Chronicles of Whimsy: Reborn: The Chronicles of Whimsy, #3

By T. Edwin Perry

Exiled by the Fae and rejected by the Broken, Whimsy has spent the last year trapped alone in Everwynn, struggling to survive in a world where nearly everything is trying to kill her. Meanwhile, visions of Josiah's plans to seize control of this magical world and punish her for standing against him haunt her dreams, but when a stranger arrives with an offer that may help her defeat the Dragon once and for all, Whimsy finds herself on her most dangerous quest yet to find her missing friends in the Elflands before Josiah can use them against her.

With more action, romance, and magic than ever before, the Epic Adventure Ends with a Vengeance in REBORN, the final installment of the Chronicles of Whimsy trilogy!

• Language: English
• Publisher: T. Edwin Perry
• Release date: Oct 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781540102966

Book preview

REBORN

Book #3 of the

Chronicles of Whimsy

Trilogy

––––––––

Written by

T. Edwin Perry

Cover Design and Artwork

by

John Gandour

––––––––

Reborn is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the Author's Imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to any actual person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Cover Credit:

Cover art and design provided by John Gandour ([e-mail]).

Art Credit:

Number images used in chapter artwork used under license from Shutterstock.com.

––––––––

Copyright © 2016 by T. Edwin Perry

All Rights Reserved.

ISBN-13: 978-1539564843

For more information about this series, please visit:

www.ChroniclesofWhimsy.com

[e-mail]

Dedicated to the Three Loves of my Life.

You still make me believe in Magic.

A Special Thanks to my Editors:

Kami Dodson-Perry

Joel Himmelfarb

Marleah Varian

& Jack Coffelt

You Make Me Look Good!

CHAPTER 1 – A New Day Dawning

Fires raged all around her, and Whimsy could feel the searing heat as her skin began to bubble and burn. She was holding a little girl in her arms, trying to protect the child from the fire, but Whimsy's flesh sloughed off her bones like foamy soap in a shower, and in her last moments of life, both she and the little girl screamed in pain as their bodies were consumed by the unstoppable firestorm.

In an instant, everything changed, and suddenly she was seeing through the eyes of a man running across the muddy street in the vain attempt to escape, but he froze in his tracks as his heart was seized by a blast of unthinkable cold and his body fell, shattering like glass against the wooden steps of the shop. She felt every crack of bone, every electric jolt as his nerves sparked in pain, and she could hear in his mind the silent prayer of the dead man wondering what he had done in his life to deserve an end such as this.

Over and over, the experience changed. A man tried to hide behind his cart in the marketplace. A Keeper tried to flee with his books. A woman begged for mercy while men gathered to try and fight back against the dragon's unyielding onslaught, but it was all pointless. Sanctuary was burning, and Josiah was laughing his cruel and devilish laugh.

He was stomping down the road in front of the Council Chambers when Councilor Siandra attempted to make her escape. Whimsy saw through the blurry eyes of an old man across the street as Josiah lifted the woman from her feet, screaming in fear and struggling against the grip of his long, reptilian fingers, but there was no point to it. In an instant, he had raised her up to his mouth and tore her body in half with his teeth, spitting her bloody, broken body down into the mud and stomping on it with his feet to add insult to her injury. Then he roared again and a blast of flame consumed the eyes that had borne witness to Siandra's demise along with the body that had held them.

Inside the Ward, the Keepers tried to move the sick and dying out of the building while there was still some chance of saving them, but the rafters were already burning and the air was thick with smoke and ash. There is no hope for them, she heard Raven cough at one of the younger Healers. Go now! Save yourself. Just then, there was a loud crack, and she looked up in time to see the second floor come crashing down on top of him, and the old man died beneath a pile of burning wood and stone.

Her name is Whimsy Lafayette! the dragon roared, stomping through what was left of the city as it burned all around him. If you survive this, remember her name. Whimsy Lafayette: Halfling Spawn of the House of Oberoth. She is the one responsible for your suffering. If not for her, I would never have even known about this place. He let out another massive roar, and flame engulfed the ramshackle shanties of Old Town. Whimsy was cowering in a corner, praying that the shadows would conceal her long enough for the dragon to go past, but he turned and looked straight at her, his red eyes burning into her very soul. You tell her that I will destroy everything that she holds dear until she begs me for the merciful release of death!!!

Whimsy awoke screaming, covered in sweat and shaking in fear. It took her a few moments to realize that the dream was finally over. That's all that it was now...a dream...a horrible recurring nightmare memory of what had happened...what she knew that she was responsible for bringing down upon the Broken, but it was only a dream now. There was nothing that she could do to stop it from happening or to change what had happened. Even worse was the reality that nothing could absolve her from the guilt that she felt for it. She had been the one that had released this nightmare on Everwynn, and there was nothing that she could do now to change that. No matter what she did next, the dead would still be dead, and it would still be her fault.

Tears streamed down her face in the dim, flickering light cast by the little fire burning in the fireplace near her bed, and she wiped them away with her fingers. It seemed like she woke up crying more often than not.  A cold wind rattled through the narrow openings around the shutters that closed off her windows, but when she looked up at the source of the noise, she saw no light peeking in through the cracks, so she was sure that it was still night. The log in the fire was nearly consumed, though, so it was getting close to morning. Soon, the sun would rise, and she would start another day.

