Chapter 221: Chapter 221 Newcomers
"What's going on?" asked Frederik, motioning to her chains.
"Oh," Aella said, glancing down. She had forgotten the chains after the realm told her what was actually going on.
Turning herself into air, she allowed the chains to fall to the chair, and stood up next to the table that had been before her.
"Hey!" cried Precious, falling through her as she turned to air, giving her a dirty look before he hopped up onto the table and started licking his paw in annoyance.
"Frederik, you probably shouldn't be in here," said Josephine, standing up from her seat. "The room is full of Aella's pheromones…"
"I don't care," he said, shaking his head and turning towards Aella. "I was so worried when you fell out of the sky and then Alfred brought you here. I would have been here sooner but his guards wouldn't let me in!"
"I was falling out of the sky on purpose!" she said with a frown, remembering her anger at the realm.
"No, I know you were going to burn something, but I mean when you fell not on purpose. It's a good thing Precious was able to get to you so fast and catch you before you hit the ground!"
Aella raised an eyebrow and glanced back at the cat on the table. He snorted and turned away from her, laying down and pretending to go to sleep. She probably needed to thank him for that. Turning back to Frederik, she noticed that his eyes had dilated and he had moved closer to her.
"I'm not having kids!" she snapped, stepping back from him.
"What? Ok?" he said, stopping and looking at her puzzled. "Are you alright? It looked like you weren't healing when I saw you before Alfred took you away."
"I'm fine now," she sniffed, crossing her arms. "I don't have long to get things done before the realm starts to unravel, so if you'll excuse me…"
She snatched up Precious and holding him tightly to her chest, she teleported above the human city, looking around to see if she saw Alfred with these new gargoyles. There was a small crowd that had formed in the center of the city, in front of the library, so she teleported over to see what was going on.
"We prefer a home that is high in the clouds, rather than one on the ground such as this," one of the newcomers was saying, but Alfred just shook his head.
"I'm sorry, I don't understand your words."
Aella landed next to Alfred and laid a hand on his shoulder, looking the new gargoyles up and down. There were five of them, and they all stood taller than her. With dismay, she saw that none of them were women.
"I understand your words. I can see about finding you a home, if you will agree to wait here while I search?" she said.
"You can speak with them?" asked Alfred in surprise.
"We can stay here for a short while, while you search, but as you can see, we have no women. Are there others of our kind here?" he asked, turning towards her.
The five gargoyles had long pointed ears that they seemed to be able to control their movement. They all had long black wings and they wore very few clothes. Their feet were more claw than foot, and they wore only leather wrappings around them, rather than shoes. Aella wasn't impressed. The one who spoke for all of them had blue skin, with darker blue freckles, and white hair.
"As I understand it, there are very few gargoyles left," Aella started, trying to figure out how to explain the situation with the demons to them.
"You appear to be gargoyle, as we are, except you do not have wings. How do you fly? Are your wings invisible?" asked a second gargoyle behind the blue one. This one had brown skin, but his hair was still white. "I have heard of our children being born without wings when we interbreed with other races. Is that what happened with you?"
Aella frowned. She didn't like being scrutinized like this.
"You all appear to be warriors of some kind. Did you come from a war-torn land?" she asked, ignoring the brown skinned gargoyle.
"Rog, don't be so rude. This realm is giving us a place to live and she is to be the one we have to deal with if no one else can speak our tongue," warned the blue gargoyle.
"Hunter, I will obey for now, only because we have an agreement," said Rog, stepping back unhappily.
Turning back to her, Hunter said, "Our prince engaged in war often, causing our numbers to dwindle. He did not get along with the other races in our last realm, and we could not keep our population up with all of the fighting. He ordered all of the males to steal women from the other races to breed with, but we refused. None of the others wished to leave our prince when your realm contacted us. Our realm refused to let any of the females come with us as there were so few pure ones left."
"Ah," said Aella, nodding her understanding of their situation. "If you will come with me, I shall make a place for you to stay while I prepare a place for you. We can talk more there about this realm, and what it wishes of you."
