Yann’s eyes fluttered open. He found himself lying on his back staring at the sky through the tops of some kind of trees.

He pried himself off the ground and looked around. His whole body ached, but at least he could move his limbs without pain.

He woke up in a clearing in some woods. A small stream ran through the grass nearby.

Eliska sat on a rock near him. All the other Watchmen who survived Middleborough were all in the process of waking up, sitting up, and looking around, too.

Wesh lay stretched out not far away with his eyes closed. “Is he…..?” Yann broke off. Maybe he shouldn’t ask.

“He’ll be all right,” Eliska replied. “He got injured, but I healed him. He just needs to rest, but he’ll wake up soon.”

She eyed Yann for a second and then went back to working on a long tree branch stretched across her lap.

She passed a knife down its edges to shave off the extra twigs and bark, straighten it, and smooth it into another staff.

A fire crackled at her feet and she occasionally stopped working on the staff to add more dead sticks to the flames. She was the only person sitting up. She must have lit it.

She’d taken off her black cloak, propped some longer branches at angles near the fire, and spread her cloak on top of it. It must have gotten wet. Now she used the fire to dry it.

Yann found himself squirming under her direct stare. She only took her eyes off him to look at her work or to glance around at the other Watchmen.

None of them seemed to be injured—not seriously. Did she heal them, too? How many of them owed her their lives? They might not even realize that she saved them. They could have been unconscious at the time.

Yann definitely owed her his life. He knew he was going to die on that rock shelf, but she saved him then. Did he almost die this time, too?

Yvan distracted him by coughing. The Watch Commander got as far as his hands and knees and then fell back on his seat. Dirt and dead pine needles stuck in his hair and covered his uniform.

Yann crawled over to his father and touched the Watch Commander’s shoulder. “Are you all right, Father?”

“I’m fine.” Yvan coughed again, looked around, saw Eliska sitting there, and glanced up at Yann. “Are you all right, son? Did you get injured?”

“I did…..” Yann didn’t tell his father that Eliska saved him again. Yvan was too smart not to put the puzzle pieces together on his own. “I’m all right now.”

Just then, Wesh jolted upright. He jerked out of a sound sleep, shot into a sitting position, and yelled out in surprise while his wild eyes darted around the forest.

“Stay calm, Wesh,” Eliska murmured and raised her staff to sight down its length. “You got hurt, but you’ll be okay. We’re in another Island.”

Wesh searched everywhere for a second before his shoulders slumped. He cast his gaze to the ground. “Mael is gone. I’m the last one.”

“We have bigger problems than that,” Eliska told him. “We’re stranded in the Coil.”

“Where are we?” Yvan asked. “What does it mean that we’re on an Island?” Now it was his turn to look around. “There could be towns around here somewhere.”

“Not here,” Eliska told him. “This Island is too small. It will change soon.”

“How can you tell?” Yann asked.

She held up the staff in her hands, rotated it to examine it from all sides, and then held it out so the end pointed at his face. “Do you see that? The growth rings are too far apart. This forest just grew out of the Coil a little while ago. We’re still in the wild Layers.”

“What does that mean?” Omer asked.

She didn’t outright sneer at him, but she barely looked at him when she answered. “It means the Island can go as easily as it came. Islands are always popping up in the Coil. Sometimes they last a few minutes like that rock shelf we landed on. Sometimes they last a day or a week or a year. Then the Coil shifts again and the Island vanishes and reforms into something else somewhere else.”

“So…..we have no way of knowing how long this Island will last?” Rien asked.

She let the staff fall down on her lap, turned around, and stared at him. “Don’t you know anything about the Coil—anything at all? You don’t even know what an Island is or how it works?”

“Of course I don’t know anything about the Coil!” Rien fired back. “I’ve never been out of Middleborough in my life! Do you think I want to be some worthless lowlife Coil rat like you?”

“Rien!” Yvan snapped. “Stuff it.”

Rien opened his mouth to say something equally insulting to Eliska, but he stopped himself in time, glanced at the Watch Commander once, clamped his mouth shut, and turned his head to look off in another direction.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Eliska scrutinized him for a second before she went back to shaving on her staff. “Don’t worry. I’ll go off alone and return to being the Coil rat that I am. You won’t have to worry about me any longer…..but you might want to think about where you are and what you’re doing here. Middleborough doesn’t exist anymore. You’re stranded in the Coil the same way I am….which means you’re Coil rats just like me. I hope you’re happy. Now you get to find out how I’ve been living for the last sixteen years. So good luck with that.”

She stood up, gave her new staff one last critical inspection, twirled it through the air a few times, and then stabbed it into the soft soil at her feet.

She crossed to her cloak and squeezed it. It must not have been dry enough. She readjusted its position on its drying frame and went back to pick up her staff.

Yvan scrambled to his feet. “Thank you….Eliska….for everything you’ve done for us. I understand why you don’t want to stay with us…..”

“I doubt you understand very much of anything,” she mumbled under her breath. “You and your dopey Watchmen will die out here. The sooner I get away from you, the better off I’ll be.”

“You would really go off and leave us alone to die—when none of us has any magic to defend ourselves?” Barsali Brun snorted. “You really are a Darkling.”

