Riven Wight

A Land of Wonder and Nightmare

Drust sneered at Ghent’s joking inquiry, while Elayra's grip tightened on her water skin.
“You think no one’s thought of that, boy?” Drust spat as Elayra took a swig of her water. “They’re still bound by their rules. Spiritayians can only do so much. Go only so far to directly alter events of our physical realm. She is out of even their abilities.”
When Ghent finished, Drust snarled.
“I didn’t. Make. The. Deal!” he repeated to Ghent as Elayra’s glower turned to the boy.
“Is everything a joke to you?” she hissed, struggling to not shout at him. Her voice overlapped with Drust’s. “Selling something that could save us from certain death, treating the daejinn like—”
“Enough,” Drust growled, interrupting her. He closed his eyes for a moment.
Elayra’s glare shifted to him, then to the fire.
“Their price varies. But yes. It could be as simple as an herb, or extreme as a soul. Or worse.” He sighed deeply, resigning himself to telling the tale Elayra had wanted. “Ellheim made the deal for the Curative.” He glanced toward Elayra.
Her gaze lifted back to him in surprise.
“We traveled with a group of Omitten.” He looked back to the fire. “Ellheim’s son, Alden, made a deal with the strongest of the daejinn. He tried exactly what you suggested. But the daejinn couldn’t. Once called, a request must be made. The deal he made instead resulted in him being mortally wounded.”
Elayra looked away and bit her lower lip, swallowing back a guilty lump. If not for her, Alden would have never summoned the beast in the first place.
“Ellheim traded his freedom for the Curative to save Alden.”
Elayra inhaled. “He became the Cat’s pet?”
Drust gave a stiff, jerky nod. “Some fates are worse than death. Becoming a daejinn’s pet among them,” he explained in an attempt at warding off a potential question from Ghent. “Alden wanted nothing to do with the cause of Ellheim’s decision. No reminders. He gave the Curative to me. We left camp before he returned.”
“You… never told me that,” Elayra’s soft voice trembled slightly. “I knew Alden had lived, but…”
“I saw no need,” he answered flatly. “You learned what was necessary from your mistakes. But you,” he looked to Ghent, “have much to learn. We’ll forgo combat training tonight.” He shifted and rose to his knees to dig into his pack. “But it’s best you familiarize yourself with a few focus words and your weapon.”
“His weapon?” Elayra eyed him, relieved for the change in topic. Though, not too relieved. The thought of Ghent having any kind of bladed item made her fear for the safety of everyone in Wonderland. Not to mention her sanity.
“A gift. From Hatter.” When he removed his hand, he held not a weapon, but a small leather-bound book.
He tossed it to Ghent, careful to avoid the flames. Though it lacked a title, faded gilded swirls decorated the corners of its worn brown cover.
“Your father’s notes. From when he first learned magic. Come to me if you have questions. I’ll do my best to answer.” He looked back to his pack, hesitating. With a heavy sigh, he reached back inside.
This time, he had to dig down deep. The pack swallowed his arm up to his shoulder.
Overtaken by curiosity, Elayra sat up straighter, ignoring the twinge it sent down her back. A hand subconsciously rested on the hilt of her saber, a gift of its own from her mother.
This time, Drust had to stand to remove the item from his pack. Nearly six feet long, a staff with a sheathed blade at either end emerged. Made to resemble a light ebony wood, a slanted crease had been embedded into the short shaft, creating the illusion of two slivers melded together.
“Hatter cast a linking enchantment on it. It should respond easily to you. Once it gets to know you.” He pulled one of the sheathes from a blade.
Elayra gawked at it. Jealousy shimmering in her eyes, she watched it as Drust turned it, examining the weapon with a trained eye.
The black blade glinted in the firelight, the thickly serrated edges lined in shimmering blue. A slit speared down its center, creating a pair of deadly-sharp prongs at the top. What looked like an oval sapphire glittered at the base of the blade just above where it connected to the shaft.
Apparently satisfied with it, he replaced its sheath.
“The blades can be separated by force of will.” He gripped the shaft in both hands and tilted it so the crease in the metallic wood shone in the firelight. “With all enchanted weapons, you’ll need to gain its respect.”
He stepped toward Ghent. His expression hardened, his gaze boring down on Ghent.
“Remember, boy,” he began, a stern edge in his voice as he held the weapon out to Ghent. “This is a tool. Not a toy. It has the power to defend, and to kill. It cares not whose blood it tastes. Treat it with care, and it will be good to you. Treat it poorly, and it will turn on you.”
This is not a good idea, Elayra thought, shifting uncomfortably.
All the same, she could not stop eyeing the weapon, her fingers itching to hold it, to feel its weight, its power. As grateful as she was for her own weapons, his was in a league all its own.
She tried to mask her envy in another long swig from her water skin.