She stood and walked over to the fireplace, pausing to grab the worn, gray rag hanging on the hook beside the mantle before reaching in and pulling out the pot of stew bubbling over the fire. It was thick and brown, looking more like sludge than food. She'd have given almost anything for a lumpy bowl of porridge, maybe with a little honey or some dried plums sliced up into little chunks, but porridge wasn't on the menu this morning, and it almost never was. Three-day-old stew was what she had, and three-day-old stew was what she would eat.

She stirred the pot with a long wooden spoon that she had carved with her own hands. Manifesting a spoon out of faestone would have been easier, of course, but she had found that it left a funny taste in her mouth. It was nearly what she would have expected licking an ashtray to taste like, although that wasn't quite right. It also left that powdery, dusty feeling in the back of her throat, like when she would use body powder back home in order to smell fresh and clean on a hot day. Anyway, it wasn't like she didn't have the time. In fact, time was the one thing that she had in abundance, and whittling spoons and carving out bowls was one way to occupy it. Not that it made the stew any easier to eat. Of all the skills that Whimsy had learned in her life, cooking definitely wasn't one of them.

She scooped out a serving of sludgy stew into one of the hand-carved wooden bowls and made her way to the table. Like everything else that she owned, Whimsy had built it with her own two hands. That, and a hearty dose of her Fae magic. She had learned how to produce her weapons, especially the powerful minigun, out of necessity. She had learned to manifest her tools in much the same way. Using a chainsaw of spinning stone blades, she could cut down trees much faster than she ever could with an ax or saw, and then she could use that same method to mill the wood into the boards and timbers that she had used to build her house. After witnessing...and even causing...so much destruction with her magic, it had felt good to actually create something with it instead. Once her home was built, though, it was time to furnish it. She milled the wood for the table and counters, the mantle...even the stools and her pallet bed. Almost everything that she owned had been built with her own two hands, and that brought with it a certain sense of pride.

She shoveled a spoonful of the brown, greasy stew into her mouth and began to chew, even though there wasn't much that was still chunky left to it. After three days, the meat had turned to paste and the vegetables had turned to mush, but a stray bone getting stuck in her throat was not a great way to start the day, so she chewed, if only to make sure that there were no surprises. Unfortunately, it was as pleasant as chewing vomit, but at least this bowl was the last of it. Today, she would go hunting, and the cycle would begin anew. Either that, or she'd go hungry: it wasn't like she had much of a choice in the matter. What she wouldn't give for a Big Mike's burger and an order of chili-cheese fries!

Whimsy shook her head and looked around her home. It didn't matter that her home looked like something out of an issue of Third World Homes and Hovels: it was hers, and that was all that mattered. She had built the little log cabin by stacking squared logs on top of one another and locking them together like those wooden building sets from her childhood. The logs were far too heavy for her to lift by herself, but, fortunately for her, she had a War Troll on retainer, and Flint had been willing to lend his assistance to her. In fact, he had insisted on it. This Flint's mistress requires a home, he had said in his gravelly voice. This Flint will do what he is able to provide one for her. It was still hard to believe that the first time they had encountered one another, this War Troll had tried to kill her and her cousin, Karl, on behalf of the Order of the Veil. Now, she considered him a friend...one of her best friends, if truth were told. She still had a hard time with him calling her his mistress, though. She kept trying to convince him that she was no better than him, but he persisted, and she had to accept that was just the way that he saw the world. Trolls served Fae, and, as far as he was concerned, she was a true Fae, not like the imposters that ruled the Faelands. He didn't even care that she was a Halfling. Whimsy used the Old Magic, and that was enough to win Flint's loyalty.

Between each log was a layer of muddy clay that served to fill in the gaps and hold the logs together, and she was grateful for it, especially when the winter came. It had been colder than anything that she had ever experienced in her young life in Central Florida, where even in the dead of winter she could expect temperatures in the eighties during the day and nights that rarely even permitted a jacket, let alone required one.

Winter in Everwynn was very different from the ones she knew back home, though. At one point, the snow had built up a drift that had trapped her in the house, and the only way that she could escape was to shrink down to her tiny Fae form and fly out through the open chimney vent above the fireplace. It was a white wonderland of snow and ice, colder than anything that she had ever experienced, and she was not prepared for it.

Preparation was the lesson that she had learned in the past year, and she kept hearing her old headmaster's voice in her head repeating his empty platitudes about life. If you are not preparing to succeed, Cartwright would say, then you are preparing to fail. She wondered if that arrogant jerk would have been able to survive even a day in this world, and she smiled at the thought of him trying to make his way in the Northern Wastes. The smile quickly faded into a disgruntled frown, though, as she took another greasy spoonful of stew into her mouth, wishing that she had taken that summer cooking class instead of auto mechanics. Who cared if she could change a carburetor or change the oil in her old beat-up land barge in a place like this? Being able to cook was a much more valuable skill!

Whimsy's experiences in the Northern Wastes had driven the lesson of the old Grasshopper and the Ant parable into her mind, the one where the ant works all summer to gather food for the winter while the grasshopper just eats and plays, but then dies when the winter comes while the ant is cozy and warm in his home, munching on the food he had stored for harder times. Whimsy hadn't really prepared for winter until it was almost upon her, and, by then, it was too late. Within the first few weeks, she had either already eaten the vegetables that she had stored or they had rotted. From that point forward, she had to rely on hunting. On the days that she couldn't find something to kill and cook, she went hungry, and she went hungry a lot. Part of the problem was that she felt bad about killing some poor defenseless animal. During the summer and autumn, when the vegetables were plentiful, she  only broke down and hunted for meat once or twice a month, but winter was another story. Without the abundance of vegetables to fill her belly, meat was all that she could rely upon for sustenance. Hunger drove the tears out of her eyes, and she became a very efficient hunter.

