“So how do we do this, exactly?” Standing on the beach of the lake next to the large raft that had been summoned for this specific purpose, I looked over to Theia. Somehow, I managed to tamp down the anger that I still felt at the fact that she hadn’t just told us what we needed to know before any of this had happened, before Avalon had been abducted. As true as it was, lamenting that or getting pissed at the girl wouldn’t help or accomplish anything. So I focused.
We had split up into those three groups. I was a part of Professor Dare’s group, at her request. She had also requested Theia. And since Abigail was going wherever Theia went, she was there too. Finally, rounding out our group were Scout and Shiori.
Tabbris wasn’t with me right now. I had assured my partner that I would be okay and that she should stay with her mother and siblings. And with my dad. Yeah, he was going to help look around, just in case his super bullshit perception and analytical ability that should have been classified as a superpower actually noticed anything.
That was Gabriel’s group: Sariel, her three children, and my dad. And as worried as I was about the idea of Tabbris and my father going somewhere without me, them being with both Gabriel and Sariel was pretty much the very best case scenario, as far as that option went. Prosser wouldn’t let anything happen to them. And with Sariel’s help, they were about as safe as they could be.
Finally, there was Deveron’s group, which consisted of himself, Columbus, Sean (with Vulcan of course), and Koren when they had left. Plus, they were planning on meeting up with Seller (whom I still hadn’t seen since getting back) and Miranda before they got too far. Again, with Seller and Deveron together, I had to trust that they’d be as okay as they could possibly be.
Koren had considered going with our group to be with her mother. But in the end, she’d hugged the woman, saying that our group was large enough and that she thought she could help ‘Grandpa Dev’ even more if she went with them. Yeah, I didn’t think Koren was ever going to get tired of teasing Deveron by calling him grandpa whenever she could get away with it.
So, that was our three groups. And now, our group was standing next to this raft on the lake.
Stretching up on her toes, the Seosten girl looked toward Dare. “You made the coin like Theia-I said?” she asked while carefully and pointedly cracking her knuckles with a loud pop.
In response, Professor Dare held up a single golden coin between her thumb and index finger. “Just like you said,” she replied before flipping it to her. “Tell me if I missed anything.” She had been the one to enchant it rather than Theia herself because Dare was quicker with magic and we didn’t have time to waste.
Giving the coin a once over, Theia nodded. “Yes,” she announced easily, with a toothy smile, “it’s ready. This is the key. Except it’s a coin. Coin key.” Pausing as if considering her words, she finally nodded before gesturing onto the boat. “All aboard that’s going aboard.”
Shiori took my hand, and I squeezed it while stepping onto the raft with her. The magicked-up creation was sturdy enough, rocking only a little on the water as our weight settled on it. The others followed suit, and soon the six of us were all there on the raft. Still holding that coin, Theia waited until we were all set. Then she tossed the little metal desk to the floor of the raft, and we all watched as it melted into the wood, disappearing.
Then the raft started moving, seemingly by itself. The boat slowly began to work its way across the water towards the middle of the lake, as if driven by invisible oars. As it moved, Shiori squeezed my hand a little tighter while leaning up to whisper quietly into my ear, “We’ll find her.”
I was still afraid. God, was I ever afraid. I was utterly terrified about what they might be doing to Avalon, to my girl. But having my other girl here with me helped a bit.
Ugh. That was still a weird way to think of it. My girls. I was proud of them, ecstatic that the two of them even wanted anything to do with me in… well, in that way. But it still felt awkward to try and refer to them as… as my girls. But they were. Shiori and Avalon. My girls. And I was their girl. Weird as it might have felt to try and describe or define, that’s what we were.
Either way, the point was that the anxiety, anger and everything else I felt at the thought of what Avalon could have been going through then was tempered just a little by the presence of Shiori. She grounded me, made me feel more human and more… capable at the same time. Feeling her hand in mine, hearing her voice, knowing she was there, it made an awful, horrific situation just a tiny bit better. It let me breathe a little more, let me focus on what we needed to do.
