“I swear I don’t taste good!” Clover pleads, racing through the backwoods he’s gotten himself lost in, trying his best to not get eaten by a monster. “Don’t you know? Us bards are all lean meat, not tasty at all—!”

Teeth bigger than Clover’s forearm snap in the place he was just standing, close enough for Clover to smell the rotten meat of its breath and get a bit of drool on his sleeve. “Eww! Try brushing your teeth or chewing on some mint big guy,” he scolds mostly to himself but judging by the—

“ROOOAAARRR!”

—The thing chasing him definitely heard it.

“Oh, come on! Can’t we work this out?” he pleads, even as he forces himself to run faster. “You know fey to fey?”

Honesty Clover has no idea what this thing is with its hulking, mostly bear-like appearance (minus the fact it’s as tall as two of him stacked on top of each other and has three heads for some gods’s dammed reason), but there’s a familiar buzz of something under Clover’s skin, a second bloodstream racing along his own, a feeling that there’s something more just beyond his reach and yet right next to him.

Áine told him that the weird buzzing was the Fluxx, some sort of secret fey realm that as a fairy himself Clover should innately understand. But even after 5 years of trying to figure it out, the “instinctual” nature of his fairy powers has never come to him. But it’s at least helpful for letting him know when he’s run into another of the fair folk.

Normally Clover avoids interacting with other fey, the war between Seelie and Unseelie is infamous for a reason and with Clover’s messed up (and failing) powers he’s not very good at telling fey from his own court and most fey don’t notice he’s also one of them unless they get close. Meaning it’s far more common than it probably should be for him to stumble into an Unseelie that immediately wants to gut him like a lackluster catch in a fisherman’s net.

‘Oh wait,’ he thinks repeating the words to himself, ‘a fisherman’s net is a good metaphor. I might have to use that. Maybe that would be a good line for the second verse—'

The only thing that saves Clover from becoming bear food is the panicked shift of the wind that has Clover lunging behind a lumbering oak tree just as the bear monster rushes past him. Thankfully Clover has been in enough sticky situations like this for him to have somewhat of a good danger sense, able to pick up on the shifting of the wind and know when he needs to bounce. Sadly, that ability only works right as he’s about to get himself killed so… he’s good at escaping only after the water starts to boil.

Clover quickly moves again as the Unseelie lunges once more, ramming into the lumbering oak he’s hiding behind instead of him, but the beast hits hard enough for dozens of branches to snap and scatter around them as half of the tree uproots.

A nervous chuckle bubbles out Clover’s throat without his permission as he scrambles backwards to avoid being crushed by falling parts of the tree, “I’ll take that as a no to us working this out.”

The three-headed bear fey snarls, thick brown pelt writhing like it has snakes stuffed under its skin, before with a terrible ripping sound, spikes of earth and maybe bone? Bit hard to see the dark gray of a cloudy day and Clover isn’t sure he wants to know what the spikes are made of as they tear through the beast’s back, covering its brown pelt like a deadly pinecone.

“Oh,” Clover says clutching his lute a little tighter as he backs up, “you have spikes too, that’s fun. Nifty ability.”

Clover knows he’s rambling, he rambles when he’s panicked, and he’s not sure he’s ever been more panicked than right now, staring down the maw of this lumbering bear monster that seems to have an almost personal vendetta against Clover. Which rude. Clover didn’t do anything to it!

‘Well, I might have woken it up from its nap,’ he reasons to himself, dashing out of the way of a volley of earthen spikes that would have impaled him like a bard kebab. “And great, it can launch the spikes from its back too. Why do I get the boring fey powers?”

“And how was I supposed to know the cave was occupied?!” he questions, in some last-ditch attempt to get the monster to see his reasoning, even as Clover stumbles into a run, showing his own shaky belief that his words will do anything to calm down the very VERY angry bear monster. “I just wanted to get out of the rain!”

It is still raining now, in fact, a light misting drizzle. More annoying than harmful, but he had already been trudging through the light shower since the mid-afternoon and beyond the lingering gray clouds, peaks of orange and pink showed that the sun was beginning to set.

“You can’t really blame me for trying to find shelter!” he defends even though he knows it falls on deaf ears, (Clover’s not sure the bear monster can even understand human speech. Clover would try the fey language if he still knew how but sadly the nasty accident that erased his memories and skills with his fairy magic, also took his ability to talk to most fey as well). “You can’t blame me for trying to find shelter I’m a bard! If I stayed out in the rain any longer it would ruin my outfit!”

And what a nice outfit it is! With a nice long-sleeved undershirt and a blue off-the-shoulder shirt with big puffy sleeves and his flower embroidered tunic over top. It took ages getting the dye of his blue and red shirt to match the socks and laces for his boots. And Gertrude, the nice grandma who lived in the house next to Áine’s, had helped Clover embroider his tunic for the past 5 winters, and she was great and all, but he really did not want to sit through even more of her boring lessons to do it all over again.

“Or worse my lute!” and Clover glances down to make sure his lute is still okay clutched to his chest. Its light wood is damp for sure, a few of the little doodles he’s drawn on its body have gotten a tad smudged, and the little clover pendant that hangs from the neck by the tuning pegs has gotten super twisted during his mad dashing, but the instrument is still in decent enough shape. “Lutes aren’t cheap you know! I had to steal this one from a no-good, far too rich for his horrid screeching he calls singing, song thief and it still needs constant maintenance!”

