The Best Present (An ACOTAR fanfiction)

Chapter 39

"How are we going to do this?" I wondered aloud. We were all gathered at the townhouse. It had been a few days since we found the spot for the Arashaak, and since we had heard our kids' first words. Elder had sent us the exact time and day of the attack, as well as where they would attack and the number of forces. It wasn't anything we couldn't handle, but the current problem was that we couldn't kill them. Elder wouldn't want us to kill them.

"If we did the blood-feeding thing again, we would have the power to kill them, which is exactly the opposite of what we're doing. And if we don't blood-feed-"

"There's a high chance we will be killed," Amren interrupted Mor. Mor nodded grimly.

"What if we created a sedative?" Cassian suggested. I stared at him. He shrugged. "We know the location of the attacks. If we lace the ground with a sedative, they will be woozy enough for us to chain up and then figure out how to convince them to not kill us."

"That's a good idea," Rhys replied. Sometimes I forgot that Cassian is an honored war general because of all the other stupid things he says.

"Okay so how are we gonna create this sedative?" I asked, mostly addressing Amren since she did tend to know a bit about this stuff.

"Well," Elain spoke up from the side. "There is a plant I know of that is meant as a sedative. Healers crush it and have their patients drink it when they need to do a extensive operation. A smaller amount spread over the area we need should do the trick. We will have to spell them with something so the smells waft upwards, and place them as close as possible to the time of attack. We will also have to keep everyone away from those areas, because anyone walking over it will pass out, and we can't have that."

"Wow, Elain," Azriel said, slinging his arm around her shoulder. "Where can we find this plant?"

"Any healer," she paused. "Or my garden. I didn't know what it was and bought it from a nursery. It grew well and began to look edible so I tried it once and I was out all day." I chuckled. None of us scolded her for eating something she didn't know, since she was the plant expert, and clearly she was fine now.

"Well, that solved one problem. So what, we just crush it and make it into a mixture and pour it over the ground?" Mor asked.

"It's a little more complicated. We'll have to pour in a certain pattern for it to be effective, as the Arashaak's sense work differently than Fae's," Amren mused. "If you can create the solution, I can figure out how exactly we need to pour it."

"Alright, well we have our plan," I said, clapping my hands. Amren left to find any books on Arashaak's senses and how to create what she called a "lattice of sedative". Mor went with her, in case her knowledge of the Arashaak helped. Elain, Azriel, Cassian, Nesta, and of course Rhys and I relaxed a bit. That seemed odd considering the impending battle, but we knew when it would happen and there's nothing we could do but wait until then. We told them how the kids said their first words, to the appropriate reactions.

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