#
Neen glided down towards the street from the front landing of the club. She tried to use her wings to power her flight as little as possible. She had left her envirocoat behind, it was already painful enough with her injured wing without the heavy coat, not to mention it was next to useless with a neat bullet hole in the wing sleeve. It annoyed her nonetheless that her wings were now soaking up the pollution. She touched down a little more heavily than normal, jarring her knees and causing her to curse loudly. Sliver fluttered down beside her.
"You ok?"
"I'm fine," she grumbled, "I just don't know why we need to walk."
"Because you are no use to me in a fight if you can't manoeuvre and the longer you stay off your wings the quicker that balm will work," snapped Sliver. "You're worse than a child sometimes!"
"Bite me Sliver!"
"I already did that and you didn't like it. Now let's get moving before this place gets overrun with undead."
Neen unfurled the map and studied it in detail as they walked. It showed a complex labyrinth of tunnels and chambers under the city with the outline of each city block overlaid in light blue ink as a reference guide to the surface.
"If I didn't know better I'd say this looks like the ruins of old Myriad, before the wars and before the humans came to rebuild it. It used to be a trade town for many races until it was raised to the ground by the orcs," said Neen.
"So?"
"Well, if this map is correct there is a lot more of the ruins still in existence under the city than I thought possible."
"After what I've seen in the last 48 hours I'd believe anything. Which way is it?" asked Sliver impatiently.
"This way," she said pointing up the street towards the north side of the city.
As the pair moved north they initially found the streets empty save the chaotic mess that a frantically evacuating populous leaves behind. They had not travelled more than a few blocks, however, when the streets started filling with stationary vehicles impatiently sounding their horns, all headed north as well, in an attempt to flee the city. Another block further and the streets were in complete gridlock. People were abandoning vehicles and filling the sidewalks. It was rapidly becoming too dangerous for the two diminutive fairies to continue on foot.
"Times up Neen," ordered Sliver as he launched into the air, rising quickly to a third story height so as to also avoid the bulk of the fairy traffic as their brethren joined the evacuation. Nobody it seemed was very keen to stick around and to be attacked by undead or blown up by the military.
The pair flew onwards towards their destination. However they quickly found that in order to avoid the attention of the blue coats, who were trying to direct the air evacuation with some semblance of order, they had to take a very winding path from street to street and block to block as they went.
The pair came to a large intersection and hovered cautiously, close up against a nearby skyscraper. On the other side were a group of three heavily armed bluecoats forming an airborne roadblock. In front of them was a large winding queue of fairies hovering impatiently and waiting to be let through. The bluecoats were shouting at the fairies in the line to drop their belongings before they would let them pass.
The pair waited quietly as they watched the bluecoats to ensure they were fully occupied with the crowd so they could slip down the side street to find another way forwards. Neen looked down onto the street below just as a precaution and she was glad she did. She nudged Sliver urgently with her elbow.
"Street corner, left," she said quietly to him.
Sliver looked down to see a half blood elf staring back up at them. He would have been impossible to pick in amongst the crowd only that he was a solitary point of calm in the pandemonium below. He was being very obvious, a little too obvious. It was almost like the half blood was bait, but for what? Then he realised.
"Up! Go, go, go!" he shouted at Neen as he surged upwards, dragging her with him the first few feet until she got her own wings going. A fraction of a second after they had moved an arrow thumped into the wall of the skyscraper where they had just been hovering. The arrow was enchanted with fire magic and sizzled its way deep into the concrete wall. It was followed in rapid succession by more arrows that landed dangerously close above below and beside them as they hurtled upwards.
When finally they were out of range they slowed and looked for their assailant. It was an elvish marksman who had been on the rooftop of the five storey building on the opposite side of the street. Neen flipped him the bird and turned back to see that although Sliver had stopped ascending, he was a long way ahead of her and continuing at speed towards their target. Neen did her best to keep up with her injured wing, gritting her teeth as she flew.
Much to her relief they did not have that much further to go and when they finally reached their destination, a subway entrance, she dropped rapidly down into the crowded street and flew directly inside. Thankful to rest her injured wing she landed on the empty platform of the subway station to find Sliver already dropping down onto the tracks.
"Which way?" he asked.
Neen consulted the map carefully again.
"Left. There should be a service tunnel in about two hundred metres."
Neen climbed gingerly down onto the tracks and followed Sliver until they found the service tunnel. They followed it until they reached a sewer line entry and then climbed down. It was too dark in the sewer even for their fairy night vision so Neen grabbed a small flashlight from a pocket and screwed it onto the underside of the barrel of one of her pistols. They followed the sewer about thirty meters until they came to another exit above them.
More than happy to get away from the disgusting stench Neen lead the way up the ladder, climbing to avoid the use of her wings. Sliver cautiously hovered behind her, drawing the two mini sub-machine guns from his chest holsters. When they reached the top Neen switched off her flashlight. It took an effort from the pair of them to slide away the heavy metal cover. Neen winced at the noise of rusted metal sliding against rusted metal.
"So much for the element of surprise," cursed Sliver under his breath. "On the count of three you go left I'll go right."
Neen nodded and on three burst as hard and as fast from the sewer as her injured wing would allow. As soon as she cleared the exit she broke hard left. She did not get far and neither did Sliver as a heavy and very sticky net fell upon them both, dragging them down to the ground.
