“You sure this spell-potion’s working?” Kionah asked.
Mutt tugged on his lead, paws pit-pattering over the cobbles. His nose hadn’t stopped twitching over the ground since she’d held the fabric to it, and now his tongue lolled happily as he scampered on ahead.
“Of course,” Luxon replied indignantly. “I brewed it myself.”
“Yeah, well,” Kionah said, glancing around. “I’m not so sure these schismatists would choose to hide in the temple district.”
“Patience,” Luxon chittered. “Tracing the path of the scent may not necessarily be efficient.”
Kionah sighed and shielded her eyes from the gleam of white marble, all aglow with the sunset. Around them came the smoky-sweet scent of incense, the soft murmuring of prayer and fountain-water. Hooded acolytes turned to stare as they passed, looking up from their rites. Kionah couldn’t blame them; a girl and a faerie being dragged after a chimera must be a change from the usual sombre traffic. They passed temple after temple, down the main thoroughfare until Mutt took a sharp left, through an alley and down to…
“Huh,” Kionah said. “Damn. Couldn’t we have taken a shuttlebus?”
An access port yawned, hewn out of the ground. Rough-cut stairs led down into a dull green gloom; the passage was barely lit by bioluminiscent mosses. Green, mostly, and blanketing the walls. Parts of it had been molded into lines of scripture by whichever priests tended to this gate.
“Oh my,” Luxon remarked. “How quaint.”
Kionah resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Luxon seemed to be treating this like some sort of adventure. Mutt yelped in excitement and tugged at his leash; Kionah groaned and stepped onto the top step. Trust a faerie to take a convoluted route. Luxon fluttered alongside, the tunnel just barely wide enough to fit them both.
The air dipped cooler as they descended, and the stairs spiraled round and round like the inside of a tower. Kionah worried about a faery crawling round the corner the whole way down. The greenish light brightened as the moss grew lush and vibrant, spiraling out of its set scripture-pattern from a lack of tending. By the time they reached the base of the stairs, the moss had grown to swallow the entire opening.
“Oh my,” Luxon said as the tunnel emptied out into an Undercity street. “I had no idea you humans were so…industrious.”
Kionah glanced around, scowling. Crowds streamed past like schools of fish; this looked like a good spot to get cutpurse’d. Had it really been necessary for Luxon to stay dressed in all of her shiny brocade crap?
“Keep an eye on your belt,” she warned. “Watch out for the little ones.”
Mutt tugged on his leash and she followed, glaring pointedly at a couple of dirty-faced urchins sauntering past. If she’d been alone, she would’ve taken some other route—but as it was, she didn’t even know where she was going. This was such a shitty plan. Were it not for Aliyah looking so damn distraught at the prospect of her mentor being dead—and maybe, just maybe, Saar-Salai having had the decency to not leave her to die—she would’ve up and left by now.
Ugh. That was the trouble with being near anyone for too long, the trouble with taking favours and scrounging help—you started to care, whether you liked it or not.
Her eyes roved the crowd as her hand reached up to twist the shielding charm Silas had pressed upon her before they’d left: a twist of wood carved with miniature runes.
“Stronger than the usual fare,” he’d said. “Probably equivalent to a usual shield. It’ll leave you free to do whatever it is you are so determined to do.”
He’d spoken that last part with a certain acidity, leaving little room as to his opinion on whatever it was that she did. She scowled at the memory. Just because he was a retired old fart didn’t mean he got to look down his nose at her when she asked if Laurent had left any spare bullets lying around.
He’d handed his spare protective charm to Luxon. Luxon had tried to hand it to Aliyah. Aliyah had refused, her voice tense with worry. Apparently, she thought they’d be in more danger than she would. So far, the only dangers that presented themselves were snivelling runts perched in the alley shadows.
Thankfully, Mutt led them away from the crowds and down a sloping street, heading away from the main blocks of populace. Kionah had expected this; unscrupulous schismatists weren’t likely to keep their lairs in town, nestled between a butcher shop and a bakery. It was part-relief, part-worry that Mutt seemed to know where he was going.
