(Huge thanks to Brinehammer for his guest appearance, and to Cornwind Evil for helping make this happen!)
“Hey Toinette, are you like me, getting bored with relaxation after a time?”
Toinette looked at Chastity like she'd asked her what the orbital velocity of the moon was.
“...No. Why, you got, like, an adventure lined up or something?”
“Not YET...but I get antsy eventually. I think it’s some holdover from the Twilight...the war I survived.” Always clarifying.
Toinette deigned not to ask. “Well, if you wanna do something that ain't just messing around, what DO you wanna do?”
---
How high up were they? Forty feet?
“Hope your balance is good.” Chastity settled down on her perch, which began to wobble under her feet. Unstable ground, a long fall into...that jelly stuff that Chastity had talked about during kite racing...and a padded staff. If Toinette had ever watched American Gladiators, she might be humming the theme. Instead she was trying to keep herself from plummeting off the high point before anyone even threw a ‘punch’.
“Uh, yeah! It's the best!” Toinette hoped her lie would hold. She gripped her staff tightly and settled into what she hoped was a good stance.
“Alright, cupcake,” she said with more bravado than she felt. “You're going dooooown!”
This turned out to be true, eventually. Chastity had seen Toinette fight, but only with weapons she'd been loaned and in a clumsy manner. When, after five minutes of frantic combat, Toinette turned a sweeping strike into a feint and a jab to the side that sent the taller woman tumbling off the edge, she learned two things - that Toinette was more familiar with staffs, and that the jelly was a pretty great landing spot.
“Ding ding ding! Victoryyy!” Toinette flailed her arms around in triumph.
“Be careful you don’t fall off!”
Toinette fell off.
“Rats,” she said, wobbling around in the jelly.
“Did...you just forget you have wings?”
“...No. I promise.”
----
“...If that didn’t work...I really have no idea how to contact her.”
Toinette didn’t know Ash Marsello. If she had any knowledge, it was of the most vague details: he had hung around the Kobbers a few times. And she’d been wholly separate from the Aggie troubles, so she had no concerns about blurting something out that could cause a paradox. So, as far as she knew, Ash was some guy Chastity knew, and his baby daughter had brown hair when he and his wife had blonde.
Was she smart enough to not comment on that, as Chastity talked with Ash about trying to get Toinette home, and Christine watched from nearby, reading to Athena.
She was. But she made a mental note of it. For later.
“Well, I could find my way home via just randomly trying everything, but I WILL end up dead.” She folded her arms. “So, we need something to start with.”
“Could go to Oriam, try out their still-experimental teleportation tech. That’s how Chris and I ended up on Porphyrion for the first time.”
“She could try a Knocker first, maybe?” Christine said.
“I don’t have any Knockers.” Chastity said.
“Yeah, we’re currently lacking Knockers as...go ahead young lady, you can start laughing.” Christine said, glancing at Toinette.
“What, who's laughing? Not me. I’m the most serious. Nothing here to laugh at.”
Toinette held it in for a second, then gave up.
“Sorry, sorry,” she managed, once she was done. “So what’re these Knocker things?”
“Momos Steps, they’re actually called. Short range translocation magical devices. They’re called Knockers because the main way to activate them is to slam them against something. But after Xaxargas died, they became a lot more finicky, so they’re a lot harder to find. Unless you go see Angie.”
“Ugh. That’ll take weeks.”
“Well, it’s not like you’re on a clock.”
“Yeah, I got time to spare. Do you guys got the time? And how much of a trek is it?”
“If you just walk it will take about….fifty days I think?” Ash said.
“Cut off maybe two weeks on horseback.”
“And no airship on this part of the continent will fly that way. Because before they get there, there’s Megan’s Woe, and no one goes anywhere near Megan’s Woe. Including airships. They crash. And you’d be hard pressed to find someone who would fly the OTHER way around, even if you offered a lot of money.” Ash said.
“Megan’s Woe is where a big ass magic battle took place. It’s turned the area...rotten. Bad bad stuff happens there. No one goes in if they can avoid it. Too many who do never come out.” Chastity said to the fae. “That includes us.”
“The last time a Kobber went into the Woe, he got infected with a copy of the worst monster that ever stalked my world and he brought it back to Vegas where...shit happened.”
“Ash, language.”
“Athena can’t understand me.”
