You followed the fairy and frankly, you could not believe your luck! That fairy was going to help you find the princess and defeat any obstacles or monsters along the way! Thanks to that magical help, your fame would know no bounds! Your renown would reach the very clouds! As much as your riches, because a princess came with a castle and an entire kingdom! Stacks and stacks of gold! Even more if the noble lady was guarded by a dragon with a hoard of gold as big as it was. But going through that ugly beast would be a breeze with the help of that fairy! It was tiny, but her magical power must be proportionally immense! You just knew everything would go well, now. And if the princess was not as attractive as tradition or your expectations held, well, you would marry her and get a few attractive mistresses on the side. No one would tell you you could not, because you'd be king and a hero. Your popularity would protect you and everyone would hang to your every word! You'd be rich and famous and frankly, what more was there to that?
All to your daydreaming, you followed the sparkling trail of the fairy absent-mindedly. You entered a big dry cave. You asked if the princess was near, and the fairy said that first, she'd give you a magical armor, sword and shield certain to defeat the monster guarding the princess held prisoner by the disgusting beast. That caught your attention and you felt another surge of elation. An armor that would make you invincible! Awesome! Even better! After saving the princess, no one else would stand in his way, even her father if that old fool sitting upon his throne annoyed you too much.
But your dreams of glory and fame abruptly came to an end when a net rose from the ground right under your feet and hoisted you high up in the air. The meshes of the net were tight and allowed very little movement. You tried to reach for your knife and cut through this trap but it was difficult, made all the more as the fairy, laughing, waved her wand and made you current weapons vanish into thin air.
"What?... What is it...? What are you doing?... What's happening?..." you spluttered, outraged.
"I just captured you, silly hero," she laughed.
She then added, more seriously:
"Let me return to my true appearance."
Another wave of her wand showed to your eyes a very different fairy. Taller, as tall as a normal woman, with long ginger hair that reached her shoulders in lush and beautiful curls. Her dress was brilliantly white with golden decorations upon it. Her wings were similar to a dragonfly and barely noticeable, so transparent they were. Her wand was now a delicate thin staff and she held no sparkles at each movement anymore.
"Silly hero with illusions of grandeur," she said evilly with a wide grin.
"What do you want?" you shouted in anger.
"Well, you, of course. Simply you," she answered airily. "I change into an innocent fairy to attract stupid heroes bent upon rescuing a royal idiot and trap them into this magical net from which only I can make them escape from. Then they are at my mercy and I can transform them, all to sell them for high profits in the fay realm. Young fools wanting gold and a royal wife never run out, it seems. You idiots always make for a plentiful harvest. And bags full of gems and gold coins for me."
Her eyes glittered with a mischievous and evil glint, insensitive to the great fear enveloping you.
"Now, what shall it be for you?" she asked playfully, clearly pondering what she could transforming you into that would sell at the highest price for fay creatures for whom you'd be an exotic thing to purchase.