The Outcast

A dull throbbing and a sharp pain at the back of her head brought her into the land of consciousness. Panic raced through her the moment her mind became active and her eyes snapped open despite the protest of stabbing pain that occurred the moment light hit her pupils. She couldn’t keep the groan from leaving her lips. Whatever had collided with her head had caused a heavy blow. Glancing down at her body, fear only crept deeper into her soul. She was bound to the wooden contraption that had been in the corner of the room, her wrists, waist, neck and ankles bound to it to keep her from moving. Her clothing was ripped and vacant in a lot of places allowing for her to see the numerous little leech-like creatures that were now littering her glittering skin as the magic disguise failed to work. Pain radiated from her skin wherever they were, it took now genius to know that they were biting and holding on.

Instinctively, she attempted to freeze them all until they dropped from her body.

Nothing happened.

Again, she tried and failed to summon up the magic she had controlled so perfectly from before she could ever talk.

The feeling of powerlessness and fear caused tears to prick the corners of her eyes.

A deep chuckle sounded from somewhere in the room and Lily’s eyes snapped up to register that she wasn’t alone. Finn stood against the desk she had been leaving over previously with his arms folded and a sinister smirk on his lips. He looked like a different being altogether from the one who had laughed with her and held her hand so often.

“Finn?” Lily’s voice croaked, not trusting itself not to break. “What’s going on?”

“What? You’re too easy, that is what is going on.” He laughed to himself as he watched Lily struggle against the restraints once again. “You actually believed everything I had to say. Man, do they not teach you fairies street smarts or something?”

Finnigan remained unflinching at the betrayal that dawned in Lily’s eyes, tangling itself with fear and sadness.

“What?” She couldn’t say anything else. Her mind wouldn’t catch up with reality. This was a boy who had spent so many months helping her, who had encouraged her that the bonds between witches and fairies could be fixed, who shared his secrets with her as she shared her own…

His green eyes rolled in annoyance. “Thought you were supposed to be a quick learner.” He clicked his tongue and shook his head, pushing himself away from the desk and moving to stand in front of her. “You. Got. Tricked.” Reaching out one hand, he took hold of one of the little leeches and tugged on it. Lily gasped in pain at the strength it was latched onto her arm.

“Peyadu… They’re my mother’s favourite pets.” He squeezed the creature lightly, gaining a wave across its skin of silver, pink, purple and blue in a pattern that could rival the beauty of the aurora borealis. “They’re consuming your magic right now, so don’t bother trying to use it.”

Lily was still dumbstruck, shaken to her very core, and unable to find the words to respond with. A loud yowl sounded off to the side and her head whipped around towards it. Hanging from the ceiling were a couple of large metal claws, designed like the feet of an eagle, and clutching two struggling black shapes. Oscar and Kiki hissed and struggled against their restraints with no avail. Claws did nothing but screech against the metal, and their bodies were held tight enough that Lily wasn’t sure they weren’t having bone broken. If she could see closer, she would have seen one digit on the claw clamping the cats’ mouths shut like a muzzle so they couldn’t part their mouths far enough to make any noise other than the guttural growls and yowls that left their throats.

“Let them go.” She croaked out, finally finding some train of thought.

“What, so they can attempt to scratch my eyes out while you all die?” Finnigan scoffed a laugh, pulling another Peyadu from the jar on the table Lily had been looking at when she had been knocked unconscious. “I don’t think so.”

“Why…?” She couldn’t even think what to follow that with. There were so many questions. Why was he doing this? Why had he had to lie to her? Why was her heart seizing up like it had been shoved into a pot half its size? Why was her stomach convulsing in a way that made her feel sick? Why did she desperately want this to be a sick dream? Just… why? Why did the person she had decided to trust with the deepest part of herself have to be a person who could bind her and take her magic, her dignity?

