Elenora, Knight of Vantress

Author's Note: Enjoy the story and R&R.

Disclaimer: I do not own anything related to or of Magic: The Gathering.

Summary:

Syr Elenora goes town to town across the Realm in search of missing midwife Hilda, and fights a beanstalk giant.


Once upon a time…

"You," Elenora addressed a man strongly as she trotted her charger into the market, reinforcing her square jaw. "Where did you acquire those beans?"

The soldier straightened. While he was dressed in a less impressive tabard, trousers, and leather skirt, the knight sanctimoniously interrupting his business with the peasant boy was easily identifiable as Vantress by her blue surcoat and the keyhole motif present in her armour and on her steed's bridle and collar. Like her Ardenvale, Locthwain, Embereth, and Garenbrig counterparts, she was suited almost entirely head to toe, a model of order to aspire towards and not an individual one would disrespect.

"These beans?" He held up the seedpods he meant to pay the boy. "A beautiful princess I rescued from a tower gave them to me! Assured me they were magic!"

"A deceit! I am called Syr Elenora. Ordered from Castle Vantress to inquire regarding the disappearance of Hilda the midwife. The stories I've heard told on my journey…They point to foul magic. Perhaps the tainted gifts of faeries or a barrow witch."

Her tone was cold, but unselfish. Noble enough to convince the soldier he'd been hoodwinked by fair folk from the Wilds, and made an accomplice to their cruel tricks.

"What can I do to help?" he begged her, wanting to make up for making such a hash.

Elenora was mounted on Phronesis, her snow-white unicorn who'd ridden with her since he was a pony and since she was too young to embark on her first quest. Phronesis had a broken horn from one of Elenora's earliest battles after the Magic Mirror Indrelon knighted her, the end of which Elenora used her own magic to replace with a perpetual icicle.

"You have my thanks. Your information is all I required. I am more interested what the boy can tell me now."

Poor child. He hoped to barter away the golden calf that stayed the night overnight in their barn. Magic beans could have solved his family's food struggles. Replenishable yield a beefier boon than the meat a lone cow could provide.

Until this exchange, no one heeded Hilda's frantic mooing. The fae curse was turning out worse than she had feared, until the knight deduced her situation.

Elenora's skills of observation were as sharp as Phronesis' icicle horn. There was a reason the courts dubbed her "The Discerning." Few aspirants outside the High King or the Queen could be claimed to have pursued the virtue of knowledge so determinedly.

Before she voiced her conclusion, another man, named Abernat – stricken by the same apparent princess – realized a bit late that he was supposed to plant the magic beans, not eat them. He'd barely gulped when their transformative properties took effect.

Villagers dropped their baskets and fled the growing giant, his size increased to epic proportions.

The giant was tall as a beanstalk.

The giant was the beanstalk!

The green-dyed Abernat trundled with heavy steps. Fertile footsteps that grew vegetation wherever his massive feet landed.

Putting knowledge to practice, Elenora charged. Phronesis galloped and leapt trunk to sprouting trunk. Around her drawn blade, ice crystals formed. Her pommel froze, and frigid energy swirled up the center of her shortsword, hardening it in a rimy skin and lighting it a blowing blue.

Her sword bit with the teeth of frostbite. The thick limbs of the overgrown plants whitened instantly, as if gripped by winter in all of seconds, chopped down in chunks of ice behind her like glass.

Slash after slash, she pruned the overgrowth the giant's paces produced.

With finesse, Elenora's swordwork and Phronesis' jumps got them below Abernat's ropy green beard. It looked absurd from the boy and the soldier's perspective. A unicorn somehow not sliding off, at the same time his rider began climbing the monstrous man's beard!

Abernat, either experiencing degradation to his mind or not caring about anything so small, heeded the knight as little as others had heeded Hilda's bovine sobs. This supplied Elenora a valuable edge. Gauntlet over gauntlet, she pulled herself to the bottom of his nose. Once she was standing under his nostrils, he finally responded, lifting his hand to swat the gnat itching up his face.

Using his slow-approaching attack to her advantage, she waited for his arm to make a pass, stole onto it, then hopped off his arm and onto his nose proper. The second swing by the giant came and she delayed again. Here, she jumped out the way in time for him to swat himself. She opted to follow through with an old-fashioned, unenchanted cut. Nonlethal, but given his size, the right amount of pain to supplement his self-inflicted injury and send him falling down.

During the freefall, she seized Phronesis' reins and generated a cloud of cold beneath them to break their fall.

Elenora timed it so nobody'd be flattened, though some weaker, out-of-use buildings nonetheless caved in on themselves due to Abernat's weight.

In fact, the impact was felt throughout the Realm.

Crowds reassembled, including the procession Elenora rode in among. The loremages immediately accepted the challenge of undoing the spell responsible for Abernat's transformation.

Hilda's case needed further attention because she'd been a heifer far longer.

"I shall bring your cow back to Vantress with me, boy." She placed a gold piece in his hand. "The Wizened will know what to do."

"And the beans?" the soldier cautioned.

"My party will see that remaining magic beans are rounded up. If the villains involved are found, I'll see to them prior to our leave-taking."

Elenora's word. They purified Abernat, scouted for the unsavoury creatures (never found), and returned to Vantress, where Gadwick the Wizened researched in seclusion to overcome Hilda's plight, successfully distilling the countermagic necessary for the loremages to revert her to human form.

And they lived happily ever after.