Trails of smoke rose from the windows of the theatre. People and monsters alike cried out over the rushing sounds of the flames, and a distant siren howled into the cavern.
I’m sorry, Ryan thought and turned his back on the golem. This was nothing more than a distraction. His teammates were in there, they needed his help.
He stepped through the door, and the stone quaked as Micah cried out, “Please!”
Through smoky hallways and nightmare creatures, he ran. Ryan retraced his steps to the auditorium. The moment he stepped into the spacious backstage area, something fluttered in the rafters overhead.
He slowed and craned his head back, turning to search for it in the dark and smoke. Something red moved up there, then in the corner of his eye, and he spun toward the stage.
Jason stepped into view. His silhouette was illuminated by the flickering fire rather than the feeble nimbus of light he had wreathed himself in. A scene flickered in his eyes, Jason now, and Jason three hours ago. He took rapid steps back, his chin tilted up and his sword held aloft with both hands as if to ward off a monster in the dark. But it wasn’t a titanic spider that bore down on him. It was … a bat?
It fluttered madly with red wings and for a moment, in the flickering light, Ryan couldn’t make sense of what it was. Then he saw its scales and the image snapped into place: it looked like a Teacup Salamander. It was sleeker, though, with a longer neck and a lithe tail. It had wings.
Jason backhanded it and the Salamander retreated in a huff, craning its neck back and parting its mouth to reveal sharp teeth and a growing, red glow in the back of its throat.
Its head shot forward but before its fire breath leave its mouth, Jason swatted it out of the air with the flat of his blade, and Lisa drop-kicked him in the side.
He bent. His waist folded around her boots and he went tumbling over the stage like a stone down a hill, out of sight.
Lisa missed her landing. She thumped onto the wood with her arms first and a bounce that made him wince but kept moving, log-rolling, then half-crawling, half-scurrying over to the fallen Salamander.
“Lisa!” Ryan shouted on reflex and he didn’t know which was greater: his horror or his concern. He rushed to the stage and glanced right. Jason’s light flickered and died a slow death as he picked himself up.
Lisa cradled the little monster in her arms—it promptly bit her and ripped out a chunk of her glove and skin.
“Argh! No!” she snapped. Trails of her blood splattered onto the stage. “No biting! I’m trying to help you, brat!” She pressed its neck against the wood as it lashed its tail at her.
Frederick and Lady Estru entered stage right and rushed toward Jason.
Anne boosted Navid up on his left and climbed up herself, because his arms were full holding three orbs of smoke against his chest. Red bodies coiled around inside of those—more of those winged Teacup Salamanders? Had they captured them?
It seemed like a ridiculous idea to him, because Ryan froze when he stared out at the auditorium. They were hidden amongst the shadows and the seats. The only light in the room came from the thin trickles of the purple and green nightmare rivers that ran dry on the stairs, and a fire that spread up a wall from a blackened doorframe. When it flared, their leathery skin caught the light—there were dozens of them amongst the audience, covering the surfaces like a cave of bats. They feasted on the food the audience had scattered everywhere and fanned their wings like beetles.
When a ghostly spider surfaced from the fog, three of the Winged Salamanders fell on it in an instant and tore it to shreds, scarfing down translucent legs and wisps of fog like it was a physical meal to them.
Where had they come from?
The wolves, the golem, those had been his mistake. Ryan hadn’t dealt with Demir, had failed his quest, and the consequence had been his fears come to life.
What else had he missed for things to go this wrong?
Lisa struggled to draw wisps of the smoky air around the Teacup Salamander, and not just because it writhed in her grasp. She didn’t look well. Her expression was frozen in place and her skin looked pale. Ryan wasn’t even sure if she was breathing, but she didn’t waver in her task. Over and over, she wove a shell of air around the Salamander to entrap it.
Its cries attracted the attention of another flight of its kin, but Sam skidded into place in front of Lisa, the size of a hound. His claws dragged scratches into the stage and he belted out a deep, bone-shaking cry that made even Ryan hesitate to approach him.
