Chapter 24 The Forest of Fairies

"Wait!! Don't hurt me!!" A voice shouts out from a distance as two small hands, one with a green band on the wrist, pokes up out of the bushes. Judging by the size, that's definitely a fairy. Looks like we finally caught a break.

Slowly the fairy flies out of the bushes, hovering just above it and I can see a fairy about the same size as Piccy. Like Piccy, her wings beat in a blur like a bee, but unlike Piccy, she has brown hair that is tied into a bun with a stick going through the middle, and she is wearing a dress made of leaves that cover all the way from her shoulders to her hips. On the pop up above her head, I can see that shes is level 12.

So I can identify even at this distance huh. If I had to guess, I'd say the radius of my mini map is around 250 maybe 300 meters. That's not bad.

"Please... don't hurt me.." The pitch of her voice is high and she is curling up a little, as if she's expecting me to attack.

Seeing how scared she is, I lower the bow and put it away. As I do so, Piccy slowly peeks out from behind my shoulder. "Dilly? Is that you?"

The fairy twitches and her eyes quickly turn to Piccy who is currently hovering above my shoulder. "Miss Piccy?"

Immediately, Piccy loops over my shoulder and fly straight at the other fairy, tackling her. "He hehe he. Good to see you again."

That's one hec of a greeting. It's not like she was flying slowly either. She didn't even slowdown for the impact.

"Ohh.. miss Piccy. I'm so glad your safe." She hugs Piccy tightly while I watched and waited, letting them enjoy their reunion.

Then she looked up and noticed me leaning against a tree, waiting for them to finish. A worried look starts to come over her face again and while keeping Piccy close, she started to slowly fly backwards.

Does she think that I won't notice them as long as they fly away slowly or something?

"Oh yeah!" Piccy breaks free and flies towards me. This, understandably worries the other fairy as she reaches her hands out to stop Piccy.

"This is my new friend. His name is Ether, I've been staying with him for the last few days."

"Hello." I wave.

"Miss Piccy you've been.. staying with a human..?"

"Yep, he was helping me look for the village when we ran into you."

"Miss Piccy, you know we can't let a human know the location of our village!"

Right after she finishes her sentence, a breeze blows across the trees, tossing around fallen leaves causing us to block our eyes. But from under my arm I can see a ball of light that's forming seemingly out of nowhere.

"It is fine. I shall let this human pass." A voice sounds from the direction of the light.

When the brightness fades, the first thing I can see are a pare of big, brilliant butterfly wings that sparkle with the residual light. Black edged wings of perfect symmetry with a streak of black running from the tip of each wing to its base. The black edges fade into purple, then to deep orange, then fades in color as you gets closer to the base of the wings.

When the lights fade further and color finally return to the silhouette, I can see the one in front of me is a fairy bigger than the two here. She has very smooth, finely groomed, light blue hair that is made in to an elaborate wave adorned with colorful decorations. Though her dress is also made of leaves, it looks a lot more well made than the dresses the other two wears, with more colors too. Also unlike the other two, the veins of the leaves are twisted into smooth, elegant patterns all over the dress.

If I couldn't tell that she was important from that alone, she's also level 50, the highest level I've seen so far ever since I got to this world.

The two fairies immediately get down on their knees and Dilly speaks "My queen."

Queen?!

The queen opens her eyes to reveal bright red eyes like brilliant ruby and she nods at the Piccy and Dilly, before finally turning to me.

"Greetings adventurer, my name is Titania Nightrose. I am sincerely grateful to you for bringing my daughter back to us safely. In honor of her return, we will be hosting a small celebration. If you do not mind, and if time permits, perhaps you might join us and give me the chance to properly show you my thanks. And I also do apologize for any trouble that she has caused you thus far. I understand that she can be quite the trouble maker at times."

"Oh please, don't worry about it, you don't need to thank me. Your daughter was no trouble at all, in fact she is a great companion to have during my tra..vels..." Wait! Daughter?! Huh?! What?! If she's a queen and Piccy is her daughter, doesn't that mean that she's a princess?!

And wait, the queen is huge compared to her! Are they really related?

Titania continues, "Oh please, I insist. It will not take much of your time at all."

Piccy, "Yeah! Come on! It'll be fun!"

Hehe. Looks like I don't have much of a choice here do I?

A princess who regularly gets lost in the woods. Sounds almost like the plot for a fairytale.

After I agreed, they lead me deeper and deeper into the forest. Following them, I walked and walked for about an hour but something feels weird. I could swear that I'm walking through the same place over and over again. I'm pretty sure I saw that same tree 5 times already.

It's not like I don't trust them, but this just feels a bit weird.

Then all of the sudden, the light in the forest started to dim slightly. As we walked further, it slowly becomes darker, and darker, and darker...

Titania, "Please stay close to us or else you'll get lost. This part of the forest is enchanted with illusion magic to prevent anyone from finding it."

"Right." The forest doesn't dim any further, and as we get to a certain point of the forest, it starts to slowly lights back up again.

"Here we are." Titania says as the light finally turns back to normal, but I don't see anything. Just more forest.

"Here? But I don't see anything, it's just more forest." Hmm.. wait.. something's here, I can since a lot of magic.

She simply looks at me and smiles, "Please follow me." She flies forward and and just fades in to… something. The two other fairies do the same and they also fade away from sight.

Could this be some kind of barrier? Another illusion magic? Here goes nothing. I take a breath and walk forward.

As I fade in and reach the other side, the scenery chanced from a normal forest into an almost enchanted forest, actually, this probably Is an enchanted forest.

