.
"THAT'S A SNARE, ISN'T IT?" you ask your partner.
"More like a big net, waiting to scoop up whatever disturbs the body," Briar agrees grimly. "There's probably an alarm of some kind hidden in the branches, too, to let the grimstalker know he has intruders. Or at least that he needs to do some groundskeeping."
"SCORE ONE FOR PARANOIA, THEN."
"Yeah."
Gained Trap Sense E (Plus) (Plus)
Gained Trapmaking F
Well, this throws a wrench into your plans, especially since you have no reason to think that the grimstalker hasn't similarly booby-trapped every one of his territorial markers. As Briar noted, it seems like the sort of thing this type of Fae would do as a matter of course.
You glance over your shoulder at the dead, dangling bait, and wonder what to do next.
You could attempt the Ritual of Greater Scrying right here. As far as you've been able to tell, the grimstalker isn't in the immediate vicinity, meaning that even if he was magically sensitive enough - or had a sufficiently strong Fae bond to the land - to notice the aura of your spellcasting from a mile or more away, he'd need some time to get here from whatever part of his territory he's actually in.
Another option is to attempt to disarm this trap. You don't have a lot of experience with this particular skill, however, and this might not be the best time to practice, particularly when failure would alert the banaan. You THINK you can avoid getting caught in the net-snare, and failing that, there's always teleportation, but still, is it really worth giving up the element of surprise?
Option C is to have your Floating Disk rise straight up beneath the corpse, moving as high as it can as fast as it can, in the hope of getting out of range of the trap. If it fails, you can dismiss the Disk and fly away, leaving much weaker magical traces than if a teleport had been necessary. Again, though, you'd be letting the banaan know that something was poking at the edges of his territory, which could still put him on alert even if he missed the indications of magic at work.
Finally, there's Plan D, which involves giving up on using a corpse to focus your Spell of Scrying. Now that you at least know the nature of your opponent, you could attempt to scry it; you'd just be less likely to succeed without the added connection provided by the body of one of the grimstalker's victims.
You give some thought to deliberately triggering the grimstalker's trap, in order to lure him into a trap of your own devising, but in the end, you decide to perform the Ritual of Greater Scrying instead.
It all comes down to information. While Lady Chloe was able to give you a general idea of what an ordinary banaan ought to be capable of, she also said that this one was unusual for its kind. It's one thing to pick a fight with a big stompy brute without knowing exactly what it can do or how to kill it; your inherited memories of Hyrule make for pretty good instructive material on dealing with such things, and you've got the skills to apply that knowledge effectively.
Dealing with smart, sneaky opponents, though? That's a different barrel of Leevers, and it's one that Ganondorf historically had some problems with, making his fragmented recollections less than entirely reliable - more so since you prefer not to rely on him any more than you absolutely must. Combine that with a general sense of cautious respect for sneaky trap-makers and stealthy killers, and you find yourself wanting more data on the grimstalker before you pick this fight.
Besides, it's not like the booby-trapped totem is going anywhere.
With that thought, you start making your preparations.
You wanted to take a few defensive measures before trying to scry out the grimstalker, but a quick review of your active suite of protective spells reminds you that you've already used several of the standard safeguards for this sort of thing: Nondetection to thwart attempts to counter-scry you; Protection From Chaos to increase your resistance to any magical effects the Fae brings to bear; and Detect Scrying to warn you if he succeeds in spite of those defenses.
Is this enough, or are there additional spells you'd like to cast?
With your protective measures in place, you begin the ritual casting of your modified Greater Spell of Scrying. Briar keeps a lookout for you as you murmur the incantation and shape the mana, making every effort to minimize the noise and the magical disturbance. You do your best to keep a distance from the hanging corpse, while also keeping your gaze averted, but at a certain point, you have no choice but to make physical contact with the body to incorporate it into your ritual.
You put that part off as long as you can, but in the third minute, you reach out, and-
-keep one hand on the body for the remainder of the ritual. (Spell links to the corpse, full scrying effect, gross.)
The dessicated flesh of the corpse is less... gooey to the touch than you were expecting. That's... that's a good thing, right?
...
Ewww-!
Even as part of you shudders in discomfort and another, greater portion keeps the ongoing ritual on track, you're able to spare enough concentration to make a mental note to have a long talk with Lu-sensei about today's experiences, whether this evening or sometime during the next couple of days. This moment, right here, is a fairly horrible one, and it won't be the last you see today, for while you've killed things before, it's always been an incidental thing, or in defense of yourself and others. This business with the grimstalker is the first time that you've deliberately set out to cause the death of another sapient being, and while the concept doesn't exactly bother you NOW, you can't say for certain that this will continue to be the case when all is said and done.
...for that matter, you can't say that a lack of reaction wouldn't be disturbing in and of itself.
Leaving that problem for Future You to deal with, you focus on the moment at hand, and the magic you are weaving, as the last few words of the Greater Spell of Scrying pass your lips.
The invoked magic reaches out-
Hesitates?
-and then focuses.
The air before you blurs, forming a circular "window" through which you are able to view another part of the forest. Nothing particularly stands out about the area, your magic gives no sense of how far away it is, and for a moment, all you can see are the trees, the undergrowth, and patches of the ground.
But then a part of the greenery moves in a way that has nothing to do with the wind, and you see him.
The grimstalker fits Lady Chloe's earlier description, resembling nothing so much as a hairless elf with skin like tree bark and clothing made of leaves and vines. You'd estimate his height to be a few inches greater than your own, but like many Fae, the banaan has a more slender build than your own.