Christine gave her husband A Look.
“...stay away from Megan’s Woe, is what I’m saying.”
“...Got it.” Toinette shrugged. “Sooo, on horse, then. Dunno if I can do that for so long. Horses don't like me very much. They remember.”
“Remember what?” Ash and Chastity said almost in unison.
“What the Fae did to them.”
Toinette looked at the stunned faces.
“...Do you want any exposition, or are y’all good?”
“Oh no. THIS I have to hear.” Ash said.
----
“Well, great.” Chastity said. “SOMEONE has a sense of humor.”
Toinette had picked up a few details of how magic worked in Chastity’s world. The bad, BAD way was called ‘The Waste’. The Waste dealt in plague, rot, horrors...and necromancy.
And this yahoo had managed to get his hands on a few thousand dead chickens.
Hey, quantity had a quality all its own.
“I’m never eating fried chicken ever again.” Toinette flicked her fingers and detonated the umpteenth squawking zombie bird. “Also, if you start making puns, I will forget where I’m aiming.”
“Who’s punning? I HATE zombie shit.” The reason became apparent: Chastity had ignited a few hundred of the birds...and they just kept coming, on fire, forcing her to break out the whip and start lashing like a maniac. “FIND THAT FUCKING DEAD RAISER!”
“Got it!” Toinette fluttered upwards, followed by a determined column of zombie chickens, and began scanning the oncoming horde.
“There he is. The only other thing taller than a foot.” She pointed at the man, who was a ways back, behind a tight-knit group of chickens. He was laughing, a lot.
“He’s having a lot of fun, anyway - ow!” Toinette kicked at a chicken that had briefly achieved the dream of flight in order to peck at her leg.
“What’s his damn problem?!”
“Someone stole his spices recipe. Or he never got laid. One of the two.”
“Tell him he has ten seconds to give up or I will find something exceptionally painful to do to his cock!”
“...do you mean those roosters or…”
“RARGH!” Chastity REALLY hated undead.
“Okay.” Toinette flew closer. “YO, BOZO! CALL OFF YOUR BIRDS OR MY GIRL HERE’S GONNA MAKE YOUR SEX LIFE EVEN MORE NON-EXISTENT!”
The response was chickens. These ones throbbing with disgusting pustules.
The torrents of blackish green goo they exploded into probably would have sickened a normal person. All it did was make Toinette feel really, REALLY grody.
“OKAY, NOW YOU’RE PROJECTING.” Toinette turned back to Chastity. “He says no.”
“HOLD OUT YOUR HANDS! TOWARDS HIM!”
Toinette did so.
Chastity let out a weird hissing noise...and then fire shot from Toinette’s hands. Chastity’s fire, setting the chickenmancer alight.
He did a comical dance, all the chickens falling down dead again, as Chastity walked over, waved her hand to put out the fire, and then kicked the man in the crotch so hard Toinette was surprised his balls didn’t fly out of the top of his head, before she spun and kicked his block off before he could really agonize over his heavily slammed manhood.
“Children shouldn’t play with dead things.”
“Gross.” Toinette poked a dead chicken with her foot. “Guess you wouldn’t wanna pay a visit to Rahitehp at any point, huh.”
She regarded the dead chicken.
“Nope. Still never eating chicken again.”
----
The town of Cross’See. Population: 24,000 crammed into a space that, on the surface, could comfortably house half that. But looks were deceiving.
For the first time that Toinette could remember, Chastity was putting clothes ON.
In the sense of ‘instead of walking around leaving nothing to the imagination, she was instead trying to cover up’. It turned out she had armor that did that. Nothing really sexual about this one.
Though Toinette envied her heat controlling abilities. Down here, in these cramped subterranean caves, filled with men, cooking fires, forges, and eagerness, the place was utterly sweltering. That was how the population lived there: ⅓ up on the surface, the rest underground. Normally, Chastity said, it WOULD be somewhat cooler...if everyone wasn’t exerting themselves and stoking a thousand fires.
Chastity, it seemed, had left a case here with said armor. High leather boots, no heels. Shin armor. Knee armor. A sort of skirt of dense fur to cover thighs and buttocks. Vest. Arm braces. Gloves. A covering overgarment that was part coat and part cloak. Chastity began doing her hair up in a tight band behind her, whistling the tune that was floating around the caverns.
