>>6184781The sun falls behind a nearby hill, casting you all into shadow. As it does so, you see a faint glimmer of fairy magic, not unlike that which accompanied Khorine’s casting. This time, it brings you no comfort, but a creeping dread, as the waving, wildly-alive grass and brachiating, belligerent bushes which Khorine provided to protect you part and bow before a new master: a huge, bloated thing, deeper purple than even a dark elf—and with a body that seems, if you had to guess, to have been shaped from elven clay in ancient days. Its breasts attest to a long-lost femininity, now hanging pendulous and empty. Its torso is emaciated and bloated at once, ribs visible yet stomach distended, almost translucent in the visibility of still-darker veins through pinkish skin. Its face has scattered eyes and eyelets, and what look like wounds or pustules from which more eyes might yet emerge. It has bushy, hairy pedipalps like a moustache, rubbing together in idle interest as those fully-formed eyes which dot its—her?—bald head survey the lot of you, from between long, thin-pointed eras like antennae. Its back hangs with an open cloak of what might be dead mosses and grasses, or again might be a mane of long, thin grey hairs.
Worst of all, for all the Ettercap’s oblong ugliness, it moves with immaculate grace, hovering through air, bare and bizarrely, OFFENSIVELY beautiful elfin feet never touching the Earth for more than a fleeting moment, and collecting no dust.
Everyone is breathless before it. YOU’RE breathless before it, for a moment. You’ve rarely seen its ilk, but your recognize it in the soul which Ezreal Mious (sometimes Van Houtzmann), scion of the Sylvan Realms, crafted for you five-or-so years ago:
THIS is a True Fey, an ageless immortal… A fallen and misshapen, yet still great and terrible, first-born child of the so-called Gods of Freedom.
<span class="mu-s">“Hello there, little things.”</span>
A scream rises in your throat, accompanied by vomit. Yous wallow both down, shake it off, and…
>Scream to the others to make a break for it—time to do An-Yii’s downhill wagon plan>Magic time! Hit her with the <Prismatic Spray>!>Sword! It’s sword-time! You’re better with swords! Everyone else, attack as well!>Say ‘hello’ back, and…>>Warn her that you know Tips, AKA Ezreal Mious van Houtzmann, AKA the badass mage who killed an Unseelie Queen>>Extend greetings and salutations on behalf of The Dragon King of Bloodrise (who IS, after all, your half-brother)>Write-in 