The morning sun filtered through the forest canopy in scattered patches of gold. The tribute cart creaked along the rutted road, its wheels grinding against stones and roots. Two villagers walked alongside it, one guiding the anqa whilst the other kept watch on the woods. The cart carried grain sacks, three casks of preserved fruit, and a small chest of coins. Not much by noble standards, but precious to the farming community that had scraped it together.
Their village had sent tribute to the dragon for a few weeks now. Each time, the collection returned safely. Each time, the roads remained clear of threats.
This week would be different.
The first arrow took the anqa in the flank. The animal bellowed and stumbled, nearly pulling the cart off the path as it tore through its reins in fear with its powerful beak and ran. The villagers shouted in alarm, reaching for the cudgels at their belts.
Five figures emerged from the trees. An elf with a longbow. A half-orc carrying a wickedly curved blade. Two humans with mismatched armour and desperate expressions. And leading them, a fairy whose wings shimmered with iridescent colours in the dappled sunlight.
Bandits.
"Leave the cart," the fairy called out, his voice carrying a shrill chirping tone. "Walk away. Nobody needs to die today."
The elder villager stepped forward, his cudgel raised despite the tremor in his hands. "This tribute belongs to the dragon queen. If you take it, there will be consequences."
The bandits exchanged glances. "We're taking the cart. Last warning."
The younger villager grabbed his companion's arm.
"But the tribute -"
"- Is not worth dying for. Come on."
They fled, abandoning the cart. The bandits watched them disappear down the road before turning their attention to their prize.
The half-orc cut the wounded anqa free while the others examined the cart's contents. The fairy pried open the coin chest, his eyes gleaming at the sight of silver and copper within. The animal ran free, chasing back after its masters.
"Not bad," he said, weighing a handful of coins. "Not great, but not bad."
"It's something," the elf muttered, checking the grain sacks. "Better than the nothing we've been bringing in. It’ll keep her off our backs."
"This is how we get back into F.P.'s good graces," one of the humans said, relief evident in his voice. "After losing the last haul, we needed this."
The fairy's expression darkened at the mention of their previous failure. That disaster at the mountain stronghold. That dragon cost them everything. "It's not our fault," the fairy said, his tone defensive. "Nobody said anything about a dragon being up there. How could we have known that little thing was a monster?" he asked, thinking of the small impish kobold they had made the mistake of mocking back then.
The elf snorted whilst shouldering the coin chest. "Maybe not, but we're sure stuck in the shit now because of it. F.P. isn't going to let us out of this so easily."
"As long as she doesn't gut us today, I'll be happy," the fairy replied.
They loaded their findings onto the cart and began pushing it down the road, moving quickly before anyone could raise alarm. The forest closed around them as they turned onto a side path, wheels bumping over exposed roots. The cart hit a particularly large bump. A single coin flew from the chest, sailing through the air before hitting the packed soil with an audible clang.
All five bandits froze.
The coin rolled along the path, spinning on its edge before finally settling in the dirt.
They stared at it. Then at each other.
Silence pressed down on the forest.
A roar shook the world.
The sound came from everywhere and nowhere, reverberating through the trees with such force that birds exploded from the canopy in panicked flight. The ground trembled. Somewhere in the distance, something dangerous was moving.
"RUN FOR IT!" the elf yelled.
They threw their weight against the cart, pushing it forward with desperate strength. The wheels screamed in protest. Behind them, the mountain itself seemed to shift, shadows moving across its face with impossible speed.
"HOW DOES IT KNOW?!" one of the humans shouted.
"THIS WAY!" The fairy pointed towards a narrow deer trail cutting deeper into the forest. They hauled the cart after him, the vehicle nearly tipping as they made the sharp turn.
A shadow passed overhead, blotting out the sun.
Then something hit the ground behind them with the force of a meteor strike.
