Rasp’s mind raced, sifting through memories of the last several days to place the speaker. The pieces fitted together rather quickly–the voice, the distinct silver aura, the smug confidence that made Rasp want to drive his fist into the speaker’s face repeatedly. “Dingle?” He called over his shoulder to Faris. “Is this the witch you hobbled the other day? You know, when I was saving your ass from the earth elemental?”

Faris’s voice was laden with trepidation. So much so, he didn’t bother to correct Rasp’s totally accurate recount of the fight. “I could have sworn I broke his leg.”

“Irvan.” The approaching witch kindly reminded them of his name. “And you did indeed, Mister Belfast. Fortunately for me, broken bones are but a minor inconvenience.”

Rasp cursed their luck. This was why it was essential to ensure every member of the decimated party was taken care of before moving on. Sole survivors bent on revenge had a nasty habit of causing unexpected hiccups down the road. Admittedly, sole survivors weren’t usually this calm and collected. Irvan was behaving like a perfect gentleman so far, which, in Rasp’s limited experience with perfect gentlemen, meant there was a wolf lurking beneath the polished veneer.

Faris must have sensed it too. “How do you know my name?”

“We know your importance now, and how the Speaker of the People is using you to draw the devil witch into his net. I’m afraid we had to take steps to keep that from happening.” Irvan’s silver aura came to a standstill at the edge of camp across from them. Rasp heard the creak of old leather being drawn open. A momentary rustle followed before Irvan withdrew something from his bag and tossed it before them. Regrettably, without the aid of light, Rasp couldn’t tell what it was. All he heard was the soft thud of something feathery strike the ground.

“Auntie!” June’s shriek turned to an agonized wail. Her howl morphed into something deeper, an animalistic, guttural roar, as her bones rearranged themselves with a series of wet pops and snaps into a form better suited for ripping out throats with her teeth.

“Sorry about your messenger bird.” Irvan remained hauntingly apathetic to June’s transformation. His next words were the same as the first, calm, collected, and dripping with feigned sympathy. “And your mule.”

From the corner of his eye, Rasp saw the hawk’s green aura swoop down from its perch and hurtle past. A pained bray filled the still night air a split moment before Bonecrusher’s heavy body struck the ground. Rasp whipped around, following her panicked screams to their source. The mule’s cries of pain faded as her thrashing legs went still. The shapeshifter’s aura stood beside the dying mule, glimmering notably larger than it had been only moments before.

The newcomer could shift faster than June, indicating either a surplus of power, experience, or an unfortunate combination of the two. Alas, such critical information was lost on June. Caught in the throes of bloodlust, her bear-shaped aura barreled towards the newcomer with a roar. The attacker shifted again, as effortlessly as before. Their feathery wings beat the air as they took to the sky, only to be slammed back down from a swipe of June’s front paw. Their auras tangled together in a symphony of shrieks and snarls as the entire encampment turned to chaos.

Scalding hot magic filled the air. Rasp winced, feeling it singe the hair from his eyebrows as the blistering wind whipped in Irvan’s direction. Irvan responded, his silver glow thrumming brighter as he willed an incantation to life. The spell surged forth like a wave across still water. Rasp was knocked off his feet when the two magics clashed. The competing auras flared, lighting the surrounding darkness ablaze with blue and silver. The tang of sweet fruit and moss permeated the gusty air, battling for supremacy against the overpowering stench of spoiled garlic and metal.

Rasp staggered to his feet, only to dive back down again to avoid being crushed by June’s flailing shape as she and the other shifter tumbled past, interlocked in battle.

Seven realms! He’d never felt so out of place during a battle before. Rasp was used to being caught in the action, center stage, with hot rage pumping through his veins. Not like this, utterly useless and stuck on the sidelines. Rasp clambered back onto his unsteady legs in time to see a wave of silver magic engulf the blue. A blazing pulse of light rippled from Irvan’s phantom form as he chanted unfamiliar words. The spell burned as bright as a solar flare before blinking out entirely.

Darkness returned and blanketed the stony forest floor in night’s shadow once more.

Whisper’s small aura crumpled to the ground with an agonized whimper. Their magic flickered, steadily fading until its telltale blue glow was barely perceptible. Rasp stumbled towards Whisper’s dimming form, feeling the ice cold grip of fear seize his heart. “No, no, no.” He hollered over his shoulder, not a hundred percent sure where the fifth member of their party had ended up amidst the shuffle, “Hop! A little help?”

Hop, probably hunkered down somewhere in fear, did not answer Rasp’s call for aid. Not in the verbal sense anyway. Rasp did hear the rustle of brush as the timid faun extracted himself from whatever vegetation he’d dove headfirst into the moment trouble had broken out.

“Tell me what you see, Hop,” Rasp prompted.

