“Do you taste it still?” Triska asked the fairy. “Do you taste anything in your mouth right now?”
Pip smacked her tongue and lips together a few times then showed a puzzled expression.
“I taste something. What is that?”
“You just ate a grape,” Daniel explained.
“I did? When?”
“Don’t you remember seeing the grape right in front of you a few seconds ago?” Specca tiredly asked.
“I think I do…” Pip said looking down and rubbing her hands against her temples. “But where did it go? Wasn’t it right here a moment ago?”
“I can’t figure her out,” Specca told Daniel and Triska with genuine concern. “She only remembers bits and pieces of what she learns. She knows Apoch and Astreal, but doesn’t at the same time. She saw there was a grape right before her, and then forgets ever having eaten it when she just did. It’s like she always forgets key moments in her memories and only remembers small parts of others.”
“Is that just how fairies are?” Daniel asked scratching his head.
“I have no idea, we don’t have anything else to compare this to,” Specca answered looking to Pip. “The only other fairy we knew of that existed blew up in Clover’s grove, and she did appear to be just as naïve as Pip from what we’ve heard, but that doesn’t tell us if how she is now is normal.”
“Is something wrong with me?” Pip worriedly asked.
“I… we don’t know,” Specca said softly. “You appear to have trouble remembering things, very much so. I’m not sure if that’s how fairies normally are, or if something is affecting you.”
“What do I do?”
“I don’t know,” Specca replied looking down to the book. “I don’t know if there is anything we can do.”
Pip sniffled then noticed Alyssa and the butterfly sisters watching them from the bed, with the witch having a tired expression on her face while Luna and Falla sat up and glanced to her with concern again.
“Alyssa, are you okay now?” Pip asked, with everyone then turning to see the witch was up.
“Alyssa,” Triska said standing up from the table. “How are you feeling?”
Slowly Alyssa stood and started taking small steps while seeming to be in a daze, with Luna and Falla getting to their feet behind her while Clover sat up and watched the witch with a dull stare. Squeak walked over next to the butterfly sisters as everyone saw the witch still reeling from what she heard earlier.
“Am I dreaming?” Alyssa asked wearily looking around the cabin. “Is this all a cruel dream?”
“You’re awake, Alyssa,” Daniel assured as walked over to her. When he got next to the girl Alyssa dropped to her knees, with the group except for Clover quickly rushing over to her.
“My baby is alive,” Alyssa whimpered as Daniel knelt down before her, eyes staring straight ahead as she shakily breathed in and out. She then broke down crying and clung to Daniel as he held her gently in his arms. “My baby is still alive! My Ember is okay! Thank god my baby is still alive!”
“Alyssa,” Daniel gently said as he held the crying witch. “I’m glad to hear that as well, I really am.”
“You should have told us you were a mother,” Specca mentioned with a smile as she and Squeak knelt down and gently rubbed the witch’s back. “We would have loved to hear about your daughter.”
Alyssa sobbed and buried her face in Daniel’s chest, her hat dropping to the ground as she held onto him tightly while crying uncontrollably.
“My baby! My little girl, she’s still out there!”
“We’re going to find her, Alyssa,” Daniel promised, with Alyssa looking up to him with teary eyes. “We’re going to help you find your daughter again.”
“Why?” Clover asked, with the group looking to her as she shook her head with confusion. “I thought her daughter was on a warpath to kill her, and everyone around her. Isn’t that the warning those other two witches gave you? To stay the fuck away from this Ember person?”
“She doesn’t know what really happened,” Daniel reasoned with her. “She thinks Alyssa abandoned her, that she left her behind. That isn’t true, Alyssa tried to find and save her, she loves her. We need to find Ember and tell her what really happened.”
“We need to find and set things straight with her,” Triska agreed. “Alyssa deserves to be with her daughter, we’re not going to let her lose Ember again.”
