Clover can’t help the bark of a laugh that rips from his throat as he blinks in happy surprise up at the armored stranger.

“Oh and mister shinning armor has a sense of humor! “And you’re a bard”,” Clover quotes with another chuckle. “Dry humor is fairly in these days I hear. And just so you know, I happen to be one of the best bards here in Freeshire!” he rambles before a slight tremor in the ground reminds him of the fact he’s currently running away from being a monster’s dinner, “but now’s maybe not the best time to trade pointers.”

Clover points towards the three large swords strapped to the man’s back, “Don’t suppose you know how to use those do you? Cause if so, then I have a contract for you, mister knight.”

The ground shakes harder, enough so that the trees that line the little road they stand on release a scattering shower of leaves, and a roar echoes from somewhere deep in the forest behind them. Even though Clover can’t see the man’s face he can feel the judging eyebrow raise, so he tacks on a soft, “A… uh, immediate contract.”

The man doesn’t move and Clover knows the bear monster won’t take a break just for them to chat, so he scoots around the knight, “Well, in that case, I suggest we should probably start running.”

But as Clover begins to walk past the knight to do just that, a hand clamps onto his shoulder and hauls him back in front of the stranger and their darkened helmet, “What kind of monster is it?”

Clover shivers at his voice, still unused to how it echoes in his ribs and tries to wrench himself free, but the man is like a statue, grip more solid than stone, keeping even the ever-flighty Clover grounded in place. Seeing that there’s no way in all the 9 realms Clover is going to be able to force his way out of this one, he gives up trying to pry the man’s hand off him and awkwardly crosses his arms. His lute gets squished between the two them, its strings scratching against the knight’s chestplate. Clover makes a note that if this jerk ruins his precious lute he’s going to make him pay for the damages.

“You could have just asked instead of grabbing me tall, dark, and rude. But it’s big,” Clover enunciates this point my making a gesture over his head, failing to show just how big, but conveying the message he hopes. “Its bear shaped mostly, has three heads for some Odin dammed reason. Came barreling out of a cave to kill me. I was just walking by! I didn’t even do anything to it!”

The knight hums, reaching up to pull one of his swords free, before he pauses, helmet fixing on Clover once more and Clover wishes he could see the man’s eyes to have some idea what he’s thinking, cause right now Clover has as much emotional read on this guy as he would a statue.

“Know what kind of beast it is?”

Clover starts to shake his head no, before stopping for a moment and slowly nodding, “It’s a fey.”

And as soon as he says it Clover knows he messed up. There’s been a weird background itch scratching at his skin the longer he stays close to this mysterious stranger and as the man pulls out one of his swords Clover finally figures out why.

‘By the World Tree, that’s iron!’ he protests in his thoughts, flinching away as the blade is drawn and hovers way to close for comfort. Desperately he hopes the knight will mistake his revulsion as just normal fear, and not as the instinctual fear response of a frightened and cornered fey now faced with an iron sword. And not just any iron either, Clover knows the familiar poisonous burn of this iron, feyer iron.

‘Oh in the name of the world tree and all the gods in Asgard he’s a feyer,’ Clover realizes with a dawning horror. Any fairy would understandably be shocked and terrified, a feyer is after all, a fey-hunter. Humans that poison their blood with iron and give up their humanity all for the sake of better being able to kill fairies.

Clover might have lost all of his “useful” fey abilities but that doesn’t make him any less affected by iron or able to lie. He gets to have all the downsides of being a fairy without any of the cool upsides.

“Uh buddy, your sword is a little…” Clover points at the blade only a few inches from his face, holding his lute close like somehow the instrument will keep him safe from a feyer’s iron, “close, don’t you think? Mind moving it just a tad for me?”

Clover knows the man hears him, because he has the gall to move the blade closer to Clover, as if mocking him.

“You know I take it back,” Clover says trying again to wiggle out of the feyer’s statute steady grip on his forearm. “I would rather the bear eat me,” and the words don’t taste like a lie even though Clover isn’t fully sure which fate is worse, iron or teeth. Clover pulls at the feyer’s hand again as the ground starts to tremble under the force of a powerful Unseelie getting closer. “Unhand me so I can go run off to my doom please.”