Down more winding paths, more staircases, a different pocket of cavern, abandoned by the looks of it—ugh, this was getting deep, even for the Undercity. There were nooks and crannies scattered about, of course, but from the look of things, they were headed for places that would count as wilderness if they were upside.
The cobbled paths became bare stone, the houses increasingly run-down and overgrown with weeds and fungi. Sputtering streetlamps gave way to glowing larvae in jars, gave way to scrappy patches of the same bioluminescent moss that had grown on the stairs they’d taken down. Before too long, Kionah found it difficult to see more than five feet in front of herself. It didn’t seem to bother Mutt in the slightest; he pulled ahead with unfailing enthusiasm.
“Hey,” she said. “Luxon, a little light please?”
“Oh! Of course. I forget you cannot scent.”
Luxon pulled a thick stump of plant fibre from her belt and cracked it down the middle; the makeshift sap-beacon flared to life, illuminating their path with sickly yellow-green light.
They carried on down the path. Before long, a sign loomed ahead, chiseled from a thick sheet of pale stone.
“Moss-spine Reaches,” Luxon read aloud. “What a dour name. No wonder no one wishes to live here.”
Kionah glanced around, scouting for clues. The sign heralded a wide passage, lined with gravel—a couple of locked carts sat off to the side, indicating some amount of regular traffic.
“Probably a farm or something,” she said apprehensively. Words had been etched into the stone next to the passage. She frowned as they walked closer: private property—trespassers beware.
“I think we’re lost,” Kionah said, shaking her head. They had to be; schismatists wouldn’t build their hideout on some random farm. The tunnel to this so-called ‘Moss-spine’ wasn’t even warded. If they were keeping Saar-Salai here, it didn’t look very secure. “That, or your potionwork was off.”
Luxon drew herself up to her full height and twitched her spines in an offended sort of way. “No, no. Let’s go through here at least—like I said, trailing a scent isn’t through the most efficient process. It is through the route the original scent must have taken.”
“Luxon,” Kionah said. “I am not risking my neck trampling over someone’s farm. You know what these sorts of deep-city geezers like to keep around? Enchanted shotguns. Double-ironed.” She reached up and gripped the pendant swinging from her neck; she had a decent amount of faith in Laurent’s charm-work, but not that much.
“My potion was correctly brewed and within the expiry date,” Luxon insisted. “Here, let’s give him another taste of the scent.” She stowed her sap-beacon away before pulling a length of red cloth from one of her implausibly cavernous pockets and pushing it under Mutt’s nose. “Here, little chimera. What make you of this?”
Mutt wagged his tail and lifted his nose from the sampled cloth. Then he spun in a slow circle before turning towards the entrance to Moss-spine.
“See?” Luxon said.
Mutt tugged insistently at the leash; Kionah dug her heels in and scowled. But Luxon was already fluttering stubbornly onwards—the ego of that faerie. She hid it well under that bubble-headed, cheery persona, but Kionah saw right through it.
The tunnel lead to a rune-lit cavern, gated and fenced; snarls of barbed wire surrounded a vast, looming field of hydroponic arrays. They resembled the ones back in Shadowsong, Kionah realised, though they were perhaps a touch more sophisticated-looking. Greenery sprouted from hundreds of trays, stacked one atop the other, fifty-feet high. Tubing ran up the racks; she supposed they pumped the water from some subterranean river or other. None of this particularly indicated the presence of a secret faerie hideout.
“It’s a dead end,” Kionah said. “Not even an out-of-the-way district or a homestead or anything—this is literally just a random hydroponics field.” And if it wasn’t, then it felt as though they were being lead into a corner. Kionah didn’t like corners.
Luxon sniffed the air carefully, spines tipped back in concentration. “No, no…is that…an un-Hival scent?”
“Luxon,” she warned.
“Let’s just take a little peek,” Luxon said.
Kionah tightened her grip on Mutt’s leash. “This isn’t a little sightseeing adventure, Luxon. We’re trespassing.”
“I didn’t realise that was a concern for you.”
“I’m not a burglar or anything like that, you know. The thing with the chariot was a one-time affair. If we get cast upon, or shot—”
“Yes, yes.” Luxon waved her hand dismissively and took another deep inhale. Her mouth dipped into a frown. “Look behind that bush, won’t you? You’ll find that ‘deep-city geezer’ you were so worried about behind it.”