Like an instinctual reaction, the Winged Salamanders scattered. Even the ones in the audience that heard Sam pressed their bodies low to the ground and kept their heads down.
“Lisa.” Ryan reached her side and pulled out a roll of bandages. “Breathe. What are you doing?”
Sam glanced back at his approach, the beginnings of a wind-cut snarl building in his throat, but he relaxed when he saw it was just Ryan.
“I have to stop them,” Lisa said, “capture them before they hurt anyone else.”
Ryan looked out over the seats and felt … so impossibly tired. “All of them?”
They didn’t look that much tougher than a regular Teacup Salamander. He had fought swarms of those for years on end, when he’d been weaker than he was now. If he had to kill them, he could.
But if Lisa wanted to capture them … if she had a reason, for her, he would.
“All of them,” Lisa insisted. She didn’t react when he took her wounded hand. “If even two of them escape they’ll— We can’t let any of them escape.”
He was pretty sure some already had, but that only meant they would have to hunt them in the streets when they were done here.
He nudged her. “Mana ring? You can make more out of what little I have left, I’m sure. Do you need me to switch to [Hearth of Salamanders]?” He wasn’t sure how her northern magic worked exactly, especially in this place, but he’d seen her accomplish much with just a bit of fire and heat essence.
She brought out a mana ring, but Anne reached them before she could answer him.
“Lisa,” she said and her voice was small and uncertain, “are these … baby dragons?”
“What? No,” she said and her expression finally moved to that same frown she used when she would say, That’s stupid. But the frown eased up and she admitted, “Yes? Almost. Their wings. They look like them. They sound like them.”
“Oh,” Anne said.
Oh, Ryan thought and questions stirred in his tired mind. Why would baby dragons make Lisa sad? But first, above that, he thought: I’m seeing dragons? His thought voice sounded childish to him then.
He had never thought he would see one. Though these were apparently only almost dragons …?
Half of their bodies did look familiar to him, like the back of his hand, but that only made him want to study the differences all the more, hybrids twice over. If only there was time.
The smoke grew thicker, the flames spread, and the food on the ground was running out—the draconic Salamanders here weren’t even the only ones in the building. Ryan heard their cries echo in distance hallways. People shouted in alarm …
“HEY!” Lady Estru snapped as she stormed at them. “Why would you attack him? He is your teammate, is he not, you harlot!?”
Lisa startled and only seemed to notice the people in the room with her then. “I— I’m sorry, Jason. I reacted. I have to save them and the people of the city. I don’t have enough in me anymore to do it on my own. Maybe if we use nets …?”
“What you on about?” Frederick scowled.
“We have to capture them,” Ryan told him, though he worried about Jason as he hobbled toward them with a pained expression and a hand held to his side. Proper apologies could come later.
The tall boy only asked, “Why?”
“Because …” Lisa hesitated. She looked conflicted as she glanced down and back to Anne with a plea in her eyes.
Anne shook her head. “No. No, I’m sorry, Lisa, but I cannot let you do this.”
“Huh?”
“The theatre is burning. We can’t breathe smoke. We won’t survive if the roof caves in.”
“We have to hurry, then,” Lisa said. “Seal the exits, funnel them all in one direction—”
“You want us to split up again? Hunting down the cauldrons was dangerous enough.” She pointed. “There are people out there who need our help, who are wounded and afraid.”
“Then— then leave,” Lisa said. “I can do it on my own.”
“What about the ones who have already escaped? Without you, they’ll be nearly impossible to track in the city. In the tunnels outside the city ...?”
“They can’t hide forever. I'll catch up. We can hunt them down.”
“Without food or potions? There are other monsters out there." Anne took a step forward. "They won’t survive the weekend, Lisa, one way or another.”