His clothes, you note, aren't worn simply for camouflage or a sense of modesty. A belt of thorns is wrapped around the killer's waist, and from it hang a number of pouches that appear to have been assembled by folding sturdy leaves over upon themselves. You can only speculate as to what might be inside those small bags. Rather more obvious in nature are the glints of silvery metal about the grimstalker's person: here on the shoulder, winking out from beneath his leaf-shirt; there through a gap in the belt; and further down on the thighs. Some sort of mail?
And then, of course, there are the bow, the arrows, and the blades - three or four knives that you can make out, plus one large enough to pass as a short sword.
A complex aura of magic hangs about the grimstalker, but before you can bend your Mage Sight to decoding it, the guardian of the sungold brings up one hand-
!
-and with a flick of the wrist that is almost too fast for you to see, sends a dagger flying straight at your face-!
While you haven't specifically trained to dodge thrown blades, some of Lu-sensei's classes involved dodging well-aimed beanbags or ki shots, which amount to much the same thing. Combine that with the natural reflex to avoid the sharp and pointy thing flying at your face, real-world experience, and some extremely unpleasant inherited memories of being SHOT IN THE FACE with the FREAKING LIGHT ARROWS...
Suffice it to say, you have a strong reflexive urge to get out of the way of the grimstalker's flung dagger.
But you resist that impulse, and so have an excellent - if highly unnerving - view as the blade flies towards you, rapidly filling the "screen" of your spell, the aura of the enchantment worked into the bright, silvery metal flaring-
!
-and then your Spell of Scrying abruptly winks out, leaving you blinking for one moment of surprise.
"...magic dagger?" Briar ventures.
You focus on your split-second glimpse of the bared blade, and the flow of energies around it. Your Mage Sight is powerful enough by now that you can determine the schools involved in a particular enchantment with a literal glance, so you know that Abjuration Magic was definitely involved. That's about all you can say for certain: sussing out the individual spells that contribute to an enchanted item's aura takes a few seconds and a bit of luck, neither of which you were given; and while the Greater Spell of Scrying does allow your Mage Sight to work through it, the results are a bit fuzzy, making even educated guesses unreliable.
Still...
"MORE LIKE AN ANTI-MAGIC DAGGER, I THINK," you reply to your partner's speculation. "OR AT LEAST A DISPELLING DAGGER."
That could be a problem for you, given the number of self-enhancement and defensive spells you have up and running. It'll depend on just how strong the enchantment in question is, whether or not the banaan has similar spells worked into his other blades, and how good his aim is against a moving target.
Taking into account what you know of the murderous Fae, and how he just hit a tiny, invisible target as close to dead center as makes no difference, you're feeling a distinct itch between your shoulders.
Perhaps it's time to fall back to your Marked point and see what your other Prying Eyes have to say?
Yeah, falling back sounds like a good idea. As it stands, you're right on the edge of the banaan's territory, and while you aren't sure if he has the means to magically track or identify you - your Spell to Detect Scrying has yet to so much as twitch - if he happens to come this way, you're close enough that he might just take a shot at you on general principles.
Putting a couple of miles of distance between you sounds like a good idea.
"I THINK IT'S TIME FOR US TO GO," you tell your partner.
"Gotcha." Briar zips back to her customary spot on your shoulder, and gives you a pat you feel more through the burst of intent via the familiar bond than for any physical reason. "Fly, you fool!"
You removed your hand from the hanging body right after you finished casting the Spell of Scrying, but all the same, you will your Spell of Flight to carry you away from the body slowly at first. You ARE wearing a Sorcerer's Robe, after all, and such things tend to billow out dramatically in response to sudden aerial maneuvers; better not to take the chance of hitting the corpse and triggering the trap.
Once you're a few more feet away, however, you start picking up the pace.
As you backtrack through the forest along the flightpath provided by your first Prying Eye, you review what you learned from this brief but technically successful bout of Divination Magic.
For one thing, you've confirmed that the grimstalker has magical gear, including a dagger that disrupts active spells; even if you weren't exactly planning to let yourself get stabbed, this is still information it's better to have in advance than not.
For another, you have an approximate idea of just how resistant to your magic this particular Fae is, the answer being "worryingly so, at least as regards spells that target the mind and/or spirit." That unaccustomed sense of hesitation from your scrying spell was a warning sign that your target very nearly threw off the effects of your magic, and that when you were casting a fifth-circle Spell of Divination with a focus to help lock him in as its target.
It's decidedly concerning to have an opponent come so close to throwing off a mid-level spell from one of your best schools, but once again, better to find out this way than in the middle of a fight or an ambush.
A third point of useful information is that the banaan has keen senses and deadly aim, and at the risk of repeating yourself - if only to yourself - this is once again something you're much happier learning by proxy than firsthand.
And that is about all you had time to confirm before your Spell of Scrying was - ahem - cut short.
Though you suppose you could aid a fourth data point, in that any further Divination Magic you mean to cast should be kept as short as possible, so you aren't needlessly wasting time or mana.
The first couple of minutes of your aerial retreat are nervous, the tension of trying to look in every direction and the itch between your shoulder blades causing each second to draw out by what feels like five times longer than they should be. Gradually, however, the lack of arrows or daggers flying at you begins to make it seem like the grimstalker isn't giving chase. You still don't relax your guard, per se, but the ongoing absence of a threat does allow you to calm down.
Twenty minutes and change later, you clear the canopy - taking a few twigs and leaves with you - following a collective mental "pull" of active spells to the tree that you laid an Arcane Mark upon, and where several of your Prying Eyes have since assembled to await your return.
