Blade Maidens: Strays – 30

Thank you all for reading Strays! It’s been fantastic introducing Melody Havensbrook to the world and having her find a pack with our lesbian sellswords. We’ve got a few weeks of shorts planned starting next Thursday, but for now please enjoy a taste of our next Blade Maidens tale: WHAT FOOLS THESE MORTALS BE!

“There are countless avenues of study in the realm of planar research. Quite literally, according to some schools of thought.

Those who seek to peer into the divine realm of the gods themselves, others who seek to answer the mysteries of the abyss and the beings within, and more still who seek the source from which all magical energies in our realm flows.

But among these peers, there is a discipline of scholar you will rarely find. A school of research so spotty and ill-defined that many learned minds don’t consider it a genuine course of study in the slightest. The examination and query into the most enigmatic realm known to modern scholarship, that of the ever-mercurial fae.

To be clear: I am not a disciple of this particular avenue of scholarship, my intent with it’s inclusion in this work is to show respect to my fellow students of the realms who have chosen to search for this seemingly impossible realm, but not to lend my name or reputation to any of their specific theories.

For those unfamiliar, the fae realm–and it’s superlatively powerful inhabitants–is purported to be a distinct plane of existence outside of any known to us. Home to curious, inhuman beings whose behaviors and society are as alien to us as ours are to an ant. Able to freely travel between any and all realms, these fae would defy every rule and concept developed over centuries of thorough, documented research.

Now, if you–like many before–wonder how you may have never heard of any actual interactions with these nigh-omnipotent beings. How such a staggeringly powerful and influential realm could have existed for centuries without any record or sign of contact? How such a thing could be when even the gods themselves have given us tangible proof of their mark on this land? Then you would come to the conclusion of myself and the bulk of my peers in the field, that the fae realm is little more than superstition and folklore given longevity through retelling.

However, such statements hold little weight with those dedicated to the pursuit of the fae. In fact, they often address them head on, with frustratingly firm confidence:

‘Of course there’s nothing to prove they exist. That’s exactly how they like it.’ ”

– an excerpt from The Spaces Between: A Brief History of Planar Studies by Professor Xindora Fitzel