The Power of Twelve

     It was hours of slogging through the mud and mulch before the steep cliffs of the mountains beyond the Woods could be glimpsed between the branches. The moonlight illuminated a large cave mouth, which had to be the one the Wanderer had spoken of. The Darkest Faerie’s hidden refuge.

     Kelland doesn’t dare give himself a light until he is well within the cave mouth, in case it attracted undue attention. Once he was sure the light would not shine outside, he took a wooden torch from his pack and lit it. Even then, he kept one hand on his belt by his dagger, just in case something else was now calling the cave home.

     The cave was not altogether deep, but curved round in on itself to shield it from the outside world. It was immediately clear that the place had been occupied, foliage and wood had been brought in from the woods to form a campfire that had long ago burnt down to ashes. There was a patch of moss and foliage that looked to have been pressed down into a makeshift bed, now turned to mulch.

     This place had not seen use in some time, but Kelland knew that the Darkest Faerie has been here. Stone always held the echoes of magic the longest, and there was still the faint metallic taste of magic on the air.

     Away from the spent campfire, Kelland could make out separate scorch marks on the cave floor. The patterns formed the distinctive outline of a slender hand. The Darkest Faerie had attempted to blast the ring off her finger, it would seem, only to fail.

     Several scorch marks, several attempts. But by the fading on them, they all happened within a few days of each other.

     The Darkest Faerie has fled there, true enough. But Kelland judges that she had stayed no more than a week before moving on.

     But where would she have gone? She hadn’t doubled back or the Wanderers would surely have spotted her. A journey into the mountains was possible, but where would she have gone from there? It wouldn’t take that long to go straight to Altador.

     Unless she had remained in the Deep Woods, and sought something else there. Kelland remembered talk of a Faerie that lived alone there, isolated from her fellow sisters for as long as anyone could remember - Ilere. The Techo had a vague memory of her visiting Altador once, long before the Darkest Faerie’s fall and the city’s thousand year slumber.

     There was something in that, he was sure.

     They said that the path to Ilere’s lair was marked by the cursed ghosts of Meepits, who danced among the trees. Kelland could do without seeking the residents of the Deep Woods, but he had little choice. He left the cave and plunged back into the undergrowth, extinguishing the torch to keep his eyes adjusted to the dark.

     It wasn’t long before he began to see the ethereal shapes drifting through the gaps in the trees, and the hint of laughter on the breeze as the ghost Meepits danced along their woodland trail. Kelland followed them at a distance. It wasn’t unheard of for the Meepits to deliberately lead lost travellers off the paths and into greater danger, so it was in the Techo’s best interests to keep out of their eye line until they reached their destination.

     Eventually the Meepits congregated in a small, natural clearing in the forest, with gnarled trees towering over it to almost enclose it in a cave of branches. There, the dozen or so ghost Meepits began to dance and swirl in the air, laughing eerily as they did. Kelland decided then to step out of the darkness, for they had led him to his destination. In the hollow of a tree behind them, it was said Ilere made her home.

     Kelland stepped through into what appeared to be a witch’s shack, but carved in some natural way into the innards of the tree. It was as if the tree itself had grown into the shape, and Kelland suspected the Earth Faerie’s magic had managed just that, though the life of the tree itself had long since faded. The place was filled with the accoutrements of a witch’s life - a cauldron, potions, jars of unpleasant looking ingredients, and thick wax candles burnt down nearly to their stubs. Kelland could see the truth of it that Ilere had been the one to tutor Sophie the Swamp Witch in her craft.

     It was also, uniformly, empty of all life. Kelland let out a deep sigh before giving the cabin a rudimentary exploration. He tapped one of the jars, full of pickled eyeballs. One blinked in response, unsettling the Techo deeply.

     “Please don’t touch anything else,” said a voice behind him.

