Amaterasu could even know what their plan was, the introduction of fairy goods via illegal means would allow them to control the local market because what the Deva were taxing them was nothing compared to their full capacity, they could even drive the price down so that the Deva food market would crash, local producers would become impoverished.
It was surprising to see a species designed to be of lower intelligence had come up with a plan like this, though fairies have longer lifespans, they planned ahead for years. Amaterasu though hated the idea of the introduction of a new substance; honey. It was refined flower nectar, sweeter than anything that they had ever produced, if further processed with Deva technology they could even make sugar a crystalline form of it much more potent and much more addictive.
Amaterasu knew of the high amounts of sugar a fairy could eat though this did not happen with Deva nor tengu (garuda as Deva called them) or tiangou like herself. She preferred to eat only meat, a choice Brighid respected, because the high intake of sugar would prove detrimental to her health. News of the Indra becoming larger due to his diet that consisted of peaches and figs had already begun circulating.
Sugar though was very mild when compared to the resin they got from the poppy flower, an invention of Brighid herself. Fairies were immune to its effects it only had a mild sweetness to it for them, but for any other species the substance would bring them to a haze worse than that of alcohol. Brighid though had not shared this knowledge to Amaterasu’s request, a substance like that would drive Deva to madness.
The day sugar would be shipped to the black-market Amaterasu was chosen to deal with the smugglers. They were tiangou like her and they did not trust fairies. They waited for them in the near moon of the planet, a Deva dome covered the place. Amaterasu greeted them with courtesy, these people though did not return the salute, it wasn’t an insult they weren’t exactly raised in the best conditions.
By their look Amaterasu could tell they were born in the wild fringes of the Deva planets, raised in freedom but also in need. Their clothes were expensive although they lacked style, perhaps because they never developed one. She found them interesting right away.
“Since when a dog lady works with those insects?” said one of them, he had a missing ear and bite marks on his right eye
“I had always work with them, but I fully understand your concerns, their minds work differently than our own” she smiled, their lack of etiquette wasn’t an insult it was just the way they were.
“If you need out of this rock just say the word. I wouldn’t mind having a wife like you” he winked
Amaterasu chuckled “If you knew how intimacy worked with me you would probably be upset, even if I liked the idea I have to decline your offer. Though the offer for gold in exchange of the new fairy craze” she opened a wooden box besides her chair, the small and rough clay pot had a sweet smell to it, much stronger than that of fruit “It lasts longer too, at any temperature”
She handed the jar to the two men, the younger one of the two had a taste, soon he began eating with such haste he would even begin chewing on the pot. The one with the missing eat pulled out his knife and cut the throat of the other. “What do you call this? Do you recommend me to try it?” He was shaking, it was excitement, this substance was so good it had driven his companion mad, he had to kill him though, he knew a feeding frenzy when he saw one and he couldn’t have someone eating their cargo.
“With all honesty I do not dare to try honey myself. So we have a deal?” She stepped away from the blood of the dead tiangou before them.
“What else you have?” He asked, fairies had promised more than this, he knew this would be more than enough, but he was curious.
“Its purified form of course” she handed him a small bag containing an amber powder “It is called sugar”
He didn’t have to taste it; he could smell it.
“The rest we cannot give you at this moment, we think this is enough” She pointed at the large pile of boxes, all of them filled to the brim with sugar.
He nodded “I think it’s fair” he then proceeded to go for his ship, he tried to aim the weapons towards Amaterasu, he knew fairies would be able to survive that but a tiangou was a whole different deal. He could walk off with this and earn enough to live the rest of his life in riches in the city of Coya.
Amaterasu though was untouched by the blast, one of her robes was roughly charred, it began falling off. She sighed and counted the layers, 5 layers, this guy had blasted away one, the temperature of the area began to increase, she walked up to the ship while the baffled man tried to fiddle the controls to hit her though her feet were way too quick for a heavy ship.