“Again, she’s trying to kill her,” Clover repeated while pointing to Alyssa. “So you want to get those two together? That seems like a very bad idea.”
“Reuniting Alyssa and Ember seems like a good idea to me,” Daniel countered, looking down to the witch in his arms with a gentle smile. “Quite frankly that seems a bit more important to me than getting to Ruhelia right now.”
“Daniel, you mean it?” Alyssa shakily asked. “But… what about-”
“But nothing,” Kroanette spoke from the doorway. The group turned to see the centaur holding aside the curtain and leaning forward into the cabin with a proud smile on her face. “Your own daughter is out there as we speak, lost and confused about her life. I agree with Daniel that finding your own kin needs to come first before we continue our quest.”
“But… Daniel needs to…” Alyssa whimpered while looking down, feeling conflicted inside about what to do. “We have to… we still have to…”
“We have plenty of time to reach Ruhelia and speak to the centaurs,” Specca assured her. “They’re not going anywhere. But Ember is out there right now, and she needs her mother. Alyssa, we wouldn’t dare ask you to set aside searching for your long-lost daughter in order to help Daniel with his quest. That wouldn’t be right.”
“Ember comes first,” Triska agreed. “We’ll focus on finding her before Charlotte and the other witches do. If we can talk her down then maybe we can spare her from being killed, maybe we can reason with your alpha about what she’s done.”
“Can you take me home first?” Clover dryly asked. “I’d rather not be around any of you when all of this blows up in your face.”
“I really do not like you,” Specca reminded the elf with a small glare.
“Hey, you’ve got a Darker One floating right above you,” Clover snapped while pointing to Pip as the fairy fluttered over Triska’s shoulder. “We’re in enough danger as it is, but now you want to go searching for some murdering witch who is out for your friend’s blood and has been killing to release her frustrations. Take me home, I’ll help you talk to my priestess about your stupid ideas, and then you can do whatever you want.”
“Clover, her own daughter is out there,” Specca firmly argued while pointing towards the entryway. “We’re not going to ignore that, we are going to find her and give Alyssa back what she lost. That comes first.”
“She’s looking for Alyssa to kill her, remember?” Clover expectantly mentioned. “Those other witches said she has been killing others in her search for Alyssa, even killing her own kind. They came here to explicitly warn us not to find Ember, that we should stay the fuck away from her at all costs.”
“Well we’re not going to do that,” Triska argued. “It was kind of Charlotte to give us that warning but we need to find Ember, that’s our priority now.”
“If you don’t like it then you can just leave,” Specca snapped at the elf.
“Please leave,” Falla insisted while waving towards the entryway. “The way out is right over there.”
“We have to help Alyssa,” Luna pleaded at Clover. “If I lost my daughter I would be so broken inside until I found her again. Alyssa must be so sad as well, we can’t keep going to Ruhelia with her feeling that way.”
“Clover, please try to understand how this is making Alyssa feel,” Kroanette insisted.
Clover growled while holding a hand over her face and slowly sliding it down, watching Alyssa with frustration before she grunted and lied back on the couch again looking up at the ceiling with a stubborn glare.
“Fine, do whate
ver you want. But if that witch starts burning all of you alive I’m getting the fuck out of here.”
Alyssa wiped the tears from her eyes then looked around at seeing the rest of the group smiling at her, with Pip flying over and landing on her shoulder with a soft giggle while Daniel gently wiped another tear off the witch’s cheek.
“Thank you, all of you,” Alyssa said with a small smile.
“We’ll find her, I promise,” Daniel assured her.
“Where should we start looking?” Specca asked them. “We have no leads to start us off with, she could be anywhere in Eden right now.”
“We should check the map for any possible places she could be,” Triska suggested before they headed over to the table and got out the chart, rolling it out for them to see where to start their search for the missing witch. “Now then, were would be a good place to look for a witch?”
