Feyhaven

Unlikely Friends

       After the fighting ends, Atlas moves to the driver's seat and brings their carriage to a stop. The middle one had already gone far ahead. He returns to see Loch and the woman checking on the few surviving people in the cart.          

  "To be honest, I figured they wouldn't find me so quickly. I don't know how they did in the first place. I'm so sorry to have brought this into your lives," says the woman, now standing in visible light.

            What initially appears to be a pale human shifts visually into an elven woman. She is of tan skin, with deep amethyst hair, as well as an outfit that follows a black and purple color scheme. She seems rather professional for someone who was in hiding. 

          Atlas looks at her, sort of shocked, "First off, weird trick there. And second off, who is they?  And please don't try to cut the explanation short to hide from us. Enough people have died today for me to believe we are owed the truth."

          With a sigh, she responds, "Actually, first off, we should share some sort of name. Be it real or fake. Second off, you two held your own back there. I'm honestly impressed. Third off, I feel genuinely bad for this, none of these people had to die, and I will carry that burden."

          After a minute, the tanned man speaks up, "My name is Atlas, pleasure to meet you, I suppose."

           "Mine is Loch, you seem awfully strange, miss-?"

           "You may call me Alice." 

           "Miss Alice. Alrighty then."

           Atlas approaches her, getting rather close.

          "Mind explaining to me why all of these people had to die?"

          "It's a long story," she says, leaping off of the now unmoving carriage. 

          Atlas follows her and so does Loch, and they walk around the cart, inspecting damages.

          The earthen half-genie looks up at her solemnly, "Looks like we got time to kill, regardless of whether or not we can get this thing moving consistently, so you might want to get started."

         "Well, clearly I am not normal am I?"

         The elven woman's skin seems to shift and change into a red color in the same proc ess as a chameleon, but she also grows slightly taller. A set of large, beautiful horns spiral out of her head, and the amethyst hair becomes an ebony black. It is clear that she has now taken the visage of a tiefling, or half demon.

          Atlas looks at her, confused but trying to understand, "So you're a shapeshifter of sorts, eh? Doesn't explain away all of this death you've brought upon these people."

          The woman speaks in a new sultry, seductive voice, "Darling I can become and kind of humanoid creature I want to, I can meet whatever desire you'd like."

          Loch and Atlas are both sort of flustered by the concepts, but both shake it off.

         She continues, "While many would apprecate this, my family deemed it a curse, said I was the cause of all of their misfortune. They are some of the most wealthy, and most secluded royalty in the West. They were deeply religious, borderline cult-like. They did...bad things to me, let's just say that. They didn't quite want me dead, but it felt like they were waiting for the opportunity to get rid of me. One night, after a particularly bad situation, I had to defend myself from my cousin, so I cut him down. Such was the last straw for them and I had to run. Before I did though, I stole a couple things of value. One such is this book."