“I— There might be a way to bring them out of this place. They feel different—”
“You want to bring them into the Tower? We don’t even have a way to contain them. There is still an entire Kobold camp waiting for us out there. We’re all tired— If they escape, they’ll spread like wildfire.”
“I can do it,” Lisa insisted. “I’m strong. Stronger than you. I have to do this.”
“Do not lie to me.” Anne stood in front of Lisa then, nearly touching her. She had drawn herself up to her full height, which put her nose at Lisa’s collarbone, but she stared defiantly past her chin up into her eyes. “You’re tapped. I’m tapped. We all are. We can’t capture a swarm of runaway drakes. You can’t protect us. People are dying. What. Do. We. Do?”
She spoke like a teacher demanding an answer from a student, an answer Lisa knew but refused to accept. But she couldn’t avoid Anne’s eyes forever and when she did …
Ryan didn’t understand what was happening, but he saw the pain in her expression, and he reached out to place a hand on her shoulder.
“This is only the Theatre,” he said gently, “none of this is real.”
He wanted to comfort her, but if anything, his words seem to be the hammer that drove the final nail into her coffin.
Lisa deflated. “I can’t do it. Not again.” She glanced at the baby dragons from the corner of her eye and looked at Anne. “But I refuse to stand by and watch. Please, help me. We have to kill them all.”
----------------------------------------
“Do you think because you are more powerful than us, that your concerns are more important? That you can trample through our lives like giants?” Micah demanded. “Even if I believe this threat of yours, which I do not, even if I were the weaker party here, which I am not”—he dug his claws deeper into the Pretender’s eyes. Their metallic jaw dropped on its hinges as they let out a trembling, voiceless breath. “I won’t let this go. Keep walking, Kerataraian. Their kin can do as they will; you’ll have made a [Giantslayer] of me.”
Her dead eyes looked prepared to tear him limb from limb as she strode forward, but something of his words must have reached her. The green hue of her irises wavered and she slowed. By the time he finished speaking, she had already taken her final step.
Any further and she might have been close enough to lunge at.
“Micah,” Brent hissed from one bridge over, “this might not be the time and place. If these bird-women can wrangle that Mimic—she’s on our side, right? Don’t piss her off. We all want to go home.”
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
“Then leave!” Micah snapped and immediately deflated. He wasn’t used to this. His voice cracked as he pushed on. “‘On our side’? What? See how well that works for the next group to come across their path and not be as lucky as us. We’re leaving. They aren’t!”
He hated that he had to remind them of that. If they ran with their tails tucked between their legs now, the only lesson these people would learn is that they could get away with this.
Just like the Rat Hermit had.
Not again.
“What are we supposed to do? Risk our lives to give them a black eye?” Quin asked in a disgruntled tone as if he had said, Be reasonable!
“What are we supposed to do now?” Ajay added with some emphasis as if he were implying … what? That they should come back next summer to get their revenge? When they had magically gotten strong enough to fight a spirit that could mimic Morgana?
But maybe there was some truth to his words, because Pijeru called up from below, “We are not your enemies!” Her voice had an upset squawk to it, but Micah thought that came from sadness rather than anger. He also heard concern—and saw a flash of contempt in Keratarain’s eyes as they flickered toward her comrade.
Was there a weakness there? One that he could exploit? Something about the future …?
No, he realized, the future is a marathon for spirits. In twenty years, he might be a threat to them but that was no help to him now! What was he supposed to do now? He couldn’t kill them, couldn’t threaten them beyond their eyes, couldn’t convince his classmates to leave …
“We fought for you,” Keratarain said, “risked our lives for yours, and now you repay us with threats and treachery?”
“You betrayed me first!” Micah snapped. “What do you think is going to happen here? I let go, we smile, and go our separate ways?”
“That is exactly what is going to happen,” she answered. “To make this clear, you are all going home tonight, no matter how much you ‘piss me off.’” She gave Brent what might have been a wry look, cocking her head like an owl, but the boy reacted to the gesture with the same wariness he had shown Micah.
