As the others finished getting dressed, or at the very least back into their combat gear Venika asked hopefully, “Do you think that we might be able to reason with them? They’re Tooth Fairies after all, doesn’t that make them related to Sprites, Pixies, and Fairies?”

I shook my head as I looked cautiously back toward the entrance. “They are not Fae, they are monsters and the Fae called them the Shaen’kas in ancient times. Humans only started calling them Tooth Fairies because they slightly resemble Fairies and because they like to wear the teeth of their victims as trophies. Believe me, we Fae would rather not have those… things associated with us. They’re savage and bloodthirsty little fuckers.”

“Okay, so I guess it’s a fight then,” the Sprite responded with a frown and a sigh. Then she added in admonishment, “What have we said about watching your language Taelya? A proper lady doesn’t swear.”

“Sorry,” I quickly apologized, looking back toward the door again to avoid the Mom-look. “I got caught up in the moment. We should… uhh… go out and find those little monsters before they find us.”

I was a bit worried about Rei and Pete as we headed outside. First, they were both still tired from whatever it was that Rei had used to heal the Human soldier. Secondly, they were the only two in the group without some form of decent night vision. Rei’s hearing and sense of smell might be pretty good as a Kitsune, but in that form, her vision was as limited as that of a Human. I looked guiltily at the pair and sighed. “Maybe I should have let you two rest a bit longer while we take care of the situation.”

“No way in hell sweetie, I’ll be okay. Besides, you’ll need me if any of you are injured. If it’s the darkness out there that’s worrying you, don’t. I can see just fine out there if I do this,” my fiancée told me as her features began to shift. Her twin foxtails and her ears seemed to melt as her features became fluid, darkening and flowing into another form until there was an androgynous Tokh'dhraí standing in front of me. She gave me a grin that revealed just a bit of fang as she added, “When Kitsune shapeshift we don’t just look like the form we’ve taken, we become it right down to the genetic level with all of the weaknesses and strengths that they have. Now let’s go kick some Tooth Fairy ass.”

“Don’t worry about me either,” Pete put in. “I’m sure that once the fighting starts we’ll have plenty of light to see by, between Daenyss and Rei.”

Reluctantly I nodded, hoping that he was fully recovered from his earlier injuries as I laid out my plan. “Yeah, Tooth Fairies are nocturnal because sunlight hurts them, so they won’t be able to see well in bright light. It’ll give us an advantage. If we see them before they see us I’ll try to hit the swarm with an AOE and thin their numbers. I have an idea that might work for that, and maybe something to lead us to them too. Once we get in the thick of fighting Venika and I will use targeted magick and Rei can use foxfire. No guns, they’ll be too hard to hit with their size and we might just end up hurting one another if we try. Nishalle, use your new ability to keep them off balance and make sure that every attack counts. Everyone else will be on close combat. Daenyss, maybe you should wait here, you have no armor or weapons and those little buggers are savage.”

The Nymph shook her head, a determined look of her face. “No, Mistress, my place is at your side and I am trained in unarmed combat.”

I didn’t like it, but it was her choice to make. I was still a bit uncertain about Daenyss, not to mention more than a little uncomfortable with my suspicions of who she really was. Still, I had promised her that I would not make her do something that made her uncomfortable merely for my own comfort, and I intended to keep that promise. “Fine Daenyss, just try to stay close to me or Lissany,” I told her with a sigh. Then I gathered mana from the world around me in preparation for the coming battle and to attempt to find our tiny adversaries before they found us. Once I had gathered enough I focused on the effect that I wanted and began to draw the sigils in the air and speak them aloud. “Kiara naethrin tiurin’híel Shaen’kas!”

A path formed on the ground before my feet leading outside to the parking lot and then onward to my targets, glittering rainbow-colored lights sparkling in the darkness. “That’s so pretty!” Lissany enthused.