     Kelland jumped as the tall Faerie stepped out of the deep shadows in the corner. He cursed himself at the shock, as Kelland of all people should be used to people creeping around in the shadows, but he had been sure the place had been empty, and had not sensed the working of magic that would have heralded her arrival. The Deep Woods had always been a place of strange and disturbing occurrences, that broke the laws of even established magic. Kelland did not like it, and did not wish to linger there longer than he needed to.

     “Mistress Ilere,” he said, attempting to cover his sudden shock.

     “Do I know you?” she asked sharply.

     “We met, once, I believe,” Kelland replied. “But that was many centuries ago. My name is Kelland, Councilor of Altador.”

     The name Altador, at least, had some peculiar cache with her. She nodded with grim satisfaction, as if that explained his presence here.

     “You have come to ask about the Darkest Faerie,” she said.

     “Yes,” Kelland said. “How did you know?”

     “I have few visitors here,” Ilere said. “Fewer of note. When she came, I knew it would not be the end of the matter. What has she done now?”

     “She is in Altador,” Kelland said. “She has thrown herself on our mercy, claims to be a reformed character. I am retracing her steps. She came to you after she fled to the Deep Woods, did she not? Why?”

     “You do not know?” Ilere asked. “We were friends, I suppose, once upon a time. If you can claim she ever had such things as friends, of course. We were comrades, back in the Faerie Wars. We both helped Fyora claim the throne and end the war. A long time ago, for both of us. So much has changed since then, but the Darkest Faerie, she remembered me. She came to me because she had realised that she could not remove the ring from her finger, and that it was killing her.”

     “She asked you to remove it?”

     “Of course not,” Ilere said with the snap again. “Even if she considered that I had more destructive power than her, she would never dare admit it by asking such a thing. No, she came to me for the talents she knows I have. I am an Earth Faerie, after all. Skilled in the magic of healing and restoration. She wanted me to stop or slow the curse.”

     “Did you succeed?” Kelland asked.

     “No,” Ilere said flatly. “I tried every spell I know, mixed potions and tinctures until I was near exhaustion. It took me many months, but I finally exhausted all avenues open to me, and the curse stubbornly refused to comply. I failed her, and she knew that I had wasted her time by trying. She was less than pleased, but I appeared to be her last option, or so I thought.”

     “Really?” Kelland asked.

     Hope bloomed in his heart. Had she sought out Ilere to buy her the time to reach Altador and seek her redemption?

     “When it became clear I could not offer her the help she needed we discussed her next moves,” Ilere said. “Ultimately, she came to me because she knew me. She has been asleep for a thousand years, both times she has awoken, she has been sealed away quickly again. She knows little of modern Neopia. Entire nations have sprung up while she slept. Now that I know much more. I haven’t left these woods for a long time. Not long after we last met, actually.”

     For a moment she had a distant, haunted look in her dark eyes as she recalled those times.

     “Still,” she added, brightening. “I told her what I knew of the changes in the woods. Of the Deserted Fairground and Nox’s cursed mansion. Of the growth in the Brain Tree and the Esophagor’s hunger. But it was Neovia that gave her pause.”

     “Neovia?” Kelland asked with a frown. “What interest does she have there?”

     “The town did not exist the last time she was at large,” Ilere said. “I told her it was founded by an old necromancer centuries ago, who practiced dark magic until the villagers turned on him and burnt his mansion to the ground. They called him Oberon, and that was what interested her. A name she recalled, though she would not say why. They claim that catacombs he constructed still exist below the town, and that seemed to be what she needed to hear.”

     Something about the name Oberon was familiar to Kelland, as well, though he didn’t have any idea where he had heard the name before.

     “She thought she would find something in the catacombs to help her?” he asked.

     “My healing arts had failed her,” Ilere said. “She went looking for a greater destructive power instead.”

     Kelland gave a sad nod. At no point in their months of conversations, it seemed, had they discussed the possibility of returning to Altador. It was looking more and more likely that the Darkest Faerie was lying, as usual, and her appearance in Altador had not been due to a change of heart.

     Still, Kelland would see this through to the end. Neovia would be his next stop, and he would seek out whatever the Darkest Faerie had found there.

     To be continued…