There are seven Eyes in total, and as you go through them in turn, the same story is repeated: a slow, cautious descent through the canopy; a long, uneventful flight through the forest; the discovery of a dead body hanging from a tree; and then the return trip. Aside from the nature and state of the bodies, most of which come from different species and each of which has decayed to a different extent, there's very little variation.
As you mark off the routes taken by each of the Eyes on your mental map, slowly plotting the edges of the grimstalker's territory, you notice two gaps between the marked sites - places where some of your Prying Eyes SHOULD have gone, based on the dispersal pattern of the rest, but from which the probes in question have not returned. One of the holes is large enough to account for two separate flight-paths, so you're looking at a minimum of three missing Eyes, possibly more depending on what's happened to the other seven that have yet to come back.
The good news is, you now have a much better idea of just what territory the grimstalker claims.
Although it was brief, getting a direct look at the grimstalker through your Spell of Scrying technically counts as enough of a "meeting" with the Fae killer for you to employ certain other spells against him. True, his demonstrated resistance to magic might render certain of such spells pointless, but fortunately, the magic you had in mind isn't one that can be defended against in that manner, largely because it has no direct effect on the intended subject.
Holding your Blessed Blade before yourself, point down, you formally invoke the Golden Goddesses, casting the Spell to Know the Enemy in search of more information about your opponent.
What knowledge you have already obtained about the banaan swirls about in your mind, covering the general points about the creature's kind that you already heard from Lady Chloe, then the specific details you just found out from more direct observation, and then you hear the voice of the Goddess of Wisdom:
"Listen carefully, Alex."
You do.
You already knew the grimstalker had been assigned here by a Fae lord, and you'd suspected that said lord's patronage was what allowed the unusual banaan to acquire some or all of that enchanted gear you spotted. From what Nayru says, most of those daggers are part of the grimstalker's payment for taking on this duty, but they won't fully become his property until his assigned task is completed - a ten-year stint of guard duty, of which six years have been "paid" in full. If the banaan fails in his duty before the end of the tenth year, the daggers will revert to their original owner.
In short, if those blades go missing, the Fae lord is going to send someone to find them. So unless you want to come to his attention, you probably shouldn't loot them.
Incidentally, Nayru has nothing to say about the grimstalker's armor, sword, and other accouterments, so you could probably take those without upsetting anyone other than the killer himself.
Speaking of whom, the Goddess of Wisdom mentions that part of the reason why this banaan stands out from his kin enough for it to be notable to major Fae like his employer or Lady Chloe is that, rather than relying solely on natural talent and life experience as a trap-maker, poisoner, and murderer, he's professionally trained. Nayru doesn't say when, where, or why - you get the feeling it would push the limits of the spell too far - only that this grimstalker has an inherent discipline most of his kind simply lack, and has successfully applied it to become a much more competent killer: improved stealth skills; superior traps; a broader arsenal of tricks; and if it comes down to it, a more refined fighting technique.
Yay?
The spell lapses shortly after that, with Nayru giving you a final warning to, "Watch out for red vines."
You bow your head, thanking the Goddess of Wisdom for her time and guidance.
You think you've got enough information at this point that further uses of Divination Magic would just be wasting time and energy. More to the point, you just spoke with one of the Goddesses; the odds of you finding a better and more reliable source are slim, to say the least, and while double-checking your information is wise, when it's coming from the mouth of the actual Goddess of Wisdom, it comes across less as wisdom and more as a sign of mistrust.
Some might even call it impious.
Rather than risk offending the sometimes-prickly Nayru, you decide to take what you know, and make a plan out of it.
And since this will be either the last or the second-last major event of this afternoon's fetch-quest, you decide to call upon some additional resources you've been holding in reserve.
"O HEART OF COURAGE, I INVOKE THY POWER! CALL FORTH FROM SOUL, CALL FORTH THROUGH SPELL, THE MIRROR OF OURSELVES! I SUMMON THEE: SHADOW ALEX AND SHADOW BRIAR!"
"Wait, what?"
*Poof*
*poof*
This dual-summon - which you don't think would be possible for two beings that weren't linked in such a manner as an overpowered familiar bond - cost you some mana, but you think the modest expense is entirely worth it.
"GREETINGS FROM THE DARKNESS WITHIN YOUR SOULS!" Shadow Alex declares himself.
"Because of COURSE he'd come out speaking like that," Briar groans.
"HAIL AND WELL MET, OTHER ME," you reply in kind. "AND OTHER-BRIAR."
"HAIL," the dark green fairy replies.
Your partner facepalms.
As your not-evil twin once noted, Shadow Alex and Shadow Briar already know everything that the two of you do; the main difference between you, aside from their summoned nature and palette swap, lies in how they choose to apply what they know. And thanks to that streak of practicality and opportunism that comes from their Shadowy nature, both of your conjured co-conspirators are entirely in favor of launching a direct attack against the grimstalker using overwhelming force, and enough additional spells to render his advantage of booby-trapped territory moot.
The only question is, which spells?
Seeing as how the banaan had a bow and arrows as well as his throwing knives, the Spell of Protection From Arrows is a no-brainer, as is the Spell of Entropic Shielding. You don't need the former spell to last for half a day, so you trade some of its duration to improve the rather more limited performance of the second magic.
Delay Poison is another obvious choice, given you're dealing with a creature known to use such methods. Once again, you reduce the duration by one step, using the mana this frees up to help power an extended casting of Persistent Vigor, which will grant you an additional layer of defense against toxins, as well as a nice bit of accelerated healing.
