by Ren Ryder
“Yeah, I don’t think so. Maybe later.”
“Ah, what a prude.” Bell made a face but started scarfing down foods at seeming random. “Mmm, not bad, but,” she licked some liquid honey off her fingers, then gobbled down a fruit pie, “I—” munch, munch munch, “really don’t even,” chew, chew chew, “like this stuff.”
“Right,” I raised my eyebrows. “Could’ve fooled me.”
A plain-looking satyr from a few seats down agreed, saying, “She doth protest too much, I think.”
Absentminded, I rubbed my chest over my sternum. “Aren’t you worried?” I chuckled. Struck down by the one I’d come to save, stranded in the Otherworld on the verge of death, and now in a trial to determine my fate.
Bell stopped stuffing her face to say, “Worried? ‘Bout what?”
“Your father, or did you forget he almost burnt me to a crisp just a moment ago?” I asked, exasperated.
“Oh, that. The stakes are already high, so what’s it matter, adding a few more?” Bell reasoned, plainly impressed with her own wit.
“Right, you would think that,” I said, deadpan.
The soft beat of tiny wings from behind me first notified me that we had company incoming.
“You are the one called Kal, are you not?” A high-pitched, melodious voice asked.
“Yes?”
“On behalf of a coalition of fellow good neighbors, I am to present you a gift free of lien for your benefit in the upcoming trials,” the little pixie said.
She looked, sorta familiar.
I squinted at the pixie. Like all her kind, she shone with a sheen of pixie dust and cherubic glee. She wore a colorful gown made to look like a blooming flower. Maybe one of my hands-lengths tall, she was a little smaller than Bell but had a similar hue to her skin.
“What is this, trying to curry favor? Are you making a run on my king candidate?!” Bell accused.
“I’m Rose, and this is my sister, Daisy!” Rose motioned, and another pixie winged to her side.
Another pixie, her twin sister by the looks of her, appeared with arms outstretched. “This is, uh, this is for you! We hope you don’t die right away!” Daisy said.
Bell jammed the heels of her hands into her eyes and made angry gestures at me where the twins couldn’t see. She crossed her arms together and shook her head back and forth in the negative. I pretended not to notice.
“With sincere gratitude for saving us all from a fate worse than death, and hope that you survive the first trial,” Rose repeated with more polish.
“Do you, want it?” Daisy asked.
“I accept."
In her hands glittered a wide bangle made of soft copper that was inscribed with swirling lines. Not wanting to offend what seemed to be a potential ally, I placed the bangle on my left arm, high up on the bicep where the metal fit snug. I tingled with pleasant warmth where the copper touched my skin.
“The Otherworld and its residents can erode your will and delude the eyes, mind, and heart. But this will protect you from much, so long as you retain some desire,” Rose said.
“Please relay my gratitude to the fair folk that gathered together on my behalf to present this to me.”
Bell tsked.
Rose and Daisy curtsied midair before flying off as suddenly as they’d arrived.
I paused to cast my eyes about the festivities, then addressed Bell. “I don’t know why you’re so against me accepting help wherever I can get it, considering. It’s not like I have a wealth of options here, or,” adding a bit of accusation, “all sorts of magics at my disposal,” I said.
Bell was spitting mad. “You’re a cheater, just as bad as those no-good fishies! Cheater, cheater, pumpkin eater! I hate you!”
I shook my head. “Right, well, I’m sorry you feel that way.”
Oberon’s voice boomed over the glade, carried by magic on the wind. “Champions, stand ready. Preparations for the first trial are complete. Beware the Otherworld’s teeth. Once you leave this glade, the rules of hospitality will no longer apply. Marked as you are, expect to be challenged.”
I didn’t even sense Oberon’s magic before it acted upon me, let alone have a way to combat it. I shivered. It felt like a dagger’s tip running up and down my spine. A dark promise.
The world skewed sideways and the ground rushed up to meet my face. I didn’t even think to put out my hands to break my fall. Faerie fire and bright lights left traceries as we spun and fell. I was cast into the topsoil, through earth, roots and a swath of stinging nettles.