“You don’t have to participate, Nette. Rows aren’t for everyone.”
“Nah, I’m down.” Toinette looked around. “So, what’s this about?”
“You want the long answer or the short answer?”
Chastity was leaving her swords behind. And her whip. Instead, she’d selected two long metal pipes studded with holes. Like she was going to go to battle with flutes.
“Short, please.”
“Law and order is a bit stretched in these parts, so the higher ups let the criminals keep their own order as long as they don’t do this and that bad stuff. But sometimes you get two groups both wanting the whole pie, so both all gather up and trash each other until one side’s broken. We’re on Side A, the Bleeding Wires side. And friends.”
“Gang war? Why didn't yah just say?” Toinette stretched, limbering up. “Me and Julius always had to fight off the Flatcap Kids on Backturn Street back in the day. I'm pretty good at this stuff. I think.”
“Then yeah, we’re doing that, except with a few hundred people on each side. Bare hands, bats, clubs, brass knuckles...bladed weapons are frowned on unless you have claws. You aren’t supposed to kill whoever you’re cracking heads with, but no one will complain if you do. Me…”
Chastity pressed her thumbs against her pipes, and steam shot through the holes.
“I like my own version of hot potato.”
“Nice.”Toinette made a mental note to try and not kill anyone.
“The other side is the Condemned. Don’t call them the Condiments, they hate that.” Chastity said, her tone clear what she really meant. Slipping on a leather helmet and strapping a face mask over it, she did up one final strap and began walking, picking up the pace to join a small group of men and women who were already heading in a certain direction. Out, Toinette assumed.
“Don’t give me that power. I’m gonna call them that all the time now!” With a blur of wings, Toinette lifted a few inches into the air and followed Chastity. “You’ve fucked up now. That’s all I’m gonna be thinking about.”
She waved at the group. “Hi!”
She got a few returned greetings and some nods. Very focused, this bunch. Focused and intense. The drums and flutes were getting louder, and the group was getting larger. Like those old war marches, where the front lines included some poor dumb kid banging on a drum and hoping not to catch a cannonball to the face.
“...Chas?”
“Mmmm hmmm?”
“When I said gang war, I didn’t think it’d be this literal.” Toinette nervously looked around for any sign she’d been accidentally drafted into the military.
“Like I said. Not for everyone. No one will think different if you stand aside. This is an army of the willing.”
“And why are you doing it?”
“Because the Wires don’t traffic.”
“Okay, no, yep, that’s good enough.” Toinette’s fingers crackled. “Let’s wreck them!”
The way the group parted, it was pretty clear that the man and woman that walked through them were the leaders. The woman had a club that was as big as she was; it was either much lighter than it looked, or she was a lot stronger. The man, on the other hand, had a classic morning star. Several people who didn’t join the group nodded or gave various members tokens and trinkets as they walked on, heading upward.
When they finally came to the door, having ascended into what seemed to be a large tanning shop, Toinette found another familiar face who she hadn’t seen in some time. Purr, the Skin Weaver who had been of help dealing with the Ithaqua. He was an odd contrast: his pose casual, but his eyes intense and verging on hateful. Not quite there, but it was clear he wasn’t exactly happy.
“...Pervon’tl.” The female leader said. Her voice sounded like she’d spent much of her childhood smoking, or getting punched in the throat. “You here to cause trouble or be with us?”
“Your Wires killed my kin.”
“That we did, but twas’ nothing personal. Y’know full well what th’Condemned think. If thae enemy of my enemy is my friend, then what do you with an enemy and a worse enemy?”
Purr snorted, and he suddenly seemed even bigger and more menacing.
“Tomorrow’s another day, man of beasts. But today, our things, their things, you wit’ us?”
“...Aye.”
Purr reached up behind his head and yanked a hood over it...no, not a hood. It looked like he’d killed a bear and turned its head into a headdress, black lengths of fur sealing it onto his head, as he picked up what looked like a whole bear’s arm, reduced to the skeleton, the bones reinforced with rock and the claws glinting in the flickering firelight.
“For today.”
And so Purr kicked the door open, and as light flooded the inside of the building, the army marched out.
----
Oriam.
“Toinette, this is a bad idea.”