Finnigan rolled his eyes again, letting out a small noise that suggested he didn’t think this was all worth her whining. Shoving the hem of her dress up he placed the Peyadu against the skin of her inner thigh above her femoral artery. Lily hissed, a couple of tears escaping the corners of her eyes as the skin was broken and the pain ran up her core.

“The war has to happen. You’re just an extra added bit of fuel to the fire.” He shrugged as he stood back to admire his work. “A fairy came to infiltrate us and learn our secrets; it’s a good spin.” Reaching out he patted Lily on her left cheek, hard enough that it may as well have been a slap. “But of course, I’m the hero, so I caught you before you could do any major damage. At least that’s mother’s plan.”

“However,” He continued after stepping away from her and placing the lid back on the jar of Peyadu. “It’ll take a few hours to drain you, and frankly, now I don’t have to pretend to care about you, I’m not hanging around to talk until you die.”

Those were the last words he left hanging in the air as he headed up the narrow stone staircase and out the door into the garden. No one else knew it was there behind the trickle of water. And even if they did, what witch was going to come and save a fairy?? In the silence Lily began to realise Finnigan was right. She had been too easy, too trusting, and this was her own fault. She had placed all her trust in him, she’d believed everything he had said, and she hadn’t even gotten Oscar and Kiki to stay outside in case something went wrong.

She had absolutely asked for this to happen. She had brought herself to the place that would change her forever, and would kill the person she was.

The snarling from the cats seemed to fade into nothing as her magic and essence was drained from her body. She could hear the beat of her heart in her ears and she could feel the warmth of the tears on her cheeks. She’d failed. She’d failed everyone she knew. Her family would suffer loss and war. Her friends would be stabbed with tales of betrayal. Her soul bonds would die with her, their lives snuffed out because of her stupidity.

A loud clatter and a thud of paws on wood snapped her back to reality, straining in her confines to see that Oscar had managed to wriggle around enough to push the talons open with his legs and fall to the floor, not without knocking the edge of a small table on his way down.

“Kiki! Twist to your side then push them open!” he was instructing the smaller feline whose legs were flailing uselessly, sticking out between the talon shapes.

With no small amount of squirming, hissing, cursing and grumbling, Kiki managed to pull her legs inside and shift in the way she was instructed until she too was landing on the floor with a soft thud.

“Are you guys ok??” Lily called hoarsely, swallowing back her tears.

“Fine, but that son of a liche!!” Kiki hissed angrily “I’ll scratch his eyes out!”

“I’ll tear his tongue out. He’ll never lie again…” Oscar agreed with a snarl as he hopped up onto the surface Lily was strapped to. Reaching out a paw he dug his nail into one of the peyadu and attempted to tug it off the fairy’s skin gently. Lily hissed at the sting before shaking her head.

“I think it has hooks holding it there.” At least that was how it felt.

Oscar glanced up to her before sighing “then, this will hurt.” Without further ado he gripped his claws tighter and pulled hard until the creature dislodged from Lily’s skin, leaving a small patch of bruise and blood. Lily yelped a little at the feeling, but the relief of having one less being sucking the magic out of her was delightful.

“Bloody things!” Oscar attempted to shake it off his paw as it twisted around to latch onto him in return. “Ow!” As it’s hooks latched onto him, he brought his paw down heavily on the ground, squashing the Peyadu and ceasing its movements. A small array of colours glowed around it before dissipating into Oscar’s paw.

“What was that?” Kiki queried.

“Magic. I felt it…” Oscar paused, picking his paw up to examine it. “Kiki, help me crush them all before we take them off!”

Immediately both of the cats were up on her body, smacking down on each slimy creature with full force that only made Lily flinch from discomfort. With each one, the array of colours appeared briefly before seeming to sink back into her skin. Oscar was right, she could feel it like a familiar warmth of family, like a dream she knew well and couldn’t believe she had forgotten.

It was the relief of coming home.

She could feel the warmth of it spreading through her being, though it felt a little disconnected still. Perhaps it would settle soon.