She didn’t miss a beat, turning to address all of his classmates instead with a voice like a [General], “Our mission was to find Tuhrie and bring her home. We found our missing Pretender instead—and they take precedence. If our superiors knew they were here, they would order us to safeguard them at all costs, for your sake as much as our own. The Pretenders are our valued guests, and we cannot allow anyone to lead them astray.
“Because while we value the Pretenders, we also value the future we see working alongside you. Your people. Our leaders have been making preparations to reach out to yours, preparing gifts and celebrations, hoping you will feel the same way. I don’t want anything to jeopardize that. I want to make sure you can all go home tonight so we can face each other on sunnier days.
“The only person standing in the way of that,” she finished, turning to lead their eyes with her own, “is you.” She stared at Micah, head held high, vibrant eyes shining like seas of grass.
And Micah withered behind Morgana’s metal head because his classmates turned on him as well. Most of them. What was he supposed to do? What would Ryan do …?
“So— so tell me what will happen with them!” he called out. “I let go. Then what?”
Kerataraian looked aside, leading his gaze toward an island where Cathy and Andrew held a rope to pull Tuhrie up from the ruins. Pijeru climbed up behind her with the crystal dagger she had thrown in one hand.
Tuhrie was limp and unmoving, but her chest rose and fell. And each time it did, a pulse of light ran through an odd purple and indigo shimmer that enveloped her. Poison enchantment?
“Tuhrie is asleep. We have apprehended her. If you let go, the Pretender should not attempt to harm you, but if you would like, we can evacuate everyone to a safe—”
“I’d like you to answer my question first!” Micah snapped. His arm was trembling. He had to hike his legs up against the stupid metal head and wasn’t even sure if he should keep holding on, but it pissed him off how blatantly she’d ignored him. “What’ll you do with them!?”
“Tuhrie is … ill,” Pijeru called from where she sat next to her unconscious form. “Lost. She needs help.”
“And she will receive it,” Kerataraian acknowledged. “At the same time, we will make sure she cannot harm anyone ever again.”
“And Rhul?” Kyle called from behind her. “The Pretender?”
The hawkish woman glanced back but didn’t immediately answer. She drew herself up and parted her beak to reply, “That is not for us to decide.”
“No.” Micah shook his head and itched his nose against the metal. “Not good enough!”
“Do people make it a habit of playing victim, police officer, and judge in your culture?” Kerataraian asked. “What do you expect?”
“I—”
“Prison!”
Micah shot a glare at whoever had called out. He was surprised, and even more frustrated, to see it was Forester. Unlike some of the others, the boy hadn’t retreated to one of the islands further out.
The bird-woman didn’t interrupt him, and he seemed to take that as incentive to keep going, “Those two try to murder us. Your other teammate, he tried to murder Stranya …? They should go to prison for that. All three of them. Or stand trial, at least.”
Micah jerked his chin at him. “That.” It may have been the first time the two of them had agreed on anything. It was what Ryan would have said if he had been here. But when he looked back, Kerataraian had taken rapid steps back and cast a fearful glance at … him?
No, at the Pretender beneath him. She spoke with quick, rallying words like she was offering reassurances, “No. I will say it again, the Pretenders are our guests.”
There was that word again. “Who attacked us! Who killed one of your own!?”
She shook her head. “Woris is not truly dead. And the Pretender cannot be held accountable for their actions. Tuhrie—”
“You called them a god.”
“I did not—”
“How can your god not be responsible for their actions?”
“They are a spirit of the Vim. I don’t expect you to understand, but spirits—”
“I understand spirits,” Micah interrupted her. “I’m sponsored by a ‘spirit of Vim.’ She’s a person! I hosted a flight of wind spirits for a month this summer. I have spent days and days trying to befriend the golems of the earth one floor beneath our feet, even as they tried to kill me. Hell, we all sleep three hallways down from a freaking fire spirit who would love nothing more than to burn our school to the ground!
