by Aaron Crash
Ymir had never seen such a thing himself, but he’d read about Glow Rain before. No one knew where it came from, and it was very rare.
Della came out, a line of worry creasing her eyebrows. “Glow Rain, at this school? I can’t believe it. It’s been fifty years since there’s been Glow Rain anywhere. We’ve got to be sure we’re not the cause of this.”
Ymir nodded. “Could this be the uncanny fruit of our spellwork? I don’t think it likely. However, if others have tried to grow the Ventita Fructus, it might explain the phenomena.”
He had another explanation, though, one that came from somewhere closer to home. “Could these be the wogglesparks that Ziziva talked about? I’m wondering if her glimmertime is over.”
Della’s jaw clenched. “I don’t fucking know. But if this is the Glow Rain, and if it does what it has done before, things might spiral out of control. What a terrible time to be considering vempors, demons, and dragons.”
Ymir didn’t disagree, but as someone who was cursed with magic, there never seemed to be a good time for such considerations. He was, however, intrigued by what the Princept had said. While he’d read about it, he couldn’t remember the chaos the Glow Rain caused.
Was this the dire danger that Ziziva warned them about?
If it was, it certainly was pretty.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
ZIZIVA HONEYGOOD WASN’T quite sure when she was dreaming or when she was awake. Her consciousness seemed to be like her breath. Inhaling brought dreams. Exhaling put her back in Ribby’s room in the Zoo.
The fairy girl dreamed of when she lived on the Sondus River just down the way from the Majestrial. The Fayee had built wonderful little cities into the banks, magical places of water, sand, flowers, and trees. They used powerful Fayee magic to keep the trees alive while they created rooms inside the trunks.
In Four Roads, on Long River, the Fayee built their city in the bricks along the river at the center of town, in a series of rooms with windows that looked like rocks from the inside. It was fun to go flying down in your Winkle Self and disappear under a bridge like a sparrow. And it was easy to make anyone forget what they saw, and so the hidden cities remained hidden.
Their opulence came from centuries of business fun, usury, and other financial games. The Fayee slept on small, comfortable beds, wore the finest silks, drank from gold, ate off silver, and played games of chance with undergems that could’ve bought whole provinces.
Ziziva would wake from her dreams of her river homes to hear the trickle of Tori’s ingenious water fountain. The happy little dwab had tapped into the pipes serving the college, and so they had a very good water source. Tori didn’t think they’d get into trouble, but she wasn’t going to ask. There was an old Morbuskor saying, something about it being better to ask for forgiveness than permission.
Various parts of the fountain took up the entire room. She had her little spot in the corner, on blankets, on pillows, listening to the water, smelling the water, and feeling the vapor on her skin. She’d get so cold she’d pile the blankets on top of her, and then she’d get so hot she’d kick them all off. Or she’d throw one in a basin, get it soaked, and then curl up in it until the blanket dried or the chills started.
The pains in her belly were gone, and now all she felt was warmth.
She laughed. She cried. She called out for Ymir, but he’d gone to that stupid party at the Reception Room in the Imperial Palace. He shouldn’t have gone. She was going to give birth any minute. Or it might be another week. Either way she giggled because she had no idea what would happen.
Awake now, Ziziva looked down to see the wogglesparks inside her womb. The little specks of light glowed pink under her skin. Every once in a while, one would make her belly bulge.
She slept. She woke. Her body felt swollen and tingly, especially her nipples, and she thought about masturbating, but she was too tired. Where was Ymir? She couldn’t remember.
She moved her big, swollen body and put her face in the fountain. The water felt so good, so cooling. She wanted to transform into her Winkle Self and go diving into the cold water. She couldn’t. Her belly was too big. There were too many wogglesparks in her womb.
She knew her glimmertime would be violent. She hoped it wouldn’t be, and so she didn’t warn anyone. And what could she say? How could she describe the chaos? She couldn’t. She had to keep this one last secret or else Ymir might get angry. Jennybelle might poison her—she was a swamp witch after all. And swamp witches loved using their bloodcross mushrooms to murder.