Cooking, on the other hand, was still a problem. Roasting the meat over a fire was difficult enough, but it was also wasteful. She couldn't eat an entire roasted rayke on her own in one sitting, and the meat would spoil if she left it overnight. Even after she had overcome the emotional burdens of hunting, the thought of wasting the meat after killing something for food was more than she could bear. There was also the fact that, as good as she was, there were some days where she couldn't find anything more than a skinny gremling or leathery zakk, neither of which was particularly appetizing. Stewing the meat was the best solution to that problem. All she needed to do was add a little water and keep it warm over the fire, and a rayke stew could last for days. One time, it had to last for an entire week, though it was little more than a broth near the end. It was still better than nothing, and Whimsy knew exactly how unsatisfying nothing could be.

The spring thaw marked the anniversary of her return to Everwynn. She had been back for a full year now, and nothing was as it had been. She was exiled, trapped in the Northern Wastes with no hope of returning to her own world. Graham had made sure of that when he shattered her sigil stone, the gift from her father that had started her on this adventure in the first place. She shook her head when she remembered that, in her world, it had only been a couple of weeks since this had all started. She thought back to that afternoon when Toryn had tried to kidnap her hoping that he could ransom Whimsy back to her father in order to get his hands on the Unity Blade. Instead, her fear had triggered the magic in the stone, carrying her to the world of her father's bedtime stories. She had spent months here that time, only to return a few hours after the Halfling Wizard's attack. Time, she learned, passed very differently between her world and this one. Two years passed in Everwynn for every day on Earth, give or take. This time, she had left her world on a Friday afternoon. She smiled when she realized that her anniversary meant that it would still be before dawn on Saturday morning back home, and she wondered if her father was sleeping, or if he had ever even gone to bed.

Either the stew was making her nauseated or thinking of her world still made her homesick. She figured it was probably the latter, but she wasn't sure why. Home didn't even exist anymore, at least not what she had always considered home to be. The dragon, Josiah, had convinced her that re-creating the Unity Blade and plunging it into the secret Well of Soul beneath the Aesir Mountain would send her home, but what she didn't know was that he had another plan, one that could have destroyed both of their worlds if he had succeeded. When the new Blade failed to send Josiah to the Mortal Realm beyond the Veil, he destroyed both the Blade and the Well, freeing the Soul Magic that had been trapped in the Well for more than 800,000 years! It flooded Whimsy's mind, supercharging her with more magic than she could control, but it also showed her the way for her to go home, and she did, unknowingly taking Josiah along with her. She fought the dragon alongside her father and Toryn, defeating him by turning him to stone and destroying his body, but it was a Pyrrhic victory. Before she could defeat him, Josiah had destroyed her home and everything in it. At least, she thought, it was finally over: she was wrong.

After returning Toryn and the Unity Blade to Everwynn, delivering them both to her most trusted friend, Darius, she discovered that she had two very big problems. The first was that she was having visions...experiencing the most tragic and painful events of Everywnn's history through the eyes of its Parsian victims. It wasn't like watching a movie, though: she was actually reliving those moments, and, worse, most of the time, she was dying in them, too. The Soul Magic that she had absorbed was tearing her apart, and she had no idea of how to release it. Then there was the discovery that she couldn't touch anyone in her own world without sharing the magic with them. After one momentary touch sent her best friend, Sarah, into convulsions, Whimsy knew that she had to find a way to release the Magic or risk killing everyone that she encountered.

The second problem was even worse. When Whimsy had turned the dragon to stone, she hadn't actually killed him. Instead, she had absorbed his essence into herself. Josiah was trapped in her mind, and she was trapped with him. It was maddening. She had to find a solution, but she wasn't going to find it in her own world. She had to go back to Everwynn.

Everything just seemed to go downhill from there. It seemed like everything that she had done the first time she had been in Everwynn had made things worse. Her only hope was to find Darius, but that meant crossing the Elflands...again...only this time, she was alone. No, not alone: just not among friends. When she finally reached the Broken Lands, she discovered that Darius had been captured by the Elves and his wife, Lidia, had been gravely injured. She set out to rescue him, leaving the Elf stronghold of Mordalis in ruins. Just thinking about that night made her smile, and not just because she discovered how powerful she could really be, but because that was the night that she fell in love with Trager.

She hadn't meant to fall in love at all. It had never even been something that she would have thought about, but there was something about him. He was so strong and handsome, so caring, but there was something else, too There was some kind of magic between them, and he felt it, too. So much so, in fact, that when she told him that she could never even touch him, he still stayed by her side. Nothing ever seemed to frighten him, and she thought that was the most attractive thing about him. He was steady, and she desperately needed steady in her life.

Then Lidia's injuries took a turn for the worse, and everyone knew that she was going to die. That was when Whimsy tried to help her. She knew that one touch might kill her, but it might also give Lidia the chance to see her son one last time before she died, and she did...only Lidia didn't die. Instead, all of the Soul Magic that Whimsy had absorbed from the Well flowed through Lidia and healed her body, but it also released Whimsy from one of her two burdens. Whimsy smiled as she recalled that first kiss with Trager, and wished that he was there with her now.

