Soulforged Dungeoneer

In a squat rectangular block made out of fabric and attached to the nothingness by silken threads, three fairies sat at a table, and although this description isn't quite correct, I'll say they were playing... let's say Magic: The Gathering, if you want to think of it in human terms. Bits of card-like chits with various patterns on them were scattered on the table in a complicated array that, even if you knew what was on the cards, only made sense when you knew the rules of the game, and also some various arcane laws of magic that defined the underpinnings of the Labyrinthine Star. Like any group that grew up in the shadow of a large, ineffable, inescapable power, they had long since grown used to those strange and unnatural rules.

And like many people from many cultures that found themselves powerless to do anything, they retreated into gambling, for the rush of feeling like they were challenging fate.

One of the fairies, whose body-construct was based on some Earth technology called a Subaru Forester, squatted uncomfortably at the table and stared at his hidden, public, and deployed hands of chits, before declaring, "I'll take half a firebolt into the darkness and power the barn for another round to produce two chickens." One chit disappeared from his public hand, and two appeared on their own volition in his deployed section.

A second fairy, whose body-construct was a goat-man of some kind, grunted unkindly and drew a chit from the reservoir of magic they had all anted into. It was a good chit--stomach of a dragon--but he didn't have the resources to power it, and just gestured vaguely to the third player, passing his turn.

The third, a grubby little fairy--literally, his body construct was a fleshy worm--let a sick grin spread across his face. "You shouldn't have done tha~at," he sing-songed, just a bit, and pushed a chit from his public hand forward. "I'll take my blank dominion chit and control chickens, then--"

"Countered," said the car-fairy, dropping a chit from his private hand into play. "You instead control the barn for three rounds."

The grub glared, but didn't contest the action. Instead, he reviewed his chits, and nodded after a minute.

"Very well. I'll sacrifice a B1 bomber's left wing to power the barn and produce a dragon's egg."

The other two fairies just groaned, as a token appeared in the grub's playing field, and he continued with a wicked grin spreading across his face.

"I'll take two and a half thunderstorms to incubate the dragon's egg, and..." he moved a piece of territory back from play to his public hand, "...take Sibera out of play to power the bakery and produce ten knives. Your turn."

Before the other players could adjust to this reshaping of the board, the door to the room bust open, revealing the face of the rabbit fairy Chyllu-llamia, whose face was twisted with at least two and a half thunderstorms worth of emotions. "Sziel-ma'al!"

The goat fairy jumped, his chits scattering, a look of panic spreading over his face. "Y-yes dear?"

"Don't you dear me!" The rabbit went right over the playfield without concerning herself with not scattering the chits--and the other two fairies, grimacing, immediately started putting things back the way they were, though both made... slight adjustments that they hoped nobody else would notice. "Were you laying eggs in me behind my back! We talked about this!"

The goat grimaced and fluttered back away from her. "I was going to tell you--"

"Oh, I bet you were going to tell me. I already have children, Sziel'al, and they're counting on me keeping this job to keep them healthy." Her face, which had been a mask of seeming rage, suddenly seemed ready to burst out into tears. "I can't... if I can't protect my children..."

The goat rushed forward. "But, honey... if we work together..."

"You weren't willing to make it work with my sister, Sziel'al," she snapped, furiously. "And she's been in the hospital ever since--"

"But Cyllia, it's you that I love," protested the goat, and producing a marriage token made of his own bones--not for the first time. "Your sister didn't understand--"

"My sister almost killed herself chasing after you," sniffed the rabbit, looking down on the goat like an insect she wanted to stomp on. "She loved you truly. She gave you everything you could possibly want, and you treated her like garbage!"

Loudly enough to be overheard, the car fairy said, "I'm going to take two chickens, a bowl of salad, and five tidal waves to activate the Coming home to roost ability and steal... sibera, and the incubated status of your dragon egg. The incubated status becomes a loaded status on my ICBM launcher, which I use to destroy the dragon's egg. Sziel, your turn."

The rabbit and goat suddenly stopped arguing as the goat man returned to the table. The rabbit, her face impassive, looked over the assembled chits, slowly taking in the state of the game, as the goat went back to his hand and picked up the pieces he had dropped. Silently, he looked over his chits for a minute, wrinkling his nose as he noticed something stolen, but too late to make a proper challenge. Instead, he took three chits from his public hand back to his private hand and moved another forward, then dragged one from the playfield back to his public hand. "I'll take the M4 Sherman Tank, the fisherman, and the disco ball into the darkness to summon the top half of the empire state building. With that, and taking my tornado out of play, I'll call lightning on your ICBM launcher. Can you defend against it?"

The car fairy grimaced. "No."

Sziel-ma'al tapped one of his chits. "Now that I have five legendary buildings in play, I can use the Pink Panther to steal any vehicle struck by lightning. So I'll have your mobile artillery, please."

There was a disgusted sigh as the chit changed hands. Sziel-ma'al then nodded. "Done with my turn."

Suddenly, Chyllu-llamia punched in the face, and screamed at him, "She loved you so much that she was willing to face exile in the void, and you treated her like garbage. Did you truly not love her at all?"

"She was a child!" Sziel-ma'al took the attack in stride. "And I told her, more than once, that it would never work out between us. And don't you forget--in the middle of all of that, she went out with that tramp and started dating again, only to come back to me crying because--"

"Because she had been attacked, Sziel!" Chyllu put a great deal of hurt behind her words, and the goat fairy felt ashamed, instantly. "She was looking for someone to help her through her troubles while I was away, and you--"

"And I manipulated her into giving me xin," he admitted, and I'll just roughly translate that for you as 'money', because the details won't help you understand any of this at all.