“Only we can see it and it should lead us right to the Tooth Fairies,” I explained as I drew in more mana and started to follow the glittering trail. The others quickly fell in step with me, though Lissany insisted on taking the lead and Nishalle the rear to ensure our safety. The starlight path led us outside and then toward and just beyond the remains of the gas station, where we found them crowded in a major intersection.

It was Nishalle and Rei who saw them first, possessing the best night vision of us all. “Nasty looking things, and that’s a pretty big swarm, there’s at least a hundred of them,” Nishalle whispered.

My sister didn’t have to tell us any more than that, we could hear them arguing about which way to search for us. “They speak in rhyme, that’s so cute,” Lissany said with a hushed giggle.

“Yeah just let them get close and see how cute and sweet they aren’t. Okay, just leave this to me. I’ll try to thin out their ranks a bit before we attack,” I muttered. There was a spell I had been wanting to try, but I didn’t want to do so too close to the village or Fae glade, in case I messed it up. Doing it while we were all in close quarters fighting the Lindwyrm or blighted would have been begging for disaster too. Now though, seemed like the perfect time, while our targets were gathered and there was some good distance between us. I concentrated on the intersection, what I wanted to do, and then pushed all of the mana that I had gathered into the spell as I drew the sigils in the air and spoke them in a whisper. “Kuor tierre tala-aeluine thren’dhal!”

“Umm, was that supposed to do something invisible, because I don’t see anything happening,” Grell silently inquired.

“Just wait a minute, this spell takes a little while if I’m right,” I told him with a sigh. That spell had taken a lot out of me and I was trying to replenish my mana.

Over a minute passed and the others were getting a bit antsy as Pete whispered, “Nothing yet. You’re usually pretty good at creating spells and such, but maybe you were wrong this time Taelya. Should we come up with something else?”

“Would you two just shut up and wait!” I hissed as quietly as I could, “it’ll get here when it gets here!” I was tired, in the dark hunting Tooth Fairies before they could hunt us, having trouble shaking those crazy pseudo-childhood dreams, enduring the cramps from hell using every bit of Fae mental control that I could summon, bleeding from an orifice that I shouldn’t even have, Amoiraishe had thrust a new Attendant on me who made me feel very uncomfortable because she just might be someone who had intended to rape and kill me, and now my friends didn’t seem to believe in me. I had plenty of reasons to be in a pissy mood, but still, I immediately regretted my words.

Pete just shrugged it off though and apologized. “Sorry Taelya, it’s just taking a while. It’s not like you to lose your temper like that and you seem a bit off, is it your time of the month or something?”

He had meant it as a joke, to lighten the mood, but at the moment I didn’t think there was anything funny about it. If anything, I was even more offended now. “I have a lot on my fucking mind right now and we’re in the dark hunting fucking Tooth Fairies!” I snapped, barely managing to keep my volume to whisper level. “How dare you think that I would let some mere physical discomfort affect my performance and behavior after all that we’ve been through?! For your information, it is that time, however that’s on the low end of reasons that I have to be in a shitty mood right now, like for instance my friends thinking that I can’t do my job, but thanks so much for rubbing that in my face too!”

Even with my night vision, I could see him pale, and then his cheeks flushed as he silently stumbled over his words. “Oh shit… Taelya… I’m so sorry, I meant it as a joke… I didn’t mean to… I forgot that in this game… and that you’re…”

Thankfully that stream of thought was interrupted as Rei, who as looking anywhere but at our argument pointed up at an orange glow in the night sky. “What is that?”

“I told you it would get here,” I grumbled before taking a deep breath and adding, “Behold! My new spell, I call it Cataclysm.” Over a dozen flaming meteorites rocketed from the sky above to pepper the intersection and its inhabitants and once the earth stopped shaking and the smoke cleared we ran for the intersection and launched our attack, holding nothing back.

Despite my attack, there were still a few dozen of the nasty creatures shrieking in confusion, most of them had been on the outer edge of the intersection, in the area that had taken the least damage. They were pretty spread out, so any further AOEs would be a waste of power. Daenyss and Rei lit up the cratered remains of the intersection and rubble of a few of the nearby buildings that had taken hits and revealing our opponents. They were bigger than Sprites, Pixies, or Fairies, each nearly a foot tall and they were a sickly grey color with four black bee-like wings, red eyes, matted black hair, nasty-looking claws, and mouths full of needlelike teeth.