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Kionah froze.
“Go on,” Luxon said. “The pacing of his breaths indicate that he is quite unconscious.”
She peered behind the bush. A farmer-looking fellow lay slumped over in the dirt, head pillowed in the crook of his arm. He was snoring gently, with an emptied bottle in hand. No sign of protective weaponry.
“What the…”
“See? There’s a scent of somnolent oils upon him.” Luxon gave a self-satisfied nod. “Our quarry took care of it for us—no trouble. Here, I can carry you over the fence.”
Kionah scowled. That was the trouble with richling types, even—maybe especially—faerie ones; they never understood the risks. If their target could subdue the person meant to be guarding this place, that didn’t bode well for them. Skirmishes weren’t something to seek out; they were here to look for Saar-Salai, get him, and then leave. In and out, real quick-like. If she was more reticent than she usually was…well, this place was setting her teeth on edge. Something about the too-stark lighting, the way the hydroponic arrays towered, the many rows like Library stacks…it was a bad place to get ambushed.
“Luxon,” she warned. “If a faerie drops down on us—”
“You’ve forgotten that I’m a so-called faerie, too,” Luxon argued, rising a foot into the air. “You can stay here if you wish, but I do believe our little chimera has led us to the correct place. I myself scented something, and the air tastes good here. It is a location that others of my ilk would enjoy—shall I fly over and see for myself?”
“Fine,” Kionah said. “Carry us over.”
If there was anything she knew about venturing into new and potentially dangerous places, it was to never split up when doing so.
Luxon’s wings made quick work of getting them over the fencing, even as Mutt squirmed and whined at being carried. Mutt pulled at his leash as soon as he was on solid ground, nose pointed down a row of arrays. Kionah flexed her free hand and called magic forth.
“You look from up there,” she told Luxon. “Not all the way up, in case they’re here. But stay in my view, alright?”
“Right,” Luxon said, and took off into the air.
Kionah continued down the corridor formed by the arrays. Penned in by foliage metal struts on both sides, the air fresh but ever-so-slightly damp, unwavering white runelight from above—with it came a certain unease crawling up her spine. She kept an eye for movement among the rows, anything that was not Luxon’s fluttering.
Something caught her eye just as Luxon froze mid-air and swooped back down—a glint of silver above, perched on the very top of an array. Kionah pulled Mutt to a stop and stepped in front of him.
“Sit,” she murmured. “Stay.” Shasta would kill her if Mutt got so much as a scratch on him, let alone pincushioned with arrows. Not that chimera-fur wasn’t practically armour—but still.
“You see her?” Luxon whispered as she landed.
“Uh huh.” The faery—the arrow one, she was pretty sure, though it was a little difficult to tell at this distance—was just sitting there, planted right in the middle of a hydroponics tray. “No…Hive stuff?”
“No,” Luxon confirmed. “No others, no building materials, no entrance. Perhaps this is a stopover.”
The silver faery turned her head.
“I thought you might turn up,” Saiphenora said. “Go away.”
Kionah cast a shield reflexively, protective pendant be damned—Saiphenora didn’t look as if she had her bow with her, but that didn’t mean spellfire alone wouldn’t hurt.
“Leave me be,” Saiphenora continued. She stood and turned to face them, walking several steps closer along the top of the array. Kionah took an involuntary step back. “Get going, get lost. You humans and your—” She paused. “Hm. You bought a friend.”
“Greetings, schismatist,” Luxon said. Her tail lashed agitatedly.
“Hiveling,” Saiphenora replied with obvious disgust, and tossed something down.
Kionah bolstered her shield before she registered the item had not been aimed at either of them—it bounced off the ground and rolled at her feet: a puffy white mushroom, with a bite taken out of the cap. Was it a distraction? Kionah glanced around discreetly for anyone sneaking up above or behind—but no, Saiphenora seemed truly alone.
Saiphenora sat herself down again and ripped a piece of ruffled lettuce from the tray alongside, cramming it into her mouth. She chewed, noisily. Kionah blinked. The situation was growing more bizarre by the moment.
