Fey’s POV

“This is pointless!” I shouted as I summoned a lightning bolt, directing it to crash down on a cluster of earthen spikes. “We should be storming the base already, not wasting time in the woods on these drills.”

“You have skill, Fey, and you’ve learned fast…” dad lowered his gaze, “…but you lack discipline and judgment.”

“Discipline? That bastard tortured Kyla, I saw it with my own eyes.” As the earth spikes burst apart, my restraint faltered. I turned my magic on The Mantis—a man too callous to be called father.

“Flare shot,” four flaming orbs shot, at odd arcs, from my fingertips. Each of the bright pink flames flew high in the sky, disappearing from sight before raining down one after the other, all landing just in front of him. They exploded on impact, but had little effect as The Mantis backed away swiftly.

The mantis rolled his eyes and shook his head, clearly disappointed in my actions. “This is what I mean, you’re impulsive. If I let you go now, you’ll just get yourself killed.”

“How can you stand there so unphased? It’s your daughter that’s now either been brainwashed or is so terrified that she—”

“You think I don’t care about what’s happening to her?” The sky darkened with storm clouds in response to his thunderous voice. “She’s my daughter! Of course I care…” he removed his mask for the first time since our reunion. “…Kyla is everything to me, but she’s already out of my grasp. Lenora as well… you and I are all that’s left and we will save them, we will…” tears were streaming down his face as our eyes met. “…but we can’t be reckless. I could destroy that base now, but it would only bring Pyro’s wrath on us and we aren’t ready to face him.”

I needed a moment to process. I had never in my life seen my dad show such emotion, usually he took everything in stride without any indication that it affected him at all. Even when I first told him of Kyla’s plight, dad didn’t react. He asked a few clarifying questions but that was all.

As for my mother's situation, this was the first time he’d mentioned it. I had assumed dad had her stashed away somewhere safe, or that she was somehow involved with his work and carrying out some secret mission; I never considered that she’d been taken by the heroes.

“You… you weren’t going to tell me were you?”

His lips straightened just slightly as his eyes closed for a longer than normal blink. “Fey, I—”

Dad stretched his hand towards me, but I backed away. Shaking my head, I ran from him, dashing deep into the forest.

I didn’t stop until I reached the river. It was swollen from recent storms and flowed at twice the normal rate; I’d have needed magic to cross safely but there was no reason to do so.

The Mantis didn’t follow me and the only thing across the river was another mile of trees then open fields until the sea.

I found a dead tree, and summoning an earthen blade, I sliced through its trunk and rested on the downed log.

Within moments my anger started to fade along with my sorrow. I felt a calmness that seemed unnatural and I wasn’t ready to let go of my feelings. “Stop it!” I growled, “I don’t want you meddling with my feelings.”

“Then learn to control them, Fey. You’re not a child and yet you act like one.” Xander replied.

“And you’re not my father, but you sound just like him.”

Xander stopped messing with my emotions, but at that point I was already calmed. As much as I wanted to be angry, I couldn’t, because with calmness came clarity and I realized my father was right. I wasn’t ready to face a hero and the next time I had to fight a foe stronger myself, I wouldn’t be able to depend on Xander.

I drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. My father was right, but I wasn’t ready to go back yet.

***

I crouched behind a boulder near the edge of the cliff. All around me there were rocks, crags, and plenty of other hiding places—a fact I was grateful for as I hadn’t expected enforcers to be patrolling mountains.

“What exactly are you doing?” Xander asked.

“I was planning to do some scouting, but—”

The sound of churned gravel distracted me for a moment. I was being followed, but I wasn’t sure by how many.

“Well your plan’s gone to shit, so what now?”

I was too scared to answer. Instead I held my breath and waited for the sounds of movement to pass.

When finally, there was silence, I peered around the edge of the rock. Two enforcers stood roughly fifteen away. They were looking in different directions, but one happened to be looking directly at me and he didn’t waste a second before firing his CAD.

Immediately I yanked my head back behind the rock and took off.

