I woke up and saw Grace.

“Pretty much everyone is ready.”

I stood up and stretched.

I saw everyone sitting there, including Brent and Amy.

“You two?”

“There are definitely things that we found out that you didn’t want us to know, so we thought, why not?”

Grace sat down.

“And you?”

“Please, I’m not dumb enough to know a pixie’s name, even if it doesn’t work, I could be killed by various people for that knowledge, whether to keep it quiet or to learn it.”

“Alright. You all ready? Suggest.”

Before they nodded I used my power, I also stretched it to Mordred, making me once again have a massive headache.

“Mordred, you will not remember my command to Taurael or any other, you will only remember that Delcel messed up and Taurael killed him before he and Cilth could stop her. Release.”

He released, but due to my prior command he couldn’t leave yet, but he wouldn’t remember this part.

“Now all of you will forget my control power but Grace. All of you but Maven will forget Taurael’s name, and all of you humans with the exception of Brent and Amy, you will forget anything you saw of fey today and the previous day. Brent, Amy, you two saw the events, but our classmates were not present. Do you all understand?”

“”””””””Yes…””””””””

“Maven, you saw my actions, watched me fight off Mordred and help Taury trick the demons into making a bad command, and you saw I had power, because of this, you gained respect for me and trust me more.”

I was not passing up the chance to get a counselor to trust me more.

“Do you understand?”

She swayed, not giving any resistance.

“Yes…”

It seems that since she entered it willingly that it was easier to command her I could only imagine the limits.

“Release.”

Their eyes went back to normal. I checked that Taury was in her small form and snuck her sleeping body in my pocket in case she was still visible.

“Wake up guys, was my story that boring? How did all of you fall asleep?”

“Oh, sorry William, we were tired from the hike.”

“Bah, I’m going to bed. Rude…”

If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

Their minds seemed to connect properly and my little addition reinforced them not asking questions with a smooth release.

I felt Mordred leave. After all, I was done. His presence wasn’t needed.

Then I climbed the tree and layed on my mattress, putting Taury on my chest.

As the world fell away due to exhaustion, I heard Cherry sigh.

“Guess he was also tired.”

_

I woke up and I couldn’t find Taury, but I knew she was close.

I looked over at Maven’s tent and saw her chatting with Taury.

Well, that answers that.

I turned the other way and saw a chest. I jumped back due to surprise, nearly falling off the tree.

“Grace, what are you doing?!”

“Listen, I don’t know what happened, but I know that you used control for something. What you did with that I won’t ask, but be careful, we are in Morgan’s woods, it would have been easy for her to detect you.”

I sighed.

“I made sure she wouldn’t…”

“Let me guess… Mordred?”

“Yeah.”

“Smart, I will learn how you know that much about it though.”

“How much do you remember?”

“Not much, the demons, you tricking them, and Wings butchering them. How much of that was control memories?”

“I removed her name.”

“Figures, what else?”

“I used control to enable Wings to fight them.”

“Smart. Anything else I should know?”

“Nope.”

That Taury was immune to the name… that would have to remain a secret.

“Here, let me get down.”

“Alright.”

We looked at each other for a second.

“What?”

“That means I need you to not be on the way down.”

“Oh, right.”

She climbed down and I followed before walking over to Maven.

“Hey ma’am could we visit the lake for the last camp day?”

“Despite what happened yesterday?”

“Simial likely cleaned it by now, and besides don’t we want to maintain an idea of normalcy?”

“Good idea.”

After everyone had breakfast, we walked to the lake and were stopped by police tape.

Simial stood, talking with a cop.

“It was terrifying. All I could do was hide and hope it didn’t find me.”

“Did you see which way it went?”

“It went further into the woods, but I doubt it’s alive, I heard the snarl of a wolf pack and a bunch of roaring.”

“So, it was killed by a wolf pack?”

“That’s what I’d assume, but you can’t be too sure.”

“Excuse me, what happened here?!”

Both me and Maven were surprised, Simial cleaned the demons and most of the blood up but left the bodies and various wounds.

“I must apologize, but a bear attacked, I’d suggest evacuating the park until we can find the bear and make sure it’s put down.”

Translation: I can’t just hide fifty or so bodies and act like nothing happened.

Of course, this added the problem that Simial was fully aware of what happened yesterday. Taury was sitting on my head still groggy, she didn’t think to try to get me and Simial alone.

“Well, that’s unfortunate, I suppose that we are going back a day early.”

No one groaned or even argued. For the regular people, that was the first time that they’d ever seen a body. Amy hadn’t wanted to get up, and now I felt that these people could relate.

Brent just told us to go without him. I felt like I understood. At that moment, I was more concerned with saving everyone I could, but actually seeing the bodies without all of the pressure… I could understand how people got PTSD…

I walked to Maven who only seemed sad, not traumatized, and then it occurred to me that she was over a century old, she had possibly seen far worse.

“That… was unexpected.”

“Though we should have expected it.”

“Yeah… that… is terrifying…”

“Certainly, terrifying seeing a murdered corpse the first time…”

“There were children. How could anything do that…?”

“The problem, William, is that you still hope that demons can be reasoned with. They are smart, but they are evil. They don’t care that it’s a child or an adult. They see us as food, but they treat us like toys. They are brutal and merciless. You must understand that. The fact that you’ve survived as many demonic encounters as you have is extraordinary.”

“But… Wing’s decimated them…”

“Yeah, but that’s because one of them messed up… that’s a very extraordinarily rare situation.”

“I see…”

“Yeah, we’re lucky that one of them did, if they didn’t… I would have been forced to hurt her, then the demons would kill me. Pain nullifies the command, so she would have killed them.”

“But… then you would have died.”

“Yes… I’m just happy most of the students stayed on the trail and waited for us.”

“Yeah.”

The bus pulled up.

“Come on.”