A loose sigh rattled out of my lungs, and just as I contemplated ringing the bell, a paper crane flew into my room and landed on my bed.

It was a green paper crane with a single, delicate ‘R’ scrawled on the surface of a wing. It unfolded itself carefully before my eyes and I noticed that the square paper sheet was etched with beautiful, cursive writing on one side.

The letters glowed green as Rizzaget’s voice echoed from the sheet of parchment, my eyes following along as his words flowed into the room, “If you’re quite done inspecting Blackswallow’s dirty sock that is known as Amano’s Rainbucket, come back to the shop post-haste. Your sister is a wart that I’d like you to remove from my sight. Immediately… P.S - Drag yourself and your heathen of a sister over to my residence tomorrow. On the diamond hill, you know the place.”

I was so sick of everyone giving me instructions, but I didn’t dare disobey such an order in case Rizzaget and Anixae were truly on the brim of destroying the town with their outbursts. It wasn’t the first time today that Blackswallow’s precarious foundations had been endangered because of Magic Bloods.

It wouldn't be the last, either.

I thought back to earlier when I’d nearly throttled Rizzaget in Heathen’s Lodge. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Blackswallow was presently under the heel of Adalantra’s mercurial High King – and Balthazar alone could have razed this city to ashes if the mood struck him.

Starving and depleted of energy, I rang the bell first and relayed to the servant who arrived that I wanted a meal brought up. The nervous female with a bonnet curtsied and brought a warm soup over to my bedside table. I stared at it longingly before walking out and slamming the door, my key to the room sitting in my breast pocket as I headed over to Rizzaget’s apothecary with heavy feet.

Arriving as I did, I’d hardly taken a moment to absorb my surroundings or discern the faces of the townspeople like I normally would, but now that I was alone and at full health, I was judiciously paying more attention to the folk who were around me.

Humans were a soft heartbeat that I felt already felt on the ground, but the Magic Bloods were strong forces of colour in my vision. Each different race gave off powerful tendrils of energy in my line of sight that I wouldn’t dare to mistake, and I couldn’t help but study them with prudence during my casual meandering.

I bumped into clusters of middle-class Elves and extravagantly dressed Seraphim lords who showed vague interest in me as I staggered with drooping eyes towards my destination like a drunkard. No, I wasn’t drunk in the slightest, even though I sorely longed to be.

This whole situation would have warranted copious amounts of wine, though, I thought sullenly to myself.

Magic Bloods of ill repute seemed to linger at my side for longer than necessary as I approached the grocers in the market – heartened by the sight of plump, round fruits and vegetables that I’d never be able to get my hands on. What they thought they’d gain from brushing at my sides, staring over my shoulder and sniffing around my neck, I simply couldn’t fathom, but I shrugged all the same and tried to move on.

I felt one of them draw me back by the collar and I glanced into the pair of twinkling brown eyes that beheld me with criminal intent. It was a rugged Faerie with long, copper hair.

“You smell just like that Dragon scourge of Adalantra... It makes me sick.” He grunted, a fuzzy brow arched and giving away his displeasure.

My lips twisted slightly, and I regarded him with open amusement, responding, “I don’t like to be touched by strangers. Not even by handsome Faeries with pretty hair. If you let me leave without further discord, I promise not to break your hand for treating me thus.”

His muddy eyes flashed in disdain. The other three Magic Bloods, who I’d recognised by smell alone were also Faeries and had also become enflamed by my remark – except for the one Seer who stood by herself, twirling a lock of hair around one finger, watching me with a mutually expressive and curious look.

The male Faerie sneered in my face. “Dryads. So pitiful and weak. No wonder your kind is so easy to pick off. I'd hoped that the Gallabritchie War wiped you all out, but maybe next time it'll happen. The Second Rising is upon us, Dryad. Your kind will be the first to go.”

“My kind?” I dusted off my clothes and gave him a filthy stare. “Something tells me that you couldn’t catch my kind even if you tried. And let’s be honest. I’m much older than you and I fought in the war, whereas you... Well, you’re a vagrant and your skills probably came from terrorising the community of Blackswallow City. I can put your head through a wall without even trying.”

By now, his murmuring associates had started to give each other sly eyes, and their gloved hands were inching toward their weapons in a desperate attempt to look subtle. They were closing ranks around me; and I confidently held my ground, switching from one glaring face to the next, before finally stopping my awareness on the Seer.

She wasn’t like her perfidious partners in crime. Despite arriving with the robed villains in black, she hadn’t said a word or acted maliciously towards me. I doubted she even wanted to approach me in the first place; but she was there all the same, watching this sordid event with considerable interest in her gaze, all attention diverted to me as she played with her hair.

I would have perceived her to be an empress – due to the way her shiny, moon-coloured hair was secured upon her head with silver hairpins, her Seer tattoos spilling down the edge of her left jaw, barely distinguishable.

But I felt it all, her waves of divine power that flowed like formidable tides of the ocean. Whoever this Seer was, she wasn’t an ordinary one and she seemed to have an oddness to her, a stony, quiet, ‘otherworldliness’ that made me reluctant to let her out of my sight.

I heard the memorable sound of wings alight… It told me all I needed to know. These men weren’t interested in settling their grievance. They wanted an altercation to happen.

I tensed in preparation for conflict. Damn it.

