A few hours passed in relative silence as they traveled through the strange Realm and towards the ‘river’ Tristan had seen from the hill. He had decided to roll the dice and visit this Matriarch, but first, he needed to get some sort of liquid in him. Felicity agreed, though she continued to insist that the river wasn’t made of water.

  Tristan also felt his stomach rumbling, and when he mentioned it, Felicity pointed out a series of what looked like berry bushes. Always cautious, Tristan fed one to her, gathered more, and waited thirty minutes. When no negative effects seemed to occur, he finally tried one himself. She had plastered the smuggest expression on her face for the next hour.

  And for good reason. It was delicious. The tastiest food he had ever experienced. It tasted like the sweetest strawberry mixed with the pleasant tartness of a raspberry; it was also hearty and the flesh inside was substantial, like an apple. The berries filled him up fully despite his only eating a handful. He made sure to shove more into his provisions sack – a lined bag that would preserve food for longer than burlap.

  Felicity must have seen the look on his face as he ate or heard his unintentional ‘gods above’ comment when he took his first bite. “It tastes so good because this is the food your ancestors ate. They were vegetarians. All of the food in this Realm is tailored to your tastes and dietary needs.”

  So that’s why meat never agreed with me, Tristan thought as he recalled many pain-filled nights after meals when his stomach rumbled and turned. Another reason why he was looked down upon by his siblings and the least favorite of his father’s children. Nobles enjoyed meat, and he tried to avoid it as much as possible.

  It had resulted in him being even more ostracized than he was already. Especially on court days where he would be among the other children of nobility.

  As he kept walking he noticed the distinct lack of noise in the environment. Wanting to fill the silence, he asked Felicity a complex question. “I got here and now I’m an Elf. Is there…anything else this Realm is doing to me just because I’m here?”

  “You’re the first Elf to visit, so all of the essence that suffuses this place has been infused into you. It’s what triggered your Elf bloodline to come out and…overpower your Human one. But that Human one is still there.” She looked at him with a curious expression, “Not sure what that will do. Or what the rest of this essence surging into you is doing. Can you feel it?”

  “Feel what?” Tristan blanched, hoping no more spontaneous changes to his physical appearance were occurring without his knowing.

  “Never mind then. Maybe The Matriarch can tell you more. What I can say is that it has been twelve-thousand years since an Elf visited.”

  “Who is this Matriarch exactly?” Tristan asked, hoping to learn a bit more about what was likely a powerful fairy dragon, as he pushed aside the disquieting thought that this Realm was maybe changing him more than it already had.

  “She’s amazing! The Realm Protector. If she wasn’t here, then this whole place would be one of the Lost Realms.” She giggled, “Plus, she’s my mom. Well, she’s a lot of the fairy dragons’ mom. Not all of us, but most. But I’m one of her favorites.”

  “Got it.” Tristan replied feeling a pit in his gut. A Realm Protector was the strongest entity inside of a given Realm. The Mortal Realm had its seven gods, and most other Realms had a handful. A single Realm Protector? That means this Matriarch is also a powerful essence-weaver. “What type of spells can she do?” he asked, hoping to use Felicity’s chattiness to learn something more about a possible foe.

  “Not a ton, just like most of us. But she can’t draw the essence of the Realm like a Winterbloom can!”

  Tristan wanted to ask what a Winterbloom was, but the idea of ambient essence in this Realm intrigued him. Some Realms were so infused with the magical energy of creation that it caused changes to the environment…or even creatures. “What else is this ambient essence doing to me?” Tristan asked, assuming his earlier changes were due to this new revelation.

  “Well…just taking an educated guess because I am very smart…your body was fully shifted to your Elven heritage. If you don’t feel an essence crucible in your torso right now…try something. Just close your eyes and imagine a spinning ball in the center of your torso.”

  “No tricks,” Tristan instructed as he still held Felicity by the neck – gently, but enough that she couldn’t wriggle free.

  “I promise! I’m interested to see where this goes.” Felicity sighed, having resigned herself to being held captive a few hours ago.

  Tristan nodded, satisfied, closing his eyes and steadying his breathing. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Finding his center just as his grandfather had taught him to calm his nerves. Then, he envisioned a ball like the one some of the children at court used to hit with a wooden stick. Okay…now to try and spin it.

  The ball he was visualizing turned a silvery hue in his mind’s eye, flecked with fractals of icy-blue. He could feel a soothing coolness spread through his chest, and when he opened his eyes, he gasped and saw a small aura of silvery light flowing from his hands. “By the gods!” he shouted out, excited, and felt giddy. “What was that?”

  “Essence! The color is different for everyone. Fairy dragons get rainbows. Because we are the b-e-s-t best.”

  The swirling silvery substance faded into nothingness, but Tristan felt the…pulse of this essence crucible next to his heart, beating slightly out of time. It was unnerving, since the sensation was entirely new to him, but he could feel the rhythms begin to synchronize. Did I just get an essence crucible? How?! It takes a huge infusion of essence!