Going up against a trapsmith that has been shown to make use of nets and snares, the Spell of Freedom of Movement is yet another clear choice. The Spell to Detect Snares and Pits is equally advantageous in this situation, but it's also one of those spells that requires constant concentration to use, a fact that would hinder your effectiveness in the coming battle. You COULD still use it, or you could hand the responsibility off to Briar or one of your summoned Shadows, freeing up your mental focus at the cost of not being directly aware of what the spell has to show.
After some debate, you decide to cast Detect Snares and Pits on...
FAIRIES!
When it comes time to cast the Spell to Detect Snares and Pits, you and Shadow Alex trade glances.
"FAIRIES?" you suggest.
"FAIRIES," he agrees.
"ARE YOU SURE ABOUT THAT?" Shadow Briar inquires cheerfully. "YOU WILL BE PUTTING YOUR SAFETY, YOUR VERY LIVES, IN OUR TINY LITTLE HANDS. YOU WILL, IN FACT, HAVE TO LISTEN TO AND OBEY OUR WORDS."
"I suddenly have fewer objections to this plan," Briar muses.
The grimstalker has been here for years. The odds that he HASN'T booby-trapped the heck out of the forest ahead of you in that time are distinctly miniscule, and while that fact is concerning, it also means that there probably isn't much more the Fae trapsmith can do to make the place more dangerous than it already is.
You also have a bunch of Prying Eyes still flying around out there, somewhere. Taking the time to cast your various spells out the long way just gives your probes more time to return and make their reports.
Really, the only "downsides" to the ritual approach are that a) it'll be somewhat dull for Lady Chloe and any members of her family that are watching with her, and b) you'll be burning some of the duration of the earliest spells as you go through the rest of your list of intended spells.
The former detail is unfortunate, but has precedent, and has yet to draw protest from your audience.
The latter bit isn't that big an issue, given you're setting all your spells to durations that start at two and a half hours, to say nothing of how you can confirm how much energy a spell of your own working has left with little more than a glance.
...
As you wrap more and more spells around yourself, you have to amend that thought slightly: you can confirm how much energy a spell of your own working has left with little more than a glance, WHEN there's only a half dozen or so such spells on your person. You're up to a full dozen, now, and the various auras are starting to conflict, if only in the visual sense.
Also, while Faerie is a more inherently magic-rich environment than most places on Earth, your quarter-hour of ritual casting has used up the equivalent of... what, twenty-five tiers of spells? That's a pretty significant amount of energy, even spread out between six separate spells, and the drain is starting to tell on this location.
Anticipating the possibility of a battle, you cast Ironskin and Greater Magic Weapon. The former spell ends up over twice as costly (or in this case, time-intensive) when converted to affect multiple targets, but the latter actually comes out at cost, thanks to a little creative range reduction and mana reassignment.
On the other hand, Greater Heroism and Divine Power are both potent enough that you can't quite make them apply to yourself and Shadow Alex (and the fairies) for as long as you want with a single casting. Even if you do manage to save time with a second caster on hand, having to cast those two spells twice each burns as much energy as you already had and then some.
You are wary of the possibility of getting stabbed somewhere vital when you face the grimstalker. As it happens, you know a spell that could reduce the risk of this: it's called the Spell of Twisted Innards, and it basically operates on the logic that your enemies can't shank you in the guts if your guts are constantly moving around inside your body.
There is an obvious downside to such magic, however, and it lies in the fact that setting your internal organs perpetually WRITHING is a PROFOUNDLY unsettling experience. You legitimately lost your lunch several times while internalizing Ganondorf's memories of this disturbing piece of Gerudo Witchcraft, and from what you can recall, the young Prince of Thieves himself didn't fare much better when HE originally learned it.
It's one thing to use such magic in the safe environment of a secluded spellcasting chamber. Using it in the field, in live COMBAT, is quite another matter.
Are you sure you want to risk this kind of distraction during a fight to the death (of something else)?
"I TRUST MY PARTNER."
"AND MY PARTNER'S SHADOW," you add, glancing at Shadow Briar.
"OR YOUR SHADOW'S PARTNER, AS THE CASE MAY BE," Shadow Alex interjects.
You glance at him, then back at Shadow Briar, and then shrug, admitting, "EITHER-OR. BOTH?"
"BOTH," Shadow Alex agrees.
"BOTH IS GOOD," the pair of you say in unison, sealing your agreement with a nod.
"D'AWWW, YOU GUYS... THAT IS SO SWEET!"
Briar winces. "Must you gush like that?"
"SOMEBODY NEEDS A HUG~! C'MERE, YOU!"
"Gah! Get away!"
You watch as reddish-pink and dark green lights chase each other about for a moment.
"BETTER HER THAN ME," Shadow Alex murmurs.
You decide that it's probably for the best that you not use this spell under these sorts of circumstances, at least not until you have some experience using it in a less hostile real-world situation. Maybe a sparring match with one of your friends, or a training session at Lu-sensei's?
Leaving that aside for the time being, you get on with the remainder of your spellcasting.
The Spell of the Umbral Weapon is another one you've never used in live combat conditions before, but the basic principle of sheathing a weapon in an aura of energy that will be detrimental to your foes is nothing new.
Though you DO take a moment to admire how your Blessed Blade now leaves a shadowy after-image trailing in its wake after an attack, and also how it DOESN'T do this when you don't swing with aggressive intent. Blocks, parries, simple repositioning of the blade - nothing but an intentional attack sets the spell off, even if that "attack" is against a lifeless and/or immobile target.
