Chp.38: The captive fairy

Freyar's eyelids fluttered. Very slowly, the fairy opened her eyes. Even that simple, short movement cost her enormous effort and hurt.

It took her a while to focus on the surroundings, but she soon realized she was in a cave. It was a rather dark cave, with only one entrance through which a small crack of light filtered. How did she get there? She wasn't able to remember…

The fairy's eyes widened in horror. The memory of what had happened shot through her mind like an arrow. The wounded ogre, the dragon, the ambush. The death of all her companions. And in the end, what the dragon said and what the other dragons had done before she passed out. Shaking like a leaf, she dared to look at the spot where her right arm should have been.

It was gone.

She no longer had her arms, her legs, or her wings. She was now just a body composed only of the torso and the head, hung from the ceiling of the cave by means of a sort of liana. Freyar wanted to scream but something, probably a cloth, was still blocking her mouth. All she could do was sob and let the tears flow down her face. Very soon she was unable to hold back any longer and began to cry like a baby. She hated herself for showing herself so weak, she didn't want to give her captor the satisfaction of seeing her so broken, but she couldn't stop herself.

"Mh. You woke up"

The fairy snapped as soon as she heard that voice and she looked towards where it had come from. Something had appeared at the entrance to the cave. She could barely see it in the dim light, but that profile was unmistakable, as was that voice. A shiver ran through what was left of her body while she recognized that being. It was him.

Haku approached making his claws clatter on the rocky floor, a sound that made Freyar shiver every time she heard it, making her wish she still had her hands to cover her ears. When he got close enough, the fairy could see that her jailer was looking at her with a look somewhere between inquiring and curious. Freyar felt sick at that sight: it was clear that the dragon cared absolutely nothing about her. He saw her as nothing more than an interesting little animal. She was sure he would have killed her as easily as he was keeping her alive, without any remorse or empathy.

This infuriated her. It was as if a flame had started to burn in her chest. The desperation gave way to a murderous rage, and she wished nothing more than to be able to jump on that dragon and cut him into smaller and smaller pieces until he was eradicated from the world. She didn't care if the dragon could have killed her with a paw, she just wanted to attack him with all her might.

"This is no longer needed" Haku said taking away the cloth blocking her mouth.

Finally free, Freyar didn't hesitate for a second: she gathered all the mana she had at her disposal and prepared to cast a deadly curse. She no longer cared about surviving, or what the consequences of that action would have been: she just wanted to kill the monster in front of her. If she had to die, at least she wanted that evil dragon to precede her to the grave! "Drya..."

She couldn't finish. Her heart skipped a beat and she felt like someone had punched her in the stomach. A trickle of blood emerged from her mouth and her breath caught. The mana she was accumulating vanished as quickly as it had arrived.

"Fool" Haku said wiping the blood from her face with the cloth. "Did you really think I'd take this away from you if you still had a chance to cast a spell?"

Freyar gasped, trying to recover as much air as possible. After her attempt to use magic her body was even more exhausted than before. Her poor heart was running a marathon.

"You know, I... don't have a good relationship with my mother. In fact, she'll probably try to eat me in a few days" Haku said while he threw away the cloth. "However, we're still in a fairly quiet phase, so she was happy to give you some information I wanted... information about how mana is used. And so I discovered that every living thing, no matter how they use it, needs to waste a certain amount of energy, energy that comes from its metabolism. If you were at your full strength you would surely have no problem using magic, and it would be impossible talk to you without risking that you cast some deadly spell against me... so I made sure that you hadn't food or water for three days"

Only then did Freyar realize that her throat was drier than a desert. Her skin had become rough and although the temperature in the cave was very hot she wasn't sweating. Her body was clearly exhausted from lack of water, so much so that she couldn't even form saliva in her mouth. "Three... three days?" she whispered.

"Yes. You've woken up many times during this time, but we put you back to sleep using the most practical way... a good bang on the head" Haku replied. "Soon you should start remembering it... or not, I don't care anyway. In any case open your mouth, you need to drink"

Only then the fairy realized that Haku was holding in one of his paws a kind of dug trunk filled with some sort of liquid. The dragon approached and poured that liquid, clearly water, into her mouth. Freyar wished she had the strength to spit it in her tormentor's face, but she was too thirsty. She swallowed it whole, but soon Haku stopped giving it to het. "More" she begged in a cracked voice.

"Absolutely no. I'm not going to risk you regaining enough energy and being able to cast a spell" Haku replied. "I gave you the bare minimum to survive. This will be all you will get. I won't let you die, but I won't give you enough to recover either. You will be constantly suspended between life and death"

Freyar gritted her teeth in fury and anger returned to her. She was dying of thirst and her eyes couldn't help but stare eagerly at the water that Haku was refusing to give her. "You are a son of a bitch" she hissed.

