followup

	The two priests helped Viri to her hooves and slowly walked her off towards the inn.  The front gate was crawling with guards now, there was little risk of anybody getting in unaided.  Lumira hovered worriedly behind the trio as they slowly walked back in.  As soon as Viri was back in her room, Lumira sat beside her and took her hand.  “Viridian, look at me,” she said urgently.  “Hang in there.  The humans healed you, you’ll be fine.”

	“Mph.”  Viri worked her jaw.  “…Did I lose a tooth?”

	“Oh, I’m sorry, sweetheart, but you did,” Lumira said.  “The demon punched you.”

	Viri sighed.  “Aww.”

	Viri looked at the two priests and gestured to the door.  They exchanged a look, but slowly moved out the door.  Lumira rose and closed it behind them.

	She stared at the blank back of the simple wood door and drew in a deep breath.  “Viri, should we go home?”

	“No.”  Viri shifted her shoulders.  “I want… I want to see what Linus thinks about this monster business.”

	“This… Viridian, really?” Lumira asked scathingly.  Viri blinked in surprise.  “The Primes can handle this.  They don’t need us around.  What is it with you and this one Prime?  This one Paladin?”

	Viri sank into the bed and rubbed her aching forehead.  “I… he’s a good man, and he knows much of the planes.  Maybe he can figure out this whole demon affair.”

	“What does it have to do with us?  It’s clearly dangerous here!” Lumira said.  “We should just go!”

	“We’re safe here now.”

	“Like you were outside?” Lumira asked sharply.

	Viri looked up and glared.  “Lumira, I want to see my friend.”

	“Are you hungering for this man?  Is he a fine lay, or something?  Because you’re not being rational about this,” Lumira pointed out.  “When somebody gets punched in the face by a demon, the rational response isn’t ‘stick around and see!’”

	“I never laid with him, and we’re waiting to see what he says,” Viri said firmly.

	Lumira stared at Viri in annoyance.  “Do you promise to stay in your room this time, at least?”

	Viri crossed her arms.  “Yes.”

	Lumira threw her arms up and stomped out of the room, closing it behind her.  The two priests outside looked at her.  “Is she going to be alright?” Erastus asked.

	“She’s as stubborn as a mule,” Lumira growled.  She wiped the last of the blood off her forehead, revealing perfectly unharmed skin beneath.  “…I’m damn thirsty,” she finally said.

	Erastus shrugged.  “Bar’s still open next door,” he pointed out.

	“Thanks,” Lumira muttered distractedly, and she walked down the stairs to find something to take her mind off her troubles.


	The Bedded Landing was no coaching house or pleasure palace, but it was still a fine tavern for a place so far out on the frontiers.  Lumira sat in one corner with a pair of lads she distantly recognized from when the Countess had brought some of them there right before she had disappeared.  Turning on her natural charms for them had been so easy that it had actually been rather disappointing.  While the drinks they had bought her in hope of repeating at least some of their adventure with Quicksnow were nowhere near as intoxicating as the stuff the satyrs made for themselves in the Feywild, it actually tasted pretty good.

	Lumira sighed internally as she heard the bard on the stage botch a note.  It happened often.  Did nobody practice music in this ragamuffin world?

	After enduring a few more missed notes, she finally made up her mind.  Standing up in the middle of a sentence from one hopeful boy, she walked right up to the stage and glared.  The musician’s playing faltered as he registered the satyress standing defiantly before him, but he managed to reach the end of the song.  “Er… what?” he asked awkwardly.

	Lumira said nothing.  She simply climbed up on the stage, to the shock and mounting concern of the rest of the audience, produced her pipes from the string pouch at her hip, and started playing.


	Viri gingerly probed the hole in her teeth.  It had stopped hurting, but the gap would probably be with her forever now.  Blast it.  All this trouble, just to meet a friend!  She sighed and threw herself down on the bed, covering her head with a pillow.  Since she, like all fauns, needed only a few minutes of sleep per night, there was effectively nothing to do in the town while she waited.  She certainy wasn’t going to go outside the wall again, and she didn’t have the stomach for wandering around being stared at.  She moaned miserably.  Nothing was fair.


	A hundred feet from her, Lumira’s estimation of the usefulness of Primes was climbing.  Sure, the musician she had replaced had had no skill to speak of, but some of them could dance, at least.  Her uplifting piping had filled the room, and a few subtle twangs of magic mixed in were turning the work-weary Primes to a more enjoyable state.

	What an eclectic bunch, too.  She had taken them all for human when she had arrived, but there were a few dwarves and an elf in the bunch too, and a tiefling dressed as a constable.  The tiefling was not looking too great, but the rest of the party was dancing happily before the stage.

	This, this was what she enjoyed, Lumira thought proudly.  She sent another twang of magic through her song, and enjoyed the looks of desire and pleasure on the faces of the audience.  She wasn’t about to stop.

