by Izzy Shows
A chuckle is one thing, but laughter is another. And Fae laughter is unlike anything you've ever heard before. It's practically music, the sound is so enchanting and so...pure. It took me a long moment, and the ability to read body language, to realise that he was laughing at me.
"What?" I put my hands on my hips, a little miffed. It was a perfectly rational thing to be thinking about.
"I just didn't take you for the type to be afraid of anything."
"Why does everyone think that because you're big and strong, you aren't afraid of anything?" I rolled my eyes. "The best fighters are afraid. They just work through their fear. If you aren't afraid, then you aren't taking the consequences seriously, and you're going to get yourself killed."
He sobered, regarding me with a new light in his eyes. "Yes," he said, softly. "That's true."
I looked at him out of the corner of one eye. "Are you saying that you took me for the type to be foolhardy and stupid in a fight?"
"I did not say that," he said, looking straight ahead.
"No, you didn't, which isn't a lie in itself. Damn Fae." I snorted, trundling along through the forest. "If you thought I wasn't good in a fight, why did you come to see me then?"
"I never said I thought you'd be bad in a fight, Sheach. It should not be a surprise to you that my coming to you is more an act of desperation than anything else. I cannot endanger the other Fae, certainly not my Lord, and I know of no other mage that would be willing to help me. Let me correct that, there are no other mages capable of helping me, and I know of no Wizard willing to help. I think we both know you possess the power to train, but you have not aligned yourself with your people's Order. Why is that?"
I stopped short to gawk at him, surprised by how blunt he had been. And OK, maybe it hurt a little for him to say coming to me for help was 'an act of desperation.' But it was obvious, so I couldn't contest it. I swallowed, trying to decide if there was anything I wanted to say before I answered his question.
Nope, nothing. I shrugged.
"I was told that there's a high likelihood they will want to...get rid of me, if they can find any possible reason to do so. I was going to go before them, when I had someone with me who was a member and could vouch for me, but..." My throat closed around any other words that would have come out.
But he died.
My mind finished the sentence I couldn't give voice to. I'd lost Aidan, and the fact that he was the only way for me to meet the Order and come out of it alive was somehow nowhere near as important as the fact that he had been the first person to really understand me. We'd only known each other for a short time, but we had clicked on a level I had never experienced before.
He observed me with watchful eyes for several minutes, letting the silence sit between us.
"If you ever trained, you would be a remarkable Wizard."
I lifted my chin. "I don't think that will ever happen, Kailan. If they find out about me, they're just going to kill me. They wouldn't want to go through the bother of training me."
He smirked. "You may yet have friends that would help you, Sheach. Assuming we are to deal with the Utakar and somehow make it out with our lives, I will not soon forget that."
A corner of my lip twitched into a half-smile, I turned my face toward the ground so that he wouldn't see it. Somehow, the idea of having a Fae in my corner was very comforting.
We kept going, deeper into the forest, until Kailan stopped short. His arm came down in front of me, halting my forward momentum so that I ran into him.
"What?" I said, looking around.
"That's it, ahead," he said. He pointed at a clearing not too far ahead. I don't know how I missed it, I just wasn't looking for it.
It was a black spot in a world of greenery. Felled trees were what created the clearing, the grass that had once grown there was not blackened char; it looked like someone had taken a bloody flame thrower to the place and somehow contained it to a perfect, unnatural circle.
"Whoa," I said. "That's...that's something, all right." I looked to Kailan, his face had turned grim, his lips set in a thin line. I noticed a slight quiver to his stance and looked down to see that his hurt leg was trembling, as if it had a consciousness of its own and knew it was at the place that had hurt it.
I placed a hand on his shoulder. "You OK?"
"I'll be fine. Let's just hurry up and get this over with."
I nodded. I could understand that. Kailan dropped his arm and I walked ahead, taking point now. I knew he wouldn't want to get too close if he could avoid it, but I wanted to get in the middle of it and see what was going on there.
"Wait," he said, putting a hand on my shoulder.
"What now?" I looked back at him, shrugging his hand off my shoulder and lifting an eyebrow. Impatient as ever.
"You wanted to know how to See."
My eyes widened and I inclined my head forward. Right, I'd forgotten about that. "Oh, yeah. Uh, how?"
He smiled, a soft and slow curl of his lips. "Close your eyes."
"How does closing my eyes help me See?" Always there are questions and I always seem to ask them but that just didn’t make any sense.
He gave me a hard look. "Close. Your eyes."
I pulled in a long breath and let it out on a rush before I closed my eyes. I tapped my foot impatiently.
I didn't hear a sound that would have indicated movement, but I felt his hands on my shoulders, brushing down my forearms.
"Relax. Breathe in and out, slowly."
The urge to fight surfaced, but I pushed it back down. Breathe. I inhaled through my nose and let the breath float out of my mouth, concentrating on quieting my mind. It was difficult, the thoughts rushing through my head didn't want to go away, the rage inside wanted to push against listening to someone else and certainly didn't want to be quieted. I made myself visualise choking the fire that burned inside until it was nothing more than a simple flicker, then squashed it as quickly as possible.
