I nearly stopped my bike in surprise as I passed through the glamour and the enchantment, which covered Shadowtown. Greta insisted that the ‘normies’ could not get past the glamour, and most wouldn’t even come close due to the fear enchantment that kept full-blooded humans away. That I could pass through both unaffected seemed to confirm my status as a Werewolf now, more than anything else had before this.

I couldn’t help but think, “And those spells cover this entire abandoned area of the city? What type of Arcane could possibly have the power to hide all of this?” Greta had learned from her bartender and fellow Witch when she first arrived that Shadowtown consisted of over 3000 abandoned properties including businesses, homes, factories, and even apartment buildings. Apparently, the Fae decided to claim it almost three years ago when it had been abandoned for nearly a decade and erected the spells to keep humans out.

I wasn’t quite certain what to expect given the brief overview that Greta had given us about Shadowtown, but I am fairly certain that if I did have any specific expectations, they would have been horribly wrong. Everywhere I looked, trees towered above me, far up into the sky. Streets and sidewalks were somehow mostly unaffected, but there was very little traffic at the moment. The forest that had otherwise claimed the area from the yards of homes and other greenspaces grew up and around the buildings, along their surfaces, and sometimes even wound through the more open structures.

This looked like far more than a decade’s worth of growth, it was as if the city had been reclaimed by nature hundreds of years ago if you ignored some glaring inconsistencies. For one thing, this seemed to be a business district and people were walking in and out of the overgrown buildings. There seemed to be electricity inside as well, going by the lights inside the buildings and the streetlights by the roadside, which had been all but consumed by sweet-smelling flowering vines.

It looked, smelled, and even sounded like an old forest, I was pretty sure that there were animals around too, going by my senses. Another strange thing was that the buildings seemed to be in far better condition than I would have thought for structures built in the early to mid-1900s and recently abandoned for a decade or so. These looked solid and well cared for, despite nature growing wild around and upon them. In fact, in some places, the growth seemed to secure and support damaged or rough areas.

Willow-the-wisps in a rainbow of colors floated lazily above us in the night sky, and on one street corner, I saw a woman with rabbit ears talking to another who looked like an Elf from The Lord of the Rings. There was this magical and comforting feel to the place that I had never felt before anywhere else. As I rode along behind Greta’s van, I kept expecting the illusion to fade but it seemed that the entirety of Shadowtown was like this.

The van ahead of me stopped in front of a much larger-looking forested area with foliage-covered homes across the street. As I stepped off my bike, the slime girl that had been back in girl form since we passed through the glamour and holding (groping) on tightly to me, grabbed enthusiastically onto my arm while we waited for our other companions to get out of Greta’s van and join us. “Mmmm… reddy red Red, such a nice looking forest. Let’s find a quiet place and fill it with some screams. I wanna hear it and see your face when I make you…”

“She’s mine, slime,” Goldie practically growled as she stepped out of the van just in time to hear and interrupt however Berry was going to finish me… err that sentence. My useless lesbian brain can’t take much more of these brazen girls throwing themselves at me. I took a deep breath and tried to focus on something else as the Vampire pulled our captive from the van and Greta came around from the driver’s side to join us.

The Witch wasn’t looking too hot. Well, I mean, she definitely was hot, I just… Stop that, Red, get your damn brain off of sex. Goldie and Berry are bad enough as it is. Anyway, Greta was looking very pale and from the way that she was shuffling as she walked around the side of the vehicle, she appeared to be exhausted as well. “Are you okay?” I asked in concern.

“I’m fucking fine,” she replied unconvincingly.

“You’re not fooling anyone, Greta,” Goldie pointed out as she effortlessly hefted our overweight payday over her shoulder. “You were hiding it well enough when you came to pick us all up, but you’re exhausted. You look like you’re about to fall over.”

“I’m jus…” Greta attempted to insist as she stumbled and had to lean against the side of the van.

“You were saying,” I retorted with a roll of my eyes before turning to the slime girl beside me. “Berry, you’re pretty strong, do you think that you could carry her? For me?”