It seemed like she had no time at all before they were gone again, leaving Trager behind as she, Darius and the others traveled to Lafayon to plead on behalf of the Broken for passage through the Faelands so that they could safely reach the Northern Wastes. It was her chance to do some real good, delivering the Broken out of their endless war and giving them a real chance at peace, but Whimsy's grandfather wasn't the ruler of the Fae anymore. After her uncle had forced Oberoth from the throne, Severin had been overthrown himself by Lord Graham of the House of Marquette, and Graham wanted something from Whimsy in order to even consider the Broken's deal: she would have to marry his son, Jayson, joining the Houses of Marquette and Oberoth forever!

It wasn't something that she wanted, but if it meant an opportunity for Trager, Darius and the others to really know peace, she had to consider it, and Graham's offer gave her the excuse to finally visit her grandfather in the hopes of getting rid of the dragon once and for all. Jayson had insisted on coming with her, and letting him do that was the worst mistake of her life. She got the dragon out of her head, all right, but at what cost? Now her grandfather was dead, Jayson was dead, and she had set the dragon loose on the world more powerful than he had been before! It was Jayson's death that had sealed her fate, though. In his grief, Graham took her sigil stone and smashed it in front of her, releasing the wave of Soul Magic that showed her the fate of Sanctuary and trapping her in Everwynn forever.

She shook her head, scraping the last of the stew out of the wooden bowl and swallowing hard to force it all down her throat. Then she turned and tossed both the dish and the spoon into the fire. There was no point in washing them. Cold water would still leave a layer of fat and grease behind, and boiling them would just turn the pulpy wood to mush. Besides, she still had stacks of them on the counter that she had carved during the winter when there was nothing else to do.

Whimsy looked at the shuttered window. Even though it faced to the west, she could still see the first signs of light outside peeking through the cracks around the shutters, so she went to the door and opened the latch, swinging the heavy wooden plank open. It was a cool, crisp morning, and her breath puffed out in a little white cloud. She smiled as dust began to swirl around her. In some ways, this was the best part of being half Fae, and she smiled as the nightgown she had created the night before crumbled and re-formed into her clothing for the day: brown leggings, leathery boots, a light green tunic with long sleeves, and a green hooded cloak hanging from her shoulders. She held out her hand and a smaller storm of dust gathered around it while she manifested her long faestone staff. Whimsy squared her shoulders, took a deep breath, and stepped out into the early morning light, pausing only to close and latch the door behind her as she headed out across the muddy field.

What was past was past, and she couldn't change it. All that mattered now was what she did in the future, and Whimsy had work to do.

CHAPTER 2 – The Harvest

Dust motes danced in the gentle breeze wafting through the branches from the east as sunlight filtered through the canopy of fresh green leaves overhead. The fields beyond the treeline that had been covered with snow and ice just a few weeks earlier were budding with green life, fresh grass growing in the brown mud left behind by the thaw. The first warm rain of the season had come and washed the last of the ice from the branches of the trees. Life, it seemed, had finally returned to the Northern Wastes after what seemed like an eternity, and Whimsy wasn't about to waste such a beautiful day sitting idle...not when she still had so much left to do.

While the clearings were fresh and green, the forest floor was still littered with the decay of last year's undergrowth. Dead leaves and rotting vines formed a sort of musty carpet that locked the wetness of winter into the dirt, keeping the soil beneath the leaves muddy, slick and slimy. She prodded the ground with her faestone staff before each step, checking for soft spots...or worse. Further to the south along the northern slope of the Midian Mountains, quicksand pits could swallow a man in an instant, but they were still two days' walk to the south when the weather was nice. No, she was more concerned with the other perils, dangers that would not hesitate to take advantage of a girl like her if she were to carelessly turn her ankle or fall to her knees.

The brown asp was one of those dangers, and it was most at home in the tangled undergrowth of the forest. The venomous reptile had a bite that was as deadly as the creature was swift. Fully grown, the little snake was no more than a foot long, its head no larger than a goffin, but the venom in its fangs could liquify a man's flesh in moments, and there was no antidote to the poison except for amputation. She knew of a few men who had suffered that particular fate, preferring to lose an arm or leg over their life, but others had not been quite as smart, not realizing the danger until it was too late. The poison worked its way through their system until they died, their bodies seizing in agony, their mouths foaming with blood as their eyes rolled back into their heads. On her second day in the Northern Wastes, she had stepped down on what she thought was a loose root from a sandapple bush. Then she felt the burning sting of the asp's bite. Had she been a normal Parsian, that momentary lapse in judgment could have killed her, but nothing about Whimsy Lafayette was normal...not anymore...not since coming to Everwynn.

As far as Whimsy was concerned, the green kraken was even more dangerous than the asp. It made sense to watch out for an animal, but the kraken was a plant...a carnivorous and dangerous plant with long, thorny tendrils that could grab hold of a man and drag him through the underbrush into its gaping maw, with long teeth embedded within its leaves and a digestive acid for sap. It was a nightmarish version of the Venus fly-trap from home, except, in this world, she was the fly. The krakens could reach out more than a hundred stones in every direction from its core, patiently waiting for the opportunity to snare its prey and feed again. After a small feeding, perhaps a rayke or a gremling, the kraken would become dormant for a week as it digested its meal. Once it had grown large enough to feed on larger prey, though, the meal would mean death for both the hunter and its prey, but it also meant life. As the body of the kraken began to decay, it would bloom with cottony shoots that reminded her of the harmless dandelion. The kraken was more Lion than Dandy, though, and within a week of the little shoots floating away on the breeze, a dozen new krakens would be born, hungry mouths waiting to be fed by whatever happened to cross its path. A sharp knife was all that a normal man would need to save himself in order to free himself from the trap...assuming that he didn't fall on a brown asp when his feet were pulled out from under him by the kraken's whip-like vines. Without a knife, though, he would be doomed.

