Beneath Shadows and Secrets

♔ 𝔉𝔦𝔣𝔱𝔶 - 𝔉𝔦𝔳𝔢 ♔

♔ 𝔑𝔦𝔯𝔞 ♔

Calix grabs my wrist and pulls me running, the moment everyone around us Sceres from view. He Scere's too, carrying me with him, and I become so discombobulated from the rush of movement that when reality engulfs me once more, my knees buckle. Sweat is beading around my hairline, but not from the overexertion of my power. If anything, since the promise I have made to Zaire, it wants more.

"Are you alright?" He asks, though his attention is focused on the space around us. We are in the thick of the trees, the canopy sheltering us from the sun and casting shadows around us. It is still warm, a horrible muggy heat that comes before a heavy rain.

"Fine." I clip, straightening my posture. It is too silent. "We have to reach the end."

"Too simple of a proposition for it to be the only thing we need to do." He counters, and I find myself inclined to agree, pulling two daggers from the fitting along my spine. "Think before you throw. Urani and Ovander are our allies."

"And we have twelve enemies. Better they learn to dodge before I risk either of our lives." He says nothing, but begins to walk, and I follow a few paces behind. "The borders are returned. There will be none of the Unseelie we faced before."

"Just whatever was left." That does not comfort me as I suspect it was supposed to. We can only walk onwards, remaining on our guard from all our foes. The foliage does not sparsen, and the silence does not lift, and I even try to Scere, but some restraint prevents me from going further. Wherever we are, so it everybody else. Our enemies are among us, and I have the nagging urge to find them.

The noise is so slight, for a minute, a think I might have misheard. Yet, my gut turns, and the hair on the back of my neck bristles to attention. I turn and poise my daggers to throw, my mind urging the thick leaves of the bush to part. Calix stalls, bringing his shadows forward, prepared to attack. From the divide in the bushes, something drags along the ground. I frown, leaning closer to see it.

The head of a snake looks back at me, coiled to strike, and I almost laugh. "Come on." I mutter and I lower my daggers, but Calix's shadows wrap around my waist to stop me. He watches with narrowed eyes, and just as I am about to argue about his overly fond interest in the reptile, it starts to move closer.

I have seen snakes in the woodlands of Cracuria several times. Small things, barely worth noticing. This one though, it is bigger that I have ever seen. As huge as the trunk of a tree, with fangs that leak with venom, at least as long as my fingers. Its eyes glow a horrid yellow, and when it hisses, there is something so...

Calix's shadows move before I can finish that thought, driving straight for the snake, and then he yells at me to run. I do not let myself consider why, for the last he sounded this panicked, it was when chased by the Magfuror, and for good reason. He knows the horrors of the Unseelie that lurk among these lands far better than I, and for that, I trust his judgement. So I run, Calix beside me, his shadows whipping the air behind us.

The Stygian erupts from me, defending our backs, my mind forcing the trees to knit together as we pass through them, in any attempt to stall the snake that pursues us. "What is that?" I shout at him, dodging the tree that unearths itself a moment too soon, collapsing to the ground as we barely pass it.

"Serpen Witch." I have heard that name before from Ezekiel, but I did not venture questions then, nor do I have the time to now. We sprint, shielding ourselves with protective magic to avoid the snag of branches and twigs. Trampling through the overgrowth, our laboured breaths are all that meet my ears. I dare to look behind us, the huge snake not far from us. Except, it is not much of a snake anymore. It's risen, it's skin shedding and mouth widening, face morphed to something more human – or Fae – like. Whatever a Serpen Witch is, it is a thing trapped between two forms, and as horrid as anything I have ever seen.