A Land of Wonder and Nightmare

Elayra sighed heavily. She held the bottle up carefully, delicately, as if afraid even looking at it too hard would shatter it.
“King’s Curative. Supposedly, the only thing it can’t cure is death. Takes a lot of magic to make.” She looked to Drust. “Don’t you think we should save it?”
“You were knocked out, girl. You may have a concussion.” He glanced to Ghent and took the bundle of jerky the boy had returned. “We can't risk its side effects.”
“I feel fine… Mostly fine,” she amended grudgingly, sure the first lie would not go well. “It'd be a waste.”
Drust snorted as he tossed the bundle into the depths of his still open pack. It disappeared inside, devoured by the enchanted fabric.
“Then stand.” The man rose swiftly to his feet, his expression hard.
Elayra blinked up at him. Craning her neck to keep an eye on his face nearly made her dizzy and her neck ache. She had expected some sort of rejection, but the demand to stand was not a part of it. She glanced to his katana, thankful he had not grabbed it. But that meant little.
Heart pounding a bit faster, Elayra carefully set her water skin and the King’s Curative aside. Keeping a wary eye on him, she forced her aching legs to move as quickly as they would let her.
She gasped when the movement made the throb in her head worsen and spread. Her world spun and she nearly lost her balance, the clearing going momentarily fuzzy around the edges.
Drust reached out to steady her with a firm, but gentle—for him, at least—hand. He watched her sit back down, the girl scowling.
“Two drops.” This time, the order sounded less severe. He returned to his own indentation in the grass beside the fire.
The argument drained out of her. He had made his point. She retrieved the discarded items. Not wanting to look at either of her companions as she gave in, she focused on removing the inkwell’s dropper stopper. She put two careful drops into her water skin, then snugly restoppered it. It did not look any emptier than before.
“Daejinn,” Drust began, his attention returning to Ghent, “are Spiritayian cats. Born of the spirit realm. They have more free rein in our physical world. Compared to most other Spiritayians.”
“They… make deals," Elayra began quietly, staring down at her water skin. “The stronger ones can do about anything, but…” She took a breath. Her voice came even softer as she continued, the sounds of the fire threatening to drown it out. “Their services always come at a price.”
Her grip tightened on her water skin. She shoved the cork back into it and shook it to mix in the King’s Curative. She sighed, realizing it was barely half full.