The impact threw them forward. Trees exploded into splinters. Fire bloomed through the forest, consuming dry brush and catching on low branches. Smoke and debris filled the air. The bandits scrambled to their feet, hauling the cart onwards whilst the ground continued to shake.
Barjuchne crashed through the forest behind them.
The dragon moved with horrifying speed, her claws tearing through trunks thick as houses. Her tail lashed out, shattering ancient oaks. Her eyes blazed with pure, incandescent rage. Foam dripped from her jaws. Every movement screamed mindless fury.
She would kill them. She would burn them alive. She would tear them apart and scatter their remains across the mountainside as a warning to anyone who dared touch what was hers.
The bandits pelted through the forest, their cart bouncing wildly over the uneven ground.
Barjuchne erupted into the clearing just after seeing them enter it. Her claws gouged deep furrows in the soil. She was sure she had them now once and for all. Her wings snapped open, filling the space with shadow. She spun in place, her senses searching, hunting, desperate for the thieves who had dared -
…Nothing.
The clearing was empty.
She stalked its perimeter, her nose pressed to the ground. No scent. She tilted her head, listening with senses that could hear a mouse's heartbeat from a mile away. No sound. Her eyes scanned the trees, searching for movement, for hiding places, for anything.
Nothing.
They were gone. Completely, impossibly gone. How? How are they doing this?
This was not the first time. The bandits had been raiding her territory for weeks now. Small thefts. Ambushes on tribute caravans. Hit-and-run attacks that ended the same way every time. She would track them. Corner them. Close in for the kill.
And then they would simply vanish time and time again.
"What the...?" The snarl ripped from her throat.
How was it possible? It was not. It could not be.
Barjuchne's rage boiled over. She unleashed a torrent of flame across the clearing, incinerating everything within reach. Trees exploded. Grass turned to ash. The mushrooms in the clearing blackened and crumbled. But the bandits remained gone.
She launched herself into the air with powerful wingbeats, rising above the forest canopy. From this height, she could see for miles. Every road. Every path. Every possible hiding place.
Nothing moved below except fleeing wildlife. She circled once. Twice. Her eyes scanned methodically, refusing to accept defeat.
Confusingly, her newly heightened senses told her a princess was in the area, of all things. But where in the world was she supposed to be? There was nothing here except the forest. Was the princess-detecting ability that she got after defeating Parsmuth broken or something? It made no sense.
She needed more information.
Barjuchne turned towards her mountain, wings carrying her home with furious speed. She needed counsel. Rou-ya understood the region. The goblin princess knew how bandits operated. Her goblin tribe had surely had encounters with them in the past, no?
The five bandits fell to the ground in a tangled heap, gasping and swearing. The fairy lay face-down in moss that glowed faintly with its own light. One of the humans kissed the ground, thanking his god for continued existence.
"Damn thing almost got us that time," the elf wheezed. "This is getting dangerous."
"Being a bandit was always dangerous," the fairy replied, pushing himself upright.
"I'll take the guards over a dragon any day," the elf muttered, helping the others to their feet.
The fairy's expression hardened. "Settle down. Mind yourself. Or you won't need to worry about anything ever again." His voice dropped to a dangerous whisper. "You know she doesn't like it when someone looks shaken. Makes you look like a liability."
They all exchanged glances and nodded.
Dusting themselves off, they picked up their scattered loot and righted the cart. The forest around them looked similar to the one they had fled but wrong in subtle ways. Colours were deeper where shadows fell. Where light touched, it blazed with unnatural vibrancy. The trees grew crooked and secretive, leaning towards each other like conspirators sharing plots. Large mushrooms sprouted from their branches, glowing with soft luminescence.
Behind them, the mushroom circle that they had come through still sparkled with fading magical residue. These were old, nearly forgotten magics of the fairy people. Not many still knew about them, let alone how to use them.
They had crossed into the fairy kingdom.
This was an old place. Once revered. Once powerful. But the fairy bloodlines had intermingled with humans and other races over centuries, becoming common in what they called the overworld, the human world.