With those lights directly above them, even something as small as the Tooth Fairies could cast a fairly large shadow and Nishalle took advantage of that, appearing from one shadow after another to eviscerate those making the shadows with her katana. This set the little savages in a panic at first and she had managed to kill six before they thought to actually fight back and the rest of us arrived and began to attack in earnest. Venika and I opened up with high-pressure water blasts, choosing those who had begun casting fire spells and sending them flying.

By the time they knew what hit them they were unfortunate enough to have Pete slicing them in twain with his massive claymore or Grell and Lissany hammering them into a paste. Lissany was trying her best to stay close to me, her mother, Daenyss, and Rei though since we were the squishies of the group. The latter of the two were managing well enough with hand to hand combat, with any of our adversaries who got too close, though the little buggers had a nasty bite and those claws of theirs were pretty damn sharp. There wasn’t really a lot that my Guardian could do to tank multiple small flying creatures, though she did try to provoke them by shouting out, “I thought you said these things were something to be scared of Your Highness! I’ve swatted mosquitoes more terrifying than this!”

That did the trick. The Tooth Fairies were furious and homing right in on Lissany to be downed by our attacks or batted aside with her large shield. Nishalle was still tearing them apart by appearing from shadows as well so we were doing fairly well for ourselves. It’s always the one you don’t see though that strikes the hardest and one of the little bastards fired a small fireball as us from behind that Lissany wasn’t in a position to block.

I never even saw it coming, I was too busy working my next spell and targeting one of the Tooth Fairies who wasn’t attacking Lissany directly, but preparing a spell instead. My only indication that something wasn’t right was when Daenyss called out “Mistress! Move!” She threw herself bodily into me and Rei knocking us aside and then screamed as the spell hit her. I was still trying to figure out what had happened as I got to my feet and the smell of burnt flesh assailed my nose.

Daenyss was laying on the ground, crying and obviously making an effort to not scream in agony from the pain. But I couldn’t be certain whether that was because she didn’t want to look weak, or she didn’t want to give the Tooth Fairy who had thrown the spell the satisfaction of hearing it. She had severe burns along the right side of her torso and her back and even though she wasn’t screaming she was making a piteous mewling sound somewhere between a whine and a wail of agony as she lay there on her belly with tears running down her cheeks.

“That was close,” Venika said with a look of concern toward the fallen Nymph. “I just barely managed to avoid that and if Daenyss hadn’t knocked you aside…” she trailed off.

If she hadn’t thrown us aside that would have hit Rei and me. Why would she do that for someone that she hardly knows? Why did she even swear the Viyr Jhaith to me in the first place? She hadn’t even met me. The only thing that was clear to me was that whoever she was before, she certainly wasn’t that person now. “Rei, please see what you can do for Daenyss. I’m going to finish things. Kiara ikandiir aeluine aentuire!” I glared at the nasty little monster who was giggling and preparing a second salvo as I quickly drew and spoke the sigils, pouring mana into the spell. A bright white sphere of light formed around me, Venika, Rei, and Daenyss, easily absorbing the second fireball.

I stepped outside the protective barrier, still glaring at the Tooth Fairy who had cast the spells and was now shielding its eyes from the bright light of my shielding spell. “You want to hear screaming you little piece of shit? Let’s hear how you scream then. Aes’Suvas tanuus tala-soldis utaera!” As I finished speaking and drawing the sigils dozens of tiny razor-sharp icicles formed in the air in front of my outstretched hand and were sent hurtling toward the creature. It did scream as the tiny projectiles impaled it and then it fell to the ground and didn’t move again.