Once all the Peyadu had been crushed, the cats began ripping them from her body, gaining at least a flinch every time from Lily. It left her with an abused body, cuts and bruises littering her thighs, stomach, chest, arms… you name it, there was a bruise with a bleeding cut in its centre. She still felt violated by it, but there was a sense of freedom now her magic was coursing through her.

“Can you use magic to get out?” Kiki chimed as she eyed the leather binds that would take some serious effort to chew through. Lily knew what she meant, if she froze them deeply enough, they would shatter if she used enough pressure.

However, knowing it and making it happen were two different things.

Panic blazed through her stomach when no ice formed.

She tried again, turning her head to look at the bind around her right hand as if focusing on it was going to help.

It did not. Nothing happened. The tears that had been fading came back to choke her again.

“It won’t work.” She whimpered; scared of the concept of being without magic.

“It’s ok, we got this!” Kiki immediately chimed and dove into gnawing at the leather bind while Oscar took to the one holding her left hand.

“Yeah, your magic will need to settle. Leave this to us.” He chimed in before starting; though Lily was pretty sure he was just using pretty words to keep her calm. Not one of them knew how having her magic leave her body would affect her going forward. It might never sync up with her properly again. Swallowing thickly, Lily pushed the thought aside, hoping that the feline’s words would be the end result.

It took a few minutes, but soon enough the straps fell from her wrists and allowed Lily to reach up and remove the strap front around her neck, before sitting up and pulling the straps against her ankles and waist open. Each one left behind a bruised band around her skin but with all the others dotted around they didn’t exactly catch the eye. Well, perhaps the bruises on her neck would.

“Let’s get out of here,” Lily mumbled as she stood, steadying herself for a moment before heading for the stairs back to the entrance way. She didn’t know where she was going to go once she got out of the door, she was obviously a fairy with her hair and skin on show right now; but she just had to get out. She had to get home.

However, the door didn’t budge when she reached it and her body collided into the solid open as her hand pushed the handle down. With a groan she pulled back to try the handle again.

“It’s sealed” she sighed with a swift, frustrated kick to the wood before turning around. “We’re locked in…” Walking absently down the stairs again, Lily raised her hands to rub away the dried tears that were beginning to itch her cheeks.

“We’ll have to wait till your magic’s up and running again.” Kiki commented, hot on Lily’s heels. “Or there might be a back exit or something; you know, for emergencies.”

Lily couldn’t find herself believing that but she didn’t deter the female cat from venturing around the room’s edge, trying to sniff out a hidden entrance. Her eyes, instead, took her back to the family tree that was still unrolled on the desk where she had been standing before taking the blow that still sent a dull throbbing ache through her skull.

It was nothing compared to the crushing ache in her chest as her eyes settled on Finnigan’s name again. She still felt confusion assailing her mind as her eyes followed the lines up from his name to the two which all lines led back to.

‘Quintina & Cyrus’

Her eyes narrowed a little. Now she focused on them, she knew those names. But where from? It wasn’t Cyrus that was ringing the bell in her mind, but Quintina.

“Oh my...!”

Quintina! She was the founder of Quintegia! But that was more than five millennia ago! How could Finnigan be linked to her in a direct line that indicated she was his mother?

Pushing the family tree out of the way, Lily began digging through the loose pieces of parchment and the small journals under the ones she’d examined earlier and were obviously aged in comparison. When she found one that looked oldest, its pages delicate and crinkled, worn from the battering of movement and time, she carefully flipped it open to squint at the contents.

The writing for the first few pages was so old that she could barely make out the lettering, but as she reached the seventh page, the writing had been traced over with fresher penmanship but the handwriting matched the ancient dim letters perfectly. Lily may not have been the quickest or most accurate when it came to gut feelings but she knew that the writer was the same person… all those years apart.

“Quintina is still alive,” she mumbled, catching the cats’ attention as she ran her hands down the page before gripping the corner and turning to the next one which explained to her exactly how.