  His father’s words echoed through his mind, “I’ll never pay for an essence elixir for a half-breed like you. You won’t be a true dragonslayer without one. Let that be a lesson to you that you are not truly my child.”

  Tristan could not wait to get home and shove the fact that he could now become an essence-weaver into his horrid father’s face. “Okay…what else is happening to me while I’m here?” Tristan asked, a bit more excitedly and far more optimistic.

  “Well, if you’re like the Elves that used to live here, enough exposure will improve your body and mind. Back then, there were tens of thousands of Elves, each getting a little bit of essence from the Realm. But you’re getting all of it. Speed, strength, agility, how fast you can think, how fast you can react, your senses, even enhancing longevity.”

  Tristan scratched his head. Those were a lot of changes, but they all sounded fantastic. Being stronger? he thought. Faster? I’ll be able to beat Betram in a practice bout! Maybe even Gisele! I can be a far better dragonslayer than father could ever be. He sucked in a deep breath and let it out equally as slowly. “How long do you think I could live?”

  “I don’t know,” Felicity shrugged, tiny shoulders moving in his grip. “Ten-thousand years? More? Less? I’m going off what I’ve learned from The Matriarch here; not any actual experience.” She sounded genuinely excited despite her predicament being gripped by the neck.

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  Mother said that Elves live to two-thousand years old on average…so if Felicity is right and telling the truth…I might live five times the lifespan of a normal Elf.

  “That’s…a lot to take in,” Tristan replied. And it was. Not just the fact that he now had an essence crucible and with training could become an essence-weaver, and not just that he seemingly had all of his physical traits increased drastically…but now also the fact that he would live for a long, long time. Longer than he had ever thought he would being a half-breed Elf.

  If she’s telling the truth…I’m going to live an incredibly long life. He was only eighteen years old, and most of that was spent learning how to fight dragons – partly book learning, partly using giant puppets that his grandfather had designed to train against the beasts.

  “Well, yeah. You’re the only thing here that can take in all that magic energy. You might be able to grow your essence crucible capacity to really big! Maybe as big as a Realm Protector, like The Matriarch! Most people die before it gets too big, though. Oooh! And if it got big enough, then when my mom beats you up, she would get so much stronger from harvesting yours!”

  Tristan tutted and considered the tiny dragon. His entire worldview was changing very, very quickly as he traveled this strange Realm with the creature he had spent years hunting so desperately. He knew enough about essence crucibles and how harvesting them worked. It was why he was so happy that he had one now. He could gain physical might – speed, strength, endurance – from killing dragons instead of just hunting them for parts to sell. But…that begged the question: why these fairy dragons would leave this safe-seeming Realm to travel the Mortal Realm?”

  “Why do you fairy dragons leave, anyways? And where’s…anything else? There are no other animals I’ve seen. Or bugs.” It’s been quiet except for us talking and my footfalls. Plus, the clattering of my gear.

  “It’s fun to get out and about. Living in a paradise can get boring, so traveling around in the Mortal Realm is like going on a vacation. Experiencing danger, possibly suffering injury? It’s exciting!”

  Seems foolish, Tristan thought. If I lived in paradise I’d never want to leave. “What about other animals and bugs?”

  “Only Elves lived here with the fairy dragons. Well, there were others, before my time. But they were sealed away. We were the faithful companions. Your ancestors used to ride us around, when we got larger.” She wiggled a little in his grip, “Yeah, nope. Not strong enough to lift you up.” She then growled slightly, “Not that I’d let you ride on me, anyways, you big meanie!”

  The idea of flying on dragonback was something that had never occurred to Tristan. Dragons were terrifying beasts, present company excluded. Monstrosities of sinew and claw, covered in scales that only the strongest magic or specially artificed weaponry could harm. The idea of riding on one was terrifying…and yet the more he looked at the fairy dragons, the more he knew they weren’t anything like the dragons from the Elemental Realms. These things were more like house pets with wings than a force of nature made of claws, teeth, and fury.

  He had trained his whole life to be a dragonslayer, and that continued to pull him away from that idea of riding a dragon. He sighed and kept bouncing along the odd mushroom-covered ground. The travel was comfortable, and his feet found sure footing every step. Like he was born to travel on these plants.

  It was second nature.

  They eventually got across the plains and to the river that Tristan had spotted from afar. Only, it was not a river with water. Some blue, viscous fluid filled it that was goopy and flowed not in a true stream but little, gelatinous chunks. It looked like a stew with no meat or potatoes in it; just chunky water. “What’s that?”

  “It’s clearcool. Just take a sip.”

  Tristan once more thought better of blindly trusting Felicity, and dipped the creature’s head down, “You first.”

  “Sure!” she began extending a long tongue that transformed into a funnel before his eyes, and then loudly slurped up the liquid. “Ahh! Refreshing.”

