The Dreamfarer

23

╣Folco╟

"Get off of me!" he shouted. 

Finally, the warlocks obeyed his command, but only in order to shove him inside of a tent. He had no way to catch his fall, considering there was rope encompassing his entire body. He fell to the ground with a grunt, but was lucky; his head didn't hit anything.

This had been a very strange night so far. First, Kroma insisted on meeting with Mae alone. Kroma had never sent him away from any meeting before; Folco was his right-hand man, the one whose advice he had always relied upon the most. The fact that the first time he sent him away was when he wanted to speak to Mae - with a visitor, no less - really perturbed Folco.

But it got even worse after that. When Folco had tried to head into the tent after Kroma and Mae, his guards actually attacked him and forced him back. Then Mae had been gone from his sight, locked away inside of the leader's tent, and there was nothing that Folco could do about it. His magic was not like other warlocks', and he had no idea how he could use Dreamfaring to break into Kroma's tent. He never had a chance to really consider it, either.

The instant he had gotten back to his feet after the guards had knocked the wind out of him, they both lurched forward to grab him. He fought, of course, and he was a competent enough fighter that he almost won. However, backup came too quickly, and while he may have been able to defeat two men in a fight with his bare hands - even two magic-wielding men - he stood no chance against six. He had put his hands in the air and allowed them to tie him up. They carried him all the way to his tent, where they threw him onto his bed and refused to acknowledge him or his questions for at least an hour. 

It had been a dreadful silence, so complete that at one point he had thought he heard shouts in the distance. He had never been able to hear anything from the camp before - excepting when warlocks were practicing their spells, setting the things off like fireworks - so he found it curious, but he had been too worried over what could be happening with Mae to dwell on it too much.

He assumed, after that, that his guards received some sort of signal, because that was then they scooped him up again and carried him back towards the camp. 

Folco was not stupid. He realized that the only reason they would have brought him all the way out to his tent if they ultimately planned on imprisoning him somewhere in the camp would be to separate him from the rest of the warlocks while something happened that he was not supposed to know about. The thought drove him insane, and he spent a long time yelling at his guards, demanding that they tell him what was going on, what had occurred that they were trying to hide from him. He gained no response, and though he was blind with rage and fright, he did notice how silent and deserted the camp seemed. Something horrible had happened, he knew it; he just did not know what it was.

And now, here he was, tied up securely enough to prevent him from moving a single muscle. The tent was fairly small, but he was not alone in it, which he noticed when he rolled over and lifted his gaze.

Caleb was huddled into a corner, and he looked as though he had just seen a ghost.

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"What is it?" Folco demanded. He did not care right now that he was not fond of this human boy, did not care that he knew the human boy was not fond of him. Clearly, Caleb knew something, and Folco needed some kind of explanation.

Caleb swallowed, his wide eyes blinking slowly. "You didn't... You didn't hear her?" he asked, his voice quiet and fearful, as if he was living out a nightmare.