Those details confirmed, you spend a minute more working to integrate the spell to your fighting style, first at human-normal speeds, and then at steadily increasing percentages of your available enhanced speed.
There is an old saying: "you are so sharp, you'll cut yourself." You'd rather not experience it for real.
Fortunately, even at the best speed your current state of magical enhancement allows, you can't seem to move fast enough to cut yourself on your blade's trailing mid-air shadow.
Synergistically Ki Enhanced speed might still be an issue; something to keep in mind.
Next on the docket is the Spell to Splinter Spell Resistance. This one, you almost don't apply; still bothered by that curious sensation when your Spell of Scrying almost failed to detect the grimstalker, you review the incident with Shadow Alex, who agrees with your nagging suspicion that what you experienced may not actually have been proper "spell resistance" at all, merely the sensation of a creature almost - but not quite - managing to throw off an inimical magical effect by dint of personal fortitude, sharp reflexes, or - as in this instance - strength of will.
You don't exactly have a lot of experience with that feeling.
Still, just because you didn't feel spell resistance at work doesn't mean the grimstalker doesn't have it, and you go ahead and include Splinter Spell Resistance. Just in case.
The last two spells you had in mind for preparation are Lay of the Land and Commune With Nature, both of which you have to expend some mana on.
Since it's short, you cast the former first, and are left frowning in dismay at the results.
"PROBLEM?" Shadow Alex wonders.
"I CANNOT FIND ANY TRAPS," you answer simply.
"...HUH. I WASN'T EXPECTING THIS SPELL TO WORK ON ROPE-TRAPS AND THE LIKE, BUT DO YOU MEAN IT ISN'T FINDING ANY PITS, EITHER?"
"NOT A ONE." You shrug. "PERHAPS THEY'RE SIMPLY TOO SMALL TO COUNT AS 'GEOGRAPHY,' AS FAR AS THIS MAGIC IS CONCERNED?"
"Alternately," Briar points out, "the pits were dug out artificially, so they don't count as 'natural geography.'"
"OR, AS A THIRD OPTION," Shadow Briar notes, "THE GRIMSTALKER MAY HAVE HAD THE RESOURCES TO HIDE HIS WORK FROM LOW-END METHODS OF DETECTION - WHICH THIS SPELL WAS."
Everybody else blinks at her.
"...YEAH, I DON'T REALLY BELIEVE IT, EITHER."
All jokes aside, you're left slightly unsure if you want to cast the Spell to Commune With Nature again. It IS a spell that's meant to work in and on natural environments, meaning the first two arguments could still apply.
While you mull that over, you call a quick break to check on the Prying Eyes that you can sense have returned. You're getting very close to the point where they will disperse, and it'd be a shame to lose the information involved.
You do a quick head count, and come up with four eyes, out of a possible ten returnees. Some of the ones that were ranging further out might still be en route, but it's starting to look like something intercepted some of your probes, despite their speed and invisibility.
Looking through the memories of the four Eyes, you confirm more of the same pattern: flying out; finding a body; and then returning. And as you mark out the locations on the map in your mind, you note that none of these eyes are from the "missing three"; in fact, you've found another gap in your scouting of the banaan's territorial boundary, large enough to account for another two Eyes.
But none of the returned Eyes suggest what might have caused the others to fail to return, and the last few minutes of the Spell of Prying Eyes' duration wind down without any of the other probes making it back.
With the Spell of Prying Eyes lapsed, you return your attention to the matter of making preparations to confront the banaan.
You were considering the Spell to Commune With Nature, but given Lay of the Land's failure to locate any of the grimstalker's traps, you decide to save yourself some time and mana and leave the spell uncast.
That was the last spell you were considering casting, although the premature removal of the Spell of Twisted Innards leaves you once again feeling that unpleasant itch between your shoulder blades, this despite all the defensive layers you've wrapped yourself up in. As you cast about for a possible, non-gutwrenching alternative to that magic, you recall prior occasions when you turned into an Earth Elemental, creatures that - due to their somewhat morphic physiology and lack of things like distinct organs - are functionally immune to things like kidney shots, slitted throats, and being stabbed in the heart.
Even as you consider that option, you realize that your usual standby of turning into an animate mass of earth and stone won't be as helpful in these circumstances as it normally is. You're in the middle of a primordial forest, with roots of unusual size running everywhere beneath the soil - to say nothing of what ELSE might be down there. Earth Elementals aren't terribly quick to begin with, and their ability to phase through earthy materials doesn't extend to wood, meaning you'd have to force your way through or go around any roots that blocked your path. Either way, you'd lose more time than you saved.
But Earth isn't the only element whose form you're able to assume. You've done time as a Fire Elemental before, but seeing as how you don't want to burn down the forest for fear of contaminating the sungold - and upsetting the locals - that leaves Air and Water.
And while you know there are rivers and marshes in other parts of Lady Chloe's territory, this area's relatively dry, which would make a Water Elemental a substandard choice.
Air it is, then.
There's still enough ambient mana here to sustain another ritual casting, and you go ahead and cast the spell the long way. As you're working out the calculations, a sneaky idea comes to you, and rather than plug in the variables that would turn you into a (potentially) sixteen-foot-tall living whirlwind, you keep yourself human-sized, trying to preserve as much of your true appearance as possible. In the process, you set aside your Blessed Sword and Vambrace of Force Shielding, so that they don't get absorbed by your Transformation Spell.