Gatha might kill her as well, but the she-orc would use a sword. One of those damn prokta blades. No, the prokta blades couldn’t kill.
Tori and Lillee were nice, and through that long evening, they kept checking on her. Tori wiped some of the sweat off her, worried over her, gave Ziziva her drink.
Lillee came in to soothe her, and then Lillee kissed her, thinking that a kiss would make Ziziva forget about her glimmertime, but Ziziva didn’t want to be touched in a sexual way by anyone, except for Ymir, but he was gone, busy with the assemblage. Busy being important.
She had to warn them about Queen Deedee. Once Dillyday Everjewel realized that Ziziva was pregnant, and that she’d shared so many secrets with Ymir and his harem, she would want them all dead.
Maybe she wouldn’t. Queen Deedee was her mother. She might not want to kill her own daughter. That might save Ziziva. No way to know.
Ziziva slipped out of the fountain and curled up, miserable, on a pile of wet pillows. It was dark now outside the window. It was so dark, and for so long, in the winter. The fairy girl slipped into another dream. Ziziva found herself on the beach below the Sea Stair Alley. It was time to train, but she couldn’t stand for long. She kept trying to fight Gatha, while at the same time taking care not to let the she-orc’s prokta blade come anywhere near her belly, full of her wogglesparks.
The dream became a memory.
The fairy was fighting with Gatha, and it was a morning when Ribby wasn’t watching. Nor was Ymir there. It was near the day when Ziziva first swelled. They’d been training together, for weeks on end, six days a week, but not on Sundays, because Gatha liked lighting Sunday fires with Ymir so both could remember their ancestors and keep their memories alive. It was a sacred time for them both.
Ziziva hadn’t been Gatha’s only student. There were some days when Jennybelle would come to have Gatha teach her some basics on knife fighting. The fairy girl loved the swamp woman’s Sapphire Fang. It was a lovely knife. Jennybelle was also cultivating a certain poison spell, though she was loath to talk about it.
Tori was working on her stone armor and wielding a hammer, and Gatha was skilled enough to offer the dwab some advice. The she-orc was less helpful with Lillee, who had worked on some interesting Flow magic involving a bow and arrows. Gatha didn’t have much patience for archery. She didn’t find it that honorable.
Mostly, though, it was just Ziziva and Gatha, alone, fighting.
The memory hit the fairy girl hard that long night of her glimmertime.
On the beach, Ziziva parried several of Gatha’s attacks, using one of the defensive poses she’d learned.
But then Gatha struck her in the face with her fist.
The fairy had been hit in the nose before by the cruel Gruul woman. Ziziva hated the feeling of being hit in the face. There was pain, yes, but more than that, it felt unfair and undignified to be struck in such a tender place.
That day, the fairy dropped her sword and both hands went to her face. “Ow, Gatha, no fair. We’re not learning fists, we’re learning swords. It hurt!”
Gatha swung her sword and hit the fairy’s slender leg.
Ziziva buckled and wound up on her knees in the sand as new rain came splashing down on them. The fairy didn’t mind the cold and rain—growing up around water, in winter as well as summer, Ziziva burned with heat. Fairies could withstand cold and wet very well because they had so much of the Divine Verum Spark in them.
&
nbsp; Gatha laughed meanly. “Will getting disemboweled not hurt, Ersh?”
Ersh. Ziziva was still a sword worm. In the eyes of Gatha, she hadn’t progressed, not even a little bit. “I suppose so, Gatha,” the fairy started to say. She’d forgotten. “I’m sorry—”
Too late. Gatha popped the hilt of her prokta blade into Ziziva’s skull. “You will address me as Gishe. Say ‘Kaiyee, Gishe!’”
“Kaiyee, Gishe!” the fairy replied right on cue. She had to play the game or she’d get hit again. And she didn’t want to get hit. Not ever.
“Will you fight, or will you die?” Gatha snarled.
The fairy knew if she stayed kneeling, the she-orc would just keep striking her. Ziziva snatched her sword out of the dirt, backed away, and held it up in a defensive stance. “No, Gishe, I will fight, and I will die. I will laugh, so I don’t cry!”