“Whisper’s alive,” Hop said with marked hesitation. “But it’s not good.”

Rasp altered course, moving towards Irvan like a suicidal moth drawn to a particularly annoying flame. “You’re going to tell me what the fuck you just did,” he said, putting on his best ‘that’s right, I’m in charge here’ voice. It was a shame none of the rest of him reflected as such. “Or I’m going to pull your fingernails off one by one and feed them to you until you choke.”

“You pompous little shit.” Irvan’s gratingly annoying voice was still as bold and brash as ever, but interlaced with an unmistakable thread of pain. “You burned two of my colleagues alive and crushed another. And you have the audacity to be angry at me?”

“That should have been your sign to stop trying to take us prisoner, yeah?”

“I offered you the chance to come peacefully. All you had to do was say yes!” Contrary to Irvan’s rise in volume, his silver aura was steadily dimming. “‘Make an example. Change his mind.’ That’s what the Sage Superior told me. Well there it is, boy.” Irvan spat at the ground, whether it was from a mouthful of blood or simple disdain, Rasp couldn’t decipher. “Let’s see how far you get without your fae master.”

Fury rose up from the depths and flooded Rasp’s tightening chest with molten rage. He dug deep, summoning any magic he could find. But there was nothing to spare. His reserves hadn’t yet recovered from that day’s flying adventure. Rasp’s hands clenched as he considered doing something horrifically stupid. Fists didn’t require magic. And, from Irvan’s labored breath, it sounded as if Whisper had done more than half of the work already. Rasp would just be completing the job.

“Message received.” A predatory smile split across Rasp’s face. “I think it’s time for me to send your boss a message back.”

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“Stay where you are or the fae dies!” Irvan’s voice flooded with panic. Still, their aura dimmed fainter and fainter as magic slowly bled from his body. “I already willed the iron poisoning deeper. Come any closer, I’ll send it straight to their heart. Your master will be dead before you reach me.”

“Rasp!” Hop yelled, halting Rasp in his tracks. “For once in your life, think before acting, please. I don’t know what we’re dealing with yet. Don’t go out of your way to make it worse.”

All eyes were on him. Rasp could feel it. Somewhere amongst the chaos, June, Faris, and the mystery shapeshifter must have realized shit was going down and ceased their fighting. They’d all gone deathly quiet, save for the sounds of June’s huffing breathing. “Is what he saying true?” Rasp asked Hop. “Can he make the iron poisoning go to Whisper’s heart?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t think we can’t risk finding out, either.”

Shit. And here he was, blood pumping and ready for a fight. Rasp glared in Irvan’s direction and scowled. “So how exactly do you see this ending? Is this one of those, agree to come with us and I’ll lift the hex situations?”

Irvan’s laugh was even more unnerving than his speaking voice. The strength in the witch’s legs gave out as his phantom aura sank to the ground. Talking sounded as though it had become more a chore which, regrettably, still didn’t prevent Irvan from doing it in the most annoying way possible. “No, no, dear boy. Such a plan would be far too easy for you to thwart. I just cursed your fae friend to death, you see. If you wish for them to live, then you will need the Sage Superior’s mercy to lift the hex.”

Hop was speaking in a low voice to Whisper. Unfortunately, Rasp couldn’t make out what was being said on account of Irvan’s loudmouth ramblings. The witch carried on, “I can tell you’re still thinking of running. And yes, you might slip through our fingers again tonight, but you won’t get far. There are over thirty members of The Sons and Daughter of Resistance assembled all around these woods. They’re not going to waste their energy on a direct attack, either. They have orders to hound you, run you ragged day and night, waiting for the exhaustion to set in as their net steadily draws tighter. When they finally make their move, none of you will have the strength to fight.”

Dread hung thick in the air like smoke from a poorly ventilated fire. It clogged the airways, choking off Rasp’s air as the realization that they were doomed slowly sank in.

Irvan issued his final ultimatum with the sort of smugness that implied he knew they were had. “Surrender, now, and it won’t have to come to that. I’ll take you back to the Sage Superior, myself, and get this all sorted out for you.”

Caught in an internal whirlwind of racing thoughts, Rasp didn’t hear Faris’s approaching hoof steps until he pressed close, whispering, “If he possesses the power to hex, then he possesses the power to lift it as well. We don’t need their leader. We just need to get it out of him.”

“And how do we do that?” Rasp asked, hopeful that the answer involved fists.

“Adriel,” Irvan disrupted their whispered huddle as he called across to the shapeshifter who, by some sheer miracle, was still apparently alive. “It’s time. Return to the others and send word to the Sage Superior. Tell her they refused.”

“Your rest was earned well, Brother Irvan,” Adriel replied.