"Aella, be careful," said Alfred with a frown. "They will probably not be welcome in the demon city. You can build them something over in that section of the city, as we don't have anything over there yet, but I don't know how you will find them mates."
"I'll worry about that later, Alfred," she said, motioning for the gargoyles to come with her. Studying the ground where they could have a house, she decided to give them some privacy, building a column up into the air, and then creating a room with many doors on top of it. Flying up, she inspected her work, changing a few things here and there, then turned to the gargoyles that had followed her.
"What kinds of beds do you use?" she asked.
"We tend to sleep on the edges of cliffs, so if an enemy tries to sneak up on us, we can escape quickly," explained Hunter.
"You probably won't have that problem here," Aella said thoughtfully. "Most of the people on the realm can't fly, and only my personal assassins can climb up here to this place."
"You have personal assassins?" interrupted one of the gargoyles in the back, pushing to the front of the others.
"Yes, I used to be the king of the demons, but now I am the king of the realm," she explained. "I formed an army of assassins to deal with things when I was the king of the demons."
"Does that mean you are a demon, instead of a gargoyle?" spat yet another of the gargoyles in the back.
"It's complicated," she said, leaning back against on of the door frames and allowing Precious to jump to the window frame beside her to sun himself.
Forming stools around a table, she motioned for them to all have a seat. Glancing at each other, they all sat.
"You have amazing abilities. Are they gifts of the realm? I thought you were the realm guardian, not the king?" said Hunter in confusion.
"Yes, they are gifts of the realm," she nodded, thinking about how the realm originally gave the hero powers to the heroes. "I was born from a human mother, with a father who was both demon and gargoyle. My mother died at my birth, and my father trained me to survive the coming trials I would have to overcome.
"The demons and the gargoyles came to this realm at the same time. The humans were the dominant race at the time, where they arrived, so the two races were put together. They interbred and lost both races as two distinct different races. Because of the ease of the word demon over gargoyle in their language, they called all of them demons.
"Magic was involved in taking everything in me that wasn't gargoyle away, so I am pure gargoyle, even though I don't have wings. When our realm was first created, it was created as a place for gargoyles to thrive, but the act of creation took so much power and energy, the realm forgot its purpose. While I was king of the demons, I was able to unlock a large amount of magic back into the realm that had been trapped away for a long time. The realm has started to regain its memories of things since then, and has discovered that the population of gargoyles has dropped to a critical level."
"So, the only reason we were brought here, was because the realm wanted more gargoyles?" laughed Rog. "You are fine to look at, but I think we might be a bit too much for just you!"
Aella frowned and stood up straight. "I am sterile. You are expected to find mates among the demons to raise the number of gargoyles in the realm. Unfortunately, the person I left in charge of the demons isn't very cooperative right now."
"This sounds very similar to what our prince had wanted," warned Hunter.
"I am not asking you to kidnap people. I fully expect you to find true mates. There may be some here, in this city, and you are welcome to look while I work on your home in the mountains, if that is what you want."
"We have already chosen to leave our prince and come here," said the gargoyle that had been shocked at her having assassins.
"You are right, Karn. We cannot go back, so we must make the best of our situation," said Hunter, turning back to her. "We will stay here while you make us a good home and see if there are any we would be interested in as mates. May we hunt in the surrounding area?"
"The people here have animals that they tend, so don't harm them, but there are wild ones out on the plains that you can hunt. I should not be long getting you a home and when I return, I will see if I can help you find mates among the demons."
They didn't look happy, but they nodded, so Aella took Precious and flew outside. Not having to worry about her pheromones was such a relief she felt like laughing. Now she could get everything done before she had to babysit the godlings!
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
Sdrawkcab
Sdrawkcab Poor Frederik doesn't have a clue what's going on. Hopefully Josephine will fill him in on everything. Wonder how the gargoyles are going to find mates when they speak a different language, and besides, how was Aella able to understand them, when Alfred couldn't?
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