With that opponent finished I turned my attention to searching for any others. By this point, we had done away with most of them and there were just a few more to finish off, but between Nishalle, Lissany, and Pete they seemed to have the matter well in hand. Before long we had finished off the last of them and I was able to dissipate my shielding spell and check on the others. Most of us had several bite marks and cuts from claws but Daenyss’s burn was the worst of it. As I canceled my spell I saw that both Daenyss and Rei were unconscious, and the latter had reverted to her two-tailed Kitsune from.

“Her burns were pretty bad,” Venika explained. “Rei didn’t think it was safe to move her and she wasn’t sure if her healing prayers could handle burns that bad so she uhhh… did her thing again.”

“We’ll have to carry them back to the Walmart so they can rest,” I said with a sigh.

“I’m sorry, it was my fault. I should have thought to warn you,” Venika said with a frown. “I kind of did my thing too, but I don’t seem to have any control over when it happens. It’s like I can see about fifteen to thirty seconds into the future, and then I’m back in the present. That fireball was supposed to hit me, so I kind of panicked and flew out of the way but I was still disoriented and didn’t think about where it would go if it missed me.”

“I should have been covering you all better,” Lissany put in.

“Liss, you can’t cover us from all directions at all times in a fight, sometimes we’re going to take a hit,” I told the Beastkin girl sternly. “This isn’t anyone’s fault, it was just a bad break, but we’re all still alive, so we just need to learn from it and move on. We’ll have to use first aid to treat any other injuries. I might be able to speed up our bodies’ natural healing rates a little, but healing magick isn’t really my thing. We’ll handle it back at camp.”

“I can carry Rei, she’s fairly light,” Pete offered.

“I can handle Daenyss,” Lissany added. “I’m pretty strong, especially in my hybrid form, and I’ll be able to carry her just fine without all of this heavy armor on. My Guardian dismissed her armor and weapons, shifted to her hybrid human-jaguar form, and picked up the Nymph with very little apparent effort. I had never seen my Guardian in her hybrid form before and she was both scary and adorable at the same time somehow, a humanoid jaguar with long black hair. She was only clad in her panties and sleep shirt, but she didn’t seem too concerned about that as she carefully hefted my Attendant in her arms as Pete picked up Rei, and then we began walking back to our camp.

We were crossing the parking lot and I was following the others and feeling pretty terrible about the earlier loss of my temper when I felt the need to apologize. “Look, I’m sorry for snapping at you all earlier. I’ve had a lot on my mind, I had some disturbing dreams, and then I woke up feeling terrible and had a major freak-out when I figured out the cause. That’s no excuse for being a bitch to my friends though.”

“I’m partially at fault, so don’t let it worry you Taelya,” Pete told me over his shoulder. “We shouldn’t have doubted you, you haven’t let us down yet and I shouldn’t have joked about that. I was being a bit of a jerk and I’m sorry. I can’t imagine how hard all of this is for you and instead of being a good friend I just made you feel worse.”

“He’s right, we should have trusted you, you’ve always had our backs and I shouldn’t have thought otherwise this time,” Grell added.

Once we had returned to our little camp in the Walmart and had Rei and Daenyss settled as comfortably as possible, Nishalle went to look for some first aid supplies since she had the best night vision. She returned a short while later and Venika had instructed us all on how to treat those of us with bites and cuts. Luckily that was less than half of us. Rei had either managed to avoid any injuries or had healed when she shifted back into her true form, Daenyss had been healed of everything when Rei had treated her burns, Lissany’s armor hadn’t let her take a scratch, Venika had been too small and fast, and Nishalle had been slipping in and out of shadows too quick for them to concentrate an attack on her. So once Grell, Pete, and I had been treated I cast my Healing Aura spell on each of us in turn, finishing with myself.

“So what now?” Lissany asked with a glance toward our resident Nymph and Kitsune. “The sun is rising out there, but it’s probably going to be a while before we can wake them up.”

