Ether

TWO

Ben hated the Druids.

That was the single truth that kept repeating in her mind as she walked, aching foot after aching foot, forward. Her feet were bare, as always. She'd been walking for hours – ten miles? Twelve? She had no idea how far they'd gone, but she knew that they were headed west, and that her feet couldn't take much more of it. Her hands were bound, sloppily but tightly, by rope, and if the clunking ahead of her was any indication, a karaban was pulling her.Clunk, clunk clunk. Clunk, clunk clunk. An unbalanced pattern, indicative of its three hooves. Tired though she was, she had a sack over her head, and she refused to give up what little sight she had through the earth, so she used her magic. And, by her estimation, the karaban was big.

"Where are we going?" She whined out the question, again, for what she believed to be the fourth time. She tried not to hate herself for how much hotter the little air within the sack over her head became.

She couldn't stop beating herself up for stopping to rescue those kids. If she had only taken a different path home, or left five minutes earlier or later, or quieted the sudden urge to help them...

"I have to pee," Ben continued, letting her voice rise to an octave she had no idea it was possible for her to reach.

"Quiet," the druid girl said. Ben felt the earth by the girl shift as her companion came up to the side of the karaban the speaker was riding. By the light thump she heard, Ben could tell that he had hit her. A warning, she thought.Not to speak to the prisoner.

She had no idea why these Druids had taken her. It was known across the land that the Druids aided the King in sealing the powers of Ethers, but, as far as Ben knew, the Druids didn't actively look for them. They just waited for the royal guard to bring them the next batch discovered from the Aetheria "holding facility," which was just the nicer way to say prison.

And, anyway, Ben was also pretty sure that the Druids only aided the king because they feared someone with killing magic would be born again, as they were said to in legend. Ben knew she could kill with her magic, but its nature itself wasn't that. They had seen her stop that tree from falling on those kids with one steady, strong pillar of dirt. They knew what she could do. So why did they care?

Ben could sense a root sticking up, ever so slightly, from the ground. She purposefully tripped over it. "Ahh," she faked. "Oh, Mother Ether, stop! I've fallen and I can't get up. Ow!"

An annoyed sigh and the vibrations of feet stepping with irritation told Ben that the male Druid was approaching, and he was not pleased to be doing so. "Get up," he said, with not a finger laid on Ben to help her do so.

"Did you not hear the 'can't get up' part?"

A hand grabbed her, then, by her bicep, and yanked her upward. Ben yanked back, refusing to leave the ground.

Suddenly, the bag that separated her from clear vision and fresh air was violently ripped off of her head. After a couple of blinding moments blinking away the sun she was no longer used to, her vision focused in on the Druid glaring down at her.

Ben hadn't really seen that many Druids in her lifetime. The Druids hated humans, so most of their interaction came from sealing an Ether's powers, and only very rarely did this bring Druids into a human town – more often than not, the royal guard was accommodating enough to go to them. And, even counting the few times she had seen Druids, it was always from afar. None of those experiences had prepared her for this.

The Druid man looked to be around twenty-four years old – or, that's what he would have been around, had he been human. Ben knew enough to expect that he was much, much older than that. His eyes were the clearest blue she had ever seen, but, instead of being surrounded by white, the rest of his eyes were black. It felt like being in a never-ending tunnel, staring into those eyes. Like being surrounded by darkness, and only being able to look forward, into the blue, into the light at the end, for escape. Compared to those eyes, the rest of him looked abnormally human. Pale white skin. Light brown hair. Between five feet, ten inches and six feet tall. It was a contrast she couldn't quite wrap her head around.