“There are a few smaller human villages scattered around here,” Specca said pointing to three areas on the map. “But they’re not monster-neutral zones. If Ember were to have gone to any of those they would not have let her in peacefully.”
“Would that stop her?” Falla questioned. “If she’s searching for Alyssa and killing those that get in her way, do you think she would burn those places to the ground while looking for her?”
“She might,” Specca worriedly said. “She already burned down Alyssa’s home, and if she’s really killed other witches in her search for Alyssa then I don’t believe killing humans would be beneath her.”
Squeak shook her head and squeaked something with worried eyes as she looked around at the village markers on the map.
“Do you not hear yourselves?” Clover called out to them. “You understand that she’s killing others so easily, yet you still want to find her. If she’s murdering others without any trouble what’s to stop her from killing all of you?”
“That doesn’t matter,” Alyssa snapped at her. “She’s my daughter, I have to find her, I have to stop her from being a murdering witch in this world. I can still save her!”
“Famous last words,” Clover muttered while keeping her eyes up at the ceiling.
“She’s not damned to hell yet,” Daniel reasoned. “We can still stop her from being a bad witch, she can still redeem herself.”
“If only we had a better idea of where to find her,” Specca fretted while biting her thumbnail. “The sooner we do the sooner we can stop her from hurting others, but there’s no telling where she is or how fast she’s moving.”
“She may not even be near us, she could be way over here or here,” Triska mentioned while pointing to distant locations on the map.
“What about here? Or here?” Pip asked zipping around and pointing to two random spots on the chart.
“She could be anywhere,” Luna worriedly said.
“For crying out loud,” Clover groaned with annoyance. “Just head to Stonegate, odds are you can find out where she is there.”
“Stonegate?” Daniel asked looking around the map, before seeing the marker resting close to the west of Ruhelia. “Why there?”
“That’s a monster city,” Specca warned nervously. “And not a safe one either. No humans go there, or at least free ones.”
“That’s pretty close to Ruhelia,” Triska mentioned. “It’s on the way even.”
“Yes, and we were going to around it,” Specca quickly informed her. “The long way around it. We were not going to go anywhere near that place.”
“Daniel and Triska would not be welcome,” Alyssa said shaking her head. “Well, actually Daniel will, I’m pretty sure the monsters there would be very interested in keeping him, but Triska would not be safe.”
“What kinds of monsters reside there? Centaurs?” Daniel asked.
“No, Ruhelia is the only centaur home in this region,” Specca explained with concern. “Stonegate is home to… other monsters. One’s that I would seriously not recommend you speaking to, Daniel.”
“Let’s just say the kinds of monsters you don’t want to meet gather there,” Alyssa added while eyeing the marker for Stonegate with unease. “And I’m quite certain they wouldn’t be too nice to us either. Only the dangerous and sadistic live there, it’s not a nice place to be.”
“Sounds like a very bad place to start looking in,” Triska mused.
“You wanted to find her daughter, didn’t you?” Clover asked standing up and watching them with a raised eyebrow. “Well if there’s any word about a witch running loose burning people alive then a monster city would be the best place to find information about it. Someone may have heard of her there.”
“It’s much too dangerous to go there,” Specca argued shaking her head. “Daniel and Triska would have an entire city coming after them for even going near that place while the rest of us might be treated rather… badly by the locals.”
“I don’t think I want to go there,” Luna mentioned before holding onto her sister’s arm fearfully.
“That does sound like a bad place to start our search,” Falla agreed with a nervous frown.
“If you want to know where a missing monster is that’s the best place to go,” Clover said while walking towards them. “Look, I want to go home as soon as possible. So if you really insist on waiting to take me to Green Haven so you can search for this witch then Stonegate is the place to start your search.”
“Did you not hear us?” Specca snapped at her. “Do you not know what the monsters of Stonegate will do to us if we enter their city? Daniel will be raped to death for certain, Triska would be either killed or taken as a slave, and there’s no telling what they would choose to do with us for being around two humans like we are.”