The man annoyingly doesn’t pay Clover any more attention and just shoves the bard behind him.

“Well fuck you too—!” he starts to complain until with a thundering crash, the nearest trees topple over, revealing the three-headed bear monster in all its gruesome glory.

“By Thor’s mead-stained beard, we’re going to die!” Clover screams as he scrambles away from the beast and the stupid feyer facing it down with a sword that looks like a dagger compared to the lumbering beast. Clover had forgotten just how big the Unseelie was, that or it had some sort of ability to get larger, because Clover is pretty sure it's now as tall as three of him.

The monster snarls at the armored feyer, halting in his mad dash to eye the iron warily. Clover feels a pang of sympathy, the burn of iron is something he will never get used to. Just being around it makes his skin itch and the scars on his back burn.

‘Only iron can mutilate a fey like you have been Clover,’ Áine had said carefully as she wrapped bandages around his middle, her fingers skating close enough to feel, but not touch, just a whispering ghost of contact over the nasty scars on his back.

It’s a memory from a year after they met when Clover was about to head outside beyond Crater and her careful watch for the first time. ‘Someone took your wings on purpose,’ and she whispered it like it was a secret that Clover couldn’t already feel in his bones.

Even when he had woken up in Aine’s house with a blank slate where his memories should be, there’s has always been a lingering bitter taste on his tongue, an understanding that something irreplaceable hadn’t just been lost but stolen from him. There was a reason why even Aine, the person he trusted the most in the world has never seen his wings. A fear deeper than just his body warning him away from ever showing another living being his true form.

Her words continue to ring his ears, a warning he had already taken to heart long before that spring morning. ‘Stay away from iron, and any who wield it, humans can and will kill you. Please don’t die out there, come back to me safe. No matter what you have to do. Come back to me, okay?’  

It feels like a dick move to just leave now that the feyer is distracting the monster, but Clover also doesn’t want to die to an iron sword anymore than he wants to get eaten.

The man is a feyer. Maybe a rouge one like Nor, without an order to call home, disgraced for some reason or another, making money off of selling fey parts to witches for use in their spells and potions. Feyers are trained practically since birth to hunt fairies, so Clover’s pretty sure the man can handle this on his own, and there’s no need for Clover to stick around when it will be his head on the chopping block next.

Carefully, Clover takes a few steps backward, eyeing the fight that still hasn’t started, making sure to keep his eyes on the two enemies in front of him. Sadly, keeping his attention on the danger in front of him means he’s totally blind to the threat at his back.

“Ahh!” He screams as he trips over a large, jagged rock, flailing and stumbling until he crashes hard into the trunk of a tree. One of the straps on his bag snaps and his belongings go clattering into the mud, and to add injury to insult, his elbow catches on another rock, tearing part of his shirt and sending a wave of stinging pain zipping up from his funny bone.

“Owww!! This is the worst day ever!”

But Clover’s little stumble seems to have snapped the other two out of their silent battle of wills. The bear beast looks up, eyes narrowing at Clover as if deciding it would rather go after him instead of the armored snack in front of it.

Taking advantage of the beat’s momentary distraction, the feyer strikes. His iron blade cuts through the air with a sharp whistle as he takes a swipe at the bear’s right leg.

The Unseelie snarls in rage, lunging forward to take a bite out of the man, and to Clover’s minor horror the beast connects, teeth digging into the feyer’s unarmored left shoulder.

“Oh fuck,” Clover cruses rushing to his feet, lute anxiously clutched to his chest, “are you okay?!”

Ignoring Clover the feyer twists, effortlessly stabbing his sword like it’s an oversized dagger into the soft junction between the middle and right bear head.

The bear monster howls in pain, releasing the warrior and taking a staggering step back, taking the man’s sword with it as the feyer staggers, pushing a hand briefly to his injured shoulder. It’s a nasty wound, his dark undershirt torn to shreds and Clover thinks he might even be able to see bone, but that’s not what has Clover gasping in horror. No, blood spills from the wound, and stains the bear’s teeth, it is not green like a fey, nor gray like an iron-blooded feyer, but red. Mortal and breakable and human.