“Now hold on, we haven’t decided–” The rest of Faris’s sentence was swallowed by a gasping squeak, followed by a whispered, “Muck.”

Across from him, Rasp watched mystified as Irvan’s weak silver glow was swallowed by the dark. He didn’t want to ask. Feared to, in fact, but short of going up and prodding the body with a stick, there wasn’t any other way to know. “Did he just…”

Faris sounded as stunned as Rasp felt. “Yeah.”

While Rasp had fully intended to carry out the job himself, he couldn’t help but wonder what powers could drive a man to such extremes. “Why?”

“To force our hand,” Faris replied grimly.

Little bird, Whisper’s voice rippled across Rasp’s thoughts, sickly and weak. Stop the shapeshifter. Buy us time.

While he would never admit it, Rasp was secretly grateful someone was finally telling him what to do. He turned and charged in Adriel’s direction. The shapeshifter saw him coming and shifted to something smaller. Too small to be a hawk, Rasp realized, as he watched the tiny green glow dart between June’s paws. June’s bear form was too cumbersome to catch it. She stamped about, snapping her jaws, and eliciting frustrated growls each time the tiny creature eluded her.

Rasp cleared the stretch of encampment and threw himself into a dive, clasping his hands around the little green aura as his body struck the ground and rolled. The shapeshifter gave a squeak of terror, their tiny, fuzzy body clawing at Rasp’s hands, as it forced its mouse-shaped body through his fingers. The shapeshifter leapt free with Rasp hot on its tail.

Sharp branches whipped at Rasp’s unprotected face as he scrambled on all fours after the mouse. In what was possibly the most undignified fight of his life, against an opponent a hundredth his size, Rasp flipped, flailed, and rolled his way to victory. Sore, bleeding, and desperately trying to fill his blistering lungs, he rose from the prickly undergrowth victorious. He proudly held his interlocked hands aloft.

“I got–ah!” Pain ripped through Rasp’s body as the mouse sank its teeth into him. His hands spasmed, loosening his interlaced fingers just enough for his quarry to spring free. Father’s harsh cry reverberated within Rasp’s ears as the raven swooped down from above. There was a furious flap of feathery wings and a sudden, piercing shriek before the ruckus went suspiciously quiet.

Rasp sucked the blood weeping from his hand, silently hoping magic shapeshifting mice didn’t carry disease. He glanced back and forth, realizing he no longer saw the shapeshifter’s tiny green glow. “Dad?”

Croak?

There were far more pressing matters at hand, undoubtedly. Still, Rasp couldn’t move past the nauseating feeling churning in the pit of stomach until he knew for certain. “Did you just…eat him?”

Father confirmed Rasp’s suspicions with a snap of his bill.

Rasp attempted to process this shocking information. Unfortunately, this involved stating all of it out loud. “You’re a bird, who used to be human. Who just ate a mouse, that was actually a person.”

“Rasp,” Faris called, trying to snap him out of it.

Unfortunately, there would be no snapping of anything. Rasp feared his mind had beat Faris to it. “On the scale of cannibalism, I think this might be a six.” He listened to his father’s resulting protest before nodding his head in stunned agreement. “You know what, I’ll give it to you. It’s a seven.”

“I can’t believe I’m saying this,” Faris said, touching Rasp’s elbow in that concerned way friend’s do when they realize they’re the only sane one left, “but I think your father’s cannibalism is the least of our concerns right now.”

Right. Back to the hopeless reality of death and gloom. Rasp turned in Whisper’s direction as the last of his phantom vision petered out, giving way to utter darkness. Rather fitting, given the circumstances. “How do we fix this?”

To his relief, it was Whisper who answered. Well, relieved until the weight of their words settled, at least. After that, there would be no relief. “We don’t. There isn’t time.” Whisper’s voice was weak and writhing with agony. “We have to move before our pursuers realize they no longer have eyes on our location.”

“And then what?”

“I am going into a state of stasis within your pack.”

Terrible start so far. Rasp hoped that whatever Whisper said next, it would be better and, most importantly, not delivered in riddle form. He really hated that. Clear cut instructions were the only way to go.

“At which point,” Whisper said between small gasps for breath, “you may have to try your hand at taking charge in my absence.”

The impossible weight of responsibility settled onto Rasp’s impetuous shoulders. Other than being born with a natural capacity for ordering others about, he didn’t know the first thing about being a leader. Somewhere, beyond the veil of space and time, he felt the cruel face of fate smiling down upon him, elated that he’d finally exhausted his ability to run. There was no other option now. The sixth son of a mighty Stoneclaw warrior, bearer of the silver-hair, was being called to step up and accept the role assigned to him.

Dear gods, Rasp thought as the overwhelming urge to crawl into a hole and hide swept over him. Why couldn’t it have been a damn riddle instead?