A Rational Magic || ONC2022

Twenty-Seven || Collision Course

"What the...?"

We're on a street now — Melitague Avenue — and there's blood streaked across the ground in places. And feathers, and what could be glass but probably isn't...

It looks like the scene of a massacre.

I feel sick.

"The watch," Kat shrugs awkwardly, not moving. "Takes you up, and nowhere else."

"Not that! Look!"

"Kat! Anya!" Cira shouts, appearing out of nowhere. Or maybe not. Probably not.

Fire and teleportation are very different.

"Cira?" Kat sits up now, and almost lies right back down again when he sees the state of the street. "What—?"

"Let's get you two inside... where's Holly?" Judging by the look on his face, our expressions are not selling a good story to him. "Uh, don't answer that. Up you get, Kat."

He's floating.

The fact that I'm barely concentrating on that thought is not promising, but Cira manages to get him to listen — whether he's responding well or not. We follow him into what must be a stranger's house, and indeed the fairy who owns the place is standing right there in the doorway of the kitchen.

"Are they alright?" she asks, wings fluttering anxiously.

"I think they will be," Cira says with the fakest confidence I've ever heard. "Thank you again."

"No problem! This must be Anya?"

What have they been saying?

"You two go join Vaeri and Felaern."

"Will do..." Who's Felaern, and why didn't he mention Lani, and what on Earth happened here? "And yeah, I'm Anya."

I leave Cira to it, and follow his instruction.

In what I assume is the living room, Vaeri's sprawled across some other elf-boy's legs, seemingly asleep. There's also a much younger fairy-child sitting on the floor.

And no Lani.

"Hi, Kat," the elf-boy says. "Glad to see you're walking around, Anya. It would've been a real waste of effort if you were dead, wouldn't it?"

"Sure." I don't even want to ask. "You must be Felaern?"

"Yep. Kat? Katriel? Wystan, what are you playing at?"

"Shut up."

"What happened out there?" I asked, deciding it would be easier to distract the boy rather than explain something I didn't quite understand myself. Sure, I knew what it was called, but not much else. "And where's my sister?"

"Great question."

"To which one?"

"Both, honestly." He shrugged. "Lani vanished hours ago, and we've really just stolen Mrs Fernshore's living room while we wait to see if anyone tries coming back for you... and as for why the place is full of blood?"

"We know that."

"We do?"

"Yeah? The ziasel?"

I remembered how Holly had fallen from the sky, and immediately felt like an idiot. Of course. The feathers and 'glass' were torn wings, and the blood was easy enough to explain.

"Ziasel?"

"Nothing important."

Do you know? I have the strangest feeling that these two might not like each other very much.

And also...

"So... she's been kidnapped, and you decided to wait for us to work that out for ourselves, find you, and then hope that my presence baited them right back? You realise they wouldn't bring her to kidnap me? That's... not how kidnappings work."

"They did bring a boy to do it," the fairy-child said. "Dark hair, bit taller than you, I think she knew him..."

"Mercury."

"That settles that debate." Kat shook his head, looking ready to throw up. "It's MALIS."

"Not in question, really. So what happened to Mulreth?"

Kat gave me a look before turning his gaze to the ground.

I didn't want to explain. But I couldn't make him admit that his sister was the reason Holly was dead either.

So I let the story pour out, trying my absolute hardest not to think about it. Kat added one or two details about how Adalia had acted after attacking us — the things she said, how she tried to spell him into believing he'd cast the spell — but for the most part he left me to it.

"You're joking."

"In what world is stuff like that funny?" Kat asked, glaring at Felaern with a surprising ferocity.

"There is no way that happened."

"Yeah, and I'm a ruler of Faerie."

"So what else happened?"

"Vaeri!"

Okay. Note to self — Vaeri is very good at pretending to be asleep.

"Nothing much," Kat said, in the exact sort of voice that makes what you say sound like a huge lie. "There's an infestation, but honestly it could be for any reason. Not necessarily MALIS..."

"You seemed convinced that it was."

"And now I'm actually thinking about it. You saw how tiny they were, right?"

I had, of course. And he did have a point, when you thought about it... since they seemed to be invisible, how easy would it be to miss them if they weren't biting you?

Which was already spelling your doom. Or maybe just making life a little more difficult.

Kat is really good at not talking about certain things.

"Can you maybe tell us about what's going on?" Vaeri suggested. "Instead of making us guess?"

"The inner workings of Lios are infested with sacurine."

Clearly I was the only one who didn't really understand what was going on, because Vaeri and Felaern shared horrified looks, and even the fairy-child gasped.

"You're not—?"

"No, no, no!" Kat said quickly, shaking his head. "I'm fine. Trust me."

"You say that too much," I pointed out. "So. What... what are we actually going to do about Lani?"

Nobody seemed to have an answer.

I was sorely tempted to go out and start looking for her myself, but something told me that she'd gotten herself caught in a similar way. So I stayed put, fiddling with the strap of my bag as I tried to think.

"I think we need to get out of here as soon as possible."

"What?"

"Lani and me. We're not helping matters. And we're not enough, are we?"

"We're even less without you two."

"Why should they even have to save our home?" Felaern and Kat asked at the exact same time — and then promptly glared at each other.

I couldn't help but sigh as Cira walked into the room, face a little too pale for anyone's liking.

"Did I miss anything... important?" he asked, a note of sarcasm in his tone.

Vaeri's response was, like I had decided not to do, to storm out of the house.