‘Turning pure magic into life force:’

Ingredients:

Blood of the line to extend (Three vials)

Magic drained from another

Dragon heart

Cantonitrua fur (Two strands)

Macellavir rot (Two pinches)

Note: The more magic obtained, the longer life is extended - (EASIER TO TAKE FROM THE FRESH DEAD)

There was so much about those words that spread acidic discomfort through her body, but as her eyes drifted to the side, to land on the crushed Peyadu that littered the floor, bile threatened to rise.

“They drain magic from the dead…” she started, both cats moving closer to her cautiously. “He said the war has to happen. Because they need the bodies, the magic.” Unrolling the scroll of the family tree again, she glanced over the other names that she’d previously ignored for Finnigan’s.

Taking a closer look, all lineages were connected to the centre two names creating the shape of an exploding star. The names crossed through with blood red lines also had a skull lingering next to it. That took little working out to conclude that not everyone in the bloodline was still alive. But the rest… had the rest been surviving through the centuries without anyone noticing?

Following one line Lily gasped at another name she recognised. One she would never have expected.

Layla Linwood. And just below hers was Jared Linwood, though his name had an hourglass next to it.

Were they in on this?! Did the reality spread through the fairy kingdom too? Manipulating the races into war every hundred years without fail? But, witches didn’t give birth to fairies randomly… her eyebrows knotted inwards in confusion as she scanned the two central names. Was Cyrus a fairy? Somehow hiding his long life while manipulating the council through children? It would make sense; council leaders were of the same five blood lines dating all the way back to the beginning. Did that mean the whole council was in on it?!

Scanning the names again but she couldn’t see the others. Though she did recognise the name of one of her father’s colleagues who was in charge of keeping their magic monitored.

“Lil?” Kiki ventured with concern at the tension rolling off the fairy’s soul.

“I think… I think this war is set up. And officials in both races are fuelling it so they can funnel the magic out of the dead.” Her voice was grim, disgusted even at the thought that so many lives could be lost for something so greedy.

“We have to take these to the other elders, we have to stop this!” She concluded, grabbing up the family scroll and the journal with the potion ingredients in.

“How? Your magic isn’t working well enough to get us out?” Kiki commented, grumpy that she hadn’t sniffed a way out.

“There has to be a way!” Her voice was desperate as Lily located and pulled out a small satchel from the bookcases to deposit the scroll and journal into.

“Maybe one of these could help?” Oscar chimed as he wove between vials on a high shelf, squinting at the for any sign of names. “Finnigan was big on maceration potions, maybe these are linked to that? Wouldn’t be locked down here if they were normal potions.”

“None of them have labels.” Lily sighed with a shake of her head.

“Only one way to find out then, watch yourselves!” Oscar flapped his wings to take him to the top of the bookcase and began to wedge himself between it and the wall.

“Are you crazy?!” Kiki yelped as she was plucked from the floor by Lily who dashed over to the staircase immediately, satchel knocking against her hip.

“Got any other bright ideas?!” Oscar groaned with effort. By her silence, Kiki did not have any other ideas. And so, Oscar continued to wiggle himself into the gap so he could press his back feet against the wall and his front ones against the back of the bookcase to tilt it forward. He didn’t have to be very big, as soon as there was enough of a tilt, gravity did the rest, pulling the bookcase forward and sliding all the vials and containers out of the shelves with a crash and a severe amount of pink smoke filled the room while sizzling echoed off the walls. A few moments later, a stench began to seep into the room that frankly could only be described as smelling like body waste.

“Genius! Now we choke to death instead!” Kiki coughed through the smoke.

“Oh, shut up!” Oscar snapped.

“Well! What did you think was actually going to happen?”

“I am hoping it will burn through the floor and we will be able to get out.”

“Oh yea… because in the ground is where we want to be.”

“Better than going through the damn door into the arms of all the witch officials!”

“Guys! Enough!” Lily yelled over them, spluttering a cough immediately afterwards. “This is going to help.” Pulling up her tattered dress to cover her mouth with its collar she attempted to squint through the smoke to see what the verdict was when it came to exiting the room through the floor. The smoke had an upward movement to it, as though there was air coming in from below.