  Tristan leaned down, cupped his hand, and scooped up some of the weird, jelly-like substance. Taking a slight lick of it, he felt a rush of energy, and his thirst was instantly quenched. It was cooling, like a subtle mint, and he gobbled it down. The consistency was a little goopier than the puddings they would have on feast days, and yet it trickled down his throat like water.

  “Just trust me, alright? You can trust me just fine.”

  Tristan wiped his mouth, “Which direction?”

  “Follow the river.” She sighed, “Still planning on holding my neck this whole journey?”

  “Yeah. Until I talk to this Matriarch.”

  “Fiiiine.”

  Tristan began to see more of the flying fairy dragons in the skies above. At first, he was a bit unsettled from the sheer number of them, but they weren’t anything like the pictures his grandfather showed him. Creatures were covered in armored scales, with muscles that could crush worked stone like a twig underfoot, whose teeth and claws were the length of swords and daggers.

  These things were like flying foxes. Rather cute and nonthreatening.

  They regarded him with curiosity, flying by and chatting with Felicity, cracking jokes at her that her new friend was into ‘rough stuff’. The female fairy dragon responded with withering, witty remarks and repartee that made Tristan chuckle from how over-the-top the insults were.

  He even went flush and red at the ears when they began using quite crude and foul language that the commoner class used. The jokes were scathing, and even bordered on the edge of atrocious. He found himself giggling and laughing at some of the raunchier jokes – because he had never heard such foul terms and innuendo.

  Almost as if their joking nature was made for him. Which was odd, because he was never very amused by clowns, jesters, or court troupes on festival days. They did not seem to care much about this Felicity in his grip, in mortal peril. If anything that made her the subject of further jokes that she was caught by someone. She drooped slightly at one particular nasty comment, and for a brief second, Tristan pitied her.

  The sky began to shift to warmer, darker tones of crimson and brown. “Night is falling,” Felicity shouted over the din of the other fairy dragons. “Not that you need to sleep here. If you want to, though, the dreams are fantastic.”

  “How much farther?”

  “See that giant tree? That’s where we live.”

  Tristan nodded and kept walking along the river towards the enormous tree in the distance. The whole time, he was asked questions by more fairy dragons. And their sizes varied; anywhere from the size of a mouse to that of a large dog.

  Part of him wanted to answer everything they said, but another part said that they were dragons and should not be trusted. He ignored them and kept walking, and Felicity engaged in some banter with them as Tristan continued.

  Soon enough he reached the base of the tree. It was gigantic, easily rising three hundred feet into the sky, and spreading out over the surrounding forest as if a protective umbrella. Flakes of snow were falling far up on the highest branches, but down on the ground it was the perfect temperature of spring’s mid-thaw.

  There were knot holes all about, and the fairy dragons were congregating, laughing, making jokes, and using magic to create all manner of fantastic, artistic illusions. The sheer number of them made him feel quite overwhelmed. If they wanted to all charge him he would probably die, and so he chose to keep his sword sheathed and not make any sudden movements.

  And he saw big fairy dragons. The size of horses. Dwarfing all of them, however, was one that looked just like Felicity; but it was the size of a small house. The size of the adult dragon puppets his grandfather made him train against. It filled him with a sense of tension, a knotted ball in his stomach that refused to let go. He felt nauseous, but pushed it down, not wanting to show weakness to this creature.

  The creature eyed Tristan curiously and cracked a mischievous smile, “Felicity, what did you bring home?”

  “A half-breed Elf.”

  “And why did you do that?”

  “He was hunting me!”

  The enormous fairy dragon lowered her head, and Tristan instinctively went for his sword. She laughed, and her voice was deep and matronly, “Half-Elf? You look like a full one. Must have had the human side pushed out of the way for the superior blood of your true lineage.”

  “Can you tell me how to get home without waiting one-hundred years?” Tristan asked a bit nervously. This thing looked like it could crush him with a casual swipe, but thankfully, it seemed to be in a good mood.

  “I’d be happy to if you would let my daughter go. But we also have items to discuss, child of the Fey Realm.”

  Knowing that it was probably the wisest thing to do, Tristan immediately let Felicity loose, and she flapped up to one of the branches overhead. The tiny dragon immediately began gabbing with other fairy dragons and sharing about her heroic experience of fighting off his assault, and their years-long ‘game of hide and seek’. Tristan ignored her chatter. “There, I let her go. Now hold up your end of the bargain.”

  The Matriarch raised her head slightly, “I smell something on you. Something…ancient. What is your family name?”

  “Anorox.”

  “Father’s side? Patriarchal society?”

  Tristan nodded. “Yes. The father’s name is passed down unless the mother’s family is really prominent.”

  The Matriarch harrumphed and her face shifted from one of mischief to a serious demeanor. “I assume that your mother did not come from prominence, then. Your blood…it smells…tell me your mother’s family name - before she took her husband’s.”

  “Oh. That one is Winterbloom.” The entire grove in front of the tree went silent. Every set of eyes stared at Tristan. “Did I say something wrong?”