“And a bard without an instrument is like…” he struggles a moment for a good metaphor as he leaps over a fallen log, his nice traveling boots squishing in the mud. He groans just thinking about all the work it’s going to be scrubbing the mud off as the perfect metaphor pops in his head, “like a bird without its wings!”

He flinches as his own words come back to ring in his ears, “Really Clover?” he questions himself, suddenly overly aware of his back and the scars there that almost seem to burn as he thinks about them. “We had to go there? We promised no bird metaphors. It’s bad enough you’re a fey that can’t even use magic, but let’s add insult to injury and just really dig at those insecurities as you’re about to get eaten. I’m not self-conscious about the fact I can’t fly in my bird form. Nope. Not at all.”

“ROOOOOAAARRR!”

Clover glances back at the three-headed bear monster, it’s still WAY closer than Clover would like, but thankfully weaving through the tight forest is proving to be a bit difficult for it with its lumbering form.

“I don’t think you were trying to be encouraging!” He calls back, the pep in his step returned now that he can shove all those annoying thoughts away, “but I appreciate you reminding me of the present, can’t change the past as they say!” 

Despite it genuinely being words of thanks, the Unseelie only seems to think Clover is taunting it and therefore the monster gets angrier. Its eyes glow a dangerous green as the bear beast stomps on the ground. The nearby trees shake and rattle, a few even uprooting as the earth itself vibrates. Clover takes a running leap, the remaining four of his six wings appearing to help him glide a few feet to avoid the destabilized ground. As soon as he lands, his small white and purple wings disappear, going back to wherever they go when Clover isn’t actively focusing on them.

“Okay,” he relents ducking behind a tree to avoid getting impaled from a flying spike, “maybe I shouldn’t taunt the crazy bear monster trying to eat me.”

“Not that I was trying to taunt it,” he explains to no one, well maybe someone, Clover’s not sure what happened to the yellow pixie that was following him for the last hour or so chittering in his ear about bad grapes or something (he wasn’t really paying much attention and only like every sixth word she said was in a language Clover understood). Though now thinking about it, she might be the whole reason he’s in this mess!

“Oh, if I get my hands on that pixie—” his threat gets cut short when he almost trips over an uprooted tree root, doing an awkward hop and a rather graceful little spin to land back on stable ground and keep running. “I’ll worry about revenge later, let’s focus on trying not to die, that sounds like a good plan.”

Clover thinks he runs for about a good five minutes before he chimes in again (but it could be as little as 30 seconds, Clover is pretty bad with time). “You aren’t getting tired, or anything are you? Maybe don’t want to wander too far from your cave? You could get lost going back and—"

Clover shuts up as another earth spike lodges into the tree by his head, “Ooooor,” he drags out with a nervous chuckle, “you can keep chasing me, that’s cool. No problem I can keep running.”

And he could, but not for too much longer. Birds and bards are both more small, showy, sprint-like creatures not long chase predators like bears. ‘How far can a bear run? They can run pretty fast right? Do rules of normal bears apply to monster bears?’

Clover glances back at the Unseelie chasing him, half a mind to just ask the monster, but he can’t really see it anymore. The thick underbrush and maze of trees, obscuring his view, seems the spike that almost hit it might have just been a rouge lucky shot.

“Hey, its gone!” he laughs, panic easing a tad bit when he notices a distinct lack of monster bear noises or the ominous shaking of the ground, “take that you three head freak! You’re not making this bard your dinner—"

Like the unhelpful ability that it is, Clover’s all-powerful fairy magic only makes him aware of the obstacle the moment right before he slams face-first into it.

“OOOWWWWW!” Clover cries as he bounces off what must be a suddenly appearing stone wall because he did not see anything in front of him two seconds ago.

“Fuckity fuck fuck!” he curses bouncing where he stands and clutching at his forehead. He thinks he’s bleeding, oh he hopes he isn’t bleeding. Áine will never let him outside without at least a dozen health potions again, and those potions are way too heavy for a poor little bard like him to cart around.

“What in the name of Hel’s frozen teeth did I—?!” Clover stops complaining and instead blinks in confusion as he looks up not to meet a wall or a tree but his own warped reflection. Freckled cheeks, wide confused purple eyes, ring covered hands clutching at his forehead and tangled with strands of his short chestnut brown hair. Clover blinks at himself in the metal reflection before casting his gaze upwards to find— “a blade?”

Said blade shifts to the side revealing the person who had just used the sheath of their sword to stop Clover from full-on barreling into them. Which… fair. Though still rude.

They are tall, a solid 7 inches to Clover’s rather normal height of 5’6”, and they are wearing a strange mismatch of a shining sliver chestplate, glittering armor guards, and a black spiked shoulder pauldron with matching deadly-looking shin guards. As if the stranger couldn’t decide if they wanted to look like a fairytale knight come to life from the pages of a children’s story or a Hel-Knight ripped from the horrors of a man’s worst nightmare.

He can’t see the knight’s eyes past his darkened helmet, a traditional helm, made out of black spiked metal, with a short pair of ornamental antlers on top. But even though Clover can’t see the stranger’s face, he can feel the weight of the stare, a strange crawling unease mixing with the taste of ozone on Clover’s tongue.

When the knight speaks it’s a deep echoing sound that Clover can feel in his bones, powerful and unimpressed, “And you’re a bard."