For all that an Air Elemental is made up of swirling gas, it has mass enough - and exerts force enough - to interact with solid matter.
Once the spell takes hold, you let out a single, sighing breath as your entire body seems to crumble to dust, and then sublimes into vapor, which swirls about madly on a sudden, supernaturally self-contained stormwind.
Gained Wind Affinity E (Plus)
You can't see most of the changes to yourself, of course, but Shadow Alex followed your lead and cast the same spell on himself, and he now resembles an Alex-shaped thundercloud, with "hair" that rises from his "head" and whips around in the fierce breeze.
Then you cast the Spell to Disguise One's Self, focusing on your normal appearance, as you see it in the mirror every day, and then turn to Shadow Alex and the fairies. "HOW DO I LOOK?"
Almost immediately, you notice a problem; your voice sounds like a gust of wind.
"The look is good," Briar replies, "at least for something that's never met the real you. You look human, anyway. The SOUND, on the other hand..."
You nod. "I NOTICED."
At this point, the Robe only accounts for a portion of your overall defense, and not a large one at that. Even so, wearing it into battle would put one more layer of armor - MUNDANE armor, at that - between you and your opponent's magic-dispelling and almost certainly poisoned knives, and that can only be a good thing.
With Shadow Alex and the fairies standing watch, you remove Batreaux's gift and stow it in your dimensional pocket before turning yourself into a human-sized and -shaped storm cell.
And then you try putting the outfit back on, a task that is somewhat complicated by the constant swirling currents of air that (ahem) currently make up your form, and how they blow the fabric of the Robe around. But you persevere.
...
Something feels off.
"HUH," Shadow Alex comments. "THE ROBE BILLOWS MOST DRAMATICALLY IN THIS FORM."
Glancing down, you see that, yes, the actual "robe" part of your outfit is still moving about your person in a manner that reminds you of the Carrock, some Poes, and other flying, robe- and/or cloak-wearing creatures you've seen in flight.
That aside, the armored portion of your Sorcerer's Robe still feels uncomfortable. Not that it's a fluffy blanket at the best of times, but it seems heavier... no, more confining than usual.
...
...right. Air Elementals don't like to be surrounded by solid matter.
Still, the sensation is bearable, more on the order of "I can do this, even if I'd rather not" than "GETITOFF, GETITOFF, GETITOFF-!" The dramatic billowing of the Robe actually seems to help, if only because their minor weight doesn't press down on you quite as much.
Heavier or more inflexible armor might be a problem, though.
Making a mental note to be careful about what you wear in forms like this in the future, you re-equip your Vambrace and Sword, and spend a minute testing how your new form affects your ability to fight in melee.
The good news is, your strength doesn't appear to have significantly changed. You can lift, swing, and maneuver your Blessed Sword as easily as ever - maybe a little more accurately, even - and the fact that it's mostly made of materials derived from Earth doesn't even register. Whether that's because you aren't quite a true Wind Elemental or because your link to the Goddess-given weapon overrides this form's instincts, you can't say.
There is bad news, however, and it's that your weight has plummeted. When Shadow Alex takes a swing at your force-shield, your attempt to block results in you flying backwards as though you got hit by a truck. You soon work out how to use your new form's supernatural flight to account for such impacts; it's really just a larger application of the same effort required not to send yourself spinning out of control while fighting in mid-air. That said, the amount of mental effort required for this to work is considerable, and your Elemental Body's borrowed instincts don't seem to help with it. If anything, you feel more inclined to dodge and redirect attacks in this state.
The Spell of the Permanent Image seems almost ideal for your needs, as not only would it hide the abnormal sound of your voice, you could also use it to mask the changes in smell and body heat that your transformation has undoubtedly caused. As a further bonus, since the Illusion would be anchored on and around your person AND doesn't need to actually be permanent, you can save yourself quite a lot of effort in its casting.
You go ahead and cast the spell, and then turn to Briar. "HOW ABOUT NOW?"
"Much better," your partner agrees.
With that issue resolved, you conclude this extended buffing session by casting the Greater Spell of Magic Aura, to hide the frankly confusing cloud of spells you've layered upon yourself.
Once Shadow Alex has finished adapting his own disguise, you look at the members of your little team.
"I DON'T KNOW ABOUT THE REST OF YOU, BUT PERSONALLY, I WANT TO ATTACK THE ENEMY NOW."
"HEAR, HEAR," Shadow Alex agrees.
"LET'S KICK SOME FAE BUTT!" Shadow Briar growls without a hint of irony.
"Do we have a plan besides 'charge in and start swording'?" Briar asks.
"TO NO-ONE'S SURPRISE, I'M SURE, THE BRIARS WILL BE RESPONSIBLE FOR SPOTTING TRAPS, WHILE THE ALEXES HANDLE ATTACKING. THAT SAID," you continue, before the other three can do more than snort and snicker in response, "SEEING AS HOW THERE'S A FAERIE LORD INVOLVED ON THE EDGES OF THIS BUSINESS, IT WOULD BE BEST IF WE FIGURED OUT SOME WAY TO MAKE THE GRIMSTALKER ATTACK FIRST."
The Briars trade glances.
"Alex," your partner says slowly, "the banaan was put here SPECIFICALLY to stop anyone else from claiming the sungold."
"ATTACKING FIRST IS PRETTY MUCH PART OF HIS JOB DESCRIPTION," the dark green fairy adds.
"AH, BUT WHAT IF WE TOOK THE DIPLOMATIC APPROACH? SPECIFICALLY, WHAT IF I SENT A MESSAGE SPELL TO THE GRIMSTALKER, CLAIMING THAT I HAD THE RIGHT TO INVESTIGATE THE SUNGOLD DEPOSIT?"
