The Burning Light with Shadows (A SOTAM Fan Fiction)

Ally (Sophie's PoV)

I ran to the bottle and swiped it up, inspecting the items inside. The tinier bottle inside appeared to be a spray bottle, and the scroll appeared to be a message.

"What is it?" Fitz asked, causing me to jump. "Let's open it with the others," I said, running into the house and up toward our rooms. Fitz grabbed my arm just as I passed my room.

"Wait," he panted. "They're all sleeping. Let's open it now and we'll talk to them about it in the morning." I bit my lip. "Alright."

I opened the door to my room and jumped on the bed. Fitz followed in. I carefully unscrewed the bottle and slid the contents out onto the blankets of my bed.

I unrolled the scroll and examined the message.

A/N Message will be in bold below this ~

Hello Elves ~

You may be wondering who I am. Unfortunately, I cannot disclose this information at this time. However, I can give you an explanation as to why Tam Song has passed out.

By now, I would assume Sophie Foster and her cognate, Fitz Vacker, have healed Tam's mind. His mind is not broken. Not exactly.

His mind is more... collapsed than broken. That is the closest metaphor I can give. The reason this happened after removing Wylie Endal's shadowflux handcuffs is because the Neverseen's shade, Umber, put immense amounts of pain, guilt, and anger inside the shadowflux. Normally, this wouldn't be possible without Umber feeling the emotions herself, but this shadowflux has been mixed with something potent.

When Tam tried to remove the shadowflux, these emotions affected him greatly. But as I said earlier, Sophie and Fitz have likely healed him by now. This part of the message is meant to be an explanation, and proof that the Neverseen have other resources up their sleeve.

However, you will probably notice in a couple days that Tam is not going to take up. I believe that a guster was hiding in Wylie house and has managed to drug Tam with more soporidine.

With this message comes a small spray bottle. You may have noticed that Tam has been falling into tired dazes. This is a major side effect of breathing in soporidine. There is a special cure in this spray bottle. Spritz it up his nose three times. Within a couple minutes, he should wake up. It should also remove the rest of the soporidine from his face. But I will warn you, he may be different when he wakes up. He'll go back to normal eventually, so don't worry about that.

But if you don't use the antidote, I hate to say it, but he won't wake up.

Sincerely,

~~~~~~

At the bottom right corner of the paper, there was a small drawing of a sword. My eyes widened. That was the same sword the cloaked figure used when they saved Wylie and the rest of us in Los Angeles.

"It's that... I don't know what to call them anymore. Strange individual?" Fitz asked. I nodded silently. I held up the spray bottle. "It could be a trap," I said, biting my lip for the second time, tasting blood. "Poison."

"We could see if Tam wakes up within several days," Fitz suggested. "If he doesn't, give him the antidote." I sighed. "But then Linh has to wait until then."

"But we don't risk his life," Fitz replied. I laid my elbows on my knees. "I guess that's the best solution," I said glumly.

I leaned onto the backrest of my bed. "It says, 'he may be different when he wakes up'. How will Linh react to that?" How will we react to it? I thought sadly.