Behind them, the worm fairy cleared his throat for a minute. "So with the Left Leg of Lenin still in play, I'm going to use..." he pushed a whole pile of chits forward. "...all of these to see if I can get Siberia to self-destruct. Can you block it?"

The car fairy groaned and started sorting through his own chits, working slowly through a large logjam of mental math.

Chyllu-llamia pointed directly at Sziel-maal's face and shook her finger, accusingly. "You... ridiculous fool. Are you not paying attention, do you not care, or do you not understand anything?"

The goat looked at her, confused.

"The left leg of Lenin!" she shouted at him, frustrated.

"Oh!" He rushed back to his spot at the table. "Sorry, sorry. With the Holy See I can take up to a quarter of the power you used for the Left Leg of Lenin."

"Damn!" The worm slammed back in his seat. "I almost had you."

The goat fairy just waved at him with a pacifying, 'next time, next time' sort of gesture, and started picking through the chits, looking looking for anything particularly valuable.

A sound in the next room caught Chyllu-llamia's attention, and she moved over to find Herman there, looking through a cabinet for what I'll translate for you as paperwork, his cup and saucer stacked on his head like a hat and several reams of other ...paperwork... held between various of his spider limbs.

"You," the rabbit fairy said, her voice dark again, but this time mostly with sadness and frustration. "You knew."

Herman turned to look at her, and cocked his head. "Yes? Sorry. I wasn't paying attention to the game. Was there--?"

"Not the game! You knew that Sziel-ma'al had laid eggs in me!" She moved up, and with alarming ferocity, pushed Herman back into the wall, his teacup somehow remaining glued in place. It wasn't a move she would normally be comfortable with performing on a fairy of higher station than her, but...

"Oh! I had thought you'd never notice. But I was... I was scared of bring it up, Chyllia." Herman looked away, refusing to meet her eyes--not that a human would have known if he was doing that, what with the clown mask on his face and all.

"I only noticed because a human told me that you told him!"

"A human? The only one I told wa--oh, dear, actually, I said it with several of them around not too long ago. There's no chance it was Kamau. Jerry? I know he was going in--"

"The young one, the whelp. Telekinesis, kid fairy."

"Oh! Yes, Jerry then. He's a bright spark, isn't he?"

The rabbit just pushed him against the wall some more. "You knew."

"Oh! Right, yes. Well..." Herman's voice got nervous again. "Chyllia... you know how I feel about you, but you..."

"Don't start with that," she snapped, in exasperation. "You know I need to keep this job, and I can't afford to have any more children. And with Sziel'al and my sister..."

"You still blame him for that?" Herman's posture crumpled, just a little bit more.

"Yes!"

"But she was trying to poison your relationship from the start, Chyllia. And not just with Sziel-ma'al. Cior'lanth, T'mothy, and Zair all told me that she was pressuring them. And each time--"

"She wasn't!" This time, Chyllu-llamia's high voice sounded scared. "She wouldn't! She's just a child, Herman. Just a fragile little..."

"She's no child any longer, Chyllia." Herman placed one hand, gently, on the other fairy's shoulder. "She has to make her own decisions, including who to love, what job to take, ...who to steal from, who to declare war on. The adult world will not keep waiting--"

"BINGO!" someone in the other room shouted. "Five units starting with the same letter, four territories of similar size, three pieces of fruit--"

There was a mutter, but all Herman could catch was, "not a fruit." The excited talking stopped, and there was, suddenly, a loud sigh.

"...and we all have to grow up sometime, Chyllia. I did." His hand, gently, traced up her cyborg arm, until it got to where she was gripping his shoulder. And then, with a twist, he wrenched her off of him, and pushed her away, into the other wall, which wobbled with the impact, as the cloth tended to do. "I'm not still holding a candle for you. You really did break my heart, you know," he said, and turned back to the cabinet, grabbing some ...documents, and closing it behind him. "But that's the past, and there's no going back."

"But Herman," cried the rabbit. "I love you!"

The spider fairy only turned his head half as far as he would need to see her. "I believed that, once," he said, and left without another word.

From the ventilation duct above her head, a worm dropped into Chyllu-llamia's hair. She sniffled, tears pouring from her eyes, and one hand unerringly reached into her hair to snag the offending creature before it could start to bite, and crushed it in her hand, and dumped the crushed giblets on the floor in the middle of the room. And then, despondently, she turned back to the break room where Sziel-ma'al worked, wondering, not for the first time, if she should just break down and accept his proposal--even if she wasn't ready for more children, not yet.

As she walked through the door, through, an enormous buffalo fairy in what I'll call a police uniform bust down the opposite door. "Sziel-ma'al! Your mother was just attacked by a ninja from Region 22-C, and is in the hospital."

The other two players at the table swore. "Not ninja protocol again..." moaned the car fairy.

Sziel-ma'al carefully hid his smile as he collected the chits. Not that his mother wasn't in any trouble--she was poor, barely a two-item fairy with no job, and the chits he'd won today would help keep her fed a little longer. But, this distraction was planned, and the timing was perfect. It had been a gamble, of course, since there was no knowing for sure when the call would come, but there was no better way to get out of a game than the ninja protocol.

That's why he'd hired the ninja. Well, that, and the off chance that she would actually die, and leave him her legacy, but he had faith that the old pigeon would survive for a bit longer. Either way, he was sure, the turf war that was to follow would be a great distraction from the miserable existence that was Fairy life. At least, assuming nobody found out...