As they arrived in the Fey Realm, Tristan glanced at Felicity who flapped off his head before shifting to her elfanoid form next to him. "Why did you care so much about that other fairy dragon just drinking and enjoying life?"

Felicity frowned and crossed her arms, "We can go to The Mortal Realm infrequently. Some of us had missions." She stopped and her frown deepened, "I was not supposed to tell you that."

Tristan also frowned, "Why?"

She squirmed for a moment, tapping her foot impatiently as she tried to hold it back. "Gah. F-i-n-e. Mom sent a couple dozen of us younger ones out to scout the Mortal Realm."

"Oh," Tristan replied as his face shifted to one of a perplexed expression, "That's not something bad like I was expecting to hear."

Felicity cracked a smile and giggled, "I was just playing you! Yeah, mom had us scouting-"

The Matriarch walked out of the Queen's Wood, cutting Felicity off, "Scouting to find those of the Winterbloom bloodline."

Tristan looked past Felicity to The Matriarch, "Why?"

She approached the two, "I had advised you about sealed parts of this Realm. The reason for that was to prevent the spread of disease throughout our Realm during that Incursion from the Plague Realm. And the seals could only be broken by a Winterbloom. That war between the Elves and that Realm cost the lives of many. Only a few remained, and shortly after I grafted that Realm onto the Fey Realm…the essence was too weak." She sighed and her face shifted to a grimace. "The Great Exodus followed shortly after. No Winterbloom could muster the essence required to break the seals."

"And you need one to break the seals now," Tristan stated.

"Correct. That is why I sent some of my children out into the world. If the seals remain for too long, then those parts of the Realm may be split off permanently and become Lost Realms. We needed one of the Winterbloom blood to come back, grow in power, and break at least one of the seals within ten year's time."

Tristan looked at Felicity with suspicion, "Did you set me up to come here then?"

She nodded proudly, "Yup! I went to Bhant, followed a ton of Winterbloom blooded Elves I could sniff out, and lucky me, I found out one of them was a dragonslayer! Did some spying, found out that no one had ever seen a fairy dragon in Bhant. So I pranked the king…and lucky me they sent you on the hunt." She giggled, "That was pure luck by the way."

Tristan frowned, "I was set up?"

Felicity shrugged, "It's not like it was a bad thing. It kept you alive. You heard what Obadai said; people with your bloodline were killed off. It's lucky we got you here in time."

The Matriarch nodded, "It does appear based on my conversation with Logos – lovely individual, by the way – that Obadai's divinations were correct. All Winterbloom save for you are dead…unless they are not in the Mortal Realm."

"I was saved by happenstance," Tristan muttered. "Well," he said as he returned to a normal volume and intonation, "You need me to un-do one of the seals. Give me a minute. Felicity, blood vial please."

She reached into the extradimensional space that opened next to her and handed him the vial. Tristan popped the cork off and the heavy scent of mud hit his nose. "Bottoms up," he stated as he dipped it back into his mouth and swallowed down. He winced, doubled over, and felt a grinding, aching pain in his stomach – like rocks being banged and smushed together to make the most irritating noise possible. But that noise reverberated throughout his whole body, and he collapsed to his knees, sucking in breath.

The Matriarch frowned, "That is a disgusting way to gain power, Lord Tristan."

The pain began to fade and Tristan shook his head as he stood, "Not power. Resistance. That was an earth dragon, so I'm more resistant to earth elementalism. Not quite sure what that entails, like with wind before."

Felicity went to the small stalactite that was still sitting upright near the arrival area from when Tristan left the cave near Bhant so many Seasons back. She snapped off the top chunk and chucked it at Tristan's head. He dodged it as the object went clattering to the ground. "We can't test it if you dodge!" she stated as she broke off another piece.

"Fine," Tristan replied as he stood still. "But we don't have a baseline to test this on."

"Sure we do. You'll throw one at me after, and we rate the pain on a scale of one to ten!"

The Matriarch leaned down and grabbed the bit of rock, "If you are going to do a test like that, I shall be the one to throw with equal force, and the same object." She paced back a few steps and threw the rock with some decent force at Tristan's shin. It hit his flesh, and he felt a little bit of irritation, but nothing extremely painful. He picked up the rock and tossed it to her.

"Felicity, are you ready?" she asked.

Felicity grumbled out, "Yeah…" as she got next to Tristan. The Matriarch repeated her throw, this time at Felicity's shin, and she let out a curse as the rock hit, and she began hopping around on one foot. "Damnit that hurt! I'll definitely get a bruise from that!" she shifted to her fairy dragon form and flew off.

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Tristan shook his head, "I'm guessing that earth elementalism resistance includes being hit by giant rocks and boulders."

"Seems like a good assumption," The Matriarch replied. "Now, Lord Tristan, there are three parts of the Fey Realm under seal. More, actually, than three. The primary ones you already know."

Tristan nodded as he recalled the locations, "The Summerbalm Springs, Springthaw Meadows, and Fallthorn forest."

"Correct. Each seals away a species and their portion of the Fey Realm. The current Summerbalm Springs you saw from the top boughs were, in fact, a small representation of the larger whole."

"I would presume a different native species belongs to each area?"

The Matriarch smiled, "Intuitive. Yes. The springs are home to the nymphs. An all-female species that are tenders of the wilderness and nature. They are excellent singers, and their songs used to fill the Fey Realm with wonderous music. The forest is home to the Spriggan, who are entities born from trees. We call them tree tenders, because they care for all of the plant life of the Fey Realm. And lastly the meadows, which are the home of the proud unicorns-"

"Hold on," Tristan said as he waved his hands in front of her for her to stop, "Unicorns? As in horses with horns on their heads? I thought they were just a myth!"