A Land of Wonder and Nightmare

“What, boy?” Drust snapped as Ghent held up a hand. The Knight placed the katana on the ground beside him. His scowl deepened at Ghent’s first question. “I mean just that!”
“We got in, didn’t we, Featherhead?” Elayra answered through an impatient sigh, her piece of toatunt jerky finished. She rubbed the back of her neck, the dull ache there finally beginning to turn into a headache.
Drust eyed her for a moment.
She glanced to him, before looking back to Ghent. She decided to elaborate both for the boy's and Drust's sake.
“Safe Zones keep the spirits and the emotions out, but these places still let in anything living. And some Spiritayians, like the tichari. Nothing living’s stupid enough to travel Hollow Forest at night, but her beasts don’t make the habit of putting brains before orders.”
She paused long enough to reach into her backpack again. This time, she retrieved a water skin.
“It’s unlikely they'd find us,” she continued. “The tichari steer clear of them, and they can’t see our fire. This place won’t disperse the smoke above the trees,” she jerked her head upward, then winced as the motion angered her budding headache. The light of the fire scarcely reached the treetops. Darkness blanketed the thick canopy stretching unnaturally above them, “and nothing outside the clearing can see the light. But…”
“Be prepared for anything,” Drust put in.
“And always expect the worst,” she finished. “Better to be safe than dead, don’t you think, Featherhead?”
She wiggled the cork of her water skin out with a satisfying pop.
“Wait, girl,” Drust demanded as she raised the water skin to her lips.
She could not stop a glare at her guardian. “Yours has the same water as mine,” she complained as the man reached into his pack again. “There's nothing —”
His sharp stare brought her words up short. He pulled a small, worn leather pouch from the dark depths of his pack, then tossed it to Elayra.
The girl caught it in her free hand. With a confused, suspicious glance to Drust, she sat her water skin upright in her lap and pulled the pouch's drawstring open. She removed a bottle reminiscent of a glass inkwell. Only instead of ink, a substance that looked like someone had dumped glitter into strawberry milk swirled around inside. It filled only a small bit of the inkwell.
Elayra blinked at the bottle in surprise. “Where’d you get this?” She unscrewed its dropper stopper and sniffed at the opening. It smelled a tangy mix of pine, grapefruit, and brine.
“A daejinn.”
Elayra stared at him with open-mouthed horror. “You called a daejinn? When—”
“Enough!” he growled with firm finality that shut down any further questions from her. He took a deep breath. “I'm not the one who called it.” He nodded to her water skin, the motion half intentional, half twitch. “Two drops.”
She nodded. Though she itched to get answers, the fear of further aggravating him won out. She drew some of the liquid into the stopper.
Drust sat beside his katana, closed his eyes, and took a few more deep breaths.

My swimming instructors a dragon. [Mortim / Siaya Dragalorn]