The merchants that had been standing around us all gasped, sensing the tense atmosphere. Children huddled behind boulders in the street, their frantic mothers shushing them as onlookers ducked for cover.

Lanky trees mired in the street began to uproot themselves, summoned by my will and magic. I pulled the spindly trees toward me, twisting my hand out to the side – a nasty, inveterate smile sealing my face into something unpleasant for the group of dastardly Faeries.

The male Faerie with his burnished head of hair heard the groaning sound of branches behind him, heard their roots scratching in a brusque chorus as they crawled across the ground in bundles, making him furious with contention.

His companions drew their weapons as he searched the area with bulging eyes, his reddened face bearing severe embarrassment. “What the hell are you doing, Dryad?!”

“Not the humans, not the humans.” I reminded myself, ignoring his hoarse wailing.

My eyes were following the veins along the ground as they turned a distinct shade of glimmering jade. I was listening to the earth, hearing every heartbeat in Blackswallow City, trying to get a feel for how many innocents were in the area… 

Just how many people were about to get hurt because they wouldn’t let this go?

“I’m talking to you, Dryad!” His long, crescent-shaped wings were still out, flapping quick in agitated spurts, and he plucked his scimitar out of its scabbard, twirling it in the sunlight.

With my eyes, I directed each scraggly tree trunk to take a close-knitted position behind a Faerie, pushing them into a small ring. 

They had circled me before.

Now I circled them.

"What are you, compared to Faerie-bears and wildling wolves? Are you more ferocious than a basilisk? I highly doubt it."

"I'm going to cut you up and serve you to the street rats, Dryad scum!" He spat.

I almost responded, but I suddenly felt like my head was not my own personal space anymore. I had another pair of eyes watching through my own, our life-bond giving him access to this moment. 

I could feel his rumbling insistence that I slay them all, using my sacred, inner magic. At my bright refusal sparking back through the tether, he allowed me a glimpse through his eyes, sucking me against my will into his mind.

He was standing on a high balcony that commanded a view from one side of his broad, intimidating castle. It was slightly lower than the battlements and watchtowers that surrounded his domain in a hexagonal formation, and he was glancing at the night sky, his neck strained from the position and his forearms braced on the ledge in front of him.

It overlooked the mountain range just north of Adalantra and the lanterns nearby gave a soft, papery glow to his skin as he finally looked down, rubbing the back of his left hand in irritation.

Balthazar said aloud, knowing I could hear him from my faraway position, "I could call in a favour with my contacts in the city, if you’d like... Those miserable Faeries would be beaten, whipped and left for dead in a way that befitted anyone stupid enough to cross a Dryad. Just say the word, my pigpen princess. Would you like me to?”

I sent him a strong, resounding, “no,” in my mind.

He chuckled, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand before looking straight at the moon, lost in thought. “They don’t deserve your mercy. If at any point you wish to allow this… Dragon scourge to come and wreak havoc in your defence, simply call on me.”

“You’re not a scourge. You’re just a prolific pain in the ass, Balthazar.”

“Yes. But we are now bound together. You mustn’t forget that, Dryad. Our bodily pains tether us, so do your utmost best not to get stabbed while I’m not around. I don’t relish feeling any sensation that is not physical pleasure.”

“It would serve you well if I did get my throat slit, then.”

He snickered. “Darling, don’t be ridiculous. Your pride would never allow such a blemish, and neither would I.”

Our connection slammed shut and I was tossed back into the present moment, my mind sinking back into my own body as reality came upon me with a quickness that made my head spin.

I wish I’d had a second more to adjust, to react in such a way that wasn’t seen as an incitement for more actionable violence; but I saw a sword coming for my throat and only just had the lightness of foot to evade the action.

Dryad speed was my best asset and now, thanks to that inherent instinct that urged me to move like the wind, I was leaning away from the weapon and spinning around the back of the copper-haired Faerie who’d attacked me.

I’d become a blur of colour that was too fast for him to pinpoint, my clothes shifting the slightest bit, but because I’d moved so fast, an incriminating gust was left behind… swirling in the spot where I’d previously been.

He paused, blinking in apparent disarray as he searched for me with flabbergasted noises, his companions snorting amongst themselves in tandem. But when he turned around, realizing that I now stood behind him, his face contorted with rage.

“You!” He growled.

“Don’t do this.”

I stepped back when he sliced the air in front of him. “Fuck you, Dryad. You’ll get what’s coming to you. Every single one of you!”

Ominous words from a peeved male, I thought. I looked him up and down, wondering if his actions had been premeditated or pure coincidence because at this point, his anger seemed to be too heightened for a mere encounter in a random city.

It seemed like this disputatious Faerie had intended to cause a commotion with me all along and was looking for any excuse to keep the fight going.

My alert eyes met with the Seer’s, and she winked knowingly; as if guessing my exact line of thought. And as she was the all-knowing Seer, didn’t this mean that she had already foreseen the outcome of this situation? That was the bigger question.

My aggressor ran with surprising agility toward me, his shoulders lowered to knock into me as he flourished his scimitar and swept it behind him, his growing maniacal expression erasing any semblance of charm from his exterior.

All his companions were on the brink of stepping in, an air of readiness hovering over them like a stench as their opulent wings sprouted from their shoulders, and they hissed, bearing fangs that grew long and pointed like stalactites.