Berry didn’t seem terribly enthusiastic about the idea, especially since it would take her away from me, whom she seemed very fixated on. She seemed to consider it a moment and then smiled as she said, “Fine, I’ll do it for you, but I’m at least getting some sugar later, as a reward.” She didn’t wait for my reply before picking Greta up in a princess carry.

“I’m fucking fine, just a little tired. I think I just used too much mana; I didn’t even start to fucking feel it until the adrenaline of our little hunt wore off,” the Witch tried to protest. Then she poked a finger into the pink slime girl that was now carrying her. “Summoning her almost drained me dry and trying to dispel her only succeeded in sucking up what mana I had left.”

“Yes,” a small and somewhat musical voice agreed. “She is definitely mana exhausted. Unlike the Fae, who use mana from the world around us, a Witch’s mana reserves are finite. When those reserves are drained, they start using physical energy to fuel their magic. She will need food and plenty of rest over the next few days while she recovers and restores her mana reserves. I am most curious about why she would use so much of her power to create such a creature and permanently bind it to someone other than herself.”

“It was a fucking mistake, okay?! I’ve only known I was a Witch for a couple of days and my spells suck and do random shit every time I cast them!” Greta replied reflexively before realizing that it wasn’t one of us who spoke.

The four of us were suddenly looking around frantically for the source of that small voice that had surprised us all. Frankly, this whole place was unusual, and it had so many unfamiliar scents and sounds that it made the owner of the voice hard to find. Finally, my eyes caught a barely perceptible motion on a branch of one of the trees at the edge of the forested area we were parked near.

My eyes went wide as I focused on the tiny person who had made the motion, and who had probably spoken before as well. She was an honest-to-goodness Fairy; maybe four inches tall, she looked vaguely human in shape with pale skin, long shimmering hair that I thought might be silver, and a quartet of iridescent rose-colored wings on her back. I wouldn’t have noticed her at all if it hadn’t been for the movement of those shimmering wings and my sharp eyes.

“Ah, a newly awakened Witch, that explains everything. It will take time, thought, and training before you are able to use your Pentagram to cast your spells reliably. You are quite fortunate that you did not harm anyone, but I see that you and your companions have brought us the man that we seek,” the Fairy replied thoughtfully.

“F-f-fairy…” was all that I could manage to squeak out as I stared. Poor Goldie nearly dropped our captive and only Berry seemed completely nonplussed about this, but then she was only brought to life a little more than an hour ago and she was a living blob of slime.

Greta was gaping at the Fairy almost as badly as I was and was trying to form questions, but her tongue obviously wasn’t cooperating. “Pentagram?” she finally managed to blurt out.

“Yes, I am. The BriarRose Family is a Fairy clan, after all. Do you know nothing of Shadowtown?” the tiny silver-haired woman replied to me helpfully. Then she fluttered off the tree branch to hover in the air before us and answered Greta’s question as well. “The Witch’s Pentagram, the five points of focus that will allow you to control your magic; Mana flow, Will, Intent, Cadence, and Rhyme.”

Goldie was the first of us to restore her ability to string sentences together. “We’re all… uhh… new arrivals. Most of us haven’t even been Arcane for very long, and the slime was only created an hour or two ago. Greta arrived a few days ago and heard that you were looking for this guy, and then met us while chasing him down. So, we helped to capture him, and here we are. I’m Goldie, that’s Red, the slime girl is Berry, and the Witch is Greta.”

“Here you are,” the Fairy agreed. It was hard to tell with how small she was, but I had the feeling that she was smiling. “You may call me Cerriwyn. Come, follow me and I shall take you to our Chieftain so that you can be properly rewarded for your services.”

Cerriwyn promptly flew off, leading us to and then along a walking path that snaked through the thick woods that had probably once been a public park, judging by the path and the park benches alongside it. Apparently, the BriarRose clan had claimed this entire forested former park as their home, and their queen waited at the very center. As we followed her, Cerriwyn quickly explained some things about Shadowtown for us.

Two clans of Fae from the Summer Court had been instrumental in the forming of Shadowtown. The first was the BriarRose Fairy clan, their chieftain had placed the glamour and enchantment over the abandoned area of the city, and it was she who kept it from falling. I didn’t even want to think about how powerful she must be to do that, or what might happen to those who crossed her, like the man Goldie had slung over her shoulder.

