§ I confess, I may have played a little bit longer than I planned. Playing with the pixies was too much fun, you see. And harassing our opponents could only help, after all, so I saw no reason to stop. In truth, it was a valuable opportunity. Although I should have Tiana’s affinity for all elements, my real talent was …

§ Deprogramming the spirits would require a great deal of additional effort. For now, the Reladorian mages simply trapped them in magic stones. They would finish the job during a peaceful moment after they recovered. “Kill bad demon now?” Butterfly Wings wondered. “Bad spirit out now!” Dragonfly Wings declared. “No problem! Easy!” Bee Wings assured us. “We should wait for …

§ Pixies are terrifying.  I really had no idea. I wasn’t ungrateful for their help, though. I was just very, very thankful they were on our side! And completely mystified as to why we were receiving it. And as to how they could be so impossibly powerful. According to the pixies in question, all three of which used the name …

§ This time, Mireia handled the connection herself, although Rhea would still watch closely. During the previous day, after the crisis with Alwain passed and the battle forced Domerà’s retreat, I had simply monitored the situation from Narses through the regular reports, but it was still early morning and I didn’t want to wait. Dilorè had switched groups to supplement …

§ <Big Sis back!> The coming dawn was not the morning after the battle. It was the morning following that. The intervening period had been a running pursuit down the river by the main force while the ‘delousing’ crew held the captive fairies and Shindzha advanced toward this place.  I spent that day mostly fretting, since I could only rarely …

§ Before Lady Alwain left Narses, Lady Tiana made sure that she knew exactly what the rebels had been doing in the Kasarene Highlands, trapping her monsters and magic beasts so that demon beast trainers could enslave and use them as weapons in the war against the Loyalists. After she returned to her territory, she sent out her scouts to …

§ “Welcome back, Lhan,” Fan Li greeted me. I blinked in confusion, realizing I was suddenly seated at the table in the Tea Pavilion. The previous moment, I had been patrolling the woods outside the bivouac perimeter. One of the semi-solid ‘servers’ placed a tea cup before me and poured. Still stunned, I accepted it with a weak ‘thank you.’ …

§ The clearing that Alwain used for her headquarters was a stone circle, fairly complete from what I could tell. It had all nineteen stones around the perimeter, but also a strange stone table in the center. I wondered if this was truly something from the Ancient Fairy Age or a place built more recently, in homage to such places. …

§ Shindzha’s eyes grew wide as she woke and saw me before her. Of course, she was disappointed to discover it was only a projection, which I had to spend time explaining, but I think it gave her reassurance that I was there in any form. “At any rate, I won’t be able to physically approach you until we sort …

§ The fairy looked first alarmed, then a bit offended, as she stared at the accusing, baleful light from Urrit’s device. For his part, Urrit was pale white and uncertain what to tell her. “Dore, relax and stay as you are,” Alwain ordered as she unfolded her legs and slipped off the box built from rock slabs. As the fairy …