Ziziva didn’t care that she’d slipped into the Winkle Tongue. Blood dripped from her nose into her mouth, which was awful, but it also dripped off her chin to stain her white dress, a simple thing that didn’t hide much. Gatha insisted she wear something. Ziziva could’ve easily fought naked if that hadn’t been the case.
Gatha charged, and sword rang off sword. “What do you mean you will fight, and you will die?”
The fairy knew the answer to this question. It had been her first lesson. “I fight and die, Gishe, and I will giggle so I don’t cry. Every battle is to be our last, and there is no future, only a glorious past. We will win every fight and stand bloody in the day. We will only be taken by the night when death has her say.”
Gatha’s sword point dipped. She was confused for a second, and then she laughed. “Death is a greedy cunt, she is. If you learn nothing more from me, you’ll learn that. To turn that first lesson into a rhyme is sacrilege. And it’s brilliant.”
Ziziva saw her chance. She sped in, knocked away the Gruul’s sword, and then threw a punch of her own.
Gatha blocked it easily, saw that the fairy was off-balance, and yanked on her arm until Ziziva went face-first into the sand.
“You’re learning, Ersh. You’re learning.”
Ziziva didn’t feel like it. and now she had sand sticking to the blood on her face. She knew if she asked Gatha if she could wash it off, she’d either get hit or berated, so she leapt to her feet, and the training continued.
Now Gatha wasn’t home, and neither was Ymir, and even cruel Jennybelle was gone.
Ziziva pushed away all the wet pillows and blankets and curled up around her big belly on the bare stone floor. The lights were getting brighter in her belly, turning the skin gold instead of pink.
It was time...she felt the urge to push, and she didn’t want to end her glimmertime alone. No, she needed her sisters, her fairy sisters. Lillee and Tori wouldn’t understand.
Ziziva now realized she’d been so foolish to abandon her people. But who could she have trusted? Zorynda? Professor Lola? No.
Ziziva called out weakly, miserable. “Help. Help little me. Help this poor little fairy.”
Tori called down. “Zee, is that you? Did you say something?”
The fairy couldn’t repeat her call.
It was Lillee that came. When the elf girl saw the bright lights, she immediately called for Tori.
The dwab came running. Tori and Lillee made her a little bed and propped her up against the wall in front of the fountain. Jennybelle was there as well, standing by the dark window, a look of worry on her face. She was still dressed up from the party. Ziziva had no idea how long she’d been home.
Tori shouted over to her. “Jenny, go get Ymir. And find Gatha. I bet dollars to donuts she’s in the Scrollery.”
Jennybelle turned and hurried off.
Ziziva was weeping now. She couldn’t help it. She gripped Lillee’s hand. “I don’t want to do this alone. Get the queen. Get Jacinta, maybe. Someone. Anyone. Help me. Help me.”
And then it was time to push.
Tori was between her legs. “Something is coming. It’s pretty glowy. Should it be so glowy?”
The first wogglespark left her, found water, and went racing away into the pipes. The next one came and went zooming up the stairs. With every spark that left her, Ziziva felt a joy. Her crying turned into laughter. She was laughing now, laughing at her silly body, and silly life, and the sparkles that would go everywhere.
Yes, the sparkles would go everywhere because Tori’s fountain was connected to the Majestrial’s water supply.
There would be the Glow Rain, which happened when fairies weren’t careful.
Ziziva hadn’t been careful, and now all of Old Ironbound would pay.
It made her laugh all the harder. Silly wogglesparks. Silly sex. Silly night.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
AFTER MIDNIGHT, THE Honored Princept, Della Pennez, stood in the Illuminates Spire with Ymir, which went against every rule. There were bookcases against the walls filled with forbidden texts, and pedestals across the room with compartments inside. On the pedestals, and inside them, were a variety of magical weapons deemed too powerful to be used safely by anyone, anyone at all. The Fractal Staff lay against a bookcase across the way.
Through the long slits of windows, they could still see the Glow Rain drifting along on the wind.
The only reason why Ymir hadn’t gone racing back to the Zoo was because Della had asked him to go check on their spellwork first. The barbarian was edgy. He wanted to check on his fairy wife and see if the Glow Rain was actually what Ziziva had called her wogglesparks. It was as good an explanation as any.