“This thing“—he rapped its metal with his thumbs—”stands with their head and one foot in my domain. I have four fingers in their head; I can feel them. So trust me when I say I can judge them—”
That I should judge them, he stumbled over the thought as he gritted his teeth. Because who else would do it but him? So what if he had to risk his life to give a giant a black eye? If this was his last chance then—
“WAIT!” a voice cried at the same time as something dove toward him. He ducked, expecting an arrow or a knife, but it was alive. At least, partially.
Sam? Then it entered his domain and he could feel the outline of his feathers. Rowan stumbled onto Morgana’s head with a light patter as his claws touched metal. He scurried toward him and cawed like a cat begging for milk.
Micah pulled his head back as far as he could without moving, but he couldn’t escape from his spot, and he bumped his chin with the top of his head and looked him in the eye.
What?
Rowan turned and slowly, as if he had invisible hands, Micah felt … something. Like strands of his hair, he gathered up something around him and pulled, gently tugging his attention down toward a [Witch].
Delilah had reached their island, running the last few meters in a hurry. Kyle fumbled to load a colorful bolt into his stolen crossbow on the rope bridge behind her, cursing under his breath.
She stepped past Kerataraian, the closest anyone was to the Pretender other than himself, and called out in a huff, “There might be another way! A way neither of us will be entirely happy with, but not entirely unhappy either, a— a compromise.” She steadied herself and spoke clearly, “You can compensate us.”
You’re right, Micah thought. He was definitely not happy with that. He nudged Rowan away. The Waxwing gave an affronted squawk.
Micah didn’t even know Delilah that well, but he had expected better from her. He almost felt the same way now as he had when Ryan had— had been upset; yelled at him … Micah did not want a reminder of that feeling.
Even Rhul scoffed in this distance, Pijeru’s expression fell, and Kerataraian sneered when he would have expected them to welcome the idea.
“Why am surprised? Thousands of years and a species apart, and justice can still be bought.”
“Huh?” Delilah startled at her words.
“Kera—” Pijeru tried.
“Nothing has changed. Nothing at all,” the bird-woman snapped and went on in a snippish tone, “So. What? You want us to give you magical items? Crystals and potions? Our money?”
“The hero with the axe already stole my stuff!” Rhul drawled in the distance. “Ooh, we saw a few Guardian lairs on our way down—”
“I didn’t—” Delilah tried but the man spoke over her.
“You people are always looking for challenges, aren’t you? Give us some paper and crayons and we could draw you a treasure map!”
“If you make me come back there,” Kyle warned him, “I’ll stuff my sock in your beak!”
“There is no way a treasure map would make up for all of this,” Ajay said.
“At least, not a single one,” Brent muttered.
A number of people shot him betrayed looks, and the tall boy shrugged while cradling his bandaged arm the Pretender had torn up. “They’re not wrong. Hey, you wouldn’t happen to know the location of any Hidden Guardians, would you?” he called.
Then, quieter, he commented to them, “Don’t much care about chests and normal guardians, but [Hunters] level tons from hunting the ones that roam around a bit. And they’re more likely to leave meat behind.”
Other people began to speak up. Some called out to Kyle, asking him how powerful the items he had looted were. Did the other bird people have similar ones on them?
Kerataraian glared at the mere suggestion. Micah could see her goodwill running thin like a cup running dry, and he belatedly switched to his incomplete emotion lens—he should have done that from the start.
It was Cathy who cut through the chaos with the shrill sound of a whistle. They flinched, and he heard its meaning almost like a weak echo of her voice—Stop. Her actual voice was much louder and carried echoes of frustration throughout the air, “She didn’t mean money!”
She looked to Delilah. “Right …? I’m a sucky [Witch] but my mom had high hopes for me. I think I know what you meant.” She smiled weakly.