She gripped one of the cannons, it slowly began to melt. Amaterasu then flew up towards the cockpit. “Do you have the payment?” She was not surprised, after all this amount of riches would break any man.
He shook his head; Amaterasu gave a heavy sigh “You poor thing”
Fairies began to appear out of nowhere, they had learned magic to make themselves transparent, one of them held up the man’s companion and ate him from the inside, the fairy squeezed itself to sizes one would think impossible the body of the companion soon began to squirm and it then stood up healed.
Amaterasu knocked on the window “Would you please open?”
He tried to fly away though a spear came flying down from the sky breaking the dome and piercing the cockpit ceiling, the man was impaled, his body now lifeless could no longer control the ship so Amaterasu held it in place.
Brighid came floating down and grabbed her spear “I’ll have to clean it later” She said while showing disgust. Another fairy came into the body of the smuggling leader. “You gave him a choice; we could have come to an agreement with him even after this betrayal”
“You would have still cursed him to lose everything though or fall sick and mad… I think he knew death was a far better option”
Brighid turned around “Load everything and patch the hole!” Flowers soon began to cover the dome; fairies began to patch up the ship itself.
“How will we get the revenue then?” Said Amaterasu, all while looking at the crates of sugar being loaded into the ship, a few gold ones being unloaded from the ship as well, it was indeed not enough to make the payment, probably the smuggler thought he was going to get some new type of fruit.
Brighid looked at the ship and sighed “You and I will pose as servants of Lord Rudra. Aengus and Derg will deal with the sale, or trade it directly for titan ore and copper”
“You sure? We will have to deal with a very large amount. Why not gold?”
Derg, in the shape of the smuggling leader came down from the ship while the rest of the boxes were being loaded “Because trading gold is banned, we could get it in the black market but it would mean a bigger cut for whoever sold it to us. We can take a small cut of the pay and get a ship too”
“That would be very helpful, having a large cargo ship to carry troops” Brighid began to walk into the ship with the spear in her shoulder. Amaterasu followed in, she thought on how this was the beginning of the war.
Which side would fairies pick, after all they were still servants of the Deva just in a different way, they could now ask for a galaxy if they helped the Deva win the war against the Ashura, or they would use this very metal to craft weapons to subdue the Fomorians in their entirety.
They arrived to the slums of Coya, the city of Shudh, the population was mostly inhabited by garuda, who welcomed Amaterasu as one of their own, not even questioning the fact that she behaved as a noble lady, and even assumed Brighid was her handmaid and bodyguard, something both considered convenient, this allowed Brighid to continue carrying her spear while they walked around the city.
Rather short buildings, mostly warehouses was what consisted of the city, the few Deva who lived there were beggars, a few wolves guarded the large ports and warehouses while the birds walked wearing rather plain clothes. Amaterasu stood out by the fact that she was wearing white and red clothing with gold embroidery, the bodyguard dressed in a green silk dress stood out just as much. What helped them blend in were the two smugglers following them.
Brighid tugged on Amaterasu’s arm, she had smelled something, so she went to meet the guards at the door. They looked at the smugglers and greeted them with friendliness “You had to return with the goods only, or is she a buyer?”
Amaterasu cleared her throat “I am a trader, any other question ask it to my servant” Brighid glared at them, they took a step back and allowed them in.
They had no idea what it was but something in that bodyguard scared them, it was uncharacteristic to have a woman as a guard though the teen Deva holding the spear made them feel uneasy. They thought she was a Deva because fairies were rare at the time in Coya, and if anything, they would avoid a city like Shudh, a city of iron. What was a Deva servant doing in a city like this anyway? Probably a pair of criminal witches, if that were the case this would be the place for them to do business.
Brighid had chosen this spot because it reeked of fruit, the smell of the smugglers was also impregnated for Brighid that smell was clear, Amaterasu could smell it too.
