She dropped dead at my feet, allowing me to see a very ambitious Rufian in front of me. He had a large ice spear in his hand hanging over his head, ready to stab the nymph cold.
We traded startled looks before he broke out in a content chuckle. “Oh, great! All of those willpower points weren’t only for show!”
“A little late on the save,” I teased.
“You nearly scared me there for a second. I thought their allure had hypnotized you.”
“She almost did, if I could be honest… Not exactly proud of that.”
He beamed. “That’s nothing to feel sorry about. We all hunger for something. I should have warned you about looking directly into their eyes. That’s how they charm you. That, and the plethora of fae dust in this forest. These promiscuous fae need to get a sharp one through the heart. Which I see you’ve done already. But, just to be safe,” he grunted, plunging his ice spear between Naiiah’s shoulder blades confirming her death. “This way, they cannot call upon the spirit of their meadow, forest, or swamp to revive them.”
“That’s good to know.”
He wiped his brow with his arm and looked over his shoulder. “While you were being drawn, I had to deal with two of them myself,” he admitted, my eyes catching two girls on the ground a few meters from us. One with blonde hair, and another with lime green. They looked like sisters, in fact, they sort of looked like Naiiah… “You’d expect from a gathering of girls who stole the souls of men that they’d have more to their names than fabrics and a handful of sammies. Hmm?” He turned to me, putting his looting on pause. “Why the long face, Silas?”
I snapped my head toward him reluctantly.
“They might be magnificent beauties, but they are deadly in every sense of the word. You shouldn’t shed a tear for them.”
I was human, maybe it was different for fae. Unless I was being swung at, it was hard for me to not feel guilt for putting someone down. I guessed it was something I had to get accustomed to now rather than later, where I’d be in the heart of Mavriel.
I flicked my bone saw of Naiiah’s blood and retracted it, shaking off my kill and edging Rufian along. “Let’s go.”
“You’re not going to loot her?”
“No, I’m good.”
“Well then, more for me!”
While I was done with the forest, it wasn’t done with me. Rufian and I didn’t take three steps before we heard rustling in the bushes in front of us. Not two seconds later, three girls came out, dressed in vines, leaves, and an array of flowers. More wood nymphs, these girls shorter than the other three we’d killed; their outwardly beauty twisted in an eerie way.
I wasn’t sure if they were just psyching us out or what. After all, we’d just slaughtered their friends, and I was pretty sure they wanted our heads on top of those tree branches right now.
Rufian tensed next to me, and I could feel him preparing for a fight. He went with the hostile approach, while I stood there torn between guilt and tactical offense.
Without much to go off of, I waited for their move. The three girls just smiled wickedly at us, their eyes sharp with mischief and ambiguity. They looked like they were barely out of their teenage years, but I knew from experience that faeries didn't age like humans did.
One had hair like fire, the other had hair as black as coal, and the last one was a bubbly blond, with dimples and a crown of thorns around her head. “You killed our sisters!” she gasped with a musical lilt. “That wasn’t very nice!”
“What I’m about to do to you isn’t going to be very nice, either, Rosalind,” Rufian threatened the level 30 fae, stretching his hands low to his sides as vapor of ice permeated around one palm and a fire ball around the other. “But I promise to be swift. We are spent on time, and I’d rather not spend the little we have on soul-harvesting banshees like you.”
“You shouldn’t have trespassed into our land,” the red one warned us when she took a step forward. “We will repay you in kind!”
CHAPTER TEN
All right, three against two. The odds were against us, but I had a level 60 mage by my side. I charged up my cyber gear for a fight as the three girls dispersed, their once beautiful faces shifting into something ugly. I mean real ugly. Calling them banshees was right on the money. They were grotesque monsters, with black veins pulsing across their grey skin and razor-sharp teeth protruding from their jaws. I had no idea there were two sides to a forest fae, their disturbing features tucking behind trees and foliage across their land.
Light footed, they scurried out of sight for an ambush attack.
“Remember what I said, Silas. We are stronger as a pair. Do not stray far, understood?” Rufian whispered as we stood in the middle of the grove back to back, Rufian scoring the left, and I, the right.
“What’s the game plan? Seems like they are waiting for us to make the first move,” I whispered, this stand-off already making my feet froggy. I wasn’t expecting them to remain hidden for over thirty seconds, the anticipation killing me.
“They want us to search for them. Since you are not familiar with nymphs there is plenty you don’t know about their fight patterns. They prefer to battle in groups of three. This is why the two before attacked me, and one approached you. They have a strong sisterhood, their main objective protecting their land. It is what gives them their power, but as you’ve witnessed before, it is very easy for them to conceal their fortitude with illusions like a foggy forest as a defense mechanism. If their home appeared as common grounds, no one would think twice about demolishing it. But right before they attack, they reveal their home, confident that they will subdue their targets with their charm. And seeing as we’ve already encountered six women, I’d say they have been doing pretty well for themselves.”
“You mean they’ve fed recently?”
“Yes. And I bet the longer we search for the plum, the sooner we will find the bodies of the poor men whose spirits they’ve consumed.”
“I don’t like the sound of that. So how about we concentrate on not being their next meals?”
“We move west,” Rufian said confidently. “I am sure they used a warding spell to detour my portal into the center of their home. But if we move west, we will find the valley of fruit and secure our ticket to Mavriel.”
“Can’t we just teleport there?” I grunted. “Wait, let me guess? Your portal is on a timer, isn’t it?”
He smiled, looking over his shoulder, “There is a saying that all good things are worth waiting for. I hope you don’t mind getting your hands dirty again?”
I sucked my teeth. “Doesn’t seem like I have much of a choice.”
“Then let’s advance.”
We moved cautiously like one unit, back to back, covering all angles. Jezz’s brother was a different fighter, more cautious, less daring and unapologetically unpredictable. It took some getting used to, not having flying ice shards coming every which way. That wasn’t to say that I missed nearly getting my face frozen over from time to time, just saying I appreciated the difference, getting experience in both approaches. We trudged through the thick forest, the air heavy with humidity and the scent of decay. I guess we were getting close to those bodies Rufian was talking about, the remnants of their deadly appetite.
Then suddenly, my feet sank into the moist earth with a shallow step, the slope buckling my ankle. I tried to hold my balance but I slipped regardless, one of the girls seeing that as a perfect time to strike.
“Silas? Rufian called out to me as he turned back, but he snapped his head around just as fast, and just in time to block the red one’s slashing claws with a square ice shield he materialized with his palm.
My ears caught the grating of her sharpened nails against the ice, the shaving showering my head. I tried to cover my noggin while I scrambled myself up, wincing at the pain surging down my feet. There was no time to cry over a twisted ankle, the girl with the long black hair coming at me quick. She crawled out from behind the tree to my near right, cackling like a hyena as she hunched over and bucked at me on all fours.