Abigail was looking at me from where she had carefully sat down to avoid the rocking of the raft as it moved. Her voice was quiet, clearly concerned. “Felicity,” she started, “are you sure you’re okay? You’ve been through a lot today, you must be exhausted.”
My head shook slightly at that. “I’m okay,” I replied. “The Amarok power, it uhh, it’s working overtime. But I’ll be fine. It’s Vanessa and Tristan I’m worried about. They’ve been going for a long time too. And… they’ve been through a lot of emotional stuff.” To say the least.
The other woman gave a slight nod. “I’m glad they’re with their mother, and with Mr. Prosser.”
“He doesn’t like being called Mr. Prosser,” Dare informed us absently, her gaze on the water in front of us. “He prefers Gabriel. Even Prosser is something he’s… accepted over time but doesn’t exactly love. It was the name of his… owner during his days as a slave. He’s mostly taken the name as his own, and understands why people use it, but just Gabriel is best. And definitely not Mr. Prosser if you can help it.”
Wincing, Abigail quickly acknowledged, “I’ll remember that. I… think I called him Mr. Prosser about a dozen times, but he never said anything about it.”
“He’s not the type to,” Dare replied quietly, before straightening. “We’re here.”
Wait, what? Blinking, I looked around. Whoa. She was right. I hadn’t noticed anything happening, my eyes and brain had never actually consciously acknowledged the moment when we had magically moved from the lake to some other water. But it had happened. At some point, maybe when I had blinked, we had disappeared from the lake by the Atherby camp and reappeared on a much larger body of water. Ahead of us was an island with a large, fairly spacious-looking cabin set up against a small grove of trees. It looked peaceful… and empty.
Sure enough, after closing her eyes briefly with a look of concentration, Dare shook her head. “No one,” she announced quietly. “The island is empty.”
That wasn’t even the least bit surprising, of course. But I still let out a low sigh. It would’ve been completely beyond shocking if we had just happened to come straight to where Manakel was holding Avalon. But still, the fact that it didn’t happen made my stomach twist up into even more of a knot regardless. No matter how unlikely finding her that easily had been, I’d apparently been holding onto at least a tiny bit of hope for it.
Scout, who had been far more characteristically quiet this entire time, finally spoke up as the raft reached the simple wooden dock that extended from the beach. “Is there any way to know when they were last here? Or when anyone was here?”
Shaking her head, Dare stepped carefully up onto the dock, pausing for a moment to make sure things seemed safe enough before she gestured for us to come as well. “Normally,” she replied, “yes, there would be ways. But now I wouldn’t trust them. Not with people like the Seosten. They know how to cover their tracks too well.”
The thought that the Seosten were good at covering their tracks didn’t bode well for our chances of finding something here we could use to track down Manakel and Avalon. But it wasn’t like we had a lot of other options at this point. We had to give it a shot, unlikely as it may have been.
The rest of us joined Professor Dare on the dock, before the woman held up a hand to stop us from going any further. Her eyes were squinting ahead suspiciously. “Traps,” she murmured.
“Oh yes,” Theia brightly confirmed. “Manakel does enjoy his traps. And zombies. Those too.”
My eyes rolled at that, even as I snarled, “One way or another, I’m going to have one less asshole necromancer fucking with my life soon.”
So, Abigail, Scout, Shiori, and I stood back a bit while Dare and Theia worked their way through the apparently numerous magical alarms and traps that had been set to catch anyone who happened to invade this particular Seosten sanctuary. I felt even more anxious and worried with every second that passed, and had to physically stop myself from pressing them to hurry.
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Was this how Avalon had felt, sitting around having to wait while I was stuck out in Seosten space? Or was that somehow even worse than this, since she hadn’t been able to do anything to help me? At least I had this search to keep myself busy, to stay occupied. Right now, I couldn’t imagine being in the position that Valley had been. It must’ve driven her crazy.
And now, now right as I had finally gotten back, right before we would have been reunited, Manakel had abducted her. God… damn… fucking Manakel. I hated that son of a bitch.
And I wasn’t feeling too fond of Jophiel and Elisabet in that moment either. If they had known anything about this, if they could have stopped it or at least warned me… would they? Fuck, would they even care? After the way they had introduced themselves, I wasn’t sure.