“Witchcraft,” Kerataraiain said with apprehension. “If not money, what do you want?”
“You,” Delilah said and her own frustration fueled her words, “messed up hard today. You have a problem that won’t easily go away. You’re new to the Tower—’you,’ as in, a people. How many of your kind are there? Thousands? Tens of thousands …?”
“Millions,” Kerataraian said and robbed her of her thunder.
They stared. Delilah stumbled. Micah closed his mouth.
The first person gasped, “What?”
“You’re lying. That cannot be true?” People broke the silence, one by one, asking the same question with different words in their disbelief.
“There are millions of us. There, above our heads.” She pointed up at the massive Root that branched out over the nearby floors. It was supposed to be connected to a tree that loomed over the Gardens but Micah couldn’t see that, only the Root. “But please, go on with your … I hope you were not about to make a threat, like him?” When she dropped her pointing arm, she gestured vaguely at Micah.
“No,” Delilah caught herself, “no threats. Or at least, not my own. You said it yourself, your … nation … wants to foster good relations with the Five Cities. You can’t allow this to be the first impression they have of you. And I do mean this and they. We have magic, truth spells, Skills—use your imagination. Hadica will see and hear exactly what we’ve seen and heard today as if they had been here themselves.
“Your leaders will do the same, I am sure. If your memory is perfect without Skills, you probably have access to memory magic as well …?”
Kerataraian didn’t answer. Instead, her expression had deadened again. It looked close to how Micah imagined a soldier would look, like Mr. Sundberg’s stony expression, but rather than disciplined, he worried that she was contemplating whether to let them live after all.
In the distance, Pijeru chuckled bitterly. “‘Access.’”
Micah took that cryptic comment to be confirmation.
So did Delilah, apparently. She went on, “So no matter how much you try to spin the truth, no matter how much you try to bully Micah now, and claw for control over this situation, none of that will matter the moment we leave this place.
“You have to make things right. Apologize in action and words. And I know, it’s not your fault—” Delilah cut Kerataraian off before she could speak, watching for a beat to make sure she would stay quiet. “It’s not your fault for what happened today, but you are the only representative of your people in a position to do this right now. I know you cannot promise us these three will be punished for their actions, and I know an apology could never make up for what they did, so you have to make up the difference in compensation.
“For starters: yes, money. Because that’s just common sense. We used emergency gear and valuable ingredients we’ve been keeping back for special projects to defend ourselves. A lot of us were injured—it’ll cost us to recover. We’re students.”
Micah scowled when she began to talk about money again but … he hadn’t even considered that when he had reacted to her words.
All of his other classmates had come here today to gather ingredients and earn some money one last time before the school year began, but they had lost everything, wasted the ingredients they had spent in preparation for this trip, and then so much more on top of that.
He had sponsors now, he’d earned good money over summer break, and he was waiting to sell the raincoat. He’d only come here because … nobody else wanted him around … but he’d struggled so much last year, he should have thought of their situation.
I’m sorry, he thought but the thought didn’t change much. His guilt wasn’t enough to loosen his grip on its own.
He perked up when Delilah went on. “But I doubt that money alone would be enough to punish you, and even if it were, accepting a fine wouldn’t be a pure gesture of remorse. So instead …”
She breathed in, turned her back on Kerataraian, and took a step forward, toward Micah, hands clasped in front of her deep black gambeson. Her feathered familiar took off, leaving Micah behind to alight on her shoulder.
“I demand a boon,” Delilah said to the Pretender, “one sliver of your power for each of my twenty-seven classmates who came here with me today, and Kerataraian, and Pijeru, and Woris, when she comes back to life—for their troubles—and me.”
A voice replied, muffled beneath the weight of his dominion, but melodic and alluring all the same like a siren singing out from the depths. It resonated off the metal beneath him, vibrating it as if it had transformed Morgana into an instrument, and Micah thought he could hear whispers of deeper meanings in the one word the Pretender said: “Fascinating.”