"They are proud and quite intelligent. Scholars, philosophers, and they facilitated travel across the Fey Realm, since most fairy dragons are not big enough to ride and Elves needed a way to traverse the expanses. " She gestured to the forest's tree line surrounding the Queen's wood. "You should choose one of the primary three to unseal. But, this will come with some issues of its own."

Tristan's eyes narrowed, "Elaborate." He waved for The Matriarch to follow her as she spoke, and whilst she did, Tristan took the different dragon parts and tried to infuse them into the plant life as he had done with other components. But none of his efforts bore fruit.

"There are different hierarchies among the various species in their sealed off sections. There may have been issues that arose in their compressed portion of the Fey Realm. Disagreements they might have with how things are being run. A distaste for Elves because of what happened in the past. The possibilities are numerous." Her voice became taut and she chose her words carefully, "It is possible that an Incursion or Delve may have happened in that compressed part. Who knows what effects that may have had. And since they did not have a Realm Protector present…" she let the thought trail off and the implications linger.

Tristan nodded and put the various wyrm-sized earth dragon items next to the same sized fire dragon ones they had gathered from the Incursion a while back. "Then we need to be prepared. How long until we have to break one of the seals?"

"Thirty days, at most," she replied.

"Then there's really no time to waste," Tristan stated. "I'll get armored up, we'll get all of the fairy dragons who can fly and fight ready to go, and then we break a seal today."

"Which one first?" she asked as she helped Tristan get his armor on.

"The Summerbalm Springs."

Tristan rode atop The Matriarch in her enormous fairy dragon form. There were dozens of horse-sized fairy dragons, equipped with Adamant Wood armor that was shaped specifically for their new forms. The forested region surrounding the Queen's Wood gave way to the plains of jumpshrubs, and Tristan glanced over towards the hill that he had first arrived at, and where the Elemental Realm of Fire incursion happened. "Is that also some type of sealed location?"

The Matriarch nodded, "Indeed. A sub-seal. The Undermount, which is a vast underground network that runs beneath the Fey Realm. Home to the gnomes. Gnomes are squat elfanoids who are skilled craftspeople. They would probably approve of your desire to facilitate inter-Realm trade."

Tristan nodded, sure that there were more sub-seals but not wanting to get over inundated with new insights. "Better to take things one step at a time," his grandfather had drilled into him. "If you focus too much on what may be, you lose sight of what is happening now." And so, Tristan instead shifted his gaze from that large hill and began to focus intently on what was a short distance away to the side.

Several ponds and lakes extended out in this part of the Fey Realm. The ground shifted from a soft, cool, green color of swaying long grass to short, upright red stalks. Dotted around the lakes and ponds were large, purple boulders that were covered in bright orange moss that glimmered and sparkled like shattered glass exposed to the light of the sun. Steam rose from some of the pools, the water bubbling and boiling, hissing from the sheer level of warmth exuding from an unseen depth. Others were placid, cool, and even had a slight layer of frost.

But all of them were vibrant colors. As if a painter had dropped their easel and infused the water with primary colors and their combinations. Oddly enough, the colder lakes and ponds were warm colors such as red, orange, and yellow, whilst the hotter bodies of water were cool colors such as blue, green, and purple. It was quite nonsensical, but as the fairy dragons were nonsensical in their whimsical way.

It made a weird, reversed sense to Tristan. The Matriarch set course for an enormous boulder in the center of the largest lake and flapped above it. "Lord Tristan, if you would climb down my tail. The seal is atop the rock."

Tristan slid down and alighted on the rock. The moss under him was slightly slick, but also seemingly gripped onto his boots to help him keep traction – the very Realm itself showing its affection to its ruler. "How do I disable the seal?" he asked as he tried to find some type of symbol or iconography.

"You will need to order the shardmoss aside to find the seal. It is Elvish script, carved into the rock. Just as with the vault door, you will need to fill it up with essence. It may already be partly filled, because the ambient essence of the Realm has slowly been siphoned into it over time."

Tristan spun his crucible in both directions, sucking in and exuding essence as he became one with the Fey Realm, capable of forcing his will upon the place. "Okay moss, please move aside."

The moss all scattered, balling up into little orbs before rolling down the rock and reaffixing themselves. The rock below was a deep, dark black. The darkest black that Tristan had ever seen. An intricate spiral was carved into the stone, but he could only see the bottom half illuminated thanks to the shimmering, rainbow essence filling it two-thirds of the way. Kneeling, Tristan placed his hands on it. "What should we expect?" Tristan asked as he looked up to The Matriarch and his fairy dragon combat cohort.

"The world will ripple, and then you will see this part of the Fey Realm grow in size to a drastic degree. But beyond that? We do not know."

"Then we prepare first." Tristan began channeling his essence into his various items, activating Scales of Our Foe on the armor, Dragon's Doom on the sword, Discharge Shock on his socks, Lucky Instinct on his maul, and then he performed the spell gesture and spoke the phrases for Aspect of the dragon – claws, Armor of Ice, Near Miss, and Persuasive Charm.

The essence funneling through him caused the expenditure to be nullified, and as his various spells took effect, he drew his sword with his right hand, and placed the left on the spiral. "Here we go!"

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