In an instant I was transported between the Wildwood and the Whitewood.
Chapter Four
At first glance, the Whitewood didn’t live up to its name. Twilit Boundary, though, it was that. The sky looked painted with an artist’s brush. There was a prominent green aurora borealis and the bright pinks, reds, and oranges of sunset.
An old growth forest, to me it looked like the forest had been there since the dawn of time itself. The wood bore the same sorts of trees so ever-present in the Wildwood. Most prevalent were hawthorn, ash, and oak, but there was flora of all sorts grown hearty and unencumbered by Man.
As if the Whitewood sensed my presence, a thick fog began to boil out of the ground. The white mass was at my knees in short order, and it wouldn’t be long before the area around me was obscured. Oberon’s magic flung me from somewhere in the Wildwood to a secluded place in the Whitewood… but what had happened to Bell?
“Bell!” I pivoted on my back foot and checked the nearby vicinity for the sylph. “Bell, where are you?”
I didn’t see her. My stomach roiled and my body felt hot as I broke out in nervous pinpricks. I tightened my hands into fists. Down my lesser elementals and bereft of Bell’s guidance, I had to come to terms with my relative inexperience with magic at large. At least before I was something of an elementalist, now I was… a whole lot of nothing.
Kicking myself, I stuffed away my anxieties and focused on the present. Other champions could come across my path or pass through my section of the Whitewood at any moment, and there was no guessing what might happen then. I needed to be on guard.
I tore off a strip of fabric from my shirt and tied it around my left bicep over the top of my copper bangle. I didn’t want its reflection to give me away, and whomever laid eyes on it might determine it worth stealing.
I made for the lowest branches of the nearest tree. It was an old oak with a massive trunk, a smattering of poison ivy and hanging moss. I pulled myself up on top my chosen branch and grabbed another point of contact before I set my feet. Light and agile, I jumped from branch to branch using my hands as needed to reach the highest point accessible to me.
Scouting my section of the Otherworld, I checked the skies for anything out of the ordinary, but I didn’t fool myself. I was holding out hope I’d see some trace of Bell, but nothing.
The fog, or was it mist? Whatever it was, it wasn’t naturally occurring, and it had quickly risen to envelop most of the great oak I was perched atop. I thought I saw movement in the mist, but it could’ve been a trick of the eye. Alarm bells rang in my head before the thought of danger surfaced in my mind.
Three figures appeared in the sea of fog in my general vicinity. A squat dwarf with one hand on a purple glowing staff and the other twirling into his red-braided beard met my eyes before casting his attention back and forth across the horizon and disappearing into the mist.
Light reflecting off mirror-bright armor drew my attention to a bulky, knight-like figure astride a tall redwood. He held aloft a jewel-encrusted sword brimming with flames, then brought it down in a sweeping arc aimed at my head.
Clawing for a chunk of my mana, I blasted off on a burst of wind. I left my stomach atop the old oak as I shot off the treetops into the open sky, on a diagonal to the knight to make myself a hard target.
I crossed my arms in front of my face and braced for impact as I crashed through a thin veil of foliage. Sending another uncomplicated gust of wind in fro
nt of me to slow my forward progress, I grabbed a passing branch with my left hand. Strain rippled through the fingers of my hand up the muscles in my forearm to my shoulder, but my grip held. Finding myself midway up a tall pine and a few of my body lengths from the boiling sea of mist, I didn’t delay my climb downwards.
The third figure, the champion I hadn’t had a chance to inspect, shot an arrow true, clear through the eyelet in the knight’s helm. There was a dull metal thunk as the arrow burrowed into eye and brain matter out the back of his skull to impact the knight’s helm. For a precarious moment that was stretched longer by my adrenaline and fear, the knight swung his sword wildly from his perch, shooting tongues of flame in all directions.
One such wave of fire, by pure luck alone, clipped the ranger’s cloak and sent him scurrying to the relative safety of the fog without delay. Another beat, a ragged breath, and the knight wavered, dropped his sword, and fell dead. His body crashed, clanged and otherwise made a cacophony of sound as it fell through branches and finally impacted the ground with a reverberating sound.