It was ten days later, and the pair still had a lot of bumps and bruises to show from the row. As it turned out, Toinette was rusty, and Chastity wasn’t quite as good in a fight where she couldn’t set anything she wanted on fire. Still, they’d come out of it a lot better than a lot of others. At least no one had literally used them as a club, as Purr had done to some person he recognized who he had turned out to be really, really mad at.
So now they were in a much nicer place: Oriam, the last major stop before getting around Megan’s Woe, and the most high tech city on Chastity’s world. And it turned out they were having some sort of inventing fair.
Great for looking at fancy doodads, many of which Toinette considered alternate uses for.
But Chastity drew the line at testing a short range teleportation machine. Toinette, however, was eagerly erasing that line.
“Look, you can back out if you want.” Toinette was staring at the teleporter as if it was made out of pure gold. “But I gotta know. There’s a whole buncha philosophical questions I gotta know. Is this the kind that might, technically, kill you and reassemble you at the other end, so you technically die? What happens when a Fae gets teleported? Will I see weird shit in between the teleports?”
Toinette turned to Chastity and struck a heroic pose.
“I gotta know. For science.”
A pause.
“Also it might send me home. That’s pretty important. Really important.”
“Yeah, or it might do all sorts of OTHER things. I can’t stop you, but you need to think of that.”
“I’ll live, I’m sure. And if I don’t, well, nice knowing ya. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t.”
Toinette headed to the machine. “‘Scuse me, mister? I wanna volunteer for the teleportation demonstration stuff!”
“CERTAINLY!” Whether the man had actually had something in the machine’s development or he was the front man for a ringmaster-esque routine, he was a pretty good showman, making a big deal of what the machine would do. Chastity stayed back, her arms crossed, her face neutral. Well, the guy seemed confident, that was a good sign right?
“AND THEN, I PUSH THE BUTTON, AND…..!”
VRRRRRRRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOPPPPPPPPPPPPP.
---
She floated through starlight, surrounded by plants of shimmering silver. They accused her with scarlet flowers, forming a tunnel of bloodshot eyes as she hurtled though them.
“Come home, child.”
Something was behind her, she knew what it was but she dare not look. The plants opened out a little, but she saw the void beyond, nothingness. No friends. Nobody to help her. Alone again.
“We miss you.”
Something grabbed her, arms of wood with fingers that bit like teeth. Faces laughed with poison smiles from the foliage. They forced her to turn around.
“I miss you,” said her mother, and stabbed her.
---
Toinette gasped as she emerged at the other end, and a hand flew up to -
No wound. Of course not. She desperately scanned the amazed, applauding crowd for Chastity.
Oh, there she was. In mid-threaten of the ringmaster man, though once Toinette re-appeared she stopped. Looking relieved, she darted over to the other transporter.
“You all right?”
Toinette took a gulp of air and shook her head.
“Away, please. Fast.” She talked like she’d run a marathon.
“Something coming out after you?” One hand grabbing hers, yanking her from the platform, the other drawing a blade, fire igniting on it.
“Maybe. Don’t know. Leave, please?”
“...I can have three members of my circle here in an hour. Give me four I can have a dozen. And if we need more to kill it, I’ll get them.”
“They’d die.” Toinette shook her head again. “Look, just, we need to go, okay? Right now.”
“We killed a god.” Chastity said, though she extinguished her sword and began moving away as requested, watching the machines, clearly trying to decide if she should blow them up just to be sure.
“So’s anyone who’s worth their salt!” Toinette grabbed Chastity’s hand and yanked her along. “Where’s the nearest horse?”
---
It was probably that rapid semi-fleeing that had landed them here.
The plan had been to go around Megan’s Woe. And they were. But Toinette had been in such a hurry that she had activated some sort of innate Fae GPS and was taking the shortest route, which was making them skirt a lot closer to the tainted area then Chastity cared for. Toinette didn’t blame her. Even with her recent ‘concerns’, she wouldn’t have wanted to go near the place. Even a few miles away, she could feel the permanent damage wrought on the area, a sour taste on her tongue and a constant feeling that her bladder was full and needed release. Whoever had danced there had stepped so hard their footprints would never come out. The world could turn to dust, and the remnants would remain, the wound that would not heal.
That, and black clouds were rolling in. It would soon be pouring rain and all around them was just rocky outcroppings and scrub-bush. And neither of them had brought an umbrella, though Chastity did have the foresight during their Oriam leaving to pack up a massive backpack full of all sorts of things. Worst came to worst they could set up a tent, though doing so in a downpour probably wouldn’t be much fun.
