Of Meepits and Dark Faeries: Part Three

Alexa saw Irathatora look out the window and smiled. I’m not as dumb as you think I am, lady, she thought. She looked fondly down at her Meepit which she had christened Meepers. “Good work Meepers! Let’s get Caira. Come on, everybody.” The Meepits followed like an army. In no time, the door was down. Alexa walked in. “Nice place.” Suddenly, she heard a voice.

     “Stop! Go no further.” At the top of the stairs was a Tyrannian Slorg. Alexa almost laughed.

     “What could you do to us?”

     A Meepit looked threateningly at the Slorg.

     “Umm... well...” Bob didn’t have time to say any more. A Meepit attacked him and he was bound in seconds.

     “Now stop right there, Poogle. You’ve made enough mess as it is. Look at my castle.” Irathatora was coming down the stairs. "It's a mess, and you're going to be cleaning it up, once I deal with these Meepits. And that’s if you’re lucky; if you’re not lucky, you’re going in the dungeon, too."

     She sent a jet of light from her hand which knocked out several Meepits, but it hardly made any difference; there were still tons left. She fired at Alexa, but missed, instead knocking out several more Meepits.

     And then the Meepits jumped on her. They managed to wound her severely before Irathatora knocked them out using a spell to drain energy from those touching her. But more came. And more. And eventually Irathatora gave up and fought her way through them to get to a lever, which she pulled.

     "That lever activated a spell which keeps anyone from leaving this house in any way," she said casually. "Now you and all these Meepits are trapped in here, because it also triggers a spell which burns anyone who touches any doorknobs in the house except for me. And I can just leave through one of the doors and you'll be left alone with no way out." She fought her way through the Meepits and quickly went through a door, so that only a few Meepits got through it after her.

     Alexa looked around at the Meepits. "Well, you have teeth, don't you?" she said. "Chew through the door! It's just wood."

     At her words, they began attacking the door.

     * * *

     Caira had regained her energy reasonably and was working on breaking through the door. In the door, there was a window with bars in it, and she was hoping to dislodge the bars and widen the window sufficiently for her to squeeze through. The problem was that it was very strong and fairly magic resistant, but she had figured out that it was mostly the front and back of the door that was magic-resistant and not the middle, which was what she was attempting to manipulate magically. She was using the Faerie ability Burrow in conjunction with the ability Magic Pebbles to eat through the middle of the door.

     Finally, she had managed to eat through enough to dislodge the bars. She grasped a bar and tugged as hard as she could.

     "Ow!"

     The bar collided with her head and she fell hard onto the rock floor. She had been using her ability Air Shield to lift her up sufficiently to work on the door, but it takes fair balance to stay on top of a ball of air, which she had lost when the metal bar hit her head. She got up, recreated the air shield underneath her, and hovered back up to the window. She pulled the other bars out more carefully.

     "Okay, Snow, come here now."

     The Weewoo flew forward, chirping, and settled on the Xweetok's lap.

     "Snowflake, go and fly to Alexa. She might have some paper you can write on, but if she doesn't, chirp or hoot or weewoo in Morse code, okay? I need you to tell her than I'm all right and that I'm in the dungeon. Then could you lead her to me, please?"

     She chirped and "weewooed", and flew through the window.

     Now Caira just needed to make it a little bigger and she could follow.

     * * *

     The work had begun to go faster after she realized that she could use the metal bars as a sort of rudimentary wand, which aided her ability to focus the magic into a certain spot, instead of letting the magic spread, which would weaken it. She still couldn't squeeze herself entirely through, however. She put her head through the window and looked around for weaknesses on the door. However, there wasn't anything but a glowing lock and the hinges to the door.

     Hinges! Of course! Even if they were magic-resistant, it would be a lot less burrowing to do – if you could call it that.

     Caira reached through the window and touched the top hinge with the metal bar and began drilling through it. It didn't take long to get through and the hinge fell off, causing the door to fall forward a bit.

     With an effort, she managed to reach the middle hinge and drilled magically through that one as well, and the door fell forward even more.

     The Xweetok couldn't reach the bottom hinge through the window, but she could if she reached around the side of the door, where the hinges had been.

     She bent her arm somewhat awkwardly and barely managed to touch the bottom hinge and drill through it. Though she couldn't see what she was doing, she could tell when she had done it because the door fell down, with the lock barely holding it up, and leaving plenty of room for Caira to jump out into the narrow hallway.

     She took a few moments to turn a bit of the floor into a pile of magical berries, using an Earth Faerie ability, and to rest. Then she scampered up the stairs, intent on getting to Alexa so they could figure out how to defeat Irathatora and Bob.

     * * *

     A flash of white caught Alexa's eye. "Snowflake, is that you?"

     The White Weewoo stopped and swooped down. She took a moment to glance warily at the Meepit on Alexa's shoulder.

     "I haven't got any paper," said Alexa, "so could you just lead me to Caira?"

     Snowflake nodded and flew off.

     "Keep working on getting to Irathatora," the Poogle called out to the Meepits as she hurried after Snowflake.

     * * *

     Meepits. Loads of them. Were they part of Irathatora's plan? She had heard plenty of stories of Meepits, and none of them good.

     "Alexa!" Caira gasped.

     The Poogle turned around. "There you are!"

     Snowflake landed in Caira's green mane.

     "I just got out of the dungeons," said Caira. "You heard what I yelled to you earlier, right?"

     "How could I not? You're pretty loud."

     "Well, we have to stop them somehow. Do you know what they're using the Meepits for?"

     Alexa laughed. "I'm using the Meepits, Caira."

     Caira's eyes widened. "What are you talking about?"

     "I'm using them to help defeat Irathatora and Bob!"

     Caira stared at her, shocked. "But... how?"

     "My little friend here, Meepers." She patted the Meepit fondly.

     "I've heard a lot about Meepits," Caira said doubtfully, "and they all seem to be evil."

     "Those are just stories, Caira," Alexa said impatiently. "Ninety percent of them are probably not true."

     Caira bit her lip. She supposed that the stories could have been made up. She decided to wait and see if anything happened, but if it did, she wasn't going to put up with it.

     "All right, so what do we do?" Caira asked.

     "Well, the Meepits are going after Irathatora right now. They're bound to have her in no time."

     "And suppose it doesn't work?"

     "Well, we'll have to think of another plan, I guess. But I'm pretty sure it'll work."

     * * *

     Irathatora had taken a healing potion and felt much better now. She was now trying to figure out a way out while avoiding the Meepits.

     THUD.

     The door fell down and Meepits began flooding in.

     "Oh, Jhudora," she said angrily, and rushed to the window, throwing it open. She leaped down and landed easily.

     Unfortunately, the Meepits landed just as easily beside her. Now that she was outside the house, however, she could teleport away. She did so quickly and ended up in Tyrannia.

     She swore loudly. She had accidentally teleported the Meepits along with her!

     The Aisha was full of energy now, however, and she knocked them all unconscious with the wave of a hand.

     She put her hand on a large rock. "This should do nicely, shouldn't it?" she said to the Slorg in her pocket.

     "How should I know?" he asked.

     She teleported them away again, with the rock, and this time they were in Faerieland, inside the palace courtyard.

     She took a healing potion to refresh her (she had just teleported twice, after all) and put a magical illusion over the courtyard. Then she added to that a spell which would give anyone nearby an urge to leave the area.

     Irathatora looked up at the stone figure of the Darkest Faerie. Now she could free her only friend.

     She got to work on the rock, beginning to magically shape it into a replica of the Faerie.

To be continued...