“I’m not leaving you alone,” Eliska told him. “Wesh is here. He’ll help you. He came to Middleborough to save you. He’ll do it if you even can be saved—which I doubt. You don’t need me and….” She glanced at Rien. “You don’t want me anyway. We’re better off apart.”

She took her staff and walked off into the trees. She must not have been planning to leave right away. She didn’t take her cloak with her.

No one spoke until she passed out of earshot. “She’s a wretch,” Rien snarled.

“Did you have to insult her to her face?” Yvan fired back. “The very next one of you who calls her a Darkling or a Coil rat or any other insult will be out of the Watch. Is that clear? She saved our lives—more than once. We’re alive right now because of her. All of you better start treating her with some respect. If you can’t do that, then keep your mouths shut around her.”

Yann didn’t get involved. The other Watchmen didn’t answer at all. Silence fell over the group.

Six Watchmen survived the destruction of Middleborough besides Yann and his father. The Watchmen had a mixture of reactions to Yvan’s order about Eliska.

Neither Rien Dugas nor Barsali Brun would look at the Watch Commander. Rien kept fuming over there, grinding his teeth, and glaring at the surrounding trees on the opposite side of this clearing.

Omer Veco looked straight back at Yvan with clear, direct black eyes. Omer’s sharp, angular features showed no surprise or offense at Yvan’s order.

Then again, Omer never said anything insulting about Eliska, either to her face or behind her back.

Vidal Rom didn’t treat the order like anything special, either. He squatted down next to the fire, used a stick to stir up the embers, added more wood, and spread his hands over the flames to warm his fingers.

“She’s a resourceful young thing, isn’t she?” he remarked. “She knows her way around the Coil.”

“Of course she does,” Wesh replied. “She understands its ways from long experience the same way you would be familiar with your own hometown. The Coil’s many dangers are no surprise to her and she knows how to survive when things go wrong.”

Neither Niyazi Trahan nor Niels Surette even seemed to hear Yvan’s order. Both of them searched the surrounding forest for something that kept not being there.

“We should canvas the area,” Niels suggested. “We might find a town…..”

“She says this Island only sprang up recently,” Omer pointed out. “It could be too new for any towns to develop.”

“We still might find something,” Niels pointed out. “We can’t stay sitting here forever.”

“If she’s right about the Coil shifting soon and swallowing this Island, then we could wind up somewhere else anyway,” Vidal added. “Canvasing the area would accomplish nothing.”

Eliska came back just then. Everyone stopped talking the instant she stepped out of the trees.

She carried her staff in one hand and the headless body of some furry brown animal in the other.

She sat back down on the same rock by the fire, held up the animal by its back leg, and aimed her staff at the creature.

She fired a fork of magic at the carcass and the hide stripped off in one sudden rip.

The pelt fell to the ground at her feet while the bloody bare body still hung from her hand.

Yann burst out laughing at the sight. He realized as soon as it happened that he probably shouldn’t have laughed. It wasn’t the appropriate response to the situation.

His laughter slipped out before he could stop it. He stifled it immediately, but the sound startled everyone into spinning around and staring at him. Even Eliska stared at him.

He bit his lip and tried to shut his mouth, but he couldn’t stop chucking at the way she skinned that animal. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “It just looked funny.”

She split in a matching grin. “It’s easier than doing it with a knife, isn’t it?”

Yann found himself grinning back at her. “Cleaner, too.”

“Watch this. This is the best part.” She picked up her staff again.

“Stop playing with it,” Niels interjected.

She barely glanced at him before she turned back to her dead animal. She fired another steady beam of magic into its body, sliced it open, and all its entrails squelched out onto the grass next to the fire.

In seconds, she cleaned, gutted, and skinned the animal as expertly as any professional butcher could have.

“You’re lucky,” Yann told her. “Our butcher’s apprentice trained for years to be able to do that.”

“There are some advantages to being a worthless lowlife Coil rat.” Eliska shifted off her rock, squatted down by the fire next to Niels, and laid her carcass on another rock while she constructed a spit to cook the meat.

The Watchmen fell silent watching her work. Did she plan to share any of this meat with them?

Yann’s stomach tightened with hunger. His mouth started to water as the smell of roasting meat drifted through the clearing.

He didn’t dare to ask her to share the food with him—not after the way Rien and Barsali insulted her. No one else asked, either. Yann really hoped the others were starting to realize the priceless resource they’d thrown away by kicking her in the teeth.

She helped them. She helped them a lot more than they deserved. She probably helped them more than they even realized.

Most or all of them could have gotten injured and nearly died when they fell through the Layers. She could have saved all their lives before they regained consciousness.

She could have been their greatest asset if they only treated her well. Now she would leave them to fend for themselves.

Yann glanced over his shoulder at the forest. It sounded peaceful. Birds chirped in the branches and insects clicked out of sight.

Sunshine streamed through the canopy. The smell of pine needles and fresh earth drifted on the soft breeze.

He couldn’t remember ever seeing such a serene, inviting landscape, but it breathed with menace.

The Coil’s swirling Layers of wild magic stormed just out of sight. Everything in front of Yann’s eyes right now—this was nothing more than a veil of deception to stop him from seeing the danger lingering right behind those trees.

End of Chapter 6.