Faelix didn’t waste a lot of time with preamble nor how he’d made it to his mother, Queen Maeve, without being recaptured by the faerie army. I had some guesses, some of which concerned Moment, but I wasn’t in a place to make any suggestions about what was going on. Instead, I needed the information Faelix was sharing so I, as with everyone else in the Forest of Never, could get free of the barrier and back into the real world.

“We need to get the barrier down, now,” Faelix said. “What you’re looking for are the places between.”

“What does that even mean?” I asked with a rather sharp note of sarcasm in my intonation.

Faelix pointed at the sky above the river and said, “Look to the place where reality comes together and falls apart. It’ll be a mix of colors all dancing about and not easy to pin down. Don’t worry about pinning the colors down, you can’t.”

“Okay,” I said and looked.

It took me a bit with Faelix watching me and then barking orders on how I needed to adjust the angle at which I was looking, the position where I was standing, and the tilt of me head, but I got there and as I made the last shift in posture and position I could see what Faelix said was there: a magical barrier that looks like scales overlapping one another.

In my peripheral vision, I thought I was seeing other things, like rivers of energy overlapping each other and creating arches in the sky that connected between trees and the ground, the mountains and the different creatures and species that were wandering about. I didn’t have a lot of time to focus on the energy as my goal was to create a break in the scales that I could now see.

Faelix had landed on my shoulder, which was a little weird as he’d so far avoided coming in contact with me, and said, “You got to focus on the places between the scales.”

“I am,” I said, only then realizing I was struggling for breath as I concentrated on the barrier.

“I believe those are sprites,” he said. “You should be able to see the flow of colors as the different kinds of sprite interact with each other.”

“Those are sprites?” I said, not bothering to hide the surprise in my voice. I took a moment to look away from the barrier and actually look back toward the Forest of Never. As I did, I could see the same lines of color extending from the barrier deeper into the woods. I didn’t need to see where they were going as there was only one place for the sprites to go. The giant mushroom we’d uncovered.

“The sprites …,” I said, letting my concentration drop for a moment. I could breath a little easier, but that didn’t help with the barrier. “How are they …?”

I couldn’t seem to finish a sentence or a thought. There was something going on here and while I hadn’t yet put it all together, I knew I was going to get to an answer. The only question I really had was whether the answers I found were good or bad. Not good as in morally good or bad as morally bad, but good as in for the benefit of the world and bad for the detriment of the world.

“What am I doing?” I asked Faelix.

He’d started to complain about my looking away from the barrier and then stopped when he saw where I was looking.

“Oh shit and skittles,” he said.

Bal said, “What is happening?”

I pointed to the forest and the light and energy I could see flowing everywhere. “The giant mushroom is what’s powering this whole thing.”

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

I turned my attention to Faelix and since I was in almost-god mode, I knew that my eyes were glowing an eerie, reddish orange color. The brilliance of my pupils were still there, but the glow would be something else entirely.

“Before I drop my vision,” I said, “I think you have some explaining to do.”

Faelix didn’t respond, instead taking off from my shoulder and flying away as fast as he could. I didn’t let him get very far before a wave of my own power leapt from me and captured him and brought him back.

“Tell me what I don’t know,” I said.

“You know everything,” he said.

“Have you looked at yourself in a mirror when your eyes are doing that?” He asked.

“That’s not an answer,” I said.

“He’s not lying,” Bal said and Clippings seemed to agree with him.

“No, there’s more to it than that,” I said. “A male faerie. A barrier. Something only I can help with. The sprites and the giant mushroom. All of it connected together and that doesn’t even include your monster, Ethan. There’s something that isn’t be shared with me and if I don’t hear it pretty damn quick I’m going to add to the energy from the sprites once I’ve made my way through the barrier.”

“You can go through the barrier?” Bal asked. I could hear how impressed she was and I nodded.

“I think so,” I said. “I haven’t tried because no one seems to want me to actually try, but if what I’m seeing is correct and what I’m feeling is accurate, then I’m no more trapped here than air or light.”

“What about everyone else?” Bal asked.

I didn’t answer her. Instead, I was staring at Faelix and waiting for him to say or do something. Somehow, in that moment and in spite of his ability to get into my personal void, I knew he had more than he was saying and, sadly, Borrowind was also involved in whatever was going on. I’d been kept moving and off balance for long enough that I wasn’t able to focus properly. Now, however, I was starting to see.

As though on cue, Borrowind appeared at the edge of the forest and started toward us. He was followed by others. I wasn’t entirely certain what I was expecting, but a procession of forest creatures wasn’t part of it.

Borrowind was in the lead and made his way to me.

“You can’t do this,” Borrowind said.

I heard him, but I wasn’t looking at him. Instead, I was looking past him at the creatures that were almost too small to see from this distance. The faeries. Those were who I’d become most interested in.

While animals and elves and others were interesting, the faeries were the ones most responsible for my being trapped and I was beginning to guess that they were also the ones who had the answers to what was happening. I could see the barrier, but I could also see the ebb and flow of energy. The pulse of life, if you will, and it was the pulse of life that was getting to me.

I’d never seen it before and yet I instinctively understood that was I was seeing, the sprites and the faeries, the animals and the magical creatures, everything seemed more than a little off. Not off as in wrong, but off as in slightly the wrong color or slightly the wrong flavor or slightly just wrong.

Now that I could see it, I could also taste it.

“Who are you really?” I asked Borrowind and then looked at Bal and Clippings and others.

“I’m a bear.”

“And I have an affinity for and curiosity about bears,” I said.

Then, looking at Faelix, I asked, “Who are you really?”

“You know the answer to that already,” Faelix said. “I’m a male faerie.”

“And I have never met nor seen or interacted with a male faerie,” I said. “And I’m guessing you’re going to tell me that that is actually Queen Maeve?” I pointed at the faerie queen still moving toward me.

“It is,” Faelix said.

“Are you okay?” Bal asked.

“Of course,” Bal said. “But what’s wrong with you? You’re different suddenly.”

Bal’s question seemed out of place, weird in a world that was already weird, and somehow prescient to the situation and the events all around me. Faelix was still being held inside of bubble of my power, the innate preternatural stuff, and he couldn’t move except to speak and the little faerie dude was speaking, his words were nasty and unpredictable and certainly being used as a means to get under my skin. He was trying to goad me into something, an unexpected explosion of power or force, and as I realized that I decided it was time to let all of the power and energy I had flowing through me stop, dissipate, and return to where it belonged. Barrier be damned, I wasn’t going to allow some two-bit wanna-be badass faerie talk to me like Faelix was talking to me and then let him get his way.