A frosty welcome from the frost nymphs

The group had been moving through the woods for almost half an hour when the leading pixies came to a hovering stop. "Ready yourselves, we're almost upon them!"

The other pixies reacted as one, their little bodies shimmering as they dropped to fly just above the forest floor. Mere moments later, a wailing shout of alarm sounded from somewhere ahead of them. The leaves in the trees rustled, and suddenly several missiles of ice shot down toward them! The pixies swerved to avoid the frozen skewers, then fired back with little blasts of air. To a human they would have been no more than a gust of wind, but they shook the branches hard enough for several pale whiteish blue figures to plummet down.

The creates were humanoids the size of squirrels, and after shaking off ther rough landing they scurried away as quickly as squirrels too. But as the pixies zoomed on more ice shards were fired from other directions. Several of them were hit, knocked to the ground in a daze.

The one closest to Troy and Helena managed to get her bearings and crawl toward them. When the battle had started, the duo had cowered together and hoped none of the projectiles would hit them. Now Helena reached out to pick up the pixie. "What the heck is going on? Why are you fighting?"

"Are those the frost nymphs?" Troy asked at the same time.

"They are," the pixie answered. "We should have known they'd still be mad at us."

Troy narrowed his eyes. "Mad at you for what?"

"For chasing them away from the ice lake of course. Did I forget to mention we did that?" She giggled like it was a harmless oversight.

"Oh come on!" Troy exclaimed.

"Why would you do that?" Helena asked.

The pixie shrugged. "They started it! They were stealing our fizzberries!"