Anora’s tendrils of mist wrapped around the creature, binding it in place.
“HA!” Her triumphant cry echoed louder than she had intended in the empty hallway. A grin spread over her lips; at last, she was using her powers for something more than play!
But Darsby reminded her adrenaline-enhanced excitement about what they faced. She blinked, a hand still extended toward the creature to aid in directing her powers. “We’re doing what now?”
She felt the creature move between the mist like a sixth sense, regaining her attention. Her expression sobered and she focused once more on the Blouth. In precaution, with a flash, the tendrils spread over the beast and hardened instead into a barrier, preventing it from escaping. But it did little good to keep it still. Its body rose and fell, like a croaking bellows.
She opened her mouth to yell at Darsby to shoot the darned thing already, but then put two-and-two together; the beast was calling the Alpha.
“A pack?” she interrupted. Great! Is it calling an Alpha, or its pack? She grit her teeth as Darsby went on. Confident she would sense if her barrier began to weaken, she looked around the hall, searching for a window.
Behind them at the hall's end, a window let in a slice of daylight, its light welcoming amidst the dim emergency lighting. Dustmotes flitted in and out lazily, oblivious to the threat plaguing the hospital. Before she could inform Darsby, a door creaked open.
Her attention snapped forward. She searched for the sound, more purple sparks igniting over her fingers in preparation to fight or defend. But nothing could have prepared her for the monstrosity that clambered its way into the main hall.
Anora had seen plenty of horror films, and even a few decently-done sci-fi ones. But those paled in comparison to the very real monster standing before her. If she did not know better, she would have said it had crawled straight from one of her lucid nightmares. Barely recognizable, only the shreds of the thing’s uniform survived to identify the decapitated female cop.
Horror froze Anora in place. The light of her barrier flickered. Seeing grotesque figures in her nightmares was one thing. As real as they seemed, she would always wake up, and could usually ultimately pick out the difference between them and reality. But seeing them in person, facing them in her waking world, was something else entirely.
The moment her gaze inadvertently settled on the blue light, her earlier mantra returned to the forefront of her mind. She tried to look away, to tear herself from it before she could find out why she was not supposed to look at it, but it was already too late. She heard Darsby’s warning, but it reached her in a jumbled, far-away mush, like it belonged somewhere outside her life, outside of time, her thoughts and will slipping from her.
She stared numbly at the creature. Her arm lowered without her conscious command. The glow in her violet eyes extinguished with her barrier, the magic fizzling from existence with a burst of purple and gold sparks.
The earsplitting bang of gunshots broke whatever spell the light held over her. The sound still echoing painfully in her ears, she wrenched her gaze from the light. She scrunched her eyes shut and shook her head to dispel the lingering sensations of whatever the creature had done to her.
She heard her name. It took her a moment to realize Darsby had stopped firing. She looked to him as he gave her orders, her heart pounding in her throat.
Taking a deep breath, she steeled herself as well as she could. Returning fully to her senses and the situation at hand, she eyed him for scarcely a second.
Despite his cool, casual demeanor, his shaking hand gave him away. Either he, too, felt fear, or his injuries were catching up to him. Magic bullets or no magic bullets, every body had its limits. For all she knew, he had already overstepped his.
She hesitated, not wanting to leave him, worried he would collapse. Nonetheless, she took a breath and nodded.
“Y-You’d better be. There’s a window at the end of the hall.” Not waiting for a response, she turned and jogged toward the window. “But my car’s impounded!” she called behind her. “We’ll have find—!”
Gunshots echoed through the hall again, cutting her off and making her flinch. Gritting her teeth, she skid to a stop a yard from the window. Keeping a hand over one ear to protect at least some of her hearing, she inhaled and summoned a crackling ball of energy. She held her hand in front of her as the magic formed over her clenched fist, waiting for Anora to release it.
She glanced back, her eyes carefully on the floor to avoid being sucked back into the Alpha’s light. She looked just in time to see the parts of the Alpha’s body slide over the tiles slickened with pus-colored slime.
“Now!”
The ball of energy shot from Anora’s fist to the window. The thick glass shattered, sending a spray of glittering shards into the afternoon sunlight. With a last glance behind her to be sure Darsby held true to his word of following, she raced the last couple feet to the window. She hastily shrugged from her backpack, tossed it out the window ahead of her, and jumped outside after it as fast as she could.
She hissed and grit her teeth when she misjudged the space, and a shard still sticking into the frame sliced into her arm. But she paid it little mind. She had bigger things to worry about. She stumbled when she landed on a patch of grass beside a sidewalk, thankful the ER was on the first floor.
Glass crunching beneath her boots, she spun back around to face the window. She stepped backward, watching for Darsby to hop out the window behind her, ready to leap back in and help if he was not at her heels.

A Land of Wonder and Nightmare

Elayra smirked at Ghent’s cluelessness about what he was about to put into his mouth. His willingness to try it without an answer only enhanced the effect.
“Not exactly.” She bit off another bit of her jerky, chewing slowly as she watched Ghent, wondering what his reaction to it would be. From what little she had experienced, the food on Earth was far different from what she was use to.
Her smirk turned into a mischievous grin when he finally took a bite, his reaction priceless.
Drust, uninterested in what the boy thought of the meat, returned to his knees and reached into his pack once more.
Elayra opened her mouth, all too eager to answer Ghent as he eagerly sipped at one of his strange beverages.
Drust raised his hand to silence her. He cocked his head toward Ghent, not quite looking at the boy. “It won’t kill you,” he growled. “Or poison you. So in this case, eat first. Then worry about what it is.”
Elayra looked overly dejected, her lip curling in a mock pout at being denied the pleasure of informing the boy.
Drust turned back to his pack. “We’ll take watch tonight in shifts. Since I’ve gotten the most sleep,” he added with a glower, “I’ll take first watch. Ghent,” he glanced to the boy, “second, and you,” he looked to Elayra, “third.”
Elayra shifted uncomfortably. She hated the idea of leaving a watch shift to Ghent. Either they would all be eaten in their sleep, or be woken at every rustle.
“Since it’s his first time,” she began slowly, trying—but failing—to keep her distaste from her voice, “maybe he should take a shift with one of us?”
Drust paused, his katana half way out of his pack. He considered her for a moment, then shook his head. He looked over his shoulder to Ghent as he fully removed his sheathed sword, its length greater than the average katana.
“It’s a simple task. Stay awake,” he began laconically. As he spoke, he placed his katana on the ground beside him, then reached for the pile of wood nearby. “Keep the fire fed.” He tossed the log with into the flames. The fire flared up in a burst of thankful sparks. “Wake us if anything enters the clearing. You’ll know if anything living tries to get in. The Safe Zone’s walls will shift. Think you can handle that, boy?”