“There he is!”

“Just shoot him and be done with it.”

“No!” A third man shouted. “Don’t kill him, he can replace the one we lost this morning. Then we don’t have to report it.”

Two bolts of pure energy shot past me, blasting boulders twice my size into oblivion.

“I said don’t shoot!”

“Right, sorry sir.”

I raced over a log I’d positioned earlier to cross a gap in the mountain path, then slid down a gravelly slope to reach a lower trail. When I looked back, only one of the enforcers was following, but I knew that didn’t mean I’d lost the others.

“This is exactly why your father said you should wait. You’re going to get us killed, or turned into some science experiment.” X quipped.

“If you don’t have anything useful to say, then just stay quiet!” I shot back.

My feet burned from pounding pavement, but I didn’t slow down. Up ahead there was a ravine and if I could make it there, I could escape into the swollen river.

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“Stop boy!” The man behind me shouted. “You can’t get away.”

I leapt over the edge only to be grabbed around the ankle and yanked back.

I slammed into the rocky ground, landing between two enforcers. One of them was half hurried with only his torso sticking out from the ground, the man doubled over panting. “I told you, you wouldn’t escape.” He said between breaths.

The third enforcer was flying high above and it looked like he may have been signaling others. Beside me, the hurried man was rising out of the ground and the other seemed to be recovering quickly. I didn’t have time to think, I needed to escape before more came and these two were in the way.

Too many thoughts swirled in my mind as I tried to focus on what I needed to do.

As one of the enforcers lunged at me with something sharp, I swung my arm in a wide arc with intent to blast them away, but the two men weren’t sent flying. Instead, my wind sliced through them horizontally. The upper body of the lunging man fell limp next to me, just barely missing my shoulder with a black spike.

The man in the sky must’ve noticed what happened, because he began descending rapidly towards me. I pushed myself up and dove over the edge of the cliff.

***

The sound of water dripping at a steady rhythm was both soothing and torturous. For what felt like several long minutes, there was only the incessant drip and pain. I felt like I had been turned into a log then found by a troll and used as his beating stick.

Opening my eyes, I saw that I’d washed up inside a cave. The river flowed on, beyond the smooth stone bank I’d been deposited on, but the water level and current, along the edge of the river, were too low to push me any further.

I was on a little peninsula, flanked on three sides by the winding river; the remaining side was a solid wall with a small crack. The chamber I was in was large, open, and full of similar little dry spots carved out by the water.

There were two ways in and two ways out—three for inhumanly strong swimmers. Light came from two of the openings, one was where the river came into the room and the other where it left. The last opening was on a dry spot and seemed the safest way out, but it was a dark tunnel and there was no indication it led out.

With each passing moment the river water was rising. I was cold, soaked, and wanted to make a fire to warm myself, but I wasn’t sure how high the water might rise or how long it would take to do so.

“So, you finally woke up,” X sneered. “What’s your plan to get out of this one?”

“I’m working that out.” I grumbled as I tried to gauge the depth of the river—a task complicated by the low light.

“You know…you can use magic.”

Consciously I was aware of that fact, however it never crossed my mind that I could just make my own path out of the cave.

“Break”

The rock beneath me broke apart from the rest of the peninsula, but quickly began sinking. “Fuck… uhm—”

“Try “Freeze” to make an ice float.”

“Freeze” I repeated. It was my first time using Ice magic, but having learned the basic forms of every element, it wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be.

The water beneath my feet froze quickly as the stone slab continued to sink away. As my feet were already in the water, it froze around them as well.

X didn’t miss the opportunity to mock me and snickered, “nice job.”

I rolled my eyes and unfroze my feet, but otherwise ignored him. I was already being carried away by the current and I wasn’t sure where the river led. I needed to get back upstream, hopefully I’d pass by something I recognized and be able to make my way home.

“Gale” I cast with the aim of pushing myself back up the river, though the wind generated was only enough to prevent my floating further downstream.