“I see.” Luxon spoke up, crossing her arms. “Sulking, are you?”
“Leave me be,” Saiphenora said around her mouthful of leaf. “You won’t find what you’re looking for here.”
Luxon continued calling out as if she had not spoken. “Running around making trouble—have your elders put you up to this?”
“Luxon,” Kionah hissed, but Saiphenora only snorted and flopped onto her back, the very picture of an insolent street-runner.
“You are lucky I am presently unaccounted for,” Saiphenora said. “Else I would have put an arrow through your tongue.”
“Come now,” Luxon said. “Let us converse in a respectable manner.”
“No,” Saiphenora said. She sat up once more, and this time there was a crackle of spellfire in her hand. To Kionah’s dismay, Luxon pressed on.
“You seem wounded—inevitable aftermath of the syrup, I gather. Have you considered speaking to the Hive? Your handlers, whoever they may be, cannot hurt you under their protection.”
Saiphenora tossed the flicker of spellfire up and then caught it again, the movement almost playful. “My position suits me well enough.”
“I am a potioneer,” Luxon said, her tone taking a surprisingly gentle turn. “It is clear to me they value you for your response to their creation. The schismatist syrup will rob you of your health, and you should not have to suffer so.”
Saiphenora tipped her head back and laughed, a chittering, whispery sound. “Better hurting for some days than under the yoke of your Titania, Hiveling.” She flared her wings. “So long, then.”
“Not yet,” Luxon said, and took flight.
+++
Luxon cleared the distance in moments—the schismatist saw her coming, of course. She wheeled out of the way in a wide, easy arc. Slim, tapered wings, a scout-like build—even without a shock of syrup to the system, there was no way Luxon could outfly her.
She didn’t plan to—she only needed to get close enough.
Below, Kionah was shouting—Luxon ignored her. The schismatist was making a beeline for the exit tunnel, and she’d get one shot at this. Dipping her wings, the schismatist flew low, skimming over the tops of the greenery. Luxon flapped her way higher, even as it widened the gap between them.
When she was far enough, she unclasped a bottle from her belt and flung it. Glass shattered across silver wings and silver spine; liquid frothed into foam moments after exposure to air. In moments, the schismatist was flailing to land, her wings engulfed in sticky bubbles.
“Cursed Hiveling,” she screeched, and flung a dart of spellfire as she hit the ground.
Luxon didn’t dodge fast enough—the spell caught her full bore. The protective charm around her neck barely flared before the runes woven into her gown did, soaking up the damage like water into spring moss. The fabric smoked and flaked at the edges, scorch-marks creeping up the hems. Luxon felt her wings droop; what a waste of perfectly good embroidery.
She drifted her way down and landed very gently, a safe distance away. The schismatist had gorged herself on fresh plant material, from the looks of it. The syrup had clearly run its course, but she still posed a threat.
The schismatist fired three more darts at her, but Luxon cast her shield before they hit—the damage to her gown wasn’t too bad. Perhaps it could yet be salvaged.
“Good aim,” she said.
The schismatist hissed and staggered upright, trying to shake the foam off her wings—her efforts were in vain; good potioneers only used the best of setting agents.
“Now,” Luxon continued. “Shall we have a nice, polite discussion about the whereabouts of your handlers?”
“Get away from me, Hiveling,” the schismatist snarled, and Luxon almost shook her head at how young she sounded.
The shining huntress Kionah had described to her bore little resemblance to this gangly, overconfident youngling. The syrup made a big difference, of course, and Luxon could hardly expect a clump of humans to realise the schismatist’s underlying fledgling-scent—but still. Pity flared in her chest at the thought of one as naive as this pledged into malicious hands.
She sighed. “Listen. If it is the Hive you loathe so much, I am not even a part of it. I’m here to help.”
“Is that so,” the schismatist said flatly. Her wings twitched, betraying her intent. When flying didn’t work, she turned and ran.
Luxon sighed again. She winged up and over, landing to block her path.
“Please,” she said as the schismatist backed away. “Lend me a moment—I do not intend to harm you. Which branch of the Hive did you come from, before all of this?”
