Astra, princess of Aquilaria, awoke to a rough, callused hand slapping her
sternly across the face. Her eyes snapped open to see a rough-featured
bearish man with a warrior's build and intricate blue tatoos, marks of
bravery. He was frantically ripping vines from her arms and legs,
apparently trying to free her. The warrior woman felt strangely drained, as if she had been asleep for days, possibly weeks. She wasn't sure how, but she had a feeling she should recognize the wild- haired man with the long, flowing beard, but she couldn't fathom from where. The forest about her had changed. It was unfamiliar to her now, a strange, nightmarish, and bleak place. "Who...who are you," Astra asked, "what are you doing?" "Though for a long time I forgot myself, I am Aethir MacFionn. As for what I am doing, well, though I do not know who you are, I am doing what I can only guess you did for me. I am freeing you from the dream-roots of the Faerie Rath." Astra's mind was foggy. She knew this should make sense to her, but she could remember none of it. "Tell me, was there anyone with you, warrior-woman? Who else must we save? Also, and here I'm afraid my manners escaped me, but who are ye?" "I...I am Astra," she said, as her mind tried to remember her title, and chose to let discretion win out in introducing herself, "Astra the Cursed. There were..." she trailed off as she strained to remember, vague images of her rescue of the legendary warrior trickling back to her mind, still hazy. "I'd ask how you got a title like that, but we've little time, lass. Now we must hope the others were as strong in resisting the wiles of the Unseelie Court as you were." Astra was confused. If her partial recollections were to be believed, shouldn't the forest be lush again now, fueled by her three companions' dreams? She rubbed her temples as she followed Aethir, squinting at him. For just the briefest of moments, the merest flicker, he was not one man, but three. Overlaid upon the warrior's image were two other wraithly forms. One was of a mountain of a man dressed in hunting clothes, his head adorned with a crest of antlers. The other... The other was the form of the spriggan who tricked them...
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4/8/2000 2:10:16 PM
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