I thought about it a moment before shrugging. “We should let them sleep until noon. That ability seems to take a lot out of Rei and I know that Daenyss didn’t get any sleep last night. Liss, I want you to watch them while the rest of us go get the vehicles and bring them closer so we can see if we have any more space to load up the things we got here. We should maybe see if there’s any more useful stuff in the back of the store, like those organic monthly supplies. We Fae won’t be able to use the regular ones and what Nishalle found won’t last the whole bloody Autumn Court for long. Can anyone else think of anything else we can salvage if we can manage the space?”

“We can manage the space,” Pete assured me. That semi is one of the sleeper models, we should have enough space in the sleeper section for at least another pick-up sized load, probably more. As for things we need, I’d like to see if we can find some tools so Grell and I can harvest that Lindwyrm’s scales. They’re practically fireproof and our weapons, including guns, weren’t able to pierce them, so I think that they could make for good body armor. It’s probably going to take us the better part of the morning to do, but I think it would be worth it.”

“Okay, once we get back with the vehicles the two of you can get started on that and the rest of us will have a look in the back of this store for anything else we need and can fit in a pickup load,” I agreed with a nod of my head. “Things should be safe enough during the day since we’ve cleared out the blighted and I didn’t see signs of anything else dangerous. At lunch, we’ll wake Rei and Daenyss and then eat before heading back toward Haven.”

Before getting down to the morning’s work we ate a quick meal of granola bars and dry cereal and then crossed the parking lot toward the Costco to gather the vehicles. Soon we had the semi, the pickup truck, the delivery truck, and Nishalle’s motorcycle parked as close to the Walmart entrance as we could. Before getting to work though I looked at my sleeping fiancée and Attendant and frowned. “What’s wrong Your Highness?” Lissany asked, wearing a look of concern.

I sighed and looked back at my Guardian as I replied, “I know that I said we would all be working hard this morning and that it should be fairly safe here, but I think that someone should stay and watch over them in case something happens or one of them wakes up. Would anyone like to volunteer?”

“I volunteer you and Lissany, Sis,” Nishalle said almost immediately. “You haven’t gotten much sleep the past two nights, even for a Fae and Lissany hasn’t either. You can take shifts sleeping and then Liss can be there to guard you in case something happens. It’s not going to take all of us to look through the back of the store and fill some carts. Venika can check the high shelves and I can check the ones on the ground level.”

“I didn’t mean…” I started to argue, but I was cut off by Venika.

“Nishalle is right,” the Sprite agreed. “You may not have meant for you to be the one to stay here with them, but you need rest and it’s obvious that you’re feeling terrible. Besides you’re the best candidate to stay anyway, Daenyss is your Attendant and Rei is your fiancée so you’ll be the most comforting presence for both of them if they wake. We’ll find some Midol for you and you can get a few hours of sleep along with them.”

I awoke at midmorning after a thankfully dreamless sleep, having managed to drift off not long after Venika, Nishalle, Grell, and Pete left us to complete their respective tasks. For several minutes I just laid there with my eyes closed, performing the mental exercises that would allow me to push aside the discomfort of my body, or at the very least make it more bearable. When I finally opened my eyes Lissany was still dutifully watching over me and the others and I felt a bit better being fully rested. I slipped gracefully into the lotus position and smiled at Lissany. She was looking tired, having had as little sleep as I had the past two nights, but she wasn’t Fae and needed more sleep, in general, to feel properly rested. If it had been too little for me, then I didn’t want to even think about how tired my Guardian must have been feeling.

“I’m awake now, so you should try to get a bit of sleep too,” I offered before asking, “Have the others checked in?”

The Beastkin girl nodded. “I’ll get some sleep in a few minutes, Your Highness. Pete and Grell found some tools and sharp knives that they thought should help to remove the Lindwyrm’s scales. Grell came in a little while ago to get some water and he said that it’s going well. They’re hoping to be done by lunchtime. Mom and Nishalle already loaded everything that we got for supplies here and they found a bunch of the organic monthly supplies in the back. They got about four cartloads and now they’re looking for anything else useful. They left some Midol to help make you more comfortable and suggested that you change your tampon and stuff when you woke up. I’ll wait until you’re back before I try to sleep.”