	She smirked to herself when she saw the elf woman look down at herself in sudden shame and annoyance.  “What am I doing?” she muttered.  Lumira had spotted the elf’s absurdly stereotypical outfit of leaf-patterned clothing as soon as she had walked out onto the dance floor.  It would be the equivalent of a dwarf wearing a tunic with an anvil and a beerstein on it, or a Halfling carrying a placard saying ‘Hello, I am small and unimportant!’

	The elf started pulling her leaf-patterned clothes off, to catcalls and cheers from the male crowd members.  Lumira had to hide a laugh in her music when a few other villagers joined in.  This was all it took Primes to get randy?  No wonder the Paladin had been so rude.  Primes were lightweights!

	Her amusement growing, Lumira poured it on, and in no time at all, half a dozen more villagers were dancing madly in the tavern floor in their smallclothes.  The tavernkeep was looking a bit worried, Lumria noticed, and kept looking at her like he was wondering if he should make her stop.  Certainly, that was the only thing that Lumira might have considered at that point.  This spoke to her in a way that babysitting fauns and watching Greenwater service her friends didn’t.  It felt like playing revel music for the flock, but cleaner, more pure, unfiltered.  It felt very, very good.

	She watched happily as two of the humans edged towards the door, gathering their clothes.  It looked like their night was spoken for.  Then she noticed the tavernkeep leaving his spot behind the bar and stomping up to her.  “All right, that’s enough,” he snapped.

	Lumria put down her pipes.  “What?”

	“I said that’s enough,” the tavernkeep, a great bear of a human, ground out.  “I can feel the magic in that.  Out.”

	“But I’m just giving people a good time,” Lumira protested.

	“So good they’re leaving without paying their bar tabs,” the tavernkeep said.  “Out.”

	Lumria bared her fangs, but to her slight surprise, the human didn’t react.  “Ugh.  Fine.  Spoilsport.”  She stood and walked off the stage into the panting crowd, nose in the air.  “Seems the fun must relocate,” she said haughtily to the disappointed revelers.  She grabbed her two erstwhile drinking partners by their belts and pulled them in her wake, ignoring the protest of the tavernkeeper that they hadn’t paid either.

	On her way out the door with her two new friends, she noted the tiefling sitting alone by the exit, her hands wrapped tight around a drinking mug, shaking heavily.  The tiefling shot her a bitter, helpless look of anger that took Lumira aback, but then she was out the door with her consolation prizes in hand.

	“So, lads, where do you go for fun around here?” she asked the human boys.

	One managed to speak past his addled mouth.  “Er… that was it,” he said.

	“What, really?” she asked disdainfully.  “That’s the bet you can get in this village?”

	“What do you want, lady?  The place got flattened by an earthquake and werewolves three years ago,” he said defensively.

	“Bah.  Fine.”  Lumira looked back over her shoulder and saw one or two more people settling their tabs and pulling their clothes back on, but the elf and a couple others were hurrying in her wake.  Maybe the night wasn’t a loss after all.  “We’ll make do,” she said coyly.


	Gillint regarded his lieutenant with interest.  “Oh, so it is true, my lovely number two?  A pair of our flockmates on forest’s edge met you?”

	Slicce beamed wickedly.  “Oh, but it is, my Dance Lord!  Lumira and Viridian!”

	“Lumira, ah, and Viridian, no less, you say?”  Gillint laughed, long and hungry.  “A job well done, my trusted whore, you have earned a prize this day.”  He waved a hand indistinctly towards his personal cache of wine and spirits robbed from passing travelers, heaped behind his throne.  She beamed happily and fairly dove on the pile.

	Gillint kicked his hircine legs out before him and slouched on his throne of bone and looted gold.  Things were becoming stale in his tempt.  The others didn’t complain much, but he could feel it.  Fresh blood was just what he needed!  He had had his fill of local bumpkins to prey on, and there were always more when he needed them, but new recruits?  That was something worth risking for.  Viridian the Faun among them, too.  That seemed auspicious.

	“Slicce, dear, a moment before you leave sobriety too far behind?” he called over his shoulder.  “I want you to travel back to the village, a brace of recruits to find.”

	“Oh, I’d be delighted,” Slicce said.  She pulled a cork out with her sharpened teeth and spat it aside.  She took a long swig from the bottle before speaking further.  “Anything special I should say?”

	“Play by ear, Slicce dear,” Gillint said lazily.  He frowned as one of the slaves’ crying grew too loud for his liking, then smiled as one of the other satyrs backhanded the sounds away.  The pen needed cleaning, he noted.

	The hyenas all started yelping at once.  He looked over to see a broken horse being lowered into their pit by one of his satyrs.  They were coming along nicely, actually.  The time would come soon, he was sure, when they would taste something more real.