“We’ll go down and see where we end up” Lily coughed, moving through the smoke, wafting it around with a wave of her hand while tentatively stepping on the ground looking for an opening that was hopefully big enough to get through.

“Careful of any of those liquids left!” Kiki called after her.

“Some way to clear the air would be great right now,” Oscar sighed.

“Should have thought about that before you shoved everything over!” Kiki retorted.

“Yeah yeah, alright!” Oscar grumbled. Lily continued further into the room, bumping into the fallen bookshelf before she found a hole to speak of.

“Doesn’t look like it spread wider than the bookcase,” she called blindly over to the bickering cats. “Which means I gotta move this thing,” she added with a sigh.

Well, at least it would be lighter now that everything had fallen off it. It was still a strain, but she managed to lift it enough to push it back against the wall. It shook a little but settled and the movement caused the smoke to waft further around the room, dispersing up the stairs and leaving the room mildly visible.

“I can see the gap, though I don’t know how deep it goes,′ Lily commented, trying to waft more of the smoke out of the way.

“My time to shine, then!” Kiki chimed, jumping into the air, revealing her wings and flapping them gently to take her down the hole in question. “Ho! It stinks down here! That smell is not the smoke!” She hollered back up to them.

A few moments passed before the little black feline flew back up into the room with a light gagging sound.

“Ok…” she groaned “You’ll definitely be fine jumping down there. But that’s a tunnel that’s got, like, so much waste! Makes me wonder what fairies do with ours.” She chortled before gagging again as the scent from below hit her.

“So… it’s through a load of waste, or through a city of witches?” Lily concluded, her nose wrinkling in disgust.

“One way we vomit a few times, the other way we potentially get caught? I vote vomit” Oscar chimed while stretching out his own wings.

This day… was definitely the worst of the ones she’d lived so far. But she could still do what she’d aimed to do and stop this war. She had the truth hanging from her shoulder and she had a way out of the room. Even if she did exactly as predicted when she landed in the slush and stench below, immediately gagging and hurling up any food remaining from breakfast into the slush.

Oh. That made her retch further.

“This is gross,″ Oscar groaned, voicing Lily’s feelings on the situation perfectly. The feeling of almost-solid liquid slid and squelched around the skin of her legs and she could feel it soaking into the hem of her broken dress. It reached her knees and made all efforts to slow her as she waded through in a direction she hoped would lead out of the sickening tunnel.

It felt like hours trying to get through, gagging now and then on the scent that surrounded them… but in reality, it was probably only around fifteen minutes. When they came to an opening, it felt like they had been freed from a live burial as they gasped for fresh, cleaner air. Coughing to clear her lungs, Lily straightened up, still distantly aware that waste still sloshed around her ankles now while she looked around the new open space. It was still underground; the high ceiling was still quite obviously earth below the city. Below the waste pooled down into a trough that circled half of the room with most waste pipes leading into it from different directions.

In the middle of the room was a large contraption that seemed to be whirring in sound though it wasn’t moving. And past it a large pipe running into the furthest wall.

“How are we going to get over there?” Kiki grumbled, catching the raised eyebrow Lily shot her. “Ok, you. How are you going to get over there? Is your magic working yet?”

Looking down at her hand, Lily flexed her fingers and attempted to draw ice into being. No luck. Sighing, she dropped her hand back to her side and shook her head. Maybe the cats could take the evidence back to their home ahead of her and she’d catch up eventually.

“Try a spell.” Oscar ventured before Lily could speak. “Witch magic has a lot of the power in the incantation, right?”

“And a wand, which I don’t have now…” Lily pointed out.

“Oh, for wings’ sake!” Kiki snapped, beating her wings so she could bring herself to hover in front of Lily’s face, her canines bared in annoyance, “You’ve never had a WAND! You had a FANCY STICK!”

