But that’s all gone to shit, hasn’t it?
I’m going to be trapped in this delusion forever.
Swallowing hard, I turn my hands into fists, nails digging into my palms.
A man follows along behind the group of soldiers, dressed similarly in green and white gingham, but with a badge on his chest in the shape of a castle with pointed spirals. His eyes are as gray as a stormy sky above a tumultuous sea, his full mouth painted in a severe frown. His own hands are squeezed into tight fists, like mine, covered with white gloves.
He stops walking, and the entire company does the same, without a single person even bothering to turn their head to look at him.
The man looks around, and it’s pretty clear that he’s not only searching for us, but has some idea of where to actually look. His hair is a metallic silver color, not like an old person’s gray hair, but actually shiny. It’s cut short, but still long enough in the front that the bangs across his forehead shimmer in the light of the torches his soldiers carry.
“They’re close by,” he says, reaching one hand up and using the other to remove the glove, finger by finger. “Find them for me.”
The soldiers scatter in pairs, heading into the woods. One set of them is coming right for us.
Meanwhile, the officer pulls off his glove, revealing a fully articulated metal hand. He squeezes it into a fist, and then opens his fingers as I turn to Stryker and Taavi.
“You two have a plan, don’t you?” I whisper, because I’m sort of playing chess without knowing any of the rules. The pieces are in my hand, but I have no idea where I’m supposed to put them.
The officer with the metal hand turns toward my voice, as if he can actually hear me from all the way over there. The deep gray of his eyes sends chills down my spine. There’s no heart in that gaze, just cold, steely indifference.
“We could fight, but every soldier in the Emerald Corp is a sorcerer,” Stryker says. “It wouldn’t end well for us, not with you in your current state.”
“We should approach them, and state our intent,” Taavi says as the pair of soldiers closest to us veer slightly off to the right, buying us a few more seconds. “We’re not in trouble here, and the C.R.O.W.S. aren’t exactly in league with the Emerald Corps.”
“I highly advise against that,” Stryker says, a bead of sweat forming on his temple. Despite his outward calm, I can tell he’s nervous. Neither he nor Taavi expected this.
Bushes rustle on the opposite side of the road, and there’s a chorus of shouting as the soldiers zone in on it. Unfortunately, the ones nearest us aren’t fooled by the diversion. Some sort of faerie creature darts from the bushes, its long legs stumbling over themselves as it tries to get away, blue eyes bright with fear.
The man with the gray eyes holds up his palm to still the soldiers, and then slowly, carefully twists off the tip of his metal pointer finger. Casually, as if pointing out an unusual flower or a particularly interesting tree, he lifts his finger in the direction of the fleeing faerie.
And then shoots it.
The bullet comes right from the tip of his finger, as if it were the barrel of a gun. The sound of it is similar, too, like the crack of thunder. I’ll never forget the sound of Uncle Henry pulling the trigger on Taavi.
The projectile hits the faerie in the back of the head, and then keeps going, exiting its forehead with a spray of blood and bone before it implants itself into the trunk of a tree.
The creature collapses to the yellow bricks beneath its feet, blood pooling around it.
“Find them,” the officer repeats again, gray eyes scanning the woods.
“Come,” Taavi says, his voice tight as he grips my hand and pulls me deeper into the darkness of the forest. I’m still gaping at the dead creature on the pathway, my mind churning with the unnecessary cruelty of that action. Why not just let the poor thing go? We’re the ones traipsing around through the woods, invading the space of the things that live here.
“Told you,” Stryker murmurs, but not like he’s particularly happy about being right either.
We slip into the shadows, moving as quickly and as quietly as possible away from the road.
“If we get too deep in, we’ll never find our way back out,” Taavi murmurs after a moment, pausing in the blackness to find his bearings. Sunlight peeks through the trees up ahead, highlighting a clearing. There’s something ominous about it though, and we make a serious effort to walk around it.
“Who is that guy anyway?” I whisper as we pass clusters of strange berries, and bushes lit up with tiny, glowing fairies, like the one Bain keeps inside his hat.