I reached over to hug her. “Thanks, Liss, I’ll try not to be too long. You really look like you could use a nap, so thanks for watching over us. I know that I probably don’t say this as much as I should, but you make a wonderful Guardian and you and your mom are great friends. I really appreciate all that you’ve done for me since we woke up in the game.”

“Thanks, Your Highness, I love being your Guardian and you make a pretty awesome princess too,” she said as she hugged me back.

Once we had released one another I made my way to the restroom with a tampon, panty liner, a bottle of water, and the red silk panties that I had worn the day before in hand. Since the cotton panties had been bloodstained when I had first discovered my monthly visitor and were uncomfortably tight around the hips I wanted to change into something more comfortable. It wasn’t until I was inside that I realized that I had forgotten to bring a flashlight and let out a curse, glad that Venika couldn’t hear me. The problem wasn’t that I was having trouble seeing in the dark, my night vision was too good for that, but I could only really see things in shades of grey. I could manage just fine that way, but being in the restroom in the dark was just creepy.

“I really need to make a light spell for situations like this,” I muttered. “Oh well, no time like the present I guess.” It took a few minutes, but as I made my way into the cleanest stall, covered the seat in a protective layer of toilet tissue, pulled down my panties, and took a seat I figured out what sigils I could combine to create light. Then I gathered in mana and, using my right hand to draw the sigils, I spoke them aloud, pouring the mana into the spell and picturing in my mind one of those ghostly globes of light that Rei could create and move around at will. “Kiara kaida aeluine!”

As I finished the spell the globe of light appeared above me and bathed the stall in soft white light, returning my perception of color as well. I was pretty pleased with myself as I relaxed and emptied my bladder. That satisfaction only lasted until I used the little string to remove the tampon and had to deal with the grotesque task of disposing of it, putting in a new one, and then cleaning myself up. The nausea that I was already feeling wasn’t improved by that and I wondered if maybe it would have been better to have done it in the dark after all. The panty liner wasn’t too bad, it seemed that the tampon got most of it, but I still disposed of both it and the ill-fitting and stained panties as well before placing a new liner in my silk panties and putting them on.

Once I had used the soap dispenser and the bottled water to wash my hands I dissipated my spell headed back out to relieve Lissany and watch over her, Daenyss, and Rei. “Okay Liss, try to get some sleep, I’ve got things covered from here,” I told her as I returned.

“Okay, Your Highness, thanks. Oh! Here, Mom said this should help with the physical discomfort and give you less to have to tune out with the mental exercises,” my Guardian reported as she passed me a bottle of Midol. Then she hesitantly added, “Just wake me if you need me for anything, okay?”

“Thanks, kiddo. I’ll wake you if I need you but I hope there won’t be any reason to, we’ve all seen enough action the past few days.” Once I made sure that she was laying down and at least trying to rest I downed two of the Midol and a full bottle of water and settled in to watch over my companions.

Lissany didn’t take long to fall asleep, the poor kid must have been exhausted. I decided that this would probably be a good time to shed the bedroom look, so I gathered my other clothes from the day before and shed my sleep shirt. I figured that I would keep the sleep shirt for other situations where we wouldn’t be sleeping in the Fae Glade and I was just reaching for my bra to put it on when I heard my sister’s voice. “Hey Sis, I see you’re awake again, feeling any better?”

I shrugged as I continued getting into my bra, it wasn’t like Nishalle and Venika hadn’t seen me in the process of dressing before, the pair seemed to delight in having me try on clothes after all. “Well, I got some sleep anyway. And no weird dreams of my childhood as Taelya, so I think I’m good, aside from the cramps and stuff, but I’m able to deal with those and I think the Midol may be starting to kick in because it’s taking a bit less effort.”

“I’m glad that you’re feeling better, I feel kind of responsible for this. Jess and I did kind of pressure you into joining the game,” Nishalle said with a guilty expression. “You’ve been having dreams like that too, huh? I started having them just before we left the estate and Moira said that it’s probably my mind trying to adjust to my in-game identity and make sense of the memories attached to the skill downloads.”

