With a flash of blue and a silent zip a hummingbird whizzes past your head and hovers over a bush with red flowers on it. It darts from one flower to another delicately sipping nectar. It is pleasant here, the birds sing, the sun shines and the water trickles over the irrigated rice fields. Workers dot the landscape here and there, some working in fields, others moving barrows full of grain and rice. You feel well rested and healthy, each breath of air renews your very essence and being.
You glance over at Butterfly, who is sat demurely on a nearby rock. She wears a long grey dress and shawl about her shoulders, as if to ward off a chill. When none exist as far as you can tell, the air is warm and smells faintly of incense. Her hair is tied back in a series of plaits, some interwoven with wild flowers. She takes a deep breath before answering you.
"You have been through an ordeal. Your mind was clouded by evil magics which intended you harm. You are safe now and free from any danger. Your friends are safe also and have returned to Luskan. You will join them soon when you have fully recovered and been debriefed." She says with conviction, there is no doubting these words are true and real. She looks at you with her dark brown eyes, one eyebrow raised in inquiry that this information has got through to you.
The hummingbird zips over to her shoulder and warbles something to her.
"I promise to come see your nest soon." she responds and it zips off over the landscape, happily warbling to anyone who would listen.
She smiles and look back towards you. When her words form they are also imprinted for you in your head, so that you may read this again later so that there is no loss of information.
"You are inside the fae realm, this is a pocket that we created for you to exist in" she says lifting an arm to gesture towards the fields and nearby village. The Sun moves slowly towards the far away mountains as the afternoon progresses. "This is the village you were born in, or a recreation of it. It was your mind that we borrowed the images from." She says smiling warmly.
"I am who you think I am, and I am real. I am Princess Pretty Butterfly of the Summer court. What the Humans call Seelie. However we have never physically met and we are not physical lovers. You were deceived by my twin sister Princess Dangerous Butterfly of the Winter court, What Humans call Unseelie. We are identical in our natural forms and as a result she can steal my image to deceive others. We are engaged in shall we say, a family dispute or feud. I am sorry to say you were collateral damage in her eyes and no more than a pawn for her to sacrifice. She harvested your spawn and that of some of your friends, she had intended to use them as," She pauses to think of the right word.
"...Fuel is the only suitable translation. However we stopped her mutations, they are under lock and key now and no longer a threat. However my sister is still at large and we fear she is heading back to her Mistress, who is sadly far out of our reach at this time of year."
"But not yours, you could work for us and relay vital intelligence to us, we could provide you with equipment, weapons and allies that can assist you in your quest. We have friends everywhere and know more about you than you may think. We give you the opportunity here and now to choose, to choose something greater and nobler than you have been before, to join us in the Gateway corps and fight to retrieve all that was lost and reveal all that is hidden."
"Commander Ironfist and the others will debrief you further and make a formal invitation later, However now you are free to relax and rest. There is no time here, so you will not age however time will progress outside it, so do not stay in here forever. There is much work to be done in your realm if we are to save it, Please help us Jing, you are our only hope." She pleads with you looking sincerely earnest with those big brown eyes.
When you wake the next day, you feel ready to take on the world, you spring out of bed and relish what this day brings. After a simple Breakfast, Butterfly comes to fetch you and take you to the council chamber. The transition from your fae realm pocket village to the council chamber involves stepping into a fizzing portal of energy, a tube which snakes across time and space depositing you in a large hall. Marble white pillars and a ceiling so high it has clouds in here and far above that its own sun bathing everything in golden sunlight.
She leads you deeper into this room and you descend into a large amphitheater of marble steps. Along each level there are terminals with images flashing over them, beings of races many of which you do not recognize seem occupied with their task. A few look up as you descend with Butterfly and whisper to each other as you pass. At the bottom is a raised plinth with a semi circle of chairs, each with its own smaller terminal. Sat on these chairs are various humanoids, that seem to carry various animal characteristics. One looks slightly Wolfy with pointed ears and sharp fangs, another has the hooves and horns of a Satyr and a tall man in white with a single horn protruding from his forehead.
You are led into their presence and Pretty Butterfly takes her place at the right hand side of the largest of all of these individuals, he stands with the attitude of one who gives orders, his thumbs hooked into his belt, which carries two fearsome looking axes. He is easily nine feet or more and mainly covered in the thick brown fur of a grizzly bear. He is smiling at you, his voice is a deep baritone rumble that almost sounds like tectonic plates grinding together.
"Welcome Captain Jing to the Gateway corps, I am Commander Ironfist and this is my council of Elders" he says gesturing towards his companions sat nearby. "We are glad you are recovered from your ordeal and willing to meet with us. I understand all of this will be very surreal to you and you may wonder what is real and what is not. We are experts at the unknown and the unfound, we keep our secrets and hold our word, in time if you come to join us, you will learn that the seas we explore are very wild and rough, and the unusual and strange are common place in our line of work." he says as he interlaces his fingers and rests them on his belt.
"We are explorers and guardians of ancient secrets that have been lost, stolen, hidden or put to evil use. We travel across realms, space and time to fulfill our quest and we have been doing this a very very long time. I am the 89th Commander of the Gateway corps. We were originally formed to safeguard the portals that we use to travel to these realms, hence the title Gateway corps. When they were secured we continued to safeguard and protect the realms we explored. saving millions of lives, curing disease ravaged races and allowing life to evolve as it should in peace for all beings. Always trying to maintain our prime directive to not impede the development of a race and not expose them to our knowledge before they are ready to join the Gateway corps Alliance, so a lot of our work is done in secret, with disguise and misdirection our key skills. However at times this requires drastic actions and we are not above killing if there is no alternative. Some beings just should not have been born and deserve nothing more than a quick end." he glances at Butterfly before continuing "Sadly we all have family that we cannot choose and some have nefarious intents. The deception you underwent has been cleansed from your mind and body. However your friends Birel and Stroud are still enthralled by them, we have prepared a potion for you to give them, that will cause some stomach discomfort for a while but will cure them of the malady that ailed you and them. If we do not do this they may succumb at any time to the vile magics of Dangerous Butterfly.
We believe her Mistress is a necromancer of terrible power whom threatens not only your realm but many others, the Gateway corps cannot allow this to continue and we must act now before it is too late. However we are the summer creatures and do not exist long in Winter climates and Luskan and all at that latitude are now very cold as you well know. This aids our enemy they are stronger at this time of year. The Winter court surprised us with their tactics and caught us off-guard, we are rallying our forces, but can make no move against them until spring, by which time the artifacts of the gods as you call them, Will be in the hands of this necromancer. Which would be very bad as they are not just terrible weapons they are control rods for the object we seek. The Evership, it was built by my ancestors and yours and could sail through the stars as easily as you sail with the wind across your oceans. In the wrong hands it would allow our enemies to spread faster than we could contain them with our gatewayst. Its possible they could even close our gateways so we would be stranded across a million planets and realms. This is why we need your help, you can follow them with your friends to the island of Tuern and hopefully help us stop one of the worst cataclysms this entire universe has ever seen, Your actions could save more lives than we have ever done, ours included and we would not be ungrateful to you. As our envoy and spy you would be outfitted with communication and observation devices have access to our intelligence network of spy's and safe-houses and have allies if you need us we can deploy some assistance to your aid. If you want gold and wealth, that can be arranged too. Can I count on you, will you stand with us and fight?"
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