Lily blinked. Ok, the small cat had a point there. She’d almost entirely forgotten that her magic was only being guided through the stick rather than enhanced by it. Stepping back instinctively from the feline, Lily nodded her head before looking down at her shoes, her white hair falling over her shoulders. Focusing on the items of clothing she took a breath.

“Volantra.”

The arches of her feet itched in her shoes and, for a moment, anxiety set in that it wouldn’t work. However, upon sliding her right foot forward at an angle she found that it raised into the air as it was meant to. ‘Walking’ on air was more like ice-skating with this technique, but with a smile she pushed herself forward from the ledge and found that there was no weakness in the magic she had used.

That was going to be useful if she could keep spells in her memory.

One foot in front of the other she managed to skate gracefully across the cavern to the furthest pipe they had been aiming for, the cats making whooping sounds and skittering through the air with her.

“See! Knew it would work; I’m a genius!” Oscar chimed happily.

“Uh huh, and I’m a singing fugacapra…” Kiki rolled her eyes.

“Really?! How did you keep that a secret? I always thought you were an edaximae; weakening my soul with every breath you take.” Oscar retorted. Their voices echoed a little in the room but there was no one around to hear them.

“Well now that’s just mean.” Kiki gasped, shooting forward to bundle into Oscar in the air.

“True though!” Oscar laughed as he batted her head lightly as she approached in an attempt to defend himself lazily.

Skating down to the pipe, Lily settled herself on the solid surface before looking up to watch the now playing cats with a fond smile. Even with her world imploding in on itself, they never changed. They were a constant and they were a reason to smile that even the heartache from Finnigan’s truth couldn’t touch them. Leaving them to it she walked along the pipe until she reached a small latch, likely used to get inside if anyone needed to check on the internals.

“Oh, thank the wings! It’s clean this time!” She exclaimed, interrupting the play fight above her.

“Good! I don’t want to retch anymore,” Oscar chortled as he landed next to her and peered into the pipe. “It’s deep though…”

“Yeah, it seems that we’ll be swimming,” Lily nodded. “Well, you might be able to hover above if you both are careful?”

Maybe.

Picking up the satchel with both hands Lily took in a deep breath, casting her mind back over the books of charms she had toyed with alongside her friends. She knew there was one which could keep the contents of the satchel dry; she just couldn’t quite remember which one. Studying so much was supposed to be a benefit, but right now it felt like she was drowning in a library within her own head.

“Ah!” The sound left her when she’d finally reached an appropriate spell in her mind. She turned her gaze to focus on the satchel in her hands. “Addari!” A ripple of shine extended from the points where her fingers touched the satchel until it coated the whole object. It was a barrier spell that the girls had perfected one evening because they wanted to test out some mess-making spells but didn’t want to stain anything in their room. If it could keep the ink that spilled over Lily’s bed from staining it, she was sure it would keep the evidence dry in water.

“I hope this takes us far enough to not be spotted…” Lily sighed, pushing her hair back from her face, taking a deep breath before jumping through the open hatch and into the water.

It took a lot of willpower not to gasp at the unexpected chill of the water, or at the strength of the unseen current that dragged Lily along with the movement of the water. Thankfully her clothing was less bulky this time being underwater, and so the weight did not drag her down like the time at the lake. Resurfacing, she glanced around to see if the cats had been able to stay above the water, only to find them floating behind her with their wings splayed out wide to act like a raft. She regretted the small laugh she gave at the sight when the current pulled her down a little providing her with a mouthful of water. Thank all the myths that this wasn’t sewage like the previous pipe.

The twists and turns in the pipe were unpleasant and soon they were twisting around a corner which opened out into the sunlight of the open world… and a sudden drop.

A scream escaped her lips as Lily was ejected from the pipe with the water, falling down until she ventured underwater once more. Her body had turned in the fall so she entered the water below head first, shoes being torn from her feet at the pressure, and her orientation messed up as she tried to find out which way led to air. Once she broke the surface, she gasped for air and flailed a little in place to keep afloat while searching for Kiki and Oscar.