After several minutes I’d moved roughly three feet, but in the wrong direction. As I agonized over how to increase the strength of the wind, I realized I could just manipulate the flow of water directly. Once I did that it didn’t take long to traverse the river and exit the cave. A few more minutes and I caught sight of a familiar dead tree that had been recently downed.

Once close enough to the bank, I hoped off of the ice float and onto dry ground, thankful that things hadn’t turned out worse.

After using so much magic I felt the need to rest a while and sat on the ground, leaning against the log.

I had no intention to sleep, this was still a forest and the sun was nearly gone; but when I sat, my eyes grew heavy and shut before I knew it. They opened just as quickly at the sight of two men each with only half a body and bloody pools expanding beneath them.

“I killed them…I actually—”

Xander cut me off before I could fully process my thoughts. “Did what you had to do. If you didn’t, who knows what they’d have done to you.”

He was right, and it was never my intention to kill them, but that didn’t take away my guilt. “Even if those men were horrible, what if they had children? Now those kids will never see their father again.”

“And they’ll be better for it!”

“How do you know that? Maybe they were good fathers.”

“Yea, maybe they were… and maybe if you asked nicely they’d have helped you down the mountain and let you go home, but I seriously doubt it. Quit being naive, Fey. Your enemies are ruthless and cold. If you don’t wise up soon, you’ll be the next one in need of saving.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but closed it again, unable to find the words to oppose him.

My clothes were still soaked and as the sun descended, so too did the temperature.

It was a long way to the sanctuary, but I made it back around the same time it got dark.

As I got close I heard voices drifting through the trees. It sounded like everyone was gathered outside discussing something. I couldn’t make out everything, but the words fugitives and dead rang clear. Those two words on their own didn’t mean much to me, but even without hearing the rest I knew it had something to do with my friends and me, by the tone of the conversation I knew they were taking it seriously as well.

From the edge of the tree line, I could see everyone gathered together around a familiar brunette. His hair and face were trimmed this time, but there was no mistaking his eyes or the mark on his face.

I had not expected to see Gill again, least of all here. As far as I knew, he’d sacrificed himself to let me escape. I’d never considered the possibility that he might’ve beaten or escaped two heroes, although given that he was gutsy enough to face Pyro, I suppose I should’ve recognized his strength.

Gill glanced around the group, looking at each person only briefly. “It might seem insignificant, but the fairy could learn something about who she is—how to control that power.”

“Thanks Gill. It must’ve been difficult for you to learn all that, given your infamy,” my dad replied, “I don’t mean to be rude, but I must ask, why did you come here in person? Surely you could’ve—”

“Publicly, Pyro may be claiming we’re all dead, but that doesn’t mean he believes it. I can assure you that he’ll be monitoring any and all communications from each of our comms…” his Gill’s eyes drifted towards Lenora, who was currently pounding away at hers, likely sending a message or making some post. “…you lot are lucky he hasn’t descended on your little town and razed it.”

“Pyro wouldn’t destroy a whole city just because of us.” Lenora quipped back.

“If you believe that, then you’re naive—or ignorant. In any case, there’s only one thing Pyro wants more than an architect; and given that you lot have a fairy, it would be wise to find out why. Maybe you can use her against him.”

So far I hadn't made myself known because I was curious about the situation and I didn’t want to interrupt, but I was really bothered by how he suggested using Audrey.

“You talk about her like she’s some sort of weapon, but she’s not, she’s a person!”

The whole group looked at me in surprise, everyone except my dad.

Fin, looking sour with his arms crossed, clicked his tongue then said, “What else would you expect from the kind of bastard that kills his own mother?” Rolling his eyes, he shook his head and went inside the sanctuary.

I’d heard the allegations against Gill, probably we all had, but given the obvious fallacies in the case facts made public, I decided to just assume him innocent.

If he really did it, that would explain why Fin was so touchy whenever Gill was brought up.

“I can read the room,” Gill said, “I’ve overstayed my welcome. Still, think about what I said.”