The fog rose again, boiling over like a pot left too long over the fire. I expected it to be cold, but it was warm. Marking the relative positions of the champion’s I’d encountered, I took one last look at the painted horizon, looking for any clue that would lead me in the direction of the Darkwood. Straining my eyes, I noted a veritable wall of light on one side of the horizon, and a relative darkness on the other.
Darkwood, darkness. That made sense.
Right when I was going to plunge into the chalky mist, a sense of wrongness seeped beneath my skin.
A dozen-plus dark wraiths rose above the mist, floating like a looming storm. They exuded a psychic pressure packed with dread fear and anger, plus a swirl of other negative emotions. Horrible screeches and screams rose on their lips, and producing the sounds made the faces of the host twist in pain. Glowing blood-red and coal-black eyes swiveled to inspect me, but none of them moved to attack.
The group was composed largely of humanoids carrying rusted-pitted weapons. They ranged from solid to semi-solid to ghost-like apparitions. Black miasma radiated out from their bodies.
A nearby scream pierced my eardrums and imbedded into my skull, freezing me for an instant. It was then the knight champion burst through the fog with sword in hand, his now coal-black eyes burning. The knight’s armor still shone, but it was a bitter gleam turning darker still as he arced his blade down for a decapitating blow.
Dark realizations marinated in the back of my head.
“Watch out!” Bell’s tinkling voice screamed.
A wall of wind knocked my grip loose and sent me tumbling into open air, by extension saving me from being executed. I fell back-first into the sea of fog, hit my head on a branch, then tumbled to the earth in a tangle of limbs.
My ears rang. “Ow.”
“Did you miss me?” Bell asked.
I groaned and rolled over to my hands and knees. “Not at all. Actually, what was your name again?” I asked.
Levering myself to my feet, I tested for broken bones or sprained limbs, both likely death sentences in my current situation. Somehow I was in perfect health. I’d taken bad falls before and been fine, but not from anywhere near that height, and usually I had more poise when landing.
“You don’t remember?!” Bell paused, “No, I don’t believe you! I bet you were actually really worried about me!”
“I wasn’t.”
I stumbled over a massive tree root and almost face-planted. My ears felt like they were plugged with cotton, and I couldn’t see the terrain well enough to keep from stumbling. Both hearing and sight couldn’t be counted on in the sea of mist, and traveling by treetop was out.
Bell kicked her feet. “Ugh. You’re the worst. Scum. Horrible.”
Black miasma oozed nearby, and I heard a horrible shriek. An apparition’s detached upper body sliced through the fog with a corroded axe. I threw myself underneath the arc of the blade, then slammed my hand into the dirt to bounce back to my feet.
“Looks like those floaty guys are just the tip of the iceberg.”
“Floaty guys?” Bell laughed. “You’ve never heard of the slaugh?”
“Never heard of them,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Obviously.”
I cupped my palms and focused on feeding a bit of my mana into the sigil in the center of my chest. Then I blasted wind all around me, clearing the fog from a good twenty-foot radius of the Whitewood. Besides the legless floating torso that’d sneak attacked me, Bell and I were on our own.
Bell hovered around the floating torso, distracting it by flying circles around it. “Faerie host of the restless undead? No? Hmm. Well, whatever. I might as well tell you.
“They’re spirits barred from both heavens and hells, dark entities tied to the land. Most people know them for carrying away the souls of the dying to join their host. One type fly in flocks like birds, another type are rooted to the earth and roam in small groups— but you know that now. Oh, and they’re part of the Wild Hunt, plus their screams can drive people insane! Both types subsist on ambient mana and souls, so all you champions must seem like a tasty buffet to them.”
The sea of fog began regenerating almost as soon as I’d dispersed it, rising up from the ground with a slow resilience that made me wary of expending all my energy trying to rid myself of it. I may as well try to drain the ocean with a bucket.
