A Rational Magic || ONC2022

Twenty-Two || The Verrior Wastes

I open my eyes to see very little, all things considered. And since I'm almost certain we're technically still unconscious, I was probably meant to assume that I would see nothing.

But I see a little bit more than nothing.

What I'm looking is a wasteland, so painfully monochromatic that I feel out of place. Until I look up at Holly — who 'came round' before me, from the look of things — and see that she's covered in grey dust.

"D'you know where we are?"

"No..." she frowns. "Here, take my hand."

A jolt of something shoots up my arm as I grab her hand so she can help me to my feet, and on instinct I whip round to look behind us, noticing my satchel following my momentum and whacking myself in the back as a result.

"Smart move, Anya."

The speaker is a girl, maybe seventeen, and definitely not a fairy or elf. She lacks their short heights and the pointed ears that Cira and Vaeri both share and the wings — whether feathery like Kat's or dragonfly-like in the same way as Holly's — of the fae. Her hair, long and wild and red, whips around in a wind that I can't feel, and I can see that Holly's hair isn't moving at all.

I can tell that she is powerful, whatever she is.

"Who are you?"

"My name doesn't matter."

"What are you?" I correct myself — she's probably more likely to answer that sort of question. Naming a mystery is a funny thing.

"You might as well call me a witch."

"Anya, who are you talking to?"

"I... you can't see her?"

Holly gives me a strange look. "No? We're alone here."

"Well, I can see someone, so hopefully I'm not going mad," I say with as much force as I can manage.

Since the strange look doesn't fade, I imagine it's either too much or not enough.

"As if she could be threatened by you."

"I do know her weakness, now."

"Anya, you wouldn't!" Holly gasps, one hand pressed to her forehead and the other to her chest like every over-dramatic actress in any 'shocking' scene ever.

The witch laughed, the sound seeming entirely out of place in the dull wasteland. I wasn't sure if I liked that fact or not.

"How sweet," she said with a sickening note of derision in her voice. "She'll never get out of here if that's how she'll react to a bit of metal."

I did not like what she was insinuating. That much, I knew.

"I think she's joking," was what I said, though.

"If you say so."

The pause after she says this is enough to make me start feeling sick with nerves. How are we meant to get out of here? Is it a case of working out that you're in a dream and trying to force yourself awake, or is it as I suspect?

A whole lot deeper than that.

Adalia probably wouldn't make it so easy. If my current theory is correct, she's trying to eliminate Kat from the equation, and we're not part of that rearrangement either.

"Do you want to get out of here?"

"Of course." I notice that Holly's staring right at the spot where the witch is standing, but there's no recognition of that fact. She still can't see her. "We have a world to save."