Sparrow Truman May 23rd,20XX

I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting when Ion sent off his soldier for reinforcements. Perhaps a few other goblins that had lost their way or maybe a few witches that wanted to help me. In a vague corner of my mind, I’d somewhat been hoping to see a Fairy or goblin royal swoop in to save Ion.

What I hadn’t been expecting and what Ion had dreaded was the current situation.

“The Fairies have arrived!”

“Move out of the way!”

“It’s the General!”

“It’s the Prince!”

A mixture of bronze and golden magic perforated the field, and the witches began to scream as their spells began to misfire. I saw the female fairy first as she appeared the closest to me. Her short hair whipped around her face as she fired orb after orb of turbid magic at the witches.

It would get close to them and then combust right beside their faces, first blinding them and then infiltrating their bodies and poisoning them to be unable to use magic.

Various witches screamed as they realized what the orbs were doing, and they fell prey to the goblins that specialized in magicless combat.

While she used her magic to her advantage, I had to say that she didn’t fight like the fairies I’d seen or learned about. She held a weapon, which looked like a glaive but had a pointed edge to its curved blade and slashed around the witches. She used her body as a weapon and would fling herself into the middle of battles, disrupting them with those magic disrupters and then dismembering the witches with her weapon.

The weapon was also unlike anything I’d ever seen before and changed shape according to the battles she fought. Sometimes it was a spear, other times it was a sword and sometimes she would turn it into a bow and would send out arrows made of magic.

Rubella’s reinforcements had arrived by now, but the way things were going, they may as well not have.

I had seen the chaos that had erupted when the fairy queen had arrived so it shouldn’t have been so difficult to accept that Cai, her grandson would be able to do the same or at least cause similar damage but somehow my mind refused to accept it.

I could hear Rubella yelling expletives at Cai, no at Finn in the background but I felt completely disconnected from the scene. Connecting the powerful creature to the kid I knew from the human world was difficult and mind-bending. The kid that didn’t like talking to others and acted embarrassed every time I forced him to wear a slightly extravagant outfit was a prince in another world. A powerful, somewhat terrifying prince that could and did end lives with minimal effort.

“Sparrow! Focus!”

Ion yelled at me as he kicked a metal ball out of my trajectory. The witch that specialized in metallic magic had given up on creating golems as she had done before and now prioritized hurling heavy metal orbs at whoever was close.

Cai stayed in the air, away from the carnage of the battle but he caused the most damage out of everyone. Compared to that of the fairy queen his magic, bombs for a lack of a better descriptor were more contained and focused on specific people rather than landscapes.

Iren let out a loud hiss as it landed a bite into the vulture’s neck and began to pump poison into the open wound. As good of a hit that was, the vulture was an animation and wasn’t alive, things like poison and curses that chipped away at life force were ineffective against it.

“So, you’re Sparrow?”

A cold but melodic voice suddenly crashed into my ears and a chill went down my spine.

I whipped my broom around and saw the fairy that had been half-way across the battlefield mere seconds ago was now directly in front of me. She made no secret of her enmity toward me and looked at me in disdain.

I tried to swallow my intimidation and tilted my chin upwards in response to her tone.

“Who wants to know?”

She shot me an insincere smile and made eye contact with me. She didn’t like me, that much was obvious, but she showed no intentions of hurting me.

“Mei Ruan, Cai’s fiancée, wants to know, nice to meet you.”

Although she was hostile toward me, I could tell that she wasn’t intimidated by me at all. It was to the point that she only introduced herself as Cai’s fiancée because she wanted me to know she was on my side, rather than her claiming her significance to him.

“Ah, nice to meet you as well. Thank you for coming to help us.”

“Save your thanks because I didn’t come here to help any of you. Cai wanted to come here so I had to follow. I need you to call back your witches and your snake and get as far away from here as possible. Cai cant fight properly with all of you around.”

Although she may not have meant it, it sounded like she thought I and the other witches were useless. While I wasn’t so stuck on the nationalism most witches shared, I didn’t like how she dismissed my comrade’s efforts and the fact that they had all risked their lives to help take down their leader.

“Even if you say that we’ve been here for most of the battle and we intend to see it through. None of us came to risk our lives for fun.”

Her large, bronze eyes slightly narrowed at my irritated tone, but she responded as coldly as she had started the conversation.

“It seems you’ve misunderstood me. I’m saying that neither Cai nor I know which witches are on our side and which aren’t. You all staying here are just crippling his ability to fight properly. Pull your witches back or risk them dying at our hands by accident.”

Oh, that… made sense.

I brought out my wand and fired a red flare into the air, a signal that the witches on our side should fly toward me. Before I could fly away she grabbed me by the upper arm and pulled me back.

“No, you need to stay. The others can go.”

Although she hadn’t threatened me in the least, I still felt in danger.

“Didn’t you say it was dangerous? Why are you keeping me here?”

“Don’t worry, I'll protect you. Besides, it's only dangerous for those that he doesn’t recognize.”

She put on a wry smile and her voice fluctuated for the first time since she had started to talk to me. Irritation and amusement took turns in colouring her voice and her grip on my upper arm grew ever so slightly tighter.

“Fine. I’ll stay then but I’ll be calling back my snake now, that will leave the vulture free.”

“Do you think I’m worried about that excuse of an incarnation?”

Once again it was annoying to hear her make light of something Iren had been risking his life to keep busy, but I couldn’t blame her either. She was powerful and could back up her confidence with results.

“Derela Sparrow! Why did you call us back!”

I received many of the same questionings looks from the witches that had so bravely followed me back here.

“Calm down! The royal is planning something, so we need to clear out of here. You’ve all worked hard…thank you.”

They all looked surprised at my final thanks but accepted it in stride and scattered in different directions, leaving the battlefield looking emptier than before.

I pulled out a whistle from my pocket and blew sharply on it. Iren ignored me the first time, too caught up in his first battle but after the third blow, he let go of the vulture and began to shrink back down to the small size I was used to.

He slithered onto my arm and affectionately hissed at me before retreating into my tattoo where he could recover.

“Will that be enough?”

Cai’s fiancée nodded in response to my terse question. I understood why she wanted to keep me close, I also understood why she didn’t like me. If she was Cai’s fiancée then it made sense for her to resent the reason Cai had come to the witch lands in the first place.

“Stay still for a moment.”

She suddenly brought out a piece of parchment from her pocket, kissed it and then slammed it on my forehead in three aggressive moves.

My hand flew to my forehead as the new sensation of fairy magic coursed through my body. The spell was familiar though.

“You tagged me?!”

“Don’t worry, it's removable. I’m going to go to the goblins and alert them to clear the area, If you want to be useful you can do the same but if not then just stay at the edge of the field. Since you knew what a tagger was, I’ll assume you also know what will happen if you try to run away.”

A tagger was something used on animals to keep track of where they were and would deliver an electric shock if they wandered too far away from the spell caster. There was an identical spell for people called Trackers, and while they were identical, it was a matter of respect to use one or the other.

Her using a tagger on me was just another way of her making it clear that she didn’t like me.

Before I could respond or even confront her, she flew off and I saw her talking to Ion with a much friendlier expression on her face than she’d had for me.

Fine, I understood.

She hated me because I’d gotten Cai hurt.

I deserved it too.

Mind control or not, it was still my fault.

But it still ticked me off.