I stoked the fires of my source, bringing my mana to a boil inside me. I needed power at the ready, I couldn’t expect to have the luxury of a slow reaction. Pure mana boiled out my skin and poured into the space occupied by my aura. A dense mana skin formed, but I had no idea if it would serve any purpose.
I wondered if I was making up the feeling of thinking I was a bit lighter, stronger on my feet.
“What’re you doing?”
“I dunno, experimenting?”
I spotted a piece of deadwood that had the rough look of a walking stick or quarterstaff. Hefting it, I spun the stick around to get a feel for the weight of it. Then I pushed mana through my palms into the inert wood. A skin of mana formed around the stick, and when it didn’t immediately explode, I grinned.
Bell buzzed by my face to make her feelings known. “Hey, that’s dangerous! You have no idea what you’re doing!”
“What is this, oak?” I asked, trying to put her off.
Bell made a face. “The stick? No, you dummy, it’s ash.”
I twirled it overhead and jumped after the retreating slaugh. I brought it down on the apparition’s head from behind, feeling almost no resistance as I cleaved the thing in two. A broken scream reverberated through the air as the apparition dispersed.
I patted my trusty new weapon. “It’s not just any stick! It’s my stick.”
Bell patted me on the head. “That’s nice, Kal. Very nice.”
Getting fed up with the situation as the sea of fog closed in, I asked, “How am I supposed to find my way to the Darkwood in all this?”
Bell’s high-pitched laughter assaulted my ears. “Pfft! You, ha-ha, you really don’t know?”
She was savoring the moment, I was sure.
“I’m at your mercy,” I admitted.
“Really really?”
Stone-faced, I swept my staff through the mist climbing up my thighs. The sea of fog pressed inwards, leaving about five meters clear around and above me.
Teeth gleaming, Bell said, “You know what I want.”
Casting about for something sharp, I eventually thought to use my fingernails to cut a thin scratch on my inner wrist that welled purple blood.
Bell licked her lips, but looked away. “No, not that. The other thing.”
Confused, I thought about it. “You want me to say I… m-missed you? That?”
Bell’s face glowed. “Sorry, come again?”
I sighed. “I was worried when I thought I’d lost you,” I said, deadpan.
“Pfft, I bet! You can’t even call up a stiff breeze when it mat
ters!”
“Right,” I took a deep breath, “now can we get a move on?”
“Oh, fine. Have you seen any thorn bushes or vines?”
“Sure, here and there. So?”
“It’s simple. Follow the path of thorns.”
“That sounds like something I would rather avoid doing.”
“You’re the one who wanted to know the way,” Bell shrugged and dusted her hands, “and now I’ve told you.”
“Have you been?” I asked.
“Hmm? Been where?”
“… to the Darkwood. Aren’t you a resident of this place? I figured you’d be the expert.”
“Sorta not really. I’m practically a baby amongst my peoples. I was raised as part of the Seelie Courts in the Wildwood, so I never really had the opportunity to explore the Twilit Boundary or travel to the Nightside.”
“No wonder your father is the way he is,” I muttered.
“What was that?” Bell asked. There was a dangerous glint in her eye.
“Nothing,” I coughed. “Well, what do you know?”
Bell screwed up her face and scratched her head. “Mmm, give me a sec, let me think.”
“The thin band of the Twilit Boundary divides the Otherworld into two parts: Dayside and Nightside. There are complicated hierarchies and a network of factions in each, but the two main groupings are the Seelie and Unseelie Courts. Though they interact the courts operate independent of one another, and possess entirely different ideologies, especially where humans are concerned.
"Nightside’s Darkwood is chock full of the Unseelie, a breed of fae that cares little for humans and is overall more individualistic. Domination, strength, and power determine hierarchy for the Unseelie, whereas the Seelie Courts tend to rely more on tradition, grace, and influence.” Bell did a little bow midair.
“Well, the Unseelie sound like my kind of simple.”
“You, for example, if crowned the Seven Year King, would be considered a pitiful weakling undeserving the title by the Unseelie.”
“Make sense. Crowning me king would be a mistake on part of the Seelie, but I don’t see a path ahead other than to play this game to its conclusion.”