A Land of Wonder and Nightmare

Elayra’s grip tightened on her saber in the silence that followed, surprised at Ghent’s relative lack of physical reaction. Drust waited, his fingers curling and uncurling with impatience.
Elayra glanced between the guys, the man towering over Ghent simply from kneeling. Even from across the fire, she could see the defiance twisting Ghent’s face, could practically hear his arguments against Drust’s demands.
The Knight’s eyes narrowed in warning at the unvoiced thoughts displaying on Ghent’s face. His neck gave a half-suppressed twitch.
Elayra’s gaze bore hard into the boy, silently demanding he hold his tongue. Ghent was still a new variable, new stressor for Drust to acclimate to, and vice versa. Which was asking a lot under even the best of circumstances. Even the wrong tone could further aggravate the man’s Curse-amplified anger, be it truly at Ghent, himself, or both.
To her relief—and shock—Ghent managed to calm himself down enough to try talking sense. Even if his words were strained and agitated.
“To think I was worried you’d figure out how to listen,” Drust growled, returning slowly to a sitting position. He moved stiffly, forcing himself into the less threatening cross-legged pose. “I said most of, boy. Not all. The value of keeping some of that isn’t lost on me. And as I said. White Knights don’t need to eat as much. Take what you need.” He nodded to the bundle. “I’ll store the rest.” He jerked his head toward his pack.
Slowly, Elayra mimicked Drust. She reluctantly unwrapped her hand from her saber. She adjusted its length behind her as she returned to her spot on the grass.
“Toatunt jerky.” She nodded to the bundle waiting for Ghent to pull off its twine. She picked up the last remaining bit of the thicker chunk she had started on. In some areas, the speckles of orange rose a bit higher than the vivid red, creating small, wart-like humps. “You won’t need much. It’s more filling than it looks.”

A Land of Wonder and Nightmare

Elayra snorted at his answer to the question she had intended to be rhetorical. “What a shame, you actually have to work to get it,” she mocked, her voice thick with sarcasm. She tore off another bit of her jerky with her teeth as Ghent neared to retrieve his backpack. She scowled at his nickname for her. “Have fun lugging that around, Featherhead,” She enunciated her own nickname for him slowly.
Drust watched Ghent in silence, the boy’s reassurance doing nothing to wipe the doubt from his expression. The man crossed his arms over his chest as Ghent began pulling his food out of his backpack.
Even Elayra could not help but watch, wondering what a ‘soda’ was. She leaned over, trying to get a better look beyond the flames between them. The packaging of his so-called provisions glistened as the firelight flickered over it, casting them in half shadows. The pictures on each one was stunning, the text on the like packaging too perfect, each exactly like the next.
Soon, a feast of junk surrounded Ghent, Drust’s expression falling with each item the boy removed. He glanced to the backpack, its bulk now mostly deflated.
Elayra’s brows furrowed. “Is that… cake?” she asked, eyeing the smushed white and brown of the Zebra Cakes in their strange clear bag.
It had been ages since she had seen cake. At least, any that looked edible. Even when compared to the smeared frosting and bits of crumbling yellow cake.
“It’s all sweets,” Drust growled with a twitch. He bent his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Sweets. Candies.” His gaze turned to Ghent, boring into the boy. “None of that will sustain you! Have you no sense of survival? Of basic needs?”
Have you not met him? Despite the thought, Elayra slowly rose to her knees, ever conscious of the weight of her saber shifting at her belt. Every muscle groaned in protest as she silently pleaded for the Knight to keep it under control.
“Drust,” she tried to soothe. She rested her left hand on the scabbard of her sword, still partially against the ground, resisting the urge to reach for the hilt with the other. “It’s fine.” She struggled to keep her own irritation from her voice at the news Ghent had brought nothing of real sustenance. “He can have—”
Drust raised a hand toward her in gesture for her to be silent. Elayra instinctively flinched away and gripped her sword's handle, straining to get a better look at his eyes. The flickering of the fire made it difficult to judge the pulsing of the dark lines on his face from her angle.
Drust took a deep, growling breath and closed his eyes. “Save your rations, girl.” With quick, heated movements, he rose to his knees, turned to his pack, and opened his eyes.
Now facing her, Elayra breathed a tiny sigh of relief; though his irate expression could have curdled milk, the Curse had not won out. Yet.
She cast Ghent a glare, resenting him for how easily he created a potential trigger. All he had had to do was unpack.
Drust reached one handed into the main pouch of his pack and withdrew a bundle much like the one housing Elayra’s jerky. He turned and tossed the bundle toward Ghent, the action more aggressive than necessary. It thunked down amidst Ghent’s pile of junk.
“I don’t need as much as you,” he growled, his words clipped. “Dispose of most of that,” he nodded scornfully to the pile of sweets. “It’s deadweight.”

