Chapter 7

"Gotta warn you though. She's a real winner. No fun at all! That Water fairy or spirit or Mistress of the Deep or whoever the heck she is!" Duo's incessant speeches had been going on for a full five minutes now.

Hilde was so accustomed to the droning sound of his voice almost missed her cue to show her show-off buddy up.

"The Water Nymph, Duo! That's what they call her, sheesh! There's not a thing that goes unforgotten with you, is there?! I must've pulled that braid of yours too many times, I gues---"

Though contrary to what the female elf claimed was her partner's shortcomings, her voice was the one mostly prattling on during their short journey back to the river together. However, when the last treeline obscuring the blue of the silver river parted, it was no longer still.
And not only---it no longer blue...

Hilde and Duo had lived all of their young elven lives here in this forest. They had not once ever seen the beautiful river that guarded the enchanted land of Eixip ever anything but peaceful, calm and that certain shade of perfect azure as it always. Just as when they were playing hide and seek, mere moments before.

But no longer was the river still and blue. In fact, it was the opposite--all choppy with torrents and restless waves. But more frightening than that, no longer did the crystal river run clear--it was now an evil devilish shade of crimson red. It was as crimson and as red---as blood....

Their ears prick up and Hilde and Duo look to each other in fear. For no longer could they pick up the soft, low strains of lovely fairies singing and dancing in the palace across the river or on the distant hill. No longer could they hear the tinkling of bells of fairy music they had become so used to hearing.

No, there was nothing. Nothing but stillness and silence in the home of their new fairy friend that had just flown back to nothing but---

"NOOOOOOOOOO!!" A high-pitched scream pierces the eerie silence. The archer and elves cringe, for they all knew who that scream belonged to. It was the beautiful voice of the fairy princess who had just fled from them with her young charge towards the safety of a palace that was no longer safe.

The fairy palace itself was on fire.

"Water Nymph! Water Nymph! Where are you?! Your fairies need you! Help them!!!"

From somewhere above the water, Sallie could hear the elves calling for her to protect her little ones. She could clearly hear beneath the watery waves, their despair. She could hear the fear and surprise and shock in her fairies' voices that would no longer sing to her in the cries for help, the screams of pain and torment as one by one, the magic held within each one's fairy wings were plucked away. Stripping the lovely creatures of not only their magic powers, but...

Also their lives.

"LEAVE THEM BE!!!!!" Wave after tidal wave of raw Nymph energy fights below on the river floor with the forces of evil sent from the dark lair high atop Nogard Mountain from whence they came.

They were obviously sent to capture one of the highest forms of energy in this world---Fairy Wing dust--and in so doing, kill every single fairy left in the Universe. They were too few already to count and now...

Sallie forces away the tears in her watery eyes.

The attack came from the Air...I could not stop them! I could not protect my little ones from the horrors of this fate! Sallie thinks desperately, her heart breaking as she lashes her anger out at the evil one whose evil incantation had sealed her beneath the water's hardened and impenetrable crystal surface. She could not use her own magic to save her fairies outside of the water---but she could still use her powers under the water, in here, as the wicked Dragon Master and despised man was about to find out.

The deep wrath of evil and of men was about to be unleashed when Sallie thinks of what happened just moments ago that could change the course of power on this green world....

~~~~~~~~

It had all happened so suddenly. There was no warning, no indication on the wind--not the least bit of a hint to convey to the peaceful fairies of Eixip what was to come.

One minute, Iria, Sylvia and Middie were all there in the palace garden nearby, at peace. They were singing, playing, tittering to each other of things only fairy girls tittered about as they had dance about, dipping their feet in the cool water pond. They were joyfully discussing in all seriousness the frivolities of their pure world of joy. Each didn't have a thought in their simple, beautiful minds of what was to come. The sisterhood, in their immortality, had no idea what pain, torture and death were until this very moment it rained down from the clear blue sky in the form of a strange gloomy cloud of sorts.

There were never clouds in Eixip, especially never dark ones. It would never dare rain on their lovely white palace. Sylvia had looked up at the cloud and wondered aloud,

"What is it doing up there?" and "My! Isn't that big and puffy! I wonder what it is?!"

None of them really feared it, for they never doubted that Sallie would protect them and keep away anything bad or scary. No, it was actually a funny thing when the cloud opened up, like a parting wave.

Iria had evened likened it to a smile on a gloomy face. They had all laughed nervous little giggles then. But that could be no further from the truth.

For a smile it was not. It was more like a full open mouth of fangs. The deadly, dangerous fangs of a dragon--the most powerful, fearsome creatures of death and destruction this world had ever seen when controlled by the will of an evil force in the form of the large jewel embedded magically upon the dragon's forehead.

And before Middie, or Iria or Sylvia could make it to the fountain pond and summon their protector named Sallie--

It had been too late. For riding alongside the female Dragonmaster, atop the turquoise blue dragon named "Shenlong" was a Nymph with as much power--or more--than the fairies' own Water Nymph, Sallie.

For this was the prophesied return of the daughter of war--the Fire Nymph of olden days found and magically resurrected from her frozen, captive cage of ice to which she had been banished to, long ago.
In ancient days, when there was once a king from the north who had found some way to vanquish her evil with the power to destroy her entirely---but in the moment of truth, he found he could not.
For the human part of him had fallen deeply in love with the Fire Enchantress' beauty and inextinguishable, soulful eyes. He believed her to be not entirely lost and in the end, he could not destroy that to which he had given his heart to.

Instead, he sealed her into the cold, bleak patterns of ice in the polar wastelands. She was devoid of all power, sealed, unaging within the crystal ice magic sphere she was entombed in forever.

But that king long ago, could not have forseen the intense magic of the power hungry Sorcerer Dermail. He would not have foretold that this wily sorcerer would release the beautiful and wicked Fire Nymph into a world of peace. She would once again rain her fiery destruction on the world. And now adding to her hatred of all things good and pure was a sense of revenge upon the descendants of the despised king who had locked her away all of these eons of years ago...

After this was all over, her mystic debt to Dermail paid, the Fire Nymph herself would seek out and destroy everything of that cursed kingdom.

The land, the people, the palace--but starting with first and foremost, the current ruler of the land. He would held that horrid man's title and power and crown she would eradicate. Anything to do with that accursed name--burn it to ashes and embers with the fire broiling within her heart for revenge upon he who holds the name of...

Peacecraft....