I shook my head after putting on my top and then wiggled into my skin-tight designer jeans as I told her, “I wanted to play Sis, and I am having fun playing with magick, so I think I can handle this other stuff for the next few months. I kind of freaked out at first, but that was mostly because of the dysphoria and still not being able to really wrap my mind around the fact that I’m essentially female right now. How goes the shopping spree? Lissany updated me before going to sleep but have you found anything else useful?”

“That’s what I wanted to ask you about actually, Venika and I were thinking that we should load up the rest of the space with clothes and undergarments of varying adult sizes for men and women. There are a lot of players still wandering around in their F.I.T suits so for the non-Fae population it could be a really good idea. There’s even some stuff Fae might be able to wear, like those sleep shirts we were wearing last night.”

Go for it, that is a good idea,” I quickly agreed. Having decent clothing would really help the morale of a lot of the players and I was completely in favor of that.

“Okay, I’ll get right on loading up carts so we can take them out then,” she said. “Oh and Sis, just remember that if you need me, for anything, I’ll always be there for you.” Then she wrapped me up in a hug and then headed off to get to work.

I spent the next little while watching over the others. Just watching Rei made my heart flutter with happiness. I loved her with all of my heart and seeing her being able to be comfortable with herself made that even more apparent to me. She was loving this experience so much and I found myself not looking forward to her having to go back to being Jess and dealing with the dysphoria, people referring to him as female when he felt male, and all those other little annoyances that I had taken for granted before, but now knew all too well. We were definitely going to have to keep playing when this was done if the game could survive Moira’s board of directors.

It was so cute the way that her tails and ears sometimes twitched in her sleep, and I found myself wondering what she was dreaming about. Was it her childhood as a Kitsune? Was I in those dreams as Taelya yet? She had yet to make an appearance in mine, but I kind of figured that that was because in my dreams I had grown up in a Fae Glade, so it made sense for Venika and Nishalle to be there. Jess and I hadn’t met until we were adults anyway, so maybe she would feature in my future dreams if they continued.

Lissany was just as adorable in her sleep as Rei, especially with that little kitty nose of hers. She was such a sweet girl, so eager to please and willing to do her best. I really was glad to have her as my Guardian. She was loyal and strong and a really good person, and it was nice to see her being able to be the girl that she had always wanted to be on her own terms. She was too hard on herself though, she needed to let herself be a kid sometimes. Still, despite her toughness and willingness to defend me no matter what, she was so innocent sometimes, though with the things we had seen in this game she was growing up so quickly.

Daenyss was the one I had known for the least amount of time, but it was she who seemed to take up most of my thoughts. She had thrown herself at me and Rei, knocking us aside and taking an attack that could have killed her if cast by a more powerful magick user. I had a deep suspicion that she had been Razor before losing her memory, as close to a nemesis as I would probably ever have. He had wanted to do horrible things to me and yet, despite my suspicions, I couldn’t see him in that innocent, loyal, and determined Nymph.

She was trying so hard to be whatever I needed her to be, giving up everything to serve me of her own free will, but realistically she hadn’t had much to give up. Her old life was lost to her, probably forever if she was right. Now she was trying to build a new one while making up for the misdeeds of her forgotten past. I was uncomfortable with her, with the mere thought of who she could have been, but did that really matter? Seeing who she was now, that innocent girl determined to do the right thing and wanting so much to please me, it made me wonder if I should give her a chance. No matter who she was in the past, she was no longer that person. In fact, she was a new and different person in every way possible.

My thoughts were interrupted as Pete and Grell came in to announce that they had finished salvaging the Lindwyrm’s scales and putting them away. Nishalle and Venika weren’t far behind so while Venika watched over the sleeping girls the rest of us started moving the carts filled with clothes to the front doors of the store and loading everything that we could into whatever space was left available. Once that was done the other’s started eating lunch as I gently woke the sleeping trio. “Come on girls, get up and have something to eat, it’s time to go home.”