In this untamed land, Whimsy knew that she had an advantage. As a halfling born of Fae and Human parents, she had the unique ability to change into her tiny Fae form whenever it suited her. She could shed her injured common form as easily as slipping her foot out of a boot, leaving the bite of the asp or the grip of the kraken behind and rewarding her would-be killers with nothing more than a mouthful of dust for their trouble.

Of course, that didn't mean that she wouldn't feel the pain of their attacks. No, if there was one constant in her new life in Everwynn, it was pain. Nothing in her life on Earth had trained her to do the things that her new life required of her, and there was no one here to teach her the things that she needed to know. She had to learn all of it by herself, and, most of the time, through her own trial and error. Walking with the staff had been one of the first lessons that she learned. The touch of the staff would usually draw out the kraken's whip or the asp's bite well away from her legs and feet. Thick, heavy boots and long leggings were another precaution that she took whenever she took to the woods.  The asp's strike was always low, no higher than the cuff of her boot, and the thorns of the kraken would tear at the leggings without getting a firm grip on her flesh. These were simple solutions, lessons learned the hard way that she was willing to share when the opportunity arose, though her students were few and far between. It seemed the only other constant in her new life in the Wastes was solitude.

The dappled sunlight fell across her skin, and she turned her head upwards to face it, closing her eyes and smiling at the feeling of the warmth on her face. After such a long winter, warmth was still something new, almost forgotten after weeks of unending cold. She inhaled deeply and smelled the scent of the freshly blossomed vagabond roses, symbiotic vines that fed off of the trees and produced beautiful little flowers in the spring, but protected the trees against the ice and bitter winds during the winter. There was also the smell of the starmelon trees blooming in the distance, and she could hear the soft humming of the bumblebears as they worked at the task of pollinating the delicate little flowers above. Soon, delicious fruit would be literally bursting through their skins with sugary goodness, and honey would be dripping from the hives on the other side of the stream. Her mouth watered at the thought of something sweet against her lips again. She had made her store of honey last as long as she could, but it had been nearly eight weeks now since she had scraped the last tiny spoonful of sweetness from the jar. Rayke stew and fish broth could sustain her, but it was only that: sustenance. There was nothing appetizing about it, but now her mouth watered as she thought about fruit and honey dripping down her chin. Just thinking about it made her hungry. After all this time, she even fantasized about the nasty sugared plums that Josiah had loved so much.

Josiah...just thinking the dragon's name made her angry, and she stabbed at the ground with her faestone staff so hard that she heard the tip crack from the impact. This is all his fault, she thought to herself. If it wasn't for him, none of this would have happened. I'd still be at home. I'd be going to school. I'd be hanging out with friends and doing homework and thinking about college, and I sure as hell wouldn't have been freezing my ass off in the snow! It never snowed in Central Florida, a place where the people of her world would go on vacation because the weather was almost always clear and sunny, warm even in the dead of winter. It seemed like the greatest danger she faced there was getting stuck in a long line to buy an overpriced ice cream bar! She gritted her teeth and clenched her jaw. Josiah was even the reason that she was stomping around the forest now. If you aren't preparing to succeed, then you are preparing to fail, her old headmaster's voice echoed in the back of her mind, and she smiled, fantasizing about the day when Josiah would finally come face to face with her preparations.

Thud thud, her staff pounded against the ground as she took another step: thud thud. The tree was just ahead and to the left. Was this the third time that she was passing it, or the fourth? It was important to remember where she was, and she needed to stay focused now. There was only one reason for her to be out stomping in this part of the forest. The grotto, as she called it, was a hunting ground, and, in this place, she was both predator and prey. Not only might she not get what she wanted out of this mission, but she might not make it out alive. Asps and krakens weren't the only dangerous things in the forest, and she knew it.

She tried to shake off her anger about the dragon and focused her mind. It was a useless emotion, after all was said and done. Anger wouldn't help her accomplish the task at hand, and it wouldn't make her feel better about what had happened, or what she was going to have to do. She had to concentrate. Thud thud: she had to pay attention to her surroundings. Thud thud: she had to...

She saw it out of the corner of her eye, a split-second distortion that anyone else might chalk up to fatigue or some sort of optical illusion...anyone else, but not her. It was the same kind of distortion that she saw whenever Josiah or Gavan turned invisible, like a mirage rising from a black asphalt road on a hot day. For the dragons, it was a matter of focus and willpower, but, for a shade, invisibility was the natural camouflage that made it the apex predator of Everwynn.

When the beast was hunting, the shade was impossible to see in either direct sunlight or steady shadows. The only chink in its armor was the fact that the distortion effect faltered in dappled sunlight, when the shadows were mixed with rays of pure light. The effect was like setting a chameleon on a plaid skirt: the poor little lizard wouldn't know how to blend against the pattern. She had caught sight of the shade on her first lap, and it had been watching her ever since, waiting for the right moment to strike. On her second pass, she had heard it shift, setting its feet into position to strike. On her third pass, she expected it to make its move, but something distracted it...a breeze rustling the leaves, or maybe a gremling skittering in the underbrush nearby. It hadn't been enough to draw the beast out of its secluded spot, but it was enough of a distraction to force Whimsy to take one more lap in order to convince the hunter that she was worth attacking. Her pace had slowed, too, like she was getting tired. Shades were fast, but they were also opportunists, living for the thrill of the kill, not the chase. Her act must have been convincing, though, because she could hear it shuffling its feet over and over again, like a house cat getting ready to pounce upon a passing mouse. In Everwynn, though, if the shade was the house cat, then Whimsy was the mouse, and, this time, the fourth pass was the charm.