Ymir and Della stood next to a pedestal, which she’d cleared off, and Ymir’s epic poem, bound in leather, lay on it, with a green plant growing out of the leather. The body of the chameleon was gone, as well as the seed and the coin, consumed by the plant.
Near the top, there had been a flower, but that flower had taken shape into a green bud of a fruit. It was getting larger even as they looked. It would be ripe by dawn, if not before. It would be about the size of a small apple, easily large enough to house a ring.
Della was glad the barbarian was there, even though it broke so many rules. She’d wanted him with her in case some vile thing emerged from the fruit. Or there was a portal opened to another world where mysterious sparkles rode the wind like sanctum fluff. Those specks of light weren’t leaving the campus, however, and they had a way of blowing into buildings.
Della had Gharam’s guards keeping the dignitaries in the Reception Room. Other campus security was going around to make sure scholars stayed indoors. The Princept didn’t want anyone out in the Glow Rain. The effects could be quite powerful, if what she’d read was true.
There had been Glow Rain in the town of Kingwater, on West Lake, fifty years ago. People still told stories of what happened.
Ymir stood with his arms crossed. He did look dashing in his new robes. They were more scholarly than his other, rougher clothes. He smelled very good as well, and she liked to get close to him, to feel the heat from his strong body. Della was feeling especially aroused that night, and she knew after they solved the mystery of the Glow Rain, she would fuck herself silly. Or she’d find Queen Deedee and Jacinta for another fairy orgy.
Strangely, the Fayee had immediately left the Reception Room when they’d seen the sparks all around. That seemed to confirm Ymir’s theory. But where had the fairies gone? To punish Ziziva? They couldn’t know she was in the Zoo. No one knew, and Ymir had cast the Obanathy cantrips to make sure his fairy remained safe.
Della decided she wouldn’t masturbate in her room that night. She’d go down into the Scrollery, to where Gatha rubbed herself to orgasm in the back corner. There the Princept would take care of the tingles between her legs.
It was the Glow Rain giving her such thoughts. It had to be.
Ymir smiled. “Our fruit is ripening. This worked. But according to the almanac, we can’t pick the fruit and open it until it’s ripe, or whatever magic we’re trying to create will be undone. The fruit
isn’t ripe, but it will be soon.”
“Of course that’s right,” Della said. “I just can’t imagine this will work.”
Ymir, never moved by doubt, shrugged. “It worked before with the Crystal Null Ring. It will work now. My poem must not have been too terrible. As for how we’ll craft the eighth ring, I don’t know. There is precious little about it. But we’ll kill that elk when we find it.”
Della found his clan talk so very pastoral. “Yes, so let’s talk of the elk we are hunting this night. If the Glow Rain wasn’t from our work, it must be coming from your fairy.”
Ymir nodded. “Let’s go and find out.”
From below, someone was hammering on the door to Della’s apartment.
The Princept grabbed Ymir and pulled him away from their ripening uncanny fruit. She pulled him down the steps and to her front door. Opening it, she found a flushed Professor Issa Leel. Her eyes went from Ymir to Della and back to Ymir. The elven professor paled. “Yes, I’m sorry, but...Princept, the scholars, below on the first floor—they have lost control of themselves. The Glow Rain drifted inside, and the results are...shocking.”
Della felt cold fear splash into her heart. She’d been caught in her apartment with the barbarian. That might not matter given the nature of the night. What was going on down on the first floor? She wanted to see. She had to see.
Issa Leel led them down the steps, but even as high up as the sixth floor, they heard the gasping, panting, and cries of ecstasy.
From the second floor, Della, Ymir, and Professor Leel gazed down onto the study tables. The specks of light floated around in the air, rolled across the floor, or tumbled lazily down the steps toward the Scrollery.
In Kingwater, fifty years prior, there had been Glow Rain, and it had unleashed the lusts of the entire city. Many tried to keep the depravity hushed. Some thought it was merely an erotic story that perverts like Gatha might like, but no, it was real.
And Della was witnessing the effects now.
