Story Arc #2: The Doctor and the Fairy

Off To The Summer Courts?

Choice 1 of The Doctor and The Fairy

This is a collaborative web-novel. Read the beginning of Story Arc 2 here. Or, if you came here via Story Arc 1 (The Castle of Shadows), you can go back to the previous chapter here.

“I’ll go with you,” you say, to humor her. After all, there’s no way that this lady who looks suspiciously like a young boy would ever be Titania, the Queen of the Fairy Race… even though she said she’s a Princess. You’re still wrapping your head around that one.

After she claps her hands once, the lady sings out, “Thank you so much for this. Now, to shed this disgusting outfit, and then we’ll be off.”

Before you can stop her from stripping her prison jumper, you see her spin around in a tight circle of glitter and dust, before she suddenly looks like a lady fairy that stands about 5 foot 7. Whereas before she had an unflattering form to her, no small part courtesy of the jumper, she now looks rather stunning. She wears a backless dress that lets her wings out. Her three sizes had to be —

“Hey, perv,” she growls. “Eyes up here.”

You look into her eyes and rub the back of your neck sheepishly. “Whoops,” you say.

Instead of responding, Titania grabs your free hand and envelopes you in an intense light, such that it somehow short circuits the security cameras watching your cell. While you might not be an engineer, you wonder what’s able to cause a short in the electrical workings. Is it anything natural?

“Hey, what’s going on in that cell?” one guard in the facility calls out.

“I don’t know, but I intend to find out,” another says, before rushing your way.

“Time to go,” Titania says, before the two of you vanish from the prison, never to be seen again… or so you think is the case.

As the two of you make it out of the prison, you take note of the surrounding land. Instead of something with any influence from human machinery, you see a sprawling plain that has plenty of idyllic wildlife prancing about. Not only is the land so peaceful, you see that the sun has not yet set.

“Wait, this isn’t right,” Titania muses, putting a hand to her chin. “This is most definitely not the place for us to be.”

“Meaning?” you ask.

“Meaning, this place is not in Summer Court territory,” she says. “There’s no way that this is where we’re supposed to go…”

As she says this, you take a further look around the place, looking for any sign of trouble. As far as you can tell, however, this place is a paradise that any fairy would love to be in. What’s wrong with it, you wonder?

“We need to leave,” Titania continues. “I mean, we need to go now. This place is not for us to tread lightly on.”

Before you can ask what she meant, however, you hear thunder off in the distance, even though the surrounding skies are clear.

Wait… that wasn’t thunder. That was heavy footfall from giants walking the land! How do you know this? Simple… you see a titan of a man off in the distance in front of you.

“Oh, crud…” you mutter, before you look Titania in the eye again. “How are we supposed to get out of here?”

“I know that there’s a safe area for us to teleport out of, but I don’t know where that is,” Titania admits. “I only know what it looks like.”

You groan, kicking your foot out against the dirt —

*WHACK!!*

— only to find that you’ve kicked something hard that won’t budge.

“A treasure chest?” Titania asks. “Did my brother send this to help us get out of here?”

If you can be perfectly honest, this is rather impeccable timing for getting out. This begs the question, however: how are you and Titania supposed to get out of the land that you found yourselves in with help from a treasure chest? Are the two of you supposed to jump into a chest that had to be full of gold coins or whatever? This isn’t a video game, for crying out loud!

Still, you open the chest just to see what you have. Almost as soon as the lid opens up, you see a strange thing… why does this chest have weapons and armor fit for an adventurer in something like a campaign of Dungeons & Dragons, you wonder? This makes absolutely no sense. Whose bright idea was it?!

Still, you are about to close the treasure chest when you hear more of the thundering that comes from those giants in the area, and it’s getting rather close… too close for comfort. What exactly is going on when you aren’t paying attention?

The moment you try to move your gaze to see what caused that loud thundering, however, you see a faint glow from the equipment that you see in front of you. What is going on with the gear? It’s not like this is a video game-like world… is it? You touch the nearest piece of equipment to see what’s so special about it.

You cannot equip Helm of Giant Tanking while under Level 40. Please try again later.

That… had to be a joke, right? What is going on, and why do you get a distinct feeling that this is going to suck?

You sigh as you make a choice.

What will you do next?

1. Find some way to get the gear to accept you as its new wielder (click here).
2. Run away from the giant while holding Titania in your arms (click here).

Samuel Kauffman, AKA Xamusel, is an indie game developer and novelist in training. His main exploits in the realm of fiction, much to his dismay, are the use of fanfic works. This includes fan games, which he’s also hoping to grow past, among so many other things.

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