The shade growled, a sound that was a mix between a wolf's howl, a cat's screech and a baby's cry. It was an eerie, haunting sound that had chilled Whimsy to the bone the first few times that she had heard it. Now, though, it was a pleasant greeting, like being serenaded by the man of her dreams, assuming that the man of her dreams was a 200 pound carnivore that could tear her in half with a swipe of its long, black, venomous claws! The shade's growl wasn't meant to be a love song: it was a warning, as if the shade was saying, I see you, and now I'm going to eat you.

The next growl was a roar followed by 20 stones' worth of pure muscle leaping through the air, fading in and out of sight as it flew through the fifteen feet or so of dappled light, yet when the beast reached its target, all it caught was a mouthful of cascading dust dripping like saliva from its mouth. As its jaws clamped shut, Whimsy had already darted away in her tiny Fae form trailing a greenish streak of light from her glowing wings. The shade shook his head, blowing the dust out of its nose like smoke. Whimsy looked back as the shade snarled in her direction, baring its teeth in a cruel smile as if to say, OK, Bitch: Game On! The shade suddenly had an appetite for Fae, and Whimsy was the only thing on the menu.

She started to the north, and then darted east as the giant wolfcat pounced and shifted to pounce again. She flew back to the south with the beast hot on her heels, and then to the east again, each time, drawing the animal along just barely a step behind her. It might have looked like Whimsy was panicking to anyone else, but that was all part of the plan. The truth was that this little dance of hers had been well choreographed. She had to get the animal to chase her in earnest, its adrenaline pumping and its claws ready to strike. Anything less would have been a waste of her time. She darted north again and then east, but, this time, the shade took the shortest route between two points, cutting between her pattern to hurl itself directly at her tiny body. She felt the claws swipe through the air ahead of her before she could spot the distortion, and dodged with less than an inch to spare. It was too close for comfort, but she wasn't doing this to be comfortable, and now that she was sure that her fish was on the hook, it was finally time to reel it in.

She turned and darted off to the west, doubling back at full speed with the sounds of the animal's feet tearing at the ground behind as it chased her through the underbrush. Leaf litter flew up in its wake as the nearly-invisible shade followed, two paws digging at a time, back legs first, then front. It didn't give any sign that it was going to give up the chase, and Whimsy smiled, because that was exactly what she had wanted.

She burst through a curtain of leaves and landed in the clearing, returning to her common form with her feet sliding across the fresh green buds of grass and what was left of the winter mud. She turned and lifted her hands in front of her, her eyes glowing bright and green. The shade roared and leaped into the air, crossing through the same opening in the leaves that Whimsy had burst through just a moment before. As the leaves began to part, Whimsy suddenly spread her hands apart as if she was pulling on invisible laces, and the trap was sprung.

The green kraken didn't like to be used in this way, and she could feel the carnivorous plant resisting, fighting against her natural authority over it, but Whimsy had been practicing. She could barely remember the time when she had struggled with the old Earth Magic that was her true birthright, the one that even Lord Graham couldn't strip away from her. There had even been a time when she could only use this magic when she was in her tiny Fae form, but those days were over. Now, she had an almost complete mastery over the abilities that she had learned, and the kraken was her servant. No matter how hard it resisted, Whimsy's will remained irresistible, and the kraken surrendered to her will as its tentacles wrapped around the shade in midair, clenching tightly around its legs and body as it splayed the beast's limbs in all directions.

Rawoar! the beast complained angrily, pulling and struggling against the iron grip of the vines. A few moments was all it took, though, for the beast to realize the fact that it had lost. The shade's struggle against the vines was as useless as the kraken struggling against Whimsy's will. Neither flora nor fauna was going anywhere until Whimsy gave her permission and, just like the plant, the animal surrendered to her will and the shade's camouflage faded away, revealing the beast in all its glory.

Aw, Freddie, she said playfully. I've missed you. I haven't seen you since the first snows! I was beginning to think that you didn't love me anymore.

Rawooor! the creature whined shamefully, but its claws were still extended and ready to strike. Sunlight glistened off of the long, obsidian talons dripping with its black tar venom, and she could hear a sizzling, hissing sound as each drop hit the wet ground below. That was what Whimsy was really after. The chase had pumped the beast up for the kill, and this venom was how the animal would do it. Shade venom was even more powerful than the stuff produced by the brown asp, a potent neurotoxin that sent the animal's prey into seizures within seconds of even the slightest scratch. Whimsy knew that she could heal from any wound, but only if she could concentrate. What if that venom was enough to keep her from being able to focus? And if the shade venom was enough to kill her, maybe it would be enough to kill something else, too...something big and powerful and dangerous. If she had enough of it, maybe it could even be used to kill a dragon.