"I don't know what a 'bitch' is, but I'm smart enough to know that it's an insult. However, if you expect me to rage for three words and kill you in a tantrum, it won't work. Oh, and for the record, as I told you before I don't have a good relationship with my mother, so insulting her won't make me angry anyway" Haku replied, and then he poured the remaining water on the ground.

Seeing this, Freyar's soul flamed and exploded like a volcano. The fairy could no longer control herself and began to shake and scream like a possessed person: "Monster! You are a damned monster! A wicked, horrible monster! I hope that the gods reserve you the worst punishment! A monster like you..."

"Monster?" the dragon seemed annoyed. "Monster is a relative term, little dragonfly. To a frog, a snake is a monster. To a snake, an eagle is a monster. To an eagle, you and your arrows are a monster. To you, I am a monster". The dragon clicked his tongue. "There are no monsters in this world, there are only prey and predators. I'm just someone who wants to protect his family. There are many predators in this world, so if I don't want my brothers and sisters to become prey, I have to do whatever I have to do to keep them safe. Don't you expect me to feel empathy or pity for you? One of those predators who would kill me and my family without a second thought?"

The dragon's answer silenced Freyar. She wanted to answer, but couldn't find the words. "Your actions are immoral anyway" she growled. "Why do you want to start a war? Do you have any idea how many innocent people will die? It's not just the soldiers who will pay the price! Families, elders, children..."

"I missed the part where that should be my problem" Haku stopped her with no emotion in his voice. "The elders and the young are easier prey. In the packs of any species, the weak are left at the mercy of predators. The fact that they cannot defend themselves is certainly not a problem for the predator"

Freyar wanted to spit in his face, and she would have had so if she didn't want to keep every drop of water in her body. "You bastard, this isn't about the natural order! There's a thing called morality that..."

"... that works only when you have a full stomach and a safe place to live" Haku said. "I know how you newcomers live and what precepts you follow. I've had access to a lot of information about your species. And I've learned what you call morality... and the more I learned about it, the more I realized it was just a pathetic construct of your society, an illusion born of the fact that you don't have to worry about food or being hunted. But for me and my siblings, who have no place in your society, there is only one choice: kill or be killed. Morality... that's just a joke"

Haku came even closer to the fairy's face, staring deeply into her eyes. "As I told you, I will do anything to keep my family safe, and to do that I need that you fairies and the ogres fight each other. The more of you will die, the easier things will be for me and my siblings. And about the effects the war will have on fairies and ogres… I don't care. So stop talking to me as if it meant anything to me"

Freyar looked at the dragon with disgust. Haku's carelessness got on her nerves. She knew that the dragon wasn't entirely wrong: after all, the various races thought first of all of themselves, not caring about the consequences on the others. It had always been like this and it always would be like this. More at all, every race would have tried to kill a dragon if one of these monsters tried to approached them, so dragons were in a terrible situation. However, from Freyar's point of view, everyone should have maintained at least some moral principles. "Why are you keeping me alive?" she asked.

"I need you" Haku replied, shifting slightly. Freyar could see that behind him was a pile of items, potions, weapons and various other things that the dragons had taken from the fairies. "I want to learn what these objects are for"

Freyar pursed her lips. "If you expect me to help you, forget it!" she screamed. "I'll never help a monster like you! Never, never, even if..."

"I know"

"Uh... what?"

Haku shook his head, as if that was something obvious. "I know you won't help me. After all, I'm an enemy of your people and even your own species, so why should you do it?" he said. "I'm not going to waste time questioning you"

Freyar didn't understand. If that dragon didn't want to question her, then why was he keeping her alive? It didn't make sense...

Haku grabbed one of the potions. It was a particularly bright orange potion. "There are two ways to know how to use something. The first is to ask to someone who already know how to use it. The second... is to experiment"

Freyar's heart skipped a beat as she realized what the dragon wanted to do. "No... no..." she stammered while beads of sweat began to form on her forehead.

"You were going to talk with an enemy people, and your job and that of the other guards was to protect your ambassador, so it's not hard to imagine that all these things, or at least the majority of them, are weapons. Since many of these objects are used to do harm, I need a live subject on which to test them. And if this subject has the gift of speech and can clearly express what it is feeling... even better" Haku said, shaking lightly the potion that he held in his paws. "Let's take this potion, for example. It's orange. I've noticed that the colors of the potions aren't random. Red is for healing, while green is for poison... what could orange be? Well...". He poured some of it on the fairy's chest. "Let's check!"

Freyar screamed in pain as the spot hit by the liquid caught fire. Haku smiled satisfied. "Mh. So this potion causes flames. Since it did this by simply pouring it on you, I assume if you drank it it would have liquefied your organs and you would be burned alive. Very interesting. Now let's try this blue potion..."