Now, I just had the thoughts to deal with.
I treated them like water in a boat, scooping them up in a bucket and dumping them out. Some water splashed back with every toss, but I kept at it until it was all gone. Until there was nothing but silence and the feeling of air moving in and out of my lungs.
"Now, visualise your eyes opening. No—don't open them, close them again."
I growled, my lips twisting into a snarl as I shut my eyes again.
Visualise my eyes opening? This was ridiculous.
More ridiculous than all the other things you've done?
That little snarky voice at the back of my head piped up. I pushed it down and away, knowing that I needed to keep my mind empty.
I chose to see it as a second pair of eyes above my own, flicking open all at once—and Saw.
The trees were the first thing I Saw, vibrant and shifting with a variety of browns and greens and alive. I could see the life inside of them, pulsing. It was so beautiful I thought I might cry.
"Now, carefully, look at the clearing. Be slow, and I'll repeat it to be clear, be careful. What you See will stay with you. Forever."
I hesitated, not sure that I wanted to see the blackness of that circle with this new Sight, but I knew that I had to. Had to know what it was really like. I turned my head and laid my new eyes on the circle.
Pain slammed into my head worse than any migraine I've ever had, the ground was crawling there with a darkness I couldn't quite make out. There were things there, things I couldn't focus on, but I knew that they were awful.
My lungs were burning and I realised that I hadn't taken another breath since I'd looked at it. I forced my new eyes to close, and was able to breathe again.
I had to push forward. I pulled more air into my lungs.
I only had to put one foot inside of the blackened circle to feel the energy. It hit me like a freight train, blowing me back several steps.
It had a distinct feeling of black sludge, though alive, like it would crawl inside of you and slo
wly eat you whole. I shuddered, brushing at my upper arms as if it was actually on me. Nothing there, I told myself, but that didn't make me feel any better.
I looked back and saw Kailan watching me with narrowed eyes.
Come on, you've got someone to impress. You can't let him think you can't handle this—he may have come to you out of desperation, but you're his last chance. Buck up.
I mentally chided myself and took a deep breath, squaring my shoulders. Now that I knew what to expect, I could sort of prepare myself for it.
I stomped forward, bracing myself for the pushback from the clearing, and managed to make it a few steps into the circle that time.
The world seemed to turn black, the air closed in around me and I felt like I was choking. My legs quivered, I felt the need to kneel and catch my breath—but no, that was a bad idea. If I went down in here, I was suddenly certain that I wouldn't make it back out.
"Vis," I said through clenched teeth, calling on the energy inside my ankle tattoo. It was one of two foci that I’d had embedded into my body—the second was a large tattoo that spanned my entire back, a multitude of dragon like scales that had the tendency to light up in diverse colours whenever activated. That one was a passive shield, designed to keep me safe from sneak attacks.
The tattoo on my ankle was different, it was a font of strength that I could call on when I needed to. Using magic from foci didn't hurt like using raw magic, that stuff could be killer. But you used up all the pain in the creation and filling of the foci, so that when you need it you can just call on it.
Most of the time, I used the ankle tattoo for extra oomph to my kicks, but this time I was pulling on it to give me fortitude. I felt the rush of heat as the energy spread through my body, causing every little hair to stand on end as it bristled throughout. My eyes went wide and my lips parted on a satisfied sigh, settling into a smirk.
"Fuck with me," I said to the clearing.
It didn't like that.
Growls came from within the dark—I couldn't see, damn it—and I knew that something had come to answer the challenge.
I backpedalled, knowing that I was only a few steps into the clearing I should be able to get out of it quickly enough. I wasn't afraid of a fight, not really, but I knew better than to try and take anything on blind.
It took longer than I wanted to get out of there, but I finally did it. The air opened up again, the light painful to my eyes, but I could see at last. I looked around to locate the source of the growling, but saw only Kailan.
"We've got company," I said, pulling out both of my wands from their holsters on my thighs.
"Are you sure?"
"Certain. You didn't hear the growling?"
He shook his head, directing his attention to the dark clearing I had come out of.
Looking back at it, it was confusing that it had dampened my vision the way it had. I could clearly see through it now to the other side, there was no limit to my vision. Left over magic from the Utakar then, I decided.
The sound came again, and three pairs of glowing red eyes pierced the edge of the clearing. They were eerie in their disembodied state, but I knew that the bodies would be coming soon. It was the magic that had hidden the world from me when I'd been in there that was currently masking them from us.
"Get ready," I said, flexing my knees as I got into a battle stance.
Three wolves—by the Gods, were those wolves? They were bloody ginormous—launched out of thin air, their coats as black as the darkness I'd been wrapped up in earlier, their fangs easily the size of my hand.
"Fuck me," I said, barely more than a whisper. It was all I had time for before one of them slammed into my chest, knocking me to the ground and the wind from my lungs. I wheezed, trying to pull in the air my brain needed to work so that I could figure out what the hell to do with this new development.