This place was just the equivalent of an abandoned house that nobody had a key to anymore. It was too dangerous and too wild, and so the fairies of the old days preferred to stay in the comparatively safer human world. After generations, it became a story. Then, many more generations after that, it became a myth. Now it’s just a bandit’s hideout, of all things. An entire nation, empty except for the horrors that filled its strange recesses and a single, still-inhabited fortress.
The bandits followed winding paths over ancient constructions. Bridges of crystal and living wood spanned streams that flowed uphill. Ruins of forgotten palaces peeked through the undergrowth, reclaimed by the forest and time. Eventually, a castle came into view. It rose from the forest floor in twisted organic curves, more grown than built. Mushroom towers spiralled towards a sky that showed stars despite the sun shining elsewhere. Two fairy guards in bark armour watched their approach with expressionless faces. They were the only ones to be seen. All the other crumbling walls and towers of the castle looked empty.
"She's expecting you," one guard said.
The bandits exchanged worried glances. Being expected was never good news.
They pulled their cart through corridors of living wood. The throne room lay at the castle's heart, a vast space lit by bioluminescent fungi and floating motes of light. It would be beautiful in a mysterious sort of way if not for one terrifying thing.
Her.
F.P., the fairy princess.
The five bandits knelt, pressing their foreheads to moss-covered stone.
"So, you morons finally managed to bring in something." The voice snapped down from above, sharp and mocking. "I'm impressed. Honestly, I was sending you back out there to die. But I guess that dragon isn't such a big problem after all if you managed to outsmart it."
The wicked fairy princess and self-proclaimed princess of the bandits lounged across her crystal throne, her posture deliberately casual. Loosely draped robes revealed her form whilst maintaining plausible deniability of indecency. Wild blue hair framed half of a face and hid the other half. A single grey eye glittered with malice, the other hidden behind her hair. Her wings spread behind her in a riot of wild colours.
She was the last of her lineage. The final heir to a kingdom that had faded into myth. There was no more fairy kingdom, no more king, no more queen, nothing. It was just her, the last fairy princess and, at this point, only so by title because of a technicality of a quirk of an oddity of a mixed-up situation in the distant past.
And she was bored.
"I have a new, much bigger job for you then," she said, leaning forward with predatory interest.
"Anything," the bandit leader replied, his voice steady despite the tremor in his hands.
The fairy princess smiled, showing carnivorously sharp teeth. "I want you to bring me a scale."
Her eyes glinted with dangerous magic. “F- from?” he stuttered.
She widened her grin at him. “The dragon, silly boy,” replied the princess of many titles, in a soft, sweet, childishly amused voice as she cups her face in both of her hands.
"B- but Your Grace", the bandit leader began.
She snapped her fingers, a spark flashing past her thumb.
Blue fire erupted around him. Not a natural flame, but cold-burning magic that consumed flesh and bone whilst leaving the surroundings untouched. Fairy fire. He screamed, rolling across the moss, clawing at flames that would not extinguish. His companions scrambled away, pressing themselves against the walls whilst their leader died in agony.
The flames burnt themselves out, leaving nothing but ash and a charred corpse. Even if the skin was gone, one could still see the scream on his face.
"Any other questions?" the fairy princess asked, surveying the remaining four bandits.
Silence pressed down on the throne room.
The elf slowly turned his head towards her, keeping his eyes lowered. "W-Which part of the body would you like the scale to be from?" he asked, gulping.
The fairy princess made a show of thinking to herself, her sharp teeth reflecting the last dying embers of blue flame. "Any part will do," she replied softly with a slight giggle.
The four of them ran away toward the door as fast as they could.
“Excuse me. Hello?” called the princess after them, her tone playful.
Immediately, one of them ran back, still sobbing as he grabbed the charred, still smouldering corpse of his friend beneath his arms and dragged him out with them. “Thank you!” she beamed, clasping her hands together and tilting her head.