“Dare you enter my magical realm,” muttered Toinette, looking over the ruined landscape.
There was a short pause, in which Chastity didn’t quiz her about the really bad joke she’d made.
“...Do you want an explanation for all that?”
“I know what happened to Megan’s Woe.” Chastity said, in a clear ‘I know you weren’t talking about that but this will give you an opening.’ tone.
“No, I meant - “ Toinette sighed. “The teleporter stuff.”
“Must have been pretty bad if you think it would kill me and my friends.”
“Yeah, well.” Toinette looked straight ahead. “Um, how am I gonna put this without sounding… Shit, whatever. I saw my mom in there.”
She looked down. “We have a real bad family arrangement.”
“So I could guess. What does she want and why, and why can’t I just turn her into a candle?”
Toinette thought for a moment.
“Did you ever have a favourite toy when you were a kid?”
“No. But let’s say yes.”
“Okay. You had a favourite toy, and if it broke, or if it got taken away from you, you cried about it. That’s it. That’s all there is to what… this is. Fae don’t see people as people. And they have hundreds of kids. They’re like butterflies that figured out how to walk on two legs and make fire and murder. And I left and my mom wants me to come back because I’m her favourite daughter and that’s all there is to it.”
Toinette looked down. “I mean, she’s the queen of the Fae. I belong to her, in her head. So, uh, you’d probably be super dead if you tried to turn her into a candle.”
“So she can do what you can do. Except bigger.”
“Basically. The only reason she doesn’t try anything is because of my dad. He’s always been… nice, I guess. For a Fae.”
“...and what happens if something happens to him?”
“Well, your world is overrun with people who think humans are a weird kind of rabbit, for a start. That’s why I left so fast. She saw me. She has an idea of where I am. She won’t do any of that because she loves my dad more than she wants to hurt me, but if he goes…”
Toinette looked smaller by the second.
Rain started to spatter on the rocks around them. Chastity closed her eyes, thinking, before she drew one of her swords.
“...That’s not something you should have to share with just anyone.” Chastity said. “...When we met, you couldn’t believe my name. Do you want to know why now? That I have this name, and keep it?”
“Yes please.”
Chastity seemed to be pondering the nature of her blade, before she used it to tap Toinette on the shoulder.
“My father-”
The lightning broke from the distant black cloud, the dagger of the heavens aiming straight for the gleaming metal of the sword, and then Toinette found her world exploding into light and motion.
----
Toinette woke up.
She was in… in bed? In the hotel room?
What the fuck?
She looked around. Yep, same decor as always. Same attempt to be generically cosy.
“Rory/” She called out, tentatively.
“Mmmm?” Asked the girl sleeping next to her, raising her frizzy head and looking around. “Whuzzit? Something amatter?”
Toinette blinked.
“...What day is it?” It seemed like the question that’d draw the least suspicion.
“I dunno. Thursday, I think?” A hand darted out and grabbed the clock off the nightstand to check. “Yeah, thought so. We hit the bar pretty hard…”
Toinette did some mental maths.
“Cool. Uh, did you notice anything… weird? Weirder than usual.” She managed to sit up and gave Rory a smile.
“What, here in the tropics with a Fae? No, noth-” she paused, blinked, and then her brow drew down; Rory sat up sharply and frowned at the wall. “The bartender stole my five dollars!... Actually, maybe not. But no, why?”
“Just making sure everything went okay!” Toinette leaned over and gave Rory a peck on the cheek. “Also, he probably took your five dollars because it was shots night.”
“Yeah, probably had something to do with it… You want to get up, or sleep till Friday?” Rory asked, smiling at her.
“I’m gonna get up.” Toinette stretched. “I need a shower anyway. I feel gross.”
The Fae began to doubt herself as she headed for the shower room. Perhaps it been all a dream...
The sound of pouring water and a room full of steam greeted her. Someone was already in the shower. But if Rory was in bed...
The soap and shampoo did not act like the movies, in that they didn’t cover anything as Chastity wiped soap from her eyes, water running down her form.
“I TOLD you getting near Megan’s Woe was problematic.”
Toinette stared.
“Oh, fuck.”
THE END
THE BEGINNING.