Unlike the normal trees I've seen so far, the trees here all look beautiful, luscious and probably even magical. Most of them have lots of colorful fruits growing on them and I can also see what looks to be bird houses made of vines and sticks hanging from some of the trees.

On the ground there's a thin dirt path that leads into the village made of trees and the surrounding ground is overgrown with luscious green grass, taller than a fairy and beautiful flowers of every color.

Titania, "We have just passed through my barrier. It is our last line of defense to prevent outsiders from finding our village."

Then I noticed shadows on the ground, I look up and against the light of the sun I can see a few birds circling above us. Titania looks at the birds, lifts her hand, and puts it back down in a gesture that tells them to come down or stand down.

The birds comply, flying down in a spiral before landing in succession, forming a row with one bird landing in front of the others. And as they do so, I can see that there are fairies riding on top of the birds.

The fairy who landed in front of the others jumps down and kneels in front of Titania. "Sa les savesee sala ey haiay. Kve sa suou lai a."

'Language skill (Fay)'

Ok let's just learn that real quick. '-1 skill point'.

After greeting Titania, his eyes now looks up at me, inquisitively. Now that he's down here, I can see that he's wearing a leaf helmet and light armor made of leaf with bark plates. On his back he carries a green spear with a wooded spear head. It looks very ornate.

"You may rise. This child is my guest, he has kept my daughter safe when she was lost and now has brought her back to us safely. I would like to express my thanks to him."

"Yes my queen. I shall shall inform the people immediately." And he flies back on his bird and they all take off.

"This way please." She says, leading me into the village.

When I get closer to the village, I can see little heads peaking out from every corner, looking at me. I can see them in the tree canopy, behind the trees, behind blades of grass, behind flower petals, it must be surprising to them to have a human walk into their village.

As my attention is now focused close to the ground, I noticed that most of the trees have mushrooms growing around them, almost as if they were fences, and some of the trees have a door on them. Multiple doors actually. So I'm assuming the fairies live in the trees, or at least use the trees as storage areas or other facilities.

We keep going forward and she leads me to gigantic tree at the end of the path, and this one is Hugeee. First thing I do is look up to see if I can see the top of the tree, but all see are a few stands of light that managed filter through the thick canopy of this one tree. Also on the bottom most branches, I can see what looks to be crystal leaves of reds and yellows, sparking in the light as the winds pass through.

We got close to the trunk of the tree before she turns back to me, lifts her hands and conjure a chair made of vines that grows from the ground.

"Please sit."

When I do so, she conjures a table of vines and wood in between us, another chair for herself and a smaller one for Piccy.

"The preparations will be done shortly. Until then, shall we have a little chat?"

Fairies descend from the canopy and place a shallow wooded bowl in front of each of us, mine bigger than the others at about the size of my hand. Another group of fairies descends with a small wooden teapot? And they place it in the middle of the table. Titania twirls her fingers and levitates the pot towards me. Pouring some for me, then herself, then Piccy.

"Please." she gestures.

I lift it up to my nose and take a deep, slow breath, "This is a pleasant fragrance."

"Huhu. This is tea made from a mix of dried flower petals. A lot of us fairies enjoy it very much." She takes the first sip.

I give it a few more whiffs, taking in the pleasant smell of flowers before taking my sip. It doesn't really have a taste to it, it's almost like warm water but it leaves a very good fragrance in your mouth. There's a tiny hint of sweetness in there, but that's about it. Almost makes me just want to do a long exhale, but that would seem a bit rude..

Titania does a long exhale.

Well, alright... me too I guess.

She smiles, "The urge is strong, isn't it."

"Hehe.. yes it is." Then we started making small talk while waiting for preparation to be ready. All around us I can see fairies flying around, gathering fruits from the branches and bringing them into the trees, as we talked. The topic mostly revolved around Piccy at first, but we eventually ventured on to other, more interesting topics.

....

Through our conversation, I learnt that fairies are considered the guardians of the grove, they are the manager of the ecosystem they live in. If there is a big forest, jungle or anyplace with a large number of trees, chances are, there is a village of fairies in there somewhere. And the size of the village is often dependent of the age of the forest or jungle they live in.

Fairies will help disperse plant seeds and organize the plants in the area, in order to help the forest expand, as well as keep animals and monsters from running rampant in their area of control. That's why a lot of people know about them and respect them. But because they are so few and numbers and are elusive, a lot of greedy people want them to keep as exotic pets or slaves. That's why they hide themselves and take so much caution in letting other races in to their village.

For that reason, most of the fairies here have also never seen any other races. That's why everybody here is staring at me so intently. It's not like they're scared of cautious of me or anything. Their queen was the one who personally brought me into the village after all. They're just very curious. But it still makes me feel uncomfortable.

*Sips* "Leaving matters of us fairies aside for now, I also wish to learn more about yourself. You are quite strong aren't you Ether?"

"Hmmm? What makes you say that?" *Sip*

"Even if they were to walk as close to us as you did, any normal human who enters the enchanted forest would have become scared and confused. However, it seems to have not affected you one bit."

"Eh hehe, you flatter me. I don't think it's anything special really, I myself don't even know why I wasn't affected."

"You are too modest. But the fact that my barrier did not affect you still stands. As you may know, we fairies have an affinity with magic, and higher fairies such as myself can often sense ones magic potential. You are more powerful than you appear, Ether. Perhaps even more powerful than you know." She takes another sip and looks at me. "But if you do not wish to elaborate than I will not pry."

A fairy flies over to us and kneels. "My queen, the preparations are ready."

"Excellent." She stands, "Now let the celebrations begin."