Whimsy held her hands out and her eyes flashed. Twin dust storms swirled around them for a moment as two round bowls magically appeared, and then she carefully leaned down to place them directly beneath the front paws of the shade. He struggled again as if this time it was going to break free and claw her face, but this time was no different than the last four times that she had collected his venom. She had him trapped, and his own adrenaline was going to force his body to fill her bowls with the black, deadly poison that she needed.

She stood up and looked him in the face. His snout was long like a wolf, but his eyes were decidedly feline, round with long, vertical pupils surrounded by an eerily-glowing red. It was like a bad special effect in a made-for-TV science fiction movie. His ears were tall and pointed, with wisps of black fur that extended upward from their peak. When not camouflaged, she had watched the shade running, his ears folded back and the wisps of hair trailing behind them like a 200-pound Yorkshire terrier that could tear her apart in an instant. As frightening as it was to watch them at work, though, she couldn't help but admire them as magnificent and beautiful animals that they were. There was a difference between fear and respect, and she had a good measure of both when it came to the shades.

While you're giving me what I want, she said, let's take a look and see how that leg of yours is doing, OK? She took the long way around the netting, rounding one the tall sentinel trees that she used to brace the vines, and came up behind the shade's left side. He kicked and struggled, but it didn't matter. Where she was, his rear claws might be able to cut her, but they had no venom in them, so, even at three inches long, they didn't scare her very much. They were no more effective against her than a knife would be. She ran her hand along his black hide and muscular flesh. When she had caught him the first time, Freddie had already suffered a massive wound to his leg, a deep gash with a long blackthorn still embedded in his flesh. Like the krakens, the blackthorns were carnivorous and poisonous vines, and they could easily kill a small animal with a single cut, but something as big as a shade would have required a dozen thorns at least. The wound was filled with puss and smelled like dead fish rotting in the sun, and it was all she could do not to vomit all over the ground. The poison might not have been enough to kill him, but the infection would have been, and she didn't think that was a very good way for such a majestic creature to die.

Whimsy remembered the story of the mouse who pulled the thorn from the lion's paw. In the version that she had been taught as a little girl, the lion was so grateful that he and the mouse became friends, although she had read another version later on where the lion was just using the thorn as a lure and actually ate the mouse when it tried to help him. Whimsy was pretty sure that, even if she helped the poor beast, it would still try to kill her the next time that it saw her. In fact, she was counting on it. The one thing that made it worth the risk to help the animal was that it could help her in return, even if it didn't want to.

The first thing that she did was remove the thorn, which made the beast howl in pain. Then she washed out the gash with water from a skin, which made the animal howl even louder, but once it was clean, the howling stopped, and Whimsy had a new problem: leave the wound as it was or try to find a way to close it up. If she left it open, there was a good chance that the infection would set in again, but she didn't have any needles or thread, nothing that she could use to actually sew the wound closed. Her eyes searched the woods around her and she spotted the string of vagabond roses nearby. She gathered a dozen of the longest thorns that she could find and returned to her patient, pinching the wound closed and punching the thorn through the edge on both sides. It wasn't pretty at the time, but it did create an interesting pattern in the scar that it left behind, like a tribal tattoo following a long line with twelve sets of dots on either side.

Freddie had started purring as she began stroking his hind quarters, and she smiled as she ran her fingers along the scar. As long as she kept her fingers along his back and away from his tail or paws, her fearsome wolfcat actually seemed to enjoy the attention. He didn't even struggle as she stroked the fur on his back, purring louder and wagging his tail steadily like a dog.

You like that, huh? she asked. King of the jungle, my ass! she teased. More like an overgrown pussy cat. With that, the shade released his bowels into a brown, steaming pile that smelled even worse than it looked. Oh, my god! she gasped, recoiling from the odor, and jumping back to escape the splatter. I take it back. You're pure evil, and must be destroyed! She was only half joking, but she could have sworn that she heard the animal laughing in response, chuffing like a tiger at her dismay.

She made her way back around the netting and examined the bowls. Each one was about half full, but the flow of venom had stopped from his claws. Really? she joked. I haven't seen you since the beginning of winter, and that's all you have for me? You're nothing but a big tease, Freddie. She reached up to pat his head, forgetting for a moment that the shade was not her friend, and he lunged at her, trying to bite her. Oops, she jumped back, drawing her hand away as quickly as she could. My bad! He chuffed again, laughing at her fear. OK, Fred, I get it. Let me just clean up and I'll let you go.

Whimsy walked a few steps to the sentinel tree that stood at the edge of the clearing. The base of the tree had rotted away, leaving a gaping hole that had once been the burrow for some smaller creature, most likely a nest for a family of gremlings or possibly a rayke or two. It was empty when she found it, though, and she had a better use for it than a condo for some iguana-like rodent or a big floppy-eared beaver-bunny. She reached in past the torn piece of oiled cloak that covered the warren and pulled the clay pot from her little hiding spot, carrying it it over to where Fred remained suspended over the green grass. The contents sloshed a little as she set it down, and, when she removed the lid, it smelled like a mix of tar, alcohol and gasoline. The smell made her wince and her eyes began to water, but she did her job, picking up the bowls one at a time and carefully emptying their contents into the pot to mix with the other contributions that she had gathered. Then she tossed the bowl away, allowing it to crumble into dust in the distance. Once again, the residue from the bowl sizzled as it hit the grass like hot oil on a griddle, another reminder that she needed to be very careful when handling the substance. When she hefted the pot again, she said, Halfway there, Fred. Between you and the girls, I should have this one full in another couple of weeks. That will make three. She smiled at the big wolfcat, who was visibly unimpressed. Finally, she returned the pot to the hollowed out tree and retrieved the little brown burlap sack that had remained hidden inside.