One thing was certain, however. We were going to have words. I couldn’t do anything right now, of course. My disappearing to go talk to those two would have caused a lot more problems. There was no way that anyone would believe that I wouldn’t be right in the middle of this search.
But the first chance I got… yeah, I was going to talk to those two. And whatever it took, I was going to push them to actually do something about Avalon. Either help Valley, or… or… something. I didn’t know what. Damn it, I didn’t know. But I wouldn’t rest until they did something to help. They had already barely lifted a finger to help us save Sariel. If they wanted us to keep working with them now, they were going to do something in return, goddammit.
Abigail was looking at me, a slight frown of concern touching her face. “Flick,” she started hesitantly, “are you sure you’re okay to be here right now? I–” She winced then. “I know, you won’t sit out, not with Avalon involved. But if you need to sit down or something until we’re ready…”
My head shook at that. “Thanks,” I murmured, not wanting to snap at the people who cared about me no matter how anxious and upset I felt. “But I’m… I’ll be okay. I can’t rest right now.”
Abigail looked like she wanted to say something else to that. But before she could, Professor Dare spoke up. “We’re through. It’s safe now. They’ll know we were here, but there’s no avoiding that anyway. Just be quick, but thorough.”
From her pocket, the woman produced a familiar silver and violet orb that fit in the palm of her hand.
“What’s that?” Abigail asked, lifting her chin as she watched the golf ball-sized orb curiously.
“Panoptic Analysis Window System,” I replied, remembering the Heretic device I’d learned about much earlier in my Investigation classes with Dare. “PAWS. It takes a full holographic recording of an area. It’ll even record things that aren’t in the open, like stuff in closets or drawers.”
Nodding, Scout added, “Then you can plug it into one of the display rooms back at Crossroads to look through the whole area whenever you want. It’s really useful for Heretics to go through a whole crime scene even when Bystander authorities lock everything down.”
Abigail was staring at us with an expression of awe. “Do you have any idea how useful that would be for normal law enforcement to have?” she demanded, sounded pretty openly offended that it wasn’t something that Heretics shared with normal humans. “Do you know how many murders and other horrific crimes could be solved if they had access to something that preserved the crime scene that well? That would completely revolutionize the–” Cutting herself off, the woman devolved into making a few annoyed grumbling sounds about Heretic secrets.
Soon enough, we made our way down the dock and up to the cabin itself. Dare made one last check that everything was clear, then told us to go ahead and look around while she made sure that the PAWS was scanning everything correctly for later.
So, Scout, Shiori and I slowly began making our way through the cabin together, while Abigail and Theia did the same on their own. The place was pretty spacious and luxurious for a cabin. There were three floors in the place, and about a dozen different rooms. Which included a truly impressive dining hall. Manakel had some expensive tastes as far as hideouts went.
All of which meant that there was a lot of ground to cover, so I was really glad that Professor Dare had thought to bring the PAWS. That would be beyond useful so that we could scour every last millimeter of this place, even after we had to leave.
Still, we could look through the live thing right now. So that’s what we did. I even set Jaq and Gus on the floor and had them look around through some of the smaller areas just in case there were any hidden areas that would be too small for us to quickly spot.
Unfortunately (and as expected), there really didn’t seem to be that much to find. There were food supplies, some books that we’d have to look through more thoroughly later, a few interesting-looking weapons, and other odds and ends that might have been interesting, but had nothing to do with actually finding Avalon. There was no letter sitting out with ‘Dear minions, meet me at this specific address when you get a chance. Thanks! – Manakel’ written on it.
Not that I’d been expecting anything like that, of course. But again, it would have been nice.
Eventually, however, we did find one somewhat important-looking door. It was made of some kind of very heavy metal, probably reinforced by magic. Even with my strength, I couldn’t make it budge. But there was a tiny keyhole, and when crouching there, I could peek inside at a roomful of empty metal cages or kennels, like the kind that you’d keep a dog in at the pound. They were each about three feet across by three feet high, and stacked on top of each other in piles of three all along the left and right walls. At the far end of the room there was what looked like a table with some notes piled on top of it.