I didn't really have the time for that though, as the jaws of death were bearing down on me, mere inches from my face.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck...Aegis!" I'm not proud of how long it took to get my brain to work, but it finally got itself in gear in time for me to yank up my now empty right hand to slide in the remaining space in front of my face. The wolf's fangs slammed into the invisible wall I'd put between us, causing blue light to spark and flicker in its face. It snarled, saliva dripping from its jowls, and slammed its face against the shield again.
More blue sparks, but I saw what it was trying to do. Destroy my shield through sheer brute force. Well, that would work if I let it, but it was a good enough distraction as it didn't seem to realise it could turn its attention from my face and make short work of my body.
"Vis!" I forced myself into a sitting position as I activated the cuff on my left wrist, dropping the shield just as I slammed my fist into the wolf's neck. I succeeded in shoving it off me, enough that it went spinning away. There was no satisfying crunch though, no broken bones for me to cry victory over.
I jumped to my feet, glancing around me for the fire wand that had gone spinning out of my hand. While by no means my best—I was far more adept with ice magic than fire—it was by far my most destructive. Ice is like surgery, you can do a hell of a lot of cool things with it and cause a shit ton of damage if you know what you're doing; but fire is a shot gun. You aim it and fire and it takes care of anything within range. You don't need to be a brain surgeon to kill someone with fire.
I spied it a few feet away and raced for it, snapping it up just in time to come face to face with another bloody giant wolf. I slammed a foot into its face, called it a victory when the damned thing whimpered, and spun away, tail down, to put some distance between it and myself.
"Kailan?" I called, looking about. "Are you still up?"
"Indeed," he said, his voice calm and steady. Surprisingly so, considering the attack we were under.
"What the fuck are wolves doing in London?" I said, glaring at one of them as I brought my fire wand up. "Incendium!" I sent the fire out in a sliver to wrap around the beast's head; I didn't want to start a forest fire. That's why I had the ice wand at the ready, to contain anything that got away from me.
I watched as the fire spiralled around first the head and then the neck of the wolf I'd targeted, slowly tightening like a noose, and choking the life out of it even as it burned it. Good. The wolf raged, shaking its head this way and that and staggering about, trying to open its maw so that it could let loose the anger inside, but it was no use. Once my fire got around it, it had no chance.
I turned my attention away, knowing that I couldn't sit and watch it die while there was at least one wolf still standing, assuming Kailan was keeping busy.
He was. My eyes alighted on a downed wolf, conspicuously missing any signs of fatality, and then found Kailan standing in front of the last one, their eyes locked together, and it took me a minute but I finally zeroed in on his lips, moving so quickly it was impossible to make out what he might have been saying.
Whatever it was, the beast was absolutely mesmerised. Its forelegs locked and then fell to the ground, so that it was kneeling in front of Kailan.
I cocked my head to the side, watching, to see what would happen. It would have been easy enough to interfere, kill the animal and be done with it, but I wanted to know how good Kailan was.
Very good, from what I was seeing.
The beast dropped onto its side now, and I could see by the rapid rise and fall of its chest that it was labouring to breathe.
I wanted to ask what he was doing, but I didn't want to stop whatever spell he was casting. At last, the wolf moved no more. I walked forward and to the side, so that I could see its head. There was no light left in its eyes, it was dead.
I whistled. "That was impressive."
Kailan looked at me with a raised eyebrow. "As were you. Your command of fire is very good, especially when one takes into account the fact that you have never trained. I see the rumors about you are well founded."
I flushed, unaccustomed to compliments. "Why a
re there wolves in London?" I said, to change the topic.
He laughed, that same musical sound that I did not doubt was capable of entrancing mortals to eternal sleep. It took effort to resist the urge to gaze at him with wonder.
"That is what you are choosing to focus on?"
I glared at him. "It is, but whatever. We should get out of here, I got what I wanted out of this, and I don't want to stick around and see what else wants to come out and play."
He inclined his head. "If you are finished, then by all means. Let us go."
I turned about and headed back the way we came.
7
It took forever to get back to the car, the same as it had been to get to that god forsaken clearing. Thank the Gods no one had happened across the car, parked out by the woods, and thought to do something awful to it. The last thing I needed was to deal with a busted window or slashed tyres.
You never know what you're going to deal with, and it wouldn't be my first time having something like that happen.
The car turned on just fine though, nothing to worry about. I peeled away from the kerb and headed home. It wouldn't take too long to get there, as the woods hadn't been far away from my place to begin with.
"What was it like?" Kailan spoke up, I could feel his eyes on me but I kept mine focused on the road ahead.
"Awful," I said, my tone clipped. I didn't want to relive the way that place had made my brain feel if I could help it. The sludge...I shuddered just thinking about it. It felt like I had taken a piece of it home with me, and it was going to infect everything around me.
"And?"
I inhaled sharply through my nose. "And, I hated it. Sludge, that's the best way I can describe it. It was black sludge, and there was nothing I could do to get away from it. The world went dark the moment I walked into that damned clearing, I couldn't see my hand in front of my face. I was suffocating. It was alive, and it didn't want me there. You saw it throw me back out the first time I walked in. When I made it in, I had to call on my magic just to stay standing. You were right, that thing is more powerful than I was expecting."