Gamleon's Tail ~ Welcome to the worlds of : Within ~

Time for action

She wobbled, her breath stopped. Knees no good. Her special parts tried to release as she nearly fell. Her hand went to her mouth instinctively, then rubbed hard and long at her eyes. She started to pray. She made justifications to the gods as to why they should spare her. Her mind reeled frozen in terror as her chest burned. Then she realized she wasn't breathing and hadn't since first seeing them.

Opposite the fairies stood a small band of the legendary bone men called the ....Jingoes.

Many a tale was told of them but most were not believed. Yet there they were.

Seven in all. A few with iron helms from Hezgeroth, their narrow visors unmistakable, even tucked deeply into where their armpits would have been.

A small dormouse skeleton scampered about eerily crawling in and out of the bones of the larger ones. Silvery plates of exotic armor patterned like the overlapping vertebrae they sometimes covered. She waited frozen hand over mouth. Transfixed shaking and near collapse she lowered down to get a better view.

Most didn't speak. The others not, much, only short clipped phrases that didn't seem to come from their mouths but from somewhere else.

Creaking and shuffling, staring at the ground between their boots and the ever gathering fay. A map was laid out there. It was very well done even after having been badly folded. It was skin, yellowed and flaking its corners weighted with small stones.

" Hmm... this says we are all standing right on top of it," one of the Jingoes finally croaked, a strange smallish voice echoing as though from inside a dry well. "Yes, we do have a problem. Don't we? And now, our problem is yours. The lagoon is not here or there." He pointed a glove covered skeletal hand here and there. At various rocks and features impatiently and expectantly.

A taller and handsome fairy with a high collar and mossy-green robes stepped forward. "That map is two hundred or more seasons out of date Palladrium. Perhaps you have been misreading it."

He made a series of deliberate motions. Some courtesans came forward bowed then removed the rocks and turned the map this way and that for a time.

"Incorrect," said another Jingo in the oddest voice and manner (not at all like the first). "This map was given directly to us from the Inner Archives of the Gorgon Queen."

The royalty among the fairies shifted their wings silently sending glowing pulses to the ones rearranging the map. They hoped their coded messages were left unsolved. Their Queen gave a thin and fake smile.

Dreema frowned trembling and clenched her teeth. That map wasn't wrong. She'd passed the lagoon just a few days ago, while foraging along the ridge trail. The rocks and features stood out, expertly drawn. It was there. Hidden, down in bowl shaped valley that wasn't on the map. Nanna had said it was a mollchaino or something like that. She remembered they talked about it. Supposedly that it once shot fire and smoke into all the lands around, but now it was all but gone. From the ground level there was no way to see it or even know it existed unless you pressed through tight thicket only a fairy or very small child would dare try, then climbed the tree hidden hill and looked down on it. They were close though, maybe a hard day's walk.

She squinted, eyes scanning the dimly lit ground. The Jingoes tiny torches flickered. Affixed inside of their ribs and at different places to highlight their roses and rubies with both steady terror and beauty. The effect was powerful and mesmerizing.

The map though must be missing an important piece.

There was a long tear through one of the folds. Someone had removed some key land marks.

They're lying, she thought. The fairies must know, and they are lying.

The bone-armored constructs were pointing and gesturing harder now. The tension had thickened.