“Lily!” Oscar called from above, drawing her eyes to where they flew down to her, obviously having caught themselves before they hit the water themselves.

“You’re okay!” She called back as they moved down to hover above the water. Looking past them, Lily squinted up at the pipe they had vacated. It stuck out of the side of a cliff, where the city walls of Mythanissiam stood proud in the afternoon sun. “Well, that’s one way out of the city…” she mumbled before adjusting her position by sweeping her arms through the water. She was in the Great Sea, she could feel the continuous flow of water pulling out from shore and pushing back in. Pushing some wet strands of hair from her face she turned back to the rock face. They’d have to follow that until they found a way back onto land.

Glancing through the water to her bare feet, she sighed. Walking on air wasn’t an option now her shoes had sunk to the depths below, and her elemental magic was still growing in her veins. Risking wearing herself out with that was something she couldn’t afford. She’d more than likely need more once she was on land than right now. Which meant she only had one option; she was swimming.

Such a feat wasn’t easy; compared to most fairies she had a flare for so-called exercise, but she had always had magic to assist. Swimming to the east, trying to stay far enough that no one on land would spot her, and trying to move fast enough that she wouldn’t still be in the water when the sun was gone from the sky, was more effort than anything she had done in the past.

That was something she just about managed, though it did leave her face down in the sand of the beach a few leagues away from Mythanissiam heaving breaths while her body screamed with aches and pains. “I can’t move anymore,” she complained, turning her head so her cheek rested against the damp sand and her eyes watched the caves in the distance.

“Yes, you can.” Kiki chimed somewhere nearby.

“Nope. I need to rest.”

“We might not have time for that.”

Sighing in frustration, Lily closed her eyes and cursed internally. A year ago, she never would have expected her life to be how it was now, she would never have known that one day she’d experience an exhaustion both mentally and physically that threatened to leave her numb. Right now, she felt weaker than she had with her magic being pulled from her. She could have fallen into a slumber easily with her eyes closed like this. Oh, she should probably open them to stop them happening.

A figure seemed to be standing by the caves in the distance when she finally forced her eyes open. It wasn’t a human figure, but a horse? No, it had large wings by the look of it and the air around it seemed to ripple with purple hues.

“What?” Lily pushed herself up from the sand, blinking at the spot in front of the caves. The creature was gone, but she could have sworn that it had been the Morequcor. Death’s horse.

That was not an omen she liked.

Even if she was imagining it, what did that mean for the future that now lay ahead of her? Was she going to fail in saving her loved ones? The thought raised bile in her throat which she swallowed back, pushing herself up to her feet where she wobbled dangerously. Her legs felt so weak and tired.

“Come on,” Kiki nudged her shoulder before dropping down to the floor so she could trot alongside Lily’s feet. Oscar flew ahead a little to make sure they weren’t going to walk straight into the chains of witches.

The first goal was to get as far away from Mythanissiam as they could. A few hours of walking up the beach towards the caves which didn’t seem to want to get any closer, they heard an echoing sound that shattered and split the air. It was coming from the city. No doubt an alarm to warn the rest of the towns nearby that there was someone who was a threat.

“We’ll take shelter in the caves and rest.” Oscar commented once the sound died off. “At least we won’t be in the open.”

Oh good. Her wobbly legs just wanted to give in and her eyes wanted to close and let sleep take over. The sand was an effort to walk across, occasionally stumbling Lily when her foot sand too far into the soft substance. Every now and then a stone or a shell could scratch or cut the base of her feet and cause her to flinch.

The sun had long since set by the time they finally reached the caves, Lily grumbling with the effort to stay awake as she haphazardly made her way inside the first one to find a dark nook to lie in and sleep. The discomfort of rocks and the uneasiness of lying in the location she’d thought she’d seen the Morequcor wasn’t able to last long as her body fell into a sleep state the moment her head rested on the satchel between it and the floor.