Thank you, she said to her captive shade. I know that you don't understand me, and it really upsets you when I do this, but you have to understand that this really is for the greater good. You're a killing machine, and I have something that I really need to kill, so in appreciation for your help, I got you a little something. The beast sniffed as she opened the bag a little and said, Yes, yes, I know: I didn't have to get you anything. You'd be more than happy to just kill me next time and call it even, but, let's face it, Fred: you're all talk, and I'm too much Fae for you to handle. Still, I believe in paying my debts, so this is for you, for all your hard work. Whimsy pulled the body of the plump little gremling from the bag and set it down on the grass in front of the shade. She could see him start to drool at the sight and smell of the fresh meat, and he began to struggle again against the vines trying to get to it. Enjoy your snack, Freddie, and I'll see you next time.

Her eyes flashed green as her body cascaded to dust and the vines released the shade in a single, fluid motion, dropping the enormous wolfcat to land on its feet at the edge of the clearing. Freddie turned his head and sniffed after her, but he didn't try to chase. Why waste his time on a tiny little morsel like her when he had fresh gremling to fill his belly laying right there at his feet? With a purring snarl, he turned back to pounce on the fresh carrion cuisine laying before him, and she could hear him crunching the bones in his jaws, quickly devouring his payment and purring the entire time.

CHAPTER 3 – An Inconvenient Life

There's just no clean way to do this, she thought to herself as her knees pressed into the moist soil and her hands began to dig. She had found and marked the wild blackroots a week earlier, planting a stick upright so that she could find them again, stopping only long enough to reach out with her magic and compel the hard little potatoes to grow faster. Under normal circumstances, it would have been another three weeks before the first of them would be ready to harvest, but, sometimes, it was good to be a Fae. She had returned twice in the past week to check on their progress. The first time, the green shoots coming up out of the ground had nearly tripled in length, tiny green leaves just beginning to unfurl themselves from the stalk.

She returned a few days later and marveled at how much they had grown. The tiny leaves she had seen before had unfolded and spread out like tiny solar panels, and the grassy stalks had more than doubled in size. She pulled a few of the small roots out of the ground to check their progress, but they were no larger than a small bar of soap, and she knew that nearly half of that was hard, inedible shell. It wasn't even worth taking them back to the house. Instead, she replanted them and willed the plants to keep growing.

This time was a different story altogether. The greenery above the roots had reached nearly two stones high with wide leaves soaking in the sun. She dug down around the plant until she had loosened the soil around the root, and then gripped it tightly in one hand, setting the other one down against the dirt for leverage. She took a breath, and then tugged. The first tug was to see if the root would budge, which it did, so she pulled again, harder this time, until the whole root came up. There was a slight ripping sound as the tiny white offshoots of the root remained in the soil, but what she held in her hand was better than gold, and she couldn't help but smile at the bounty she had discovered.

She examined her harvest with a smile. The blackroot looked like a long rock the size of her forearm. It was black on the outside, but she knew that just protected the tender, white flesh inside. At this size, one blackroot was almost enough for an entire meal, and her mouth watered at the idea of finally having fresh vegetables in her pot instead of greasy, sludgy stew made of nothing more than meat and water.

Her eyes flashed as a tiny dust storm swirled about her hand while she manifested a small, curved knife. She removed the cap, leaving about three inches of root beneath the green stems, and replanted it. Her eyes flashed again as she instructed the root to grow. In a few days, she'd have another root to harvest. It was a sustainable food source that could carry her through the spring at least, and she wouldn't have to kill quite as often in order to survive. She had grown tired of killing. Elves, Fae, rayke, gremling: there had been so much death in her short life that she had lost count of the lives that she had claimed. It wasn't something that she enjoyed, even when it was necessary. There was only one creature in all of Everwynn that she actually wanted to kill, but Josiah was going to have to wait. She had gathered a lot of venom, but she still hadn't figured out how to use it. Until then, she had other things to focus on, and that included gathering food.

Whimsy placed the portion of the blackroot that she had collected for herself and set it down in the whitevine basket by her side. She had learned to manipulate the vines into creating practice weapons in Lafayon, but a woven staff or practice sword was as useful in the Northern Wastes as a cell phone or credit card. A good, sturdy basket, on the other hand, was a very useful item. She had stumbled upon the whitevine bulbs growing in a shaded alcove near the stream purely by accident, but it was a happy one for a change, and willing the vines to weave themselves into the shape of a basket was a simple task for her now. She wasn't shy about making use of her good fortune, especially since she had experienced so little of it in the past year. As she began to dig at the next of the roots in line, she thought back to her arrival in the Northern Wastes.

Exile was more of a punishment than she had expected it to be, especially when it was her own uncle who had sent her on her way. She remembered the long ride in the cagewagon, covered in the filth that had been hurled at her by the people of Lafayon as the rain fell down upon her. She was cold and tired, hungry and sore, and, worst of all, emotionally drained. Her tears mixed with the falling rain as she thought about how the dragon had killed both her grandfather, Lord Oberoth, and the young man she was supposed to marry, the High Lord's only son, Jayson. Lord Graham didn't blame the dragon, though;  he blamed her, so he sent her away with Severin as her guard to make certain that she left and never came back.

Severin and two of his guards followed her up the path called the Throat, the easiest passage from the Faelands that would take her across the Midian Mountains