>>6177844You all know what that means, though none of you speak orc. Or, well, you have a good idea, at least. It’s Khorine who gives Common context to it, though:
“It’s Fey,” she says. “A changeling… A ch-child of some sort, twisted by… By FAIRY magic.”
“Impossible,” Martyn says, his stoic silence finally broken by uncomprehending horror. “The <span class="mu-i">Bonum Chaoticum</span> are GOOD spirits… HOLY spirits!”
“Not all of them,” Khorine admits, sounding pained.
Suddenly, you remember something… Something from years back, from you time with Tips, at Old maple Hill and beyond. An enemy… A renegade band of Fair Folk that fucked with him and his girl, Izzy, and nearly got them killed more than once. Even as your mind is still piecing the memories together, the word escape your lips:
“Unseelie.”
Khorine nods, barely perceptible. Dura glowers down at the bound, squirming ‘changeling’.
“Oh, Gods Above,” Martyn gasps. “I think I know what this is.”
All eyes, including yours, are again upon his handsome-yet-horrified face.
“There’s a legend I’ve heard… A fairy tale, you could say… Of a monstrous, twisted fey creature lurking in the near east, in dense woods and dark places. Something like a huge, bloated tick or spider, which steals away little folk and the children of the giant races. They… They were elves, once, or something like them, priests of the <span class="mu-i">Bonum Chaoticum</span>, but they became wrapped by magic. Some say they turned against the Gods of Freedom, hungry for power. Others say they were cursed by the fleeing Forces of Darkness, their own magic turned against them in an act of vengeance.”
Khorine bleats nervously, clutching herself. Your feel a shiver up your own spine as well, at Martyn’s smooth, sensuous storytelling voice, now turned to this unsettling account of eerily-relevant local mytho-history.
“In my people’s language, those who know the story call them many things… <span class="mu-i">derwyddon pry cop</span>, <span class="mu-i">plentyn-bwndelwr</span>...”
He gulps.
“I believe in the Steelwood region, they call them… Ettercap.”
>TO BE CONTINUED 