The owner of the place was surprised to see his men coming back with people, he knew of their plan to steal from the fairies, nobody steals from the fairies. He was greeted by his pilot “Boss the fairies weren’t willing to trade, they had risen up their prices again. I though found something new, this tiangou has a chemical plant somewhere, well look at what she produces”
Derg handed the man a small bottle containing honey, the man smelled it then ate it, the group could see his pupils dilate after his tongue processed the taste. “What does she want for it?”
Amaterasu remained in her place “I have 100 Tan of honey” she said, making sure to use the tianou measurement for weight “And 50 of its purest form, sugar you may call it. Both last long without cooling unlike the fairy food”
The man laughed “This is far better! If what you say is true then name your price, I will name mine in the market anyway”
Amaterasu smirked “I want copper, tin and titan ore”
“Lady I deal with money not with metals… If you have a chemical plant, then you would be capable of dealing metals. Who are you?!” The man said
Brighid who was showing a very calm expression every single moment of the conversation sighed “Good sir we came here to get metals and metals we will get; we are negotiating out of respect not from need”
He glanced at his pilots, there was something off about them, he had noticed it before, but he thought they were under some fairy spell. It wasn’t their demeanor nor their appearance, it was their smell, it was slightly putrid, now that he saw more closely they weren’t even breathing, their blinking was off too, too exact as if they were doing it out of habit not because their eyes were getting dry. This man had dealt with fairies before, he had heard legends of them taking people as if they were mere puppets. This garuda though had never seen it happen, fairies usually only wanted the payment and left right after, this time was different. It had to be that they wanted something more than money, they brought something much more valuable.
The woman besides Amaterasu looked young, though bodyguards are rarely that short even if their magic is powerful every Deva will run out of mana eventually and must use their bodies to fight. If this woman were a fairy then the case would be different, then for her species she could be considered tall. What gave it away the most was her spear, it did not have the slight blue hue of polished iron, it was pure silver, titan ore, fairy steel, it was more expensive than iron and was harder to sharpen once the blade became dull, it was called fairy steel for a reason, fairies used it since they were allergic to iron.
His smugglers were very tired, and were growing more tired by the minute, the effect of the iron structure they were in was slowly poisoning them. All of this flew in his head at such a speed only a fraction of a second would pass. So, his men did try to betray the fairies, and the fairies had come to directly deal with him.
“I’ll see what I can do” he replied, hiding his fear. Even though he was in a steel building in a steel city he did not feel safe, the fairies were threatening to use him as a literal puppet if he didn’t comply. “It may take a couple of weeks though. I’ll need the sweets to be able to trade”
Amaterasu nodded “We will leave you the things, and return within two weeks”
Of course, they would leave, the two pilots were trying very hard not to faint. He though noticed something, the bodyguard was not showing those effects, maybe she was a Deva who served fairies, a fairy slave. Maybe he could use that as leverage for later.
They left and returned in the promised time, by that time he had told his workers what had happened with the two pilots who came with them, they weren’t them anymore but mere flesh puppets. All of them began wearing iron armor to prepare for their return.
They had not specified how much metal they needed but he sold the sugar at as high of a price as he could then with three fourths of it, keeping his usual cut of one fourth, he bought as much metal as he found, it was so much even the price for them rose.
He even had to rent warehouses to keep it all in, enough metal to rebuild the city many times over. The fairies were pleased to see this, though they didn’t expect to see so much metal. Derg laughed because their plans to buy a ship did not make sense now, they would need to buy a fleet to get all of that.
Amaterasu was amused too, though she asked their business partner to move all the metal to a single location. Derg went to buy salt and chalk which he then mixed. Once all of this was done Brighid began to draw a circle around the metal using the powder Derg had made.
Brighid now began to chant in sylvan, purple wings of light grew on her back, then everything was gone, they had left. The man, now rich enough to retire for the rest of his days shivered in fear now seeing in how much danger he was, and how smart he was to just comply with their orders. If they had the power to move that amount of metal, they could have very well leveled the city with the snap of their fingers.
Editorial 