“I’m not going there either,” Kroanette spoke up shaking her head. “No centaur goes there, not even to make deliveries. I’ve heard rumors that centaurs are served on platters there for the residents, I’d really not wish to learn if that’s true or not.”
“They’ll only give you trouble if you act so weak and pathetic around them,” Clover scoffed as she walked up to them. “I went there myself to learn where that traitorous elf went. That’s how I knew she was heading towards Rackleholm. Gossip spreads fast in Stonegate, and an elf that passed through while being all alone and carrying a black satchel was taken notice of. If your missing witch has been causing fires and trouble for others than surely you’ll hear about her from someone.”
“You went to that place?” Specca questioned while eyeing the elf carefully. “The monsters there are some of the more dangerous and unruly ones in the region, they’re absolute brutes and degenerates. Are you saying they just told you what you wanted to know just like that?”
“You gotta know how to talk to them,” Clover replied with a shrug.
“I suppose speaking to foulmouthed wretches would be right up your alley,” Specca scoffed while crossing her arms.
“You know, I’m trying to help you out here. You don’t sound too appreciative,” Clover retorted through gritted teeth at the nixie.
“We can’t go to Stonegate, that is simply out of the question,” Specca shot back while stomping her foot.
“You’re looking for a witch who’s gotten on her leader’s bad side and is also causing trouble wherever she goes. That’s the kind of monster you hear about in a place like Stonegate. Hell, she might even be in Stonegate.”
Everyone looked to each other with concern then to the map as they thought about that reasoning while Clover crossed her arms in discontent at the nixie.
“That does unfortunately make sense,” Triska admitted.
“Stonegate sounds like the perfect place for her to be in,” Falla agreed.
“But we shouldn’t go there too, should we?” Luna nervously asked. “It isn’t safe for us, right?”
“What do we do?” Specca said holding her hands to her cheeks. “She could very well be in Stonegate, but we can’t go there. That’s not a place for us to be in at all.”
Daniel looked at the map with a sharp
eye, thinking carefully about their options and risks with finding Ember, and then watched along with everyone else as Alyssa slowly held her hand out on the chart, her eyes staring at the marker for Stonegate as she thought about the idea of her daughter taking refuge in a place such as that.
“Alyssa, what do you think we should do?” Daniel said as Alyssa closed her eyes and slowly breathed out. After a while she glanced to Clover with a bitter scowl.
“When we get closer to the city you and I will ride into Stonegate alone,” she decided. “I’m not having Daniel or anyone else setting foot in that place much less go near it.”
“Excuse me?” Clover laughed. “I’m not taking orders from you.”
“Clover, do not test me,” Alyssa growled as her eyes gave off a small glow briefly. Clover backed up a step as the witch walked closer to her with a stern glare. “You know where we can go in Stonegate to ask about my daughter, I need to know if she’s there or not, I have to know where she went and I will not leave any stone unturned until I do, so we’re both going there together. Everyone else will stay in the caravan far, far away from Stonegate. I will not put them in danger with my search for Ember.”
“Alyssa, you mustn’t go there,” Specca pleaded. “It’s not a safe place for anyone, not even yourself.”
“Just have Clover go and ask,” Falla reasoned with a weak smile. “You don’t need to risk your life as well.”
“Fuck you,” Clover snapped at the butterfly.
“I’m going to find out where my daughter is!” Alyssa declared loudly, with everyone falling silent as she glared at Clover with a few tears starting to form in her eyes. “Nothing is going to scare me away from her, nothing will keep me from being with my baby again. So you’d better take me to Stonegate and show me where I can find out if anyone has heard of my girl or not, you’d better help me find her, Clover, or so help me I will make your life a living hell!”
Clover watched the witch glaring at her with anger while her eyes were glowing softly then glanced to the map on the table with a raised eyebrow while remaining silent.
Chronicles of Eden - Act VI Page 11