Again, the fairies look at each other.
"AND WHERE, PRAY TELL, WERE YOU PLANNING TO SAY YOU GOT THAT RIGHT FROM?"
"Or more precisely, whom?"
You decide to split the difference. You'll try to focus on evasive maneuvers in the upcoming encounter, but you'll keep your Vambrace out, ready to activate the force-shield if it proves needed.
Better to have the shield in position and ready to be used and then never need it, than to find out you need it after you've put it away.
"WELL, I WAS OPERATING UNDER THE ASSUMPTION THAT SINCE LADY CHLOE GAVE NAVI PERMISSION FOR US TO QUEST FOR THE ORE SAMPLES, WE IMPLICITLY HAD HER PERMISSION TO GO ANYWHERE WITHIN HER DOMAIN THAT DEPOSITS OF SAID ORES MIGHT BE FOUND. SHE HAD NO PROBLEM WITH US TAKING THE OTHER METALS, SO IT'S FINE TO GET THIS STUFF AS WELL. THE BANAAN IS ALLOWED TO GUARD THE POSITION, AS PER LADY CHLOE'S ARRANGEMENT WITH ITS EMPLOYER, BUT THAT DOESN'T MEAN THE SUNGOLD BELONGS TO THE FAE LORD OR THE BANAAN."
"Actually, I'm pretty sure it means EXACTLY that," Briar rebuts. "At least as far as the lord in question is concerned."
"YEAH, THE SUNGOLD MAY BE IN LADY CHLOE'S DOMAIN, BUT IF SHE'S AGREED NOT TO INTERFERE WITH THE GRIMSTALKER, AND IT'S KILLING EVERYBODY ELSE THAT TRIES TO GET NEAR THE STUFF, THEN AT THE VERY LEAST, THAT SPLITS OWNERSHIP OF THE SUNGOLD DEPOSIT BETWEEN LADY CHLOE AND THE LORD."
"SORT OF A 'POSSESSION IS NINE-TENTHS OF THE LAW' THING, THEN?" you venture in response to Shadow Briar's words.
"More or less," Briar agrees. "Why did you think she was so annoyed?"
"I'D ASSUMED THE BANAAN'S FONDNESS FOR CASUAL MURDER AND HANGING CORPSES FROM TREES HAD SOMETHING TO DO WITH IT."
"...you're not wrong," your partner admits, "those just aren't the ONLY things that are upsetting her." Briar sighs. "Anyway, to answer your original question: if you tell the grimstalker that we have Lady Chloe's permission to take a sample of the sungold, it might let us pass, or it might try to kill us anyway. The latter would definitely make it the aggressor. I'm just concerned that Lady Chloe might prefer to have us keep her name out of this. Don't forget, the banaan WILL revive eventually, so anything we show or tell it now, it'll remember going forward."
"AND IF HE REPORTS THIS ENCOUNTER TO HIS LORD, HE'LL KNOW AS WELL," Shadow Briar adds.
Having caught the qualifier in her statement, you turn to the dark green fairy and ask, "YOU THINK THE GRIMSTALKER WON'T MAKE A REPORT?"
"MAYBE, MAYBE NOT. I MEAN, IF WE'RE RIGHT ABOUT THE LORD'S OPINION OF THE SUNGOLD, THEN BY LETTING YOU PASS AND COLLECT A SAMPLE UNHARMED, THE BANAAN WILL HAVE TECHNICALLY FAILED IN HIS ASSIGNMENT."
"Which is another reason why he might decide to attack, beyond random murderous impulse," Briar notes in passing. "Those daggers have to cost a pretty penny, I really doubt the banaan wants to risk losing them by failing to meet the terms of his service."
"YEAH. BUT IF HE ATTACKS YOU AND GETS KILLED FOR HIS TROUBLE, THEN HE'LL NOT ONLY HAVE FAILED IN HIS CHARGE, HE'LL HAVE ATTACKED AN EMISSARY OF HIS HOSTESS. THIS IS STILL LADY CHLOE'S DOMAIN, AFTER ALL, AND EVEN IF SHE DOESN'T REALLY WANT HIM HERE, SHE DID AGREE TO LET THE BANAAN STAY. IF HE BREAKS THE TERMS OF HIS LORD'S AGREEMENT WITH HER, THE LORD WILL BE ACCOUNTABLE FOR HIS VASSAL'S BEHAVIOR."
Fae politics give you a headache.
Cutting to the heart of Briar's concern, you look to the sky again, and ask, "LADY CHLOE? DO YOU MIND IF I MAKE USE OF YOUR NAME?"
"I was hoping you'd just blast the murderous little wretch," the Great Fairy's voice sighs from nowhere, "but no, as long as it's just to establish that you have my permission to gather some of the sungold, then I have no objections."
You bow, somewhat awkwardly considering you aren't entirely sure what Lady Chloe's current point-of-view is. "THANK YOU KINDLY, MA'AM."
"WE HAVE A PLAN, THEN?" Shadow Alex asks.
"I BELIEVE WE DO."
Is there a particular manner in which you wish to approach the grimstalker's territory?
It seems to you that the quickest way to find the grimstalker would be to fly straight for the sungold, and let him - and whatever methods of detection he has access to - find YOU. And so that's what you do, taking to the air with your new power of elemental flight.
