Hidden One

Chapter Twenty-Five

Looking up, Tessa realized that the buzzing must have been Cecilia and Demetri, who were currently standing just outside her glowing silver shield with disapproving looks on their faces. She'd not even really noticed herself creating the barrier between them- it just happened. With a sheepish smile she let it down, the noise of the keep flooding her senses the second she did so.

"Teresa Katherine Erickson, don't you ever scare me like that again!" Cecilia rushed to her side, helping to lift her to her feet so that she could hug her tightly. "My gods, if it hadn't been for Demetri assuring me that you were okay..."

It took Tessa a moment to realize, in the midst of all her rambling, that Cecilia was not angry- she was frightened. Frightened for Tessa's wellbeing, and that something would happen to her. It was rather sweet.

"I'm fine, Ceci. Please just let me go. There's no reason to worry." She said rather awkwardly.

"You're sure you're okay?" Demetri asked, gently tugging her from Cecilia's grasp to wrap an arm around her waist.

"I'm fine." She giggled a bit. "I know what Kasper is."

Even Kasper looked interested to hear this. "Pray tell, though what I'm really worried about is if he's going to sell us out." Ceci muttered.

"I know he'll never stab us in the back, Ceci." She said. "He's completely different now. He's a Seer."

"What?!" Kasper squeaked. "No! I've got all my manly parts! Seers are women."

Tessa rolled her eyes, turning to Cecilia and Demetri. "It's just like Selene. When a shifter goes rogue, it creates a Seer. When a Bender goes rogue, it creates a Seer."

"But shifters go rogue all the time." Demetri argued, scratching at the back of his neck.

"And how many of them actually survive?"

Ceci and Demetri glanced at one another. "None that I know of." Cecilia admitted.

"And Kas, wasn't it you who said you've never heard of a Bender going rogue before?"

He groaned, realizing her words were true. "Oh no."

"We need a great big, huge finale." Anna was saying, gesturing to a map of the surrounding area. They had a pretty good idea of where the shifters were in the forest not too far from here, they just had no exact location.

"Storming those animals isn't finale enough? I'd say killing a couple hundred of them would be enough of a bang." Kai muttered, playing absently with a pencil as he looked over estimations of their numbers. "There has to be over five hundred of them in there...." He said quietly to himself, crossing out a set of numbers.

"We can't just storm them, Kai. Our main priority is killing Tessa and that dog of hers. Of course, I won't stop you from killing any shifters, but Tessa and whats-his-name are most important." Isabelle said. Keenan pulled a face.

"Something wrong, Kee?" Anna asked, catching his look. He stood way at the opposite of the room, slightly in shadow.

"The dog's real name is Demetri." Was all he said.

"Shouldn't Kate be in on this? Where is she?" Maria was leafing through some rough drafts for a plan as she spoke.

"Alexander brought her upstairs to relax." Was Luciana's contribution. "Kallen went with them."

Anna was drawing circles around various parts of the map with a dry-erase marker. "We know they're concentrated here." She was saying, pointing to the smallest circle. "But they could stretch out as far as...here." She drew a larger circle around the original one. "So if we were to create a ring of our troops along this outer circle, we could slowly close in, killing the shifters as we go. Tessa will have nowhere to go, and she'll become trapped in the center here, where their main building is."

"We could use our fire students to set the buildings alight." Maria said.

"Yes. And it'll take away any hiding spots, too." She agreed. "Kol, what do you think?"

"We've got enough Earth benders alone to ring this whole area." He said, standing and coming to the table. He ran his finger along the outer circle. "The Fire benders can go in first, moving in groups of two. The Earth benders will hold this ring while we send the Water and Air benders forward, slowly closing the cricle as we go. It will be slow going, sure, but we'd have plenty of time if we started at sunset."

"We'll need an elite group to guard whoever goes after Tessa." Anna said. "I'll be staying back with the Earth benders, but what if all of you MacAlistars guarded Kate, Maria and Isabelle? Lucy will need to stay back to heal the wounded."

There was a silence as everyone mused over the plan. It wasn't hard for them to imagine these things- this wasn't their first battle with the shifters, not by a long shot. But for Keenan, this one felt different. And he didn't like it.