Chapter 3

Gazza was not aware that asking a mage what skills he had was considered a rude question.

Bette thought she could get away with her question since it was obvious he wasn’t from around here and since he seemed to know bugger all about magic. She watched as he pulled the medallion from out of his shirt and showed it to her. Bette pointed to the wind symbol, “Physics is on top, so it’s your dominant skill. Makes sense if you used to fly.”

Pointing to the book symbol, she continued, “Lore means you’re smart and learn things easily. The eye is for Psychic and represents mental and metaphysical energies. Since the tree is for Nature, it is associated with manipulating plants, animals and people. You are a strong mage and a leader of people. Is this your only item?”

Gazza shook his head. He had learnt already that the items disappeared and that he could tell them to appear. He showed her the ring and she could see the diadem. He removed the wand to show her how it could be changed into a stave. He also mentioned they all came in a strange metal box with a little book.

Bette was fascinated and stated, “Wow, a true high mage. I don’t think the gems are big enough for you to be an apprentice and I’ve heard that their diadems are more elaborate than your’s is. They also like to use chests to keep their items in and the apprentice’s box always returns to wherever it’s wizard’s box is being kept.”

“I heard a rumour a couple of months ago that a high mage had been fixing things on Eagle Island and that some Quaz crystals have come back onto the market. Other people say that the magical energies of our world have been increasing over the last year.”

“Since I’ve found crystal growths in this mountain range, I think that the rumours may be true. My people, the Faeries, have lived here for over five thousand years and we have never found them here before. I believe that the landslip that exposed the cave I entered has been more recent too.”

“I was not aware we had a transportation ring in these mountains. Some people even say that one of the original settlement ships crashed on this Island but no one alive knows where it is. To my knowledge, the only Quaz crystal cavern on this Island was in Avila where the Queen lives. It ran out of crystals over a hundred years ago.”

She pulled one of her socks out of her pack and tipped some of the crystals onto the table. Gazza picked one up and knew that it was the same crystal that was in his items. The entity in his head seemed excited that he had them in his possession. He looked up and realised the ones above him were sparse and would be hard to get too. “Can we get some more? For some reason, the bloke riding in my head seems excited by them.”

Bette giggled. “The crystals provide magical people with more power. You can charge them up with light and heat and um...” she trailed off as she looked at him with embarrassment and blushed. “Well, it’s said that sex can recharge magicians or so I’ve been told.”

Gazza looked at her inflamed cheeks and felt his cock respond. ‘Not now, I don’t want to scare her off,’ he thought and tried to will his cock back down. She looked so damn cute it took some effort but he managed to stop it getting any thicker.

The damn monkey chittered its laugh at him and then it flashed an image of a naked Bette riding his hips with her legs wrapped around his arse. The red curls flying and sexy titties bouncing, was a hard image for him to dispel and didn’t help Gazza’s condition at all.

He frowned at and mentally chided the monkey, telling it to behave but it just grinned at him. He was damn sure the little beast had understood his message. It took his overloaded brain several minutes to fully comprehend that he could communicate with it on an intellectual and mental level.

Bette had to think about what he asked. Something about this man tickled her fancy. He didn’t treat her like a sex object or an oddity. However, she didn’t know him that well either. She hoped the fact he was a mage would mean that he would continue to treat her with respect. Entities didn’t like their hosts doing bad things, so she felt safe with him.

She also felt his confusion and determined that things were different in his world. He didn’t behave as if he had a lot of knowledge concerning the items he wore. Personally, she was thinking that he was handling finding himself in a strange land rather well.

“I suppose I can share my find with you since you also found this place. Having the crystals is a two-edged sword. While they are worth a lot of coin and are very useful, if certain people found out we had a good source of them, we could find ourselves in trouble,” she warned him.

“Well from what you have told me, once I’ve learnt how to do a bit of magic, I should be able to keep them and us safe,” he told her.

Bette frowned. “Don’t you know any magic? You wear the items.”

It was Gazza’s turn to blush. “I only found them a few hours before you turned up. I’d been given a parcel to transport and after the crash, I found two boxes inside it. Here I’ll show you,” he said. He got up and went to retrieve the boxes.

Sitting back down he said, “This one had my items in it and this is the other box.” He opened his box and turned it to show Bette that it was now empty.

Bette looked in and said, “How did all of those things get into this small box?”

Gazza frowned and looked into the box himself. An inventory seemed to appear in his mind and he put his hand in and pulled out a short sword that had a slim, fifty centimetre long, single-edged blade. Its handle guards barely let him pull it free. It was surprisingly light in weight. He then pulled out a scabbard.

Standing he opened his belt that held his pistol and slid the scabbard to the right side and tightened the belt again. He placed the sword in the scabbard and tied the bottom to his thigh. “The entity seemed to think I should be wearing it,” he explained. It didn’t talk to him in words but he felt emotions come from it and sensed what it wanted.

“The different races here wear swords and many people walk around armed, even in the cities,” Bette told him. She still missed her bow and only wore a short eating dagger.

Gazza grinned, “Well I’ll have to learn how to use it too. I wonder if the book that came with the box has any ideas about how to teach me?”