A Land of Wonder and Nightmare

Elayra smirked in satisfaction from beneath her tangled mass of hair at Ghent’s reaction to her threat. If Drust noticed, he gave no indication.
Drust’s gaze shifted from the flames only when Ghent leaned forward in interest, flicking to the boy for only a moment.
“I bet you guys had some pretty cool adventures,”
Drust’s lips twitched again in something somewhere between a smile and grimace, as if his mouth had forgotten how to truly smile. “Your father was a great man. But he always had a knack for finding trouble.” Amusement dusted his otherwise stiff words, his gaze growing distant in silent reminiscence.
The Knight blinked, drawing himself back to the present when Ghent broke the silence. He nodded in a poor attempt at encouraging the boy’s next questions.
Whatever either of them had expected to be those two questions, what left Ghent’s mouth was not it.
Drust looked fully to Ghent with a disbelieving scowl and twitch of his neck.
Elayra groaned. “Seriously, dodo brain? That’s what you want to know?”
“Tichari aren’t pets, boy,” Drust snapped, an extra edge in his voice. “They’re messengers of the Spiritayum. They deserve respect. Not enslavement.”
Rolling her eyes with an exasperated sigh, Elayra placed her piece of half-eaten jerky with the others. She sat the cloth on the ground beside her and sheathed her dagger. She forced herself to her knees, then reached her better arm into her pack.
Thinking of Ghent’s unusual backpack in as great detail as she could, it took her only a moment to find it. Her fingers closed around one of the cushioned straps of his pack. With more effort than she would have liked and no small amount of maneuvering, she managed to pry Ghent’s pack from hers. She let it drop to the ground beside hers, too weary to do much else after fighting it out even if she had wanted to.
She plopped heavily back into the indention she had made in the plush grass. She retrieved her jerky, glaring at Ghent. “Happy, Featherhead?”
“I trust you’ve brought provisions?” Drust asked darkly, doubtfully, eyeing the skull-patterned backpack. It looked out of place between the Wonderlanders, a modern item dropped into the center of the wrong era.

A Land of Wonder and Nightmare

You guess? Elayra thought with a snort, a loud pop from the fire drowning out the sound.
When Ghent glanced to her, she did not miss the look that flashed over his face with his thought.
With a steely expression, she drew her dagger from her boot. She pointed it in a warning denial at Ghent, its wavy blue blade glinting in the fire. Before Drust could notice, she quickly disguised the action by using the tip of the blade to aid in loosening the knot of the bundle’s twine.
Drust paused again when Ghent finished his newest round of questions, the man’s breaths forcefully deep and even.
“Vinifcium typically possess a natural prowess in combat as well as magic.” He frowned. “But I suppose there’s the possibility that gene didn’t get the chance to develop,” he added darkly with a subtle twitch.
Elayra looked up to him at his new tone, her untied bundle put on hold.
“Or it’s just gone dormant until he needs it,” she offered, scowling at the unwanted doubt that swelled in her voice. “But magic’s what we need now, anyway,” she continued quickly, trying to amend the emotional slip. “We’ve already got two fighters.”
Drust took another deliberate breath, then gave a stiff nod. “And your aging will slow. Once you’re a bit older.”
Elayra sighed, relieved he had at least changed the subject. Keeping one eye on Drust, she unwrapped the cloth, revealing a few slabs of jerky. She began gnawing on a thicker piece. In the firelight, the dried meat looked an unusually vibrant red speckled with orange.
“I’ve traveled to other worlds twice,” Drust continued, keeping pace with Ghent’s rabbiting topics. “Once with Hatter and Elayra’s mother in the White Queen's youth.” The corner of his mouth twitched fleetingly in an almost-smile.
Elayra's grip tightened on her piece of jerky at the mention of the White Queen. Her expression hard, her full interest turned to her bit of food rather than the conversation. She once more tried to tune out all but Drust's tone.
“Then again when Hatter and I surveyed the worlds. It was necessary to determine the best one to keep you two safe. There were multiple possibilities. We chose Earth for its lack of magic users. The fewer magic threats, the better.” He snorted in disgust at the plan that had backfired.