“We need to get in there,” I announced then, straightening up while looking to Shiori. “You up for a quick sand trip through the hole?”
Scout, however, shook her head. “I can do it.” As both of us looked that way, the other girl held her hand out. A small glowing orb appeared in her palm, before shrinking and reshaping itself into the form of a key. Scout put the key in the lock, then clearly adjusted it a few times, making the thing fit into the lock precisely before she turned it. With a click, the door opened.
“Wow,” I murmured, “now that seems useful.”
In reply, Scout winked at me, her voice soft. “You’re not the only one who got some new tricks while you were gone.”
Together, the three of us stepped into the room. Immediately, I wrinkled my nose. “Oh, God, what is that smell?”
Cringing beside me, clearly affected by her own enhanced senses, Shiori shook her head. “It’s… kind of like… tangy, but also rotten? Like a bunch of lemons that went bad. And also just a bit of, umm… chlorine. Heavy chlorine.”
I felt the approach of a figure who I recognized as Theia. The girl’s approach still made me tense up, looking back that way as she stepped closer. “Mesches,” the Seosten announced. “It smells like Mesches.”
In response to our collective baffled looks, she added, “Mesches block magic sight or tracking. It’s their… their gift? Yes, their gift. If you have a bunch of them in an area, they can make that place impossible for any spell to follow. And also make ongoing spell effects run out faster.”
“Any spell,” I murmured, “including the ones that Avalon has on that are supposed to let us find her. That’s how Manakel’s keeping Avalon hidden and speeding up the clock on those spells. He has a bunch of these Mesches.”
Theia was frowning. “Yes,” she murmured, “but Mesches aren’t that easy to use. They make powerful poisons. Their smell isn’t just awful, they make a poison cloud in the air that does very bad things. Keeping someone near enough to them for the beneficial effect and avoiding any poison problems would be… hard.”
Honestly, the fact that she was actually being this helpful, not making any cracks, and seemed serious about the situation made me believe even more that Theia genuinely felt bad about what had happened. She wanted to make up for it, in whatever way that she could.
Still, she did kind of creep me out a little. It hadn’t been that long since she’d been trying to kill us, after all. It was going to take a little more time for me to totally move past that.
Did that make me a bad person, or a hypocrite? I… I wasn’t sure. I was trying to control my reaction to her. But again… time. It would take time.
Then there was what she had said. Poison. Poisoned air. Somehow, that was important. It was tickling something in the back of my head. But what was it? What…
Shaking it off, I moved through the room to the table at the back end. The cages were all empty, as Manakel had clearly moved his herd or… pack or whatever they’d be referred to as to his new hiding place. The papers were all mostly just confirming what Theia had already said, that the creatures were useful for blocking magic trackers and for speeding up magical effects. He’d been planning this for awhile.
With an inward sigh, I looked up from the papers to glance slowly around the room. Nothing. I had a feeling that there was something important about all this, something that would tell me a lot more, but I couldn’t quite figure out what it was.
What could it be? What was so important about this room, or the animals that had been here, or… or… whatever it was that was bothering me? What was it?
“Flick?” Shiori was looking at me. “What’s wrong? What are you thinking about?”
Slowly, I shook my head. “I’m not sure. There’s just something… it feels like this should be telling me something, but I can’t… I can’t quite reach it. This is a clue, an important one. I’m just… not sure how it fits.”
With a sigh, I quickly finished gathering up the rest of the papers, tucking them under an arm. “Let’s go see what the others found. And hope that they’ve had more luck than we have. Because judging from the number of cages in here, I’d say that Manakel has a lot of those Mesches things he can use to speed up those protection spells. Which means Avalon is running out of time.”
“It’s worse than that, I’m afraid.”
The voice came from nearby, and I turned to find Seller there. Blinking, I asked, “Aren’t you supposed to be with the others?”
The man with the emerald shades gave a slight nod. “Yes, but there’s been another complication that you should all know about.”
Looking like the last thing she wanted was another complication, Professor Dare ground out, “What happened?”
“It’s the boy, Trice,” Seller replied slowly and reluctantly.
“Someone found a way to break into Gaia’s private dimension and freed him. He’s gone.”