“It may,” Bette replied as she glanced at the other box. “Um ... Gazza, did you get an itchy feeling that made you want to open that box?”

Gazza looked at her and then the box he hadn’t opened. “Not really, but when I touched my box it felt warm but the other box didn’t when I picked it up.”

Bette reached out and touched the unopened box. “Oh my! I think it wants me to open it.”

“Well tell it to open,” Gazza replied. He was of the opinion that he and Bette were not here by chance. This meeting had that same odd feeling he got when he had met Tristin in the shower block that evening that had changed his life for the better.

He didn’t know what the fates had in mind for him but he had never been accused of being stupid, except by his father when he had wanted to join the Army. The sheer fact that he survived the wreck of his helicopter and now wore mythical magic items left him open to any possibility.

Meeting a person with real working wings and a monkey that could communicate with him telepathically were other good reasons that he felt his life was no longer fully under his control. If the magical box wanted Bette, then he would have a strong ally in this world and he considered that a very good thing.

By this time, he was under no illusion that he was still on Earth. He had noticed the lighter gravity. It wasn’t hugely different and he guessed it was less than ten percent difference. He knew that he had managed to shift rocks that he wouldn’t have been able to move on Earth.

Since he didn’t really have a lot to go back to, he wasn’t that pissed-off to find himself where he was. He did like a good mystery and was quite sure he was smack bang in the middle of a corker. The company he had at present wasn’t that hard on the eye either. Gazza grinned as Bette removed the ring from her box.

‘Yes!’ he thought. Bette’s ring had the same five gem pattern that his ring did but two of the gems were different. When she removed the medallion, he deducted that Lore was her strong suit, then Energy, Earth and Nature. Bette seemed pleased by the selection of gems.

Gazza watched her shudder delicately when she placed the diadem on her head. He wondered if she now felt as horny as he had after he had put his magical items on. He tried to distract himself from this line of thought as his body also responded. Then Bette smiled at him and he knew he was in serious trouble.

“So how does time work here anyway?” he asked her, to distract himself from bounding over the table and raping her, as he felt like doing.

Bette blinked at his sudden question. “I don’t know how to compare it to your world. We have three hundred and sixty days in a solar year. Our day has twenty-four time periods or hours that are then broken down into sixty minutes to an hour. We have six days to a week, five weeks to a month and twelve months to a year.”

Gazza now wondered just how similar to Earth this planet was. “So how many solar years old are you?” he had to ask.

Bette dithered a bit and then decided to tell him the truth. She was sure he would know if she lied, so she responded, “I’m twenty-one years old.”

She went on to explain, “For most Faeries that means they are just mature enough to have sex, but they are not considered adults until they are twenty-five years old. However, I’m a cross breed. My mother was a Shifter and her people are considered adults at my age.”

“Faeries can live to be around a hundred and sixty years old. Shifters live to around one hundred and forty years like the Genteli. This can vary because many Shifters and Genteli also have magical abilities, even wearing a single gemmed magical item can double the wearers life expectancy.”

“Magical people age even slower. They don’t get sick very often and they can heal very fast. Many magical people don’t worry so much about age as long as the people involved in the relationship have reached adult status for their race.”

“I’m not sure about me since I look more like a Shifter. I’m too tall to be a Faerie even if I do have wings, so my family considered me an adult. True Faeries don’t grow much taller than forty centimetres tall, that’s about a third of my height.”

Looking Gazza in the eyes, she sat straighter. “Gazza, many people think that I’m an oddity, an abomination. Like the Prols, Faeries do not normally mate outside their own race. My half-brother, Roux, had the Council of Elders caste me out since my sister and father are now dead.”

Stoically she continued, “They don’t believe I am a true Faerie. They say I’m a Shifter who was born in this form but I can’t shift from it. So I’m not entitled to inherit the crown and rule the clan. I can’t blame them really. My mother’s people also think I’m an abomination. The fact I can’t shapeshift means I am not one of them either.”

“Shifters are considered a form of hermaphrodite. Normally, children are born in their female form. Nearly all children that are born in male form can’t shapeshift and they are always caste out. For a female child not to be able to shift at least to their normal form or any other form is unheard of.”

Bette wiped the tears from her cheeks, once she felt them drip and she sniffed before wiping her nose. She lifted the medallion and said, “I’m sorry, I have accepted this gift under false pretences. I should take them off.”

Gazza’s entity seem very perturbed at this announcement, so he asked, “What happens if you take them off?”

“Well I could go mad, but I haven’t had them on very long, I should be okay,” Bette replied but her hand didn’t seem to be able to lift the medallion over her head.

Gazza got up and he went around the table to kneel beside her. He gently removed her hand from the medallion. “Bette, the box wanted you. I don’t know why we have met like this or why they wanted us but you are no longer an abomination. From what you have said I gather being a high mage gives us both a lot of status, yes?”

“Yes,” she answered with a wobbly voice and nodded her head.

“So, whether you have wings or not it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks. You have me now and you and I are equals. I have no idea what the fates have planned for us but I believe we are meant to be together. Mind you, it would be nice if you could take male form as well. I seem to like being with both sexes, so that’s something we will have to work out as time goes by,” he told her with his cutest grin.