“We already attracted the entire forest.” I gestured to the mass of glowing eyes around us. “What’s a little fire going to do?”
“Seems like you took care of…that…without needing it.” She nodded her head towards the seeping red mountain of white flesh I had left to waste away.
“Right, thanks for the help with that by the way,” I groaned, wiping at the blood that had started to dry sticky against the side of my face.
“I was occupied. Besides, you looked like you had it under control,” she grinned, a shared respect hovering between us as we stood amongst the horrors nature had to offer. “Let’s go find your mate.”
Mykie led the way without another word, leaving our defeated opponents twitching on the ground behind us for the audience to finish off. We didn’t get far before the beastly noises of the forest fell on the wounded creatures. Hopefully, the onlookers had taken note of whotrulywas the apex predator. They may be disturbing, but I was a fucking nightmare. Anything that got between Faeryn and me would pay the price with their life.
The fluids left on my body from the entrails of the creature were foul. We passed many a snarl or batting pair of eyes, all of which left us alone, maybe because of that very smell. I sloshed off what I could from the moisture-wicking material of the uniform and considered myself lucky that nothing else seemed eager to start a fight.
Eventually, the trees gave way to a towering concrete wall, the branches above our heads creating the impression that its height stretched infinitely. Mykie looked left and right, selecting a direction to follow. She opted for right, retreating into the tree line just enough that the wall was visible to us, but our silhouettes would be concealed amongst the densely packed trunks.
I wasn’t surprised by the lack of entrances, but was frustrated regardless as we turned the corner. The building could only be so big, right? We’d already walked far longer than the length of Faeryn’s field. How big was the operation here that it needed to be the size of atown?
My frustrations were cut off when Mykie’s hand shoved against my chest in a clear command to halt. I followed her eyeline, but saw nothing. She pointed the tip of her knife up into the branches, drawing my attention to the slightest shine of light in the darkness. We were getting near somewhere worth illuminating, which meant we needed to proceed very carefully.
Mykie spun her finger for us to keep moving, each foot placement slow and intentional. The faint outline of her head whipped around, her arm dramatically pressing her hand to her neck repeatedly. It took me a moment to recognize she was telling me my emblem was glowing—I would make an awful hitman. I wrapped my hand over the faint light, cringing internally when there was more immediate darkness. I hadn’t realized it was shining so brightly.Myneck should have a ribbon around it.
Two Quadmos guarded the first sign of an entrance. Eight arms were certainly better security than four. They held long, black weapons in their hands. Weapons capable of killing from a great distance with the twitch of a finger. Guns. I’d only heard about them in passing from patrons at work. Mykie once dismissed them as noisy, messy, and cowardly. Right now, they seemed quite useful.
Mykie held up her hands in a “stay put” signal, pointing to a direction off into the woods and then repeating her over-exaggerated neck covering movement. I pointed to the hand smothering my emblem. She nodded. Got it. She’s going thatway, I need to uncover my neck. Itsoundedlike I was about to be used as bait and get shot, but she was the boss right now.
I waited for a few seconds until she was far enough away, and peeled my hand away from the sweat of my skin in the humid air. It wasn’t long before one of the guards elbowed their partner and pointed in my direction. They wouldn’t be able to tell that I was a person in the black abyss of the woods. I was just a suspicious glowing light. Nothing worth shooting at.
One guard remained at their post, the other stepped in my direction. My gut told me to retreat, but I held still. I needed to stay a benign glow. His body silhouetted against the background, reminding me just how dark it was between the trees. His partner probably couldn’t see him anymore.
Mykie must have drawn the same conclusion. Her small, deadly frame overlapped his. The only sound was a strangled breath before he slumped down, his body shoved against a tree to make the fall more controlled. Near silent. Mykie was in her element.
The second guard began to shuffle uncomfortably, craning his neck to find his friend in the black woods. I stood at my post, ready to snare another victim in our trap.
“Oberon?” he called out in a hushed whisper. “Oberon, you alright?”
Mykie had disappeared again, Oberon’s corpse out of sight on the forest floor.
“Oberon,” The guard began to step in my direction, raising his weapon to point at the mystery light—my throat.
I tried to remain calm, not wanting my glow to increase enough to raise alarm. Maintaining a steady emotional state wasn’t easy when I considered the power of a gun. If I were killedhere, would Mykie be able to save Faeryn on her own? I hoped so.
The guard’s steps were loud as they crunched closer, branches snapping repeatedly. He would have been doomed if our situations were reversed, unable to be stealthy with those wide, heavy Quadmos feet.
There was a rustle of leaves as he tripped over something, looked down and stumbled back in terror. Oberon’s legs.
Before he could scream, run, or summon help, Mykie was upon him. He was ruthlessly dropped to the ground with a loud “thud”. We were the only ones alive out here now, there was no need to be quiet. The dark outline of Mykie’s shoulders rose and sank with heavy breaths, her head snapping up to look at me before she turned towards where the guards had come from. I followed, less concerned about my noisy footsteps. The entrance was straight ahead and the path was clear.
The door was surprisingly narrow, more like an emergency exit than a heavily foot-trafficked gate. A glowing glass sensor, presumably a requirement for entrance, hung on the hefty metal. Mykie shrugged her bag to the ground and pulled out a small machine I didn’t recognize. She held it to the red glass, and the light immediately died out, followed by the satisfying click of a door unlocking. This facility must not have considered that anybody would be desperate enough to traverse the forest to enter here, or they would have invested in better security. That carelessness would work in our favor.
Faeryn
Time had passed—how much, I couldn’t be certain. The lights never dimmed. The windowless, clockless room lacked any temporal context. Dia never stirred in her sleep, seemingly spared the nightmares that I was beginning to connect to my past experience in the facility. The white lighting was eerily similar. I wondered if it was a side effect of the pods. How long had I been in one? Months? Years? It was a rabbit hole I needed to abstain from falling down right now. There were more critical topics at hand.
I’d been playing mental chess all night, inventing solutions with limited resources. They had weapons, drugs, and backup. We had… the ability to heal quickly, and hospital gowns. So far, being a “demigod” wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Most devastatingly working against us: limited time. Something had to be done, and fast.
The creak of the metal door lifting signaled our breakfast’s arrival, waking Dia. She sat up promptly, alert and ready to take on a threat. A Quadmos guard, not the same from yesterday, entered with a silver tray in each lower hand, the top of his head nearly touching the upper frame of the gateway. He greeted us in a cheerful—no, mocking—manner. At least the lady withthe injections had offered us some dignity with her misplaced kindness.
“How are we doing, ladies?” He stepped up to Dia’s glass, crouching down and sliding the tray through a narrow slot at the cage’s base.
Neither of us responded.