A Land of Wonder and Nightmare

Drust’s eyes followed Ghent as the boy moved to the fire. The man exhaled then stood, slower this time. Beneath Elayra’s watchful gaze, the man collected his pack and brought it closer to the campfire. He sat with his legs crossed, the trio forming a triangle.
Elayra raised her hands toward the fire, warming her fingers in the short silence. The crackle of the feasting flames filled the clearing, its snaps and pops drowning out the majority of the moans of the spirits of the woods.
At last, Ghent broke the silence with the first of his questions.
Drust’s jaw stiffened, his neck twitching slightly, while anger joined the rising warmth beginning to color Elayra’s cheeks.
“What?!” Elayra’s hissed voice echoed around them.
Before she could say more or Drust silence her, the boy quickly continued, explaining himself. She looked to Drust at the audacity of the question. The dark glare he gave her made her look hastily back to the dancing orange licks as the boy voiced a second question.
Another short silence fell before Drust answered, a sneer pulling lightly at the side of his pale lips.
“Wonderland has been Cursed for years, boy,” he began in a low growl, his eyes on the heart of the flames. “The damage is done. Our world won’t transmute back into what it was. But it’d be a start. The portals should reopen once they sense the Curse’s threat has been abolished. The only reason the portal to Earth opened now was because of spell cast before the Crimson Curse. That their spell worked speaks hope to all of them opening once more.”
Elayra suppressed a sigh at the old-to-her news. She only half listened to Drust, paying more attention to his tone than his words.
Without an imminent threat on their lives to keep adrenaline pumping, her aches and pains slowly began to fully demand her attention. Tiredness settled in, and her stomach grumbled, reminding her of how long it had been since she had last eaten.
“As for Wonderland’s magic,” Drust continued, his gaze intent on the fire as if they would keep his mind and emotions where he needed them. “Magic is a living thing, in its own right. It’s even theorized magic is what created the worlds. And it’s different in each one.
“Earth and its magic is young. Weak. Wonderland’s is ancient and powerful. And wounded. The Forsaken and Forgen can’t comprehend it. The Omitten were all but completely cut off from it the moment the Curse touched them. But you, boy.” Drust looked away from the flames to Ghent. His eyes bore into him, the man’s face unreadable.
“You have two advantages over the Curse:” Drust raised a finger in count, “you were not touched by it when it was enacted, and,” he lifted a second finger, “vinifcium have magic in their blood.” He returned his hand to his lap. “Wonderland’s magic will answer your call. But a wounded animal won’t come wholeheartedly to a wavering stranger. You must gain its trust and respect. It will get used to you the more you grow accustomed to it. As I’ve said before, magic is equal parts servant, friend, and master. But it’s just as easily and willingly your enemy.”
“Magic doesn’t take sides,” Elayra put in, tuning in for a moment as she dug around in her pack. “Not exactly. It just takes orders. The stronger your will and conviction, the stronger the magic you can control. Being a race with magic in their blood always helps, though.” She snorted, retracting her hand. She pulled out a wad of thin fabric tied together with a cross of twine. “Might not take sides, but I swear its biased.”