You're capable of moving a fair bit faster this way than your Spell of Overland Flight would have allowed, or would be in better-lit or more open terrain. Thanks to the thick growth and reduced light of the forest, you're limited to something approaching two-thirds of your current top speed, which is actually not a bad thing; when you cast the Greater Spell to Create a Magic Aura, you purposely left your Spell of Overland Flight unmasked to "explain" how you were staying in the air. There are a few other such gaps in your coverage, namely the magical (and blessed) nature of your sword, the Spell of Augmentation, and the Spell of Low-Light Vision - things you either can't hide that you're using, or would look foolish (and thus vulnerable) or suspicious for not having.
Of course, to spot any of that, the banaan would have to get around your Spell of Nondetection, and if he doesn't, the trick will be wasted. Still, better to have the deception in place and not need it, than to need it and not have it, right?
Your small party forms up in the air, Shadow Briar taking the lead with Shadow Alex a short distance behind and to her right, with Briar opposite him to her doppelganger's left, and you bringing up the rear in a "flying diamond" formation. Almost immediately, the fairies notice that you and your not-evil twin are moving too gracefully for the magically airborne young humans you appear to be. The choice to wear your armor and carry your sword helps a bit, adding weight and generating drag, but you still have to actively remind yourself to "fly clumsily."
Gained Flight (Magical) C (Plus)
You're probably not going to be able to keep doing that if and when this comes to a fight, but so be it. A sudden burst of unexpected maneuverability held in reserve is one more card in your hand, provided you play it at the right time.
The trip back to the site of the hanged body passes without interruption. As the corpse comes into view again, you find yourself wondering if you should take the time to cut it down and give it a proper burial. It's a task for later, whatever you decide, but the body DID help you out against the banaan, and it seems only right to repay that assistance. Plus, you could add a little eulogy, letting the Fae know that they helped you defeat the one that killed them. He or she might appreciate that, or at least find a measure of peace in it.
For the moment, your party gives the body a wide berth, but does not penetrate the "boundary" of the grimstalker's territory.
"I DON'T SENSE ANYTHING," Shadow Alex reports.
"ME NEITHER," you agree.
"Call him out and see what happens?" Briar suggests.
"MIGHT AS WELL." You clear your throat and raise your voice. "HEAR ME, GRIMSTALKER! MY NAME IS ALEX! ON THIS DAY, MY COMPANIONS AND I COME TO THE REALM OF FAERIE IN SEARCH OF SUNGOLD! THE LADY CHLOE, MISTRESS OF THESE WOODS, HAS HEARD OF OUR QUEST AND GRANTED US PERMISSION TO CROSS HER LANDS AND COLLECT SAMPLES OF ITS BOUNTY FOR OUR OWN PURPOSES. IN HER NAME, LET US PASS!"
Seconds tick by, without response.
"STILL NOTHING," Shadow Alex tells you.
"RIGHT, THEN." You gesture to the fairies. "AFTER YOU, LADIES."
The grisly territorial marker swiftly fades into the distance behind you, and for all that your senses are on alert, probing for detection wards, traps, or a Fae lurking in ambush, you don't sense any change in the environment.
Yet if you don't notice anything, the fairies definitely do.
"TRAP AHEAD!" Shadow Briar calls, as she slows and steers to the right. "TAKING EVASIVE ACTION."
As you maneuver to match, you glance to the side, but whether due to your speed or lack of practice at trapfinding, nothing strikes you as out of place about the tree that you appear to be steering clear of.
"ANY IDEA WHAT WE JUST MISSED?" you ask Briar.
"Nope!" she reports. "Just that it's there."
You nod at that. Detect Snares and Pits does have the capability to determine the nature of traps, within certain limits, but that takes more time than your quick fly-by allows. The Spell to Detect Magic is similar... which suddenly makes you wonder if there's a trap-detecting equivalent to the Spell of Arcane Sight. You can't think of one, but given the similarities between the various Divination Spells, you could research "Spell of Trapsight" easily enough...
Eh, a thought for another time.
As you penetrate deeper into the grimstalker's territory, Shadow Briar calls out more alerts and leads you away from other trees, from relatively open areas between trees, from a couple of perfectly ordinary-looking boulders, and once from a small clearing where the sun shines down almost entirely unobstructed.
"SOMEONE'S BEEN BUSY," Shadow Alex mutters.
"HE'S HAD SIX YEARS TO WORK WITH," you return.
The constant evasions reduce your speed further, to the point where you're not flying any faster than you could walk; on top of that, you periodically pause to repeat your bombastic announcement to try and draw the grimstalker out, or goad him into attacking. Even with these delays, it takes you only twenty minutes to cross the booby-trapped territory.
The sungold rests atop a mound of moss-covered stone at the heart of another clearing. As with the moonsilver and Goddess copper, this precious metal is indiscernible from common rock until you start looking at it with more than the mundane eye, revealing the aura of Fire- and Light-enriched Metal that glimmers in specks within the stone.
Though the ore and the prospect of finishing this part of your quest call to you, your attention is drawn elsewhere - namely, to the tangled, dark red vines that hang from every tree ringing the clearing.
You glance at Briar, sending a pulse down the familiar bond to get her attention, and when she looks your way, you indicate the not-quite-bloody-hued growths that all but surround you.
She squints at the nearest of them, and sends back a negative signal.
So the vines aren't a trap, at least as the Spell to Detect Snares and Pits defines such things.
Considering Nayru saw fit to warn you about them, this implies that the vines are dangerous all on their own. Poisonous? Capable of grappling prey? Outright plant monsters, maybe?
And there is STILL no sign of the banaan.