Finley Cai Aies Hall May 19th,20XX

Once I’d made sure Mei had flown far enough away, I began to make a show of unpacking my things and setting up camp for the night.

Jake looked at me strangely but the soldiers paid me no heed and got to work scoping out the campsite for any potential foes.

Between the signal from the 'wish' Sparrow had activated and the map that Mei had given me, I was able to make a confident guess at where she was. If she had said what she wanted over the 'wish' like she was supposed to, it would have been easier to track her down. I could only assume that she hadn’t been in a position to give a verbal wish but once I had come up with that theory my mind kept proposing worse and worse scenarios.

Was she hurt? Was she in danger? Why hadn’t she wished for me to save her?

Elpis, the fairy on the left had saved me in the past. She was the strict captain of the fairy that had taken a cut for me. The other was a stranger but she seemed no less competent than her counterpart.

I picked up my bedroll from my things and dragged it over to Jake’s tent with a faked nervous expression on my face.

“Hey Krion, would you mind if I slept in your tent tonight? I’m a bit uneasy since Mei left.”

Jake gave me another wary look but thought nothing of my request and nodded, pushing his bedroll to the side of the already narrow tent. The two guards, on the other hand, had immediately perked up their heads as they heard my voice but relaxed as they heard my words.

The night deepened and Jake’s light snoring filled the otherwise tranquil night. Ordinarily, it would have bothered me but tonight it was my greatest ally. If we were still in the fairylands I would have just cast a spell over the camp and have leisurely flown away, but in the witch lands, I didn’t want to create too much clean magic and attract any curious witches to the campsite.

I left my things behind and flew out of the campsite, quickly disarming the barrier the soldiers had put around us. It had been a hasty job, and they had kept the power level of it low for fear of detection from scouting witches, so it hadn’t been too difficult to disarm.

A fidgety Tyus occupied my left breast pocket and the gem Theodulus had given me occupied my right. I doublechecked for my wand and quickly changed my appearance.

A few witches had flown over us so I’d gotten a fair enough sense of their style.

I transformed my wand into a pair of scissors and began to hack off sections of my clothes. Turning the tunic-like top into a cropped style and cutting out sections of my pants to look more like harnesses around my legs. They were a bit looser than regular witch clothes but I hoped it wasn’t enough to draw any attention to myself.

As for my hair, I considered the leopard patterned and snakeskin printed hair that my two unwitting samples had sported and settled for leaving it as it was but after a moment of further thought I put a few blocks of silver through it. There were already more than a few strands of silver in my hair so it didn’t look as foreign to me as I’d figured it would.

I folded my wings as tightly into my back as possible and draped my blanket over myself as a cape. Thankfully, the fabric was quality enough to pass.

“Cai.”

Tyus’s small voice floated up from my pockets into my ears and alerted me to the presence of witches around me.

At first, I dismissed them since I was pretty close to the outskirts of the city, even if I was still in the woods. Witches could be this far outside the barriers of their cities, even if it was odd.

In the fairy queendom, each settlement was protected by a barrier to protect the weaker fairies from wandering magical beasts. The barrier was another reason why a Royal was so important since it was mainly their magic that powered it. It didn’t look like the witches had any such mechanisms though, maybe because witches had to eat more often than fairies did?

In that case, it would make sense that they would forsake a safety barrier to make it easier to hunt. It didn’t make a lot of sense to me since it was such a big city, and it seemed more than reasonably developed, but it was a conclusion I was willing to accept.

In the hopes they had mistaken me for an animal I slowed down and ducked onto the ground but they didn’t slow down and I could feel them approaching me at the same speed.

They suddenly began to speed up toward me, probably having realized the jig was up but I was slightly faster.

I took off in another direction from the campsite but sent Tyus back to warn them to getaway. As long as they could get Galen up into the air and flying, then the two soldiers would be able to protect Jake long enough for me to take advantage of the chaos and try to find Sparrow and take her to the human world with me. Since she was a witch, she shouldn’t need any more special equipment or preparation than I did, which was virtually none.

Although I had slipped their notice pretty easily, I chose to attribute it to my amazing skills rather than their ineptness.

There was no way that the fairies Mei had entrusted my safety too would be so useless that they couldn’t keep a single human safe… right?

I resisted the urge to fly as I ran, knowing that my greatest advantage right now was the cover the foliage gave me from the ongoing attacks from the sky. None of them were using lethal spells but that only put me further on guard. Them not using lethal spells on a fairy this deep into their territory could only mean that they recognized me enough to know I had more value to them alive.

Or at least I hoped.

“Find the prince! Don’t let him escape and don’t let him get to the prisons!”

The most persistent witch me yelled instructions at his peers as they chased me down, very clearly trying to block me from running toward the city.

It was clear that there was something or someone in the prisons that they didn’t want me to find and something in me was sure that it was Sparrow.

I tucked my wings closer into myself and ran even faster, for once feeling thankful that Theodulus had forced me to train up my body so much.

There was something pretty fishy about this whole thing, from how quickly they had found me to how convenient that one witch had told me about Sparrow’s whereabouts, so I hooked my transporter onto my belt and had it ready to use.

Even if it was a trap, I couldn’t let go of the opportunity to save my friend.