The Fairy Path

Nimue led them out of the clearing, holding aloft a small stick and snapping it in half. She guided them down a small forest path that might have been present when they arrived, but if it was it had flawlessly blended into the background. She rode at a sedate walk through a tunnel of trees with a thick canopy, so slow that Gil may have had an easier time following on foot, and it was clear that Gawain was growing more stressed by the moment.

“Don’t worry, Gawain.” Gil said, squinting into the distance. “She’s definitely doing something.”

The tiny floating red numbers indicating Kusai’s team had winked out of existence shortly after they left the shores of the lake. As it seemed unlikely that the invader had randomly decided to surrender or to get obliterated by an orbital laser, Gil figured that meant they were in some kind of altered space. He didn’t know if they were in some manner of alternate dimension, or if Nimue had simply lured him into an illusion to hide what she was really doing, but magic of some kind was almost certainly afoot.

What really clinched it, however, was the bout of overwhelming nausea from Rose. As it turned out, being hyper aware of trajectories and spatial positioning made magical progression quite a bit harder on the brain. She couldn’t even manage Bayard, so she ended up climbing onto Gil’s saddle and burying her face between his shoulder blades.

“This is worse than Vista.” She muttered into Gil’s back. “So much worse. My powers haven’t felt quite right since I got here.”

Nimue herself was barely paying attention, despite being the one in the lead. She held the glowing fire materia, rolling it between her fingers and studying it closely while her horse plodded along. Occasionally she would hold it up to the light or whisper to herself, and a few times she coaxed out a tiny tongue of flame from the marble and smiled like a child with a new toy.

That smile vanished when Gil pushed his horse forward to ride alongside her.

“If you aren’t too busy, can I ask you about magic a little bit?” Gil said. “Just for the sake of planning?”

“The secrets of the world are held jealously by their keepers.” Nimue said, a clear dismissal, “In any case, a few inquiries would not make you a sorcerer.”

“I don’t really need to know the underlying secrets.” Gil said, “But I’m fighting a war. I’d like to know how they work in practice. I’m particularly curious about Merlin and his visions. What exactly is he seeing? How much information does he have? How much can we trust his intel? Does it have holes in it?”

Nimue looked at Gil with irritation, then sighed.

“Very well. I shall tell you that much.” She said, her voice completely even. “Merlin can see the paths in life that he did not take and also ones that he will not take, whether the fork in the path be past, present, or future. He can see each path all the way to its terminus, his death. In doing so, he may choose the path which aligns most closely to what he most desires. He plays at wisdom, but in truth his strength is in his will to choose pain in pursuit of his desires. He hardly ever needs to guess.”

“So he just sees the results, then?” Gil said thoughtfully. “Interesting. Can you do the same?”

“No.” Nimue said, “I don’t believe he can teach that talent, unfortunately.”

She didn’t choose to elaborate, nor did she have more to say to Gil in general. Each attempt to gather more information was met with a shorter response, until Nimue was down to grunts and monosyllables. Luckily, it was only another hour before the horses stepped out between two rocky outcroppings and into an open space where Gil could actually see the sky again. Kusai’s team winked back into his sight, moving more quickly than they had the first time he’d seen them on the horizon. Probably that just meant they were closer.

He even caught a flicker of a name next to one of the T5s: Ginny Weasley. It vanished almost as quickly as it had appeared.

“Yep,” Gil said, “That’s a teleporter.”

“There.” Nimue said, “If indeed it is a dragon you seek, you shall find one in a cave upon that mount, near a large white stone. Tread lightly, and you may yet find it sleeping.”

Gil, Gawain, and Rose crept up the rock strewn mountain path, quietly enough that Gil could hear a slow, rhythmic rumbling. He looked at Gawain, who nodded his head tightly and glanced at the sky, where the noonday sun shone down upon them. Another nod, and they made their way up to the cave and peeked in.

The dragon was a different shape than Gil had seen in most worlds, but it was absolutely massive. It resembled a snake coiled in on itself, except for a pair of large feathered wings and two proportionately small clawed feet. Of course, they were still easily the size of serving trays, but next to the creature’s three foot thick trunk they were positively tiny. The dragon’s neck tapered down to a slightly smaller size as it approached the head, but it still looked like it could easily swallow an adult human if it unhinged its jaw.

That was going to be trouble, because it was currently coiled in upon itself. Gil wasn’t willing to bank everything on the spores jumping out of the bottle at his command; he was probably going to need to pour them in manually into the dragon’s mouth or an open wound to be certain that they would take. As things stood currently, Gil was fairly sure he’d need to crawl over multiple coils of the dragon before he could hope to reach the mouth. Rose hefted her spear, removed her cloak to reveal the high cut leotard, and pointed at a spot near the dragon's head.

They’d discussed the plan before they’d started climbing, and it wasn’t terribly complex. Rose would use Flechette’s ability to empower a weapon to pin the dragon down, attaching the entire dragon to the stone wall. Gil would toss the spores into the dragon’s mouth when he had an opportunity, and Gawain would be on standby in case the spores took longer than expected. They would all try to avoid being directly in front of the dragon, so as to avoid its venom spray, and the single most important thing to avoid would be constriction.

The plan went perfectly right up until the spear in Rose’s hand exploded.