"Neen, I'm pinned by the net, can you reach my sword?" asked Sliver urgently, with almost a hint of panic. Neen did her best, but also found herself stuck well and truly by the net which was covered in a sticky blue substance. She was still holding the one pistol in her right hand, but it was stuck at a strange angle that she could not adjust. They were both completely helpless. The only thing that was likely to get them out of this situation was magic. Sliver cursed loudly in frustration as he tried in vain to extract himself from the net with a violent burst of thrashing about.
"Sliver shut up and let me think would you!" she demanded as she racked her brain for a useful spell. An idea finally came to her and she started speaking the words of a spell in the ancient tongue.
"Really? You are going to try and break the net by using the sewer water to freeze it? I have been living in exile down here for a long time, but that's still disgusting," interrupted a voice from the darkness beyond.
Neen reacted by firing several rounds from her pistol in the hope that the one direction she could shoot just happened to have their assailant’s forehead in the way.
"Tsk tsk, dirty little sewer pixies not satisfied in coming to rob me now you bring weapons with you. Looks like I'll be feasting on fried pixie tonight."
"We're not pixie's we're fairies!" retorted Neen, angered by the insult and frustrated by her inability to move as she tried even more feverishly to free the hand holding the pistol.
"Illuminate!" said the voice and suddenly the chamber was filled with a dull orange glow. The light came fro
m a flame that appeared to be burning atop of a huge red crystal at the end of a metal staff that was held by their captor. Neen's eyes opened wide as she got a good look at him. He was tall and lanky like an elf, his eyes and ears were elven too. However that was where the resemblance stopped. His skin was mostly green, with patches of white and his jaw was heavy set and square like that of an orc. He even had two elongated lower canines that jutted up just above his lower lip. "Hmm so you are, that's even worse, meddling little creatures you are. On the other hand you do have more meat on you and I am getting sick of pixie meat."
"Stall him!" whispered Sliver as he continued to struggle against the net, albeit more subtly than before.
"We are not here to rob anyone we are here to find an elf called Heliodor. There is an orcish wizard who has stolen a spell that allows him to raise the dead and we need his help to reverse the spell."
"What did you say?" asked their captor as he rapidly came closer and knelt down to get a better look at Neen, all carefully out of the line of fire of her pistol.
"We have come to seek help from the elf Heliodor," repeated Neen.
"I am Heliodor!" he growled baring all his sharp yellow orc like teeth. "And don't call me elf! Now tell me who really sent you and why or I will burn your little friend here well and truly before he grabs his little sword."
Neen watched in alarm as Heliodor brought the magical flame on the end of his staff very close to Slivers wings.
"I already told you why we are here! An orcish wizard stole a potion from the elves and raised an undead army. They have already taken over half of the city above and whatever has possessed them is contagious! Clix sent us to find you. He said you are the only hope we have at reversing the spell!"
Heliodor reacted by bringing the flaming crystal close to Neen's face, shining it directly into her eyes. It was so bright that her natural reaction was to close them, but she found she could not. Heliodor leaned down very close to her and stared deeply into her eyes as though looking for something. It was hypnotic. Then just when Neen thought he was going to burn her face with the flame he pulled it away again and his shoulders slumped.
"I really was hoping you were lying little one, but there are none on this world who can deceive the flame. Dissolve!" he ordered and the net that bound them suddenly liquefied.
In a flash Sliver was in the air with his sword drawn and its blade already glowing red and about to go white hot. Heliodor jumped back and raised his staff, pointing the flaming crystal end directly at Sliver's chest. He growled fiercely. Neen quickly jumped between the two.
"Sliver no!" she yelled. "We need his help remember!"
"He's no elf, he is some sort of orcish abomination and he's dead!" yelled Sliver shoving Neen back out of the way.
"You were smart not to go for your guns little one," mocked Heliodor. "Tathra is a powerful sword, but do you really think you can hurt me with it?"
Sliver answered by flying at Heliodor and swinging his sword hard towards the much larger elf-orc hybrid. Heliodor responded by dodging backwards and swinging his staff down onto the sword.
"Extinguish!" he commanded and Sliver's blazing sword turned instantly back to cold steel as the staff contacted it. The sword went instantly cold, so cold that Sliver was forced to drop it. He suddenly found himself defenceless with the flaming crystal pointed to within an inch of his face.
"Stop!" yelled Neen as she leapt into the air and pushed both her pistol barrels against the side of Heliodor's head. "And if you're thinking my little pistols can't hurt you, think again unless you are immune to dark elixir."
Heliodor slowly lowered his staff and Neen followed suit with her guns.
"We don't have time for any more games. Where is the elf Heliodor?" demanded Neen.
Heliodor spun and faced Neen angrily.
"I am Heliodor and don't call me elf!" he yelled.
"OK, orc then."
"I am no orc either!"
"What the hell are you then? Clix told us Heliodor was an elf."
"That doesn't surprise me. That conniving little worm must not like you if he sent you here without telling you about me."
"Don't worry, the feeling is mutual. If I cross paths with him again he is dead," growled Sliver.
"Perhaps we have more in common than I first thought," replied Heliodor smiling briefly. "Clix has been exploiting my situation for years in return for trying to help me with my affliction. I have been waiting for the day that I don't need him anymore."
"Well I am glad you and Sliver will have some male bonding to do over the best way to torture Clix, but we need to know if you can help us or not? " insisted Neen.
"Yes I will help you. Come, let me reset my trap otherwise I will be up to my knees in pixies. Then we can go to my humble home. I have something there that I need to show you."