The schismatist bared her teeth. “How very Hival of you, to think everyone must sprout from that festering boil.”
“Which Hive, then?”
“No Hive.”
Luxon frowned. Taken alone, it was an adolescent boast—bravado to shore up fast-crumbling confidence. But the way the schismatist had said it, there was a heaviness to the words. No daring, no pride.
“What do you mean,” she started.
“No,” said the schismatist. A circle of arrows blazed to life, crackling like constellations. “I am loyal. Leave me be.” She fired.
Luxon leapt, boosting her arc with a wingflap. She almost made it—the arrows circled round to crash into her, flinging her diagonally into the corridor-wall of plants. Nutrient-water and hydroponic substrate spilled down. She flicked her wings up to shield herself from the splash and groaned at the state of her dress. A good six inches of brocade had gone up in smoke, peeling back against the petticoats.
The schismatist turned and fled—right at Kionah skidding around the far corner, spellfire blazing in hand. Shasta’s mutt bounded along, overtaking her. The schismatist summoned more spell-arrows, a white-hot wave that scorched at Kionah’s shield-charm and shoved her aside. She rounded the corner, shedding a trail of foam as she disappeared from sight.
“C’mon,” Kionah yelled, already jumping to her feet.
Luxon staggered upright and followed, almost grinding her teeth together in annoyance. Hives curse-it. The mutt yapped happily and scampered after her, its animal brain oblivious to the conundrums of burnt gowns and troubled youths.
By the time they looped round to the exit, there was no sign of the schismatist save for a last few globules of fallen foam.
Luxon scented the air, and sensed nothing. She frowned, spines twitching with agitation; she was no General, and it had been some time since she’d used her abilities thus, but surely she was not so out of sorts? The schismatist had passed here minutes, maybe even seconds ago. But the initial trace of scent that had indicated her presence, that hint of grass shoots and frigid air, had dissipated as if it had never been. Unless she was still hiding among the plants, waiting them out?
“Stay here,” she told Kionah, and winged back into the Moss-spine cavern to search from above.
Nothing. She did a sweep-over twice, scenting all the while. Again, nothing; her stomach did a little twirl of unease. The presence of nutrient-water and damp substrates wouldn’t be enough to disguise the schismatist’s presence. The stacks of plant-growing trays were not wide enough that burrowing into the foliage would have done her any good.
Luxon mulled it over. No Hive, the schismatist had said. No Hive. Could it be…?
+++
Luxon landed empty-handed, and Kionah swore under her breath before she could open her mouth to speak.
“You lost her?”
Luxon gave her an unimpressed glare. Funny that, how obvious a glare could be, even with special-order faery eyes.
“She is quite gone,” Luxon said stiffly. “Really, Kionah, if you hadn’t interrupted so abruptly…”
“My apologies,” Kionah replied, equally as stiffly. If Luxon wanted to make this into a contest of who could act the most uncomfortable, then she was game. “Not that it’s of consequence. There was nothing here but her. We’d better leave, before the farmer comes to and shoots us both.”
“Very well. Hand me that creature.”
Luxon lifted the now-placid Mutt over the fence. Kionah grabbed Mutt’s leash once she was over, not that it was needed—he stood in place and craned his neck to blink at her, no longer after a scent.
“Potion worn off?” she asked as they made their way back into the darkness of the tunnel.
Luxon sighed and pulled her sap-beacon out of her pocket. “No, it shouldn’t have. I believe the schismatist has sealed off her scent for the time being.”
Kionah raised an eyebrow. “You guys can do that? Well why didn’t you just say so and save us the trouble?”
Luxon shook her head. “We can’t. Not usually. She didn’t, until after your friend’s chimera-mutt found her—that is something, at least.”
“Is it?” Kionah asked doubtfully. “I mean, the Healer’s still—”
She cut off at a sound in the distance, footsteps tapping over solid stone. She stiffened and readied her shield, until—
“See?” Shasta said, rounding the corner. “I told you they’d be fine.”
Aliyah hurried out from behind him, her eyes wide and searching—then crinkling with dismay. “You didn’t find them?”
“No,” Kionah said, as kindly as she could. “We didn’t.”