The other clan was the Hawthorne clan of the Aos Sídhe, like the LOTR elf I had seen earlier, and ruled by Elric, a progressive young prince of the Summer Court. Where the Fairies excelled in misdirection and illusion magic, their counterparts in the Hawthorne clan specialized in nature magic. It was they who had grown the insane wilderness without damaging the roads, buildings, or infrastructure. They were also the ones who brought in Knockers, Brownies, and other Summer Court Fae to repair damaged structures or tear down ones that were lost causes so the materials could be used to help in repairs elsewhere and new woodland regrown in their place.

Now that process was nearly complete and both clans had split Shadowtown down the middle, for themselves or those allied to them, though there was a growing population of non-Fae as well, like Greta’s bartender friend. Usually, even the non-Fae were employed by one of those two clans in some way though, and those of us who could interact with the normies outside to buy needed supplies or construction and repair materials were a valuable resource in Upper Shadowtown.

It would seem that this community of Arcane had its seedy underbelly though. In tunnels and caverns built well below the sewer systems by Goblins and other nasty creatures sat Lower Shadowtown. It was ruled by Malafis, a self-styled Queen of the Winter Court. It was said that not even the backstabbing and power games of the Winter Court could take her down because of her powerful scrying abilities. As long as she had a mirror or another reflective surface, she could spy on anyone, anywhere.

Not only did she rule most of Lower Shadowtown with an iron fist, but she had made her presence known in Upper Shadowtown as well. She had information merchants and ran a currency exchange on the BriarRose side. Most of her criminal enterprises were focused outside of Shadowtown and spread across several states since she didn’t want a war within Shadowtown itself. Outside Shadowtown everything was fair game though. Drug trafficking, assassins, theft; if it was criminal, she probably had her hands in it somewhere. She even made some money by smuggling in things that the Aos Sidhe in Upper Shadowtown had trouble getting their hands on, for a price. She held a shaky truce with those living above and her only real problem was her daughter.

The rumor was that decades ago Malafis had tried to poison her daughter in a fit of jealousy over her great beauty. Now that daughter wanted to see the world burn, particularly her mother, and she had a small army of Dwarves under her thumb to help her. Over the last six months, she had carved out a piece of Lower Shadowtown for herself, made several attempts on her mother’s life, and was starting to sell drugs inside Shadowtown. Nobody spoke her daughter’s name aloud in Shadowtown, lest it invite trouble, so she was locally known by the same name as the product she peddled, Snow White.

Snow White was a variant of cocaine that was particularly addictive and potent to Arcane and Cerriwyn warned us to avoid it, and the woman herself if we could. As long as we kept to Upper Shadowtown and were careful when dealing with those from below, we would likely be fine if we chose to stay. At least we now knew all of the major players, and who to avoid. The BriarRose Family, the Hawthorne Family, the Blackapple Family, and the White Family. The four different groups were now locally known as the Four Families, and everyone in Shadowtown had ties to at least one of them somehow.

“You’re making it sound like we’d be dealing with the mafia or something,” Goldie muttered before summing up with a grimace, “Okay, so there’s four Families ruling here. Snow White rules the White Family, evil Queen Malafis rules the Blackapple Family, Prince Elric runs the Hawthorne Family, and your BriarRose family is ruled by…” She trailed off as she realized that we hadn’t heard the Fairy give their chieftain’s name yet.

“Well, sort of? I mean it does fit since the ‘Families’ pretty much run all of Shadowtown, or want to,” our tiny guide admitted. Then she gestured to a small clearing with glowing flowers and mushrooms growing all over the ground and a single oak growing in the center. “Look, we’re almost there. Oh, and our leader is Chieftain Rissara, but most people around Shadowtown call her the Fairy Godmother. She will be so happy to hear that you have brought the man we have been looking for.”

“Just to be clear, there is a reward, right?” Greta asked tiredly from Berry’s arms.

The fairy turned back toward us to flutter backward as her minuscule head bobbed rapidly up and down in assent. “Yes, and trust me, it will be worth it. Chief Rissara is going to make you an offer you can’t refuse.”