Unnamed

Delicate swamp lady, will ruin your life if you cross her.

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The tundra fanned himself with a paw. "It's so HOT here!" he grumbled, looking over at Earth territory.

The fae rolled her eyes. "Keep still! We still need to bandage you, you ungrateful little thing!"

He almost laughed at being called a LITTLE thing by a fae, but was distracted by her pulling on his fur. "Ow!"

A short distance away his familiar waited, sulking, for her own turn. The umbra wolf panted in the heat, lifting one paw and then another to lick at the sore pads. "What were you thinking anyway, so far from anywhere without proper directions or equipment?"

The two sorry sacks of fur eyed each other and avoided her gaze. She sighed and swatted at the tundra's fussing with his bindings. "Leave it! Gladekeeper knows what was in that horrid goop." The sun beat down on the Pox Consulate, and the humidity rose. "Treasure hunters, I presume. Did you run out of things to dig up over in Earth?"

"Hah!" the tundra barked a coughing laugh. How could she know? "If there ever was any treasure in there it's surely rotted, what a sweltering pile of compost." She gave him a stern look and then moved to tend to the wolf.

"Now dear, stop licking and let me rinse you off. You'll need some trimming too, we can't leave that crud in your fur so close to that scrape." The wolf sighed and rolled to allow the fae access to her injured leg, worn raw from a long slide down the cliffs they'd descended while looking for a sneaky way into Nature's domain.

The plan had been simple. Penetrate the buried Consolate, locate relics, profit. Nothing had prepared them for the sheer size and abundance of the plant growth they'd faced. Absolutely nothing COULD have prepared them for how carnivorous some of those plants were. But the real trouble had been the weird remnants of sludge they'd found lurking, almost as if hiding, in the deeper recesses under the structure.

By the time this annoyingly competent fae had found them, they'd been scraped, tossed, tangled and then contaminated. Empty handed and each now missing several patches of fur, they had no choice to but retreat. Their fae rescuer escorted them to the edge of the forest, where they were chagrined to be put onto a completely mundane ferry, and sent home.

The fae waved them off, and then turned away, glad to have the swamps to herself once again.