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Water Tank Escape
I woke up with a jerk, arms and legs propelling me backwards in an instinctual scramble. My brain finally caught up with my body. I forced a stop. Forced a breath. Began thinking.
Ground myself, I remembered. I’ve got to ground myself.
Sight, sound, smell, touch, taste.
The sky was purple. The trees were rust-red. The grass was neon green.
Things whispered around me, trading wild secrets with each other, but I understood none of it.
The smell of damp moss hung in the air, mixing itself with wet clay and heavy minerals. Petrichor was the resulting stench, hanging in the nose and solidifying in the mouth to create a thick paste along the tongue.
Tall grass surrounded me. Thick blades rested under my fingertips, soft and plush. It felt akin to down feathers, despite the sheer thickness of it covering the forest floor.
Unfortunately, none of these sensations matched up with anywhere on our world. Not this combination. Not this intensity. I was left with precious few conclusions, but the purple sky was the main clincher. I had been dropped in Koanni.
I was reasonably sure of it, this time.
Taking a deep breath, I did my best to calm my nerves. It wasn’t working. I was so tightly wound I barely noticed someone behind me. Something small and sharp pricked my shoulder and a red blade pressed itself against my neck. Numbness began to spread along my arm and back, resulting in a dead arm and side.
"Don't worry about moving," said a recognizable voice. "I've pricked you with a poisoned thorn. You'll be dead in a minute unless you tell me what you're doing here and how you were able to drop out of the sky."
Wolf. I was being threatened by Wolf.
My tongue felt clumsily heavy, but workable.
"Jules," I said thickly. "Grace. Cronoth, Lyra, Layla. Uhm..." My tongue tripped over the words, jumbling them into useless mumbling noises as the rest of the names flickered through my memory. "Glidon. Sparrow?"
He was silent.
"Sting!" I blurted, not sure who else was in this ridiculously-sized family. A soft giggle drifted over me, and suddenly the rest of the names appeared in my mind with faces to match. "Cryton, Gidel, Miles, Raven, Alex, Keysa, Caine—"
"Alright," the voice gruffly countered. "I get it."
A patch of wild brown hair came into view as Wolf moved around to face me, red sword still pointed at my throat. A small smile broke over his face, the motion veiling the age and feral energy I sensed from him.
"So you're the ghost I sensed way back when, huh?" He asked, raising an eyebrow. "Have to say, I never thought it would have been you."
"I told you he was coming, darling Wolf." Another familiar voice, and this one I knew without having to see her. I had hoped not to run into her quite so soon.
"Relax, Jules." Yet another voice I knew. It belonged to a very old friend of mine. One blacksmith by the name of Jake, the very same blacksmith responsible for the Koanni weapons. "First we have to find out why he's here."
"I already told you both," she said with a dismissive laugh. "And I'm never wrong.”
"Hey!" I interjected, drawing silence from the others. "Not that I’m not...loving this moment of This Is Your Life, but...any chance I could get the antidote now?" The numbness had spread across my entire back and was now spreading down through my abdomen.
Wolf smiled again. "Certainly." He looked up. "Jules?"
“Are you sure? We could play with him a little longer.”
The numbness spread further. My chest and lungs went numb. I slumped backwards, wildly gasping for air.
“Jules.”
"Oh, very well."
My nerves came back with a jolt, making me flinch at the sudden rush of sensation. Groaning, I managed to get my feet under me and stand, turning and stepping back to get a better look at them all. Jules was lowering her hand, flashing me a smirk as she placed it gently on her cocked hip.
“I see you found my note,” I said, watching her face for any murderous intentions. Taking off with her sword after kicking her butt would have been enough reason for some dangerous retaliation, so I tried to offset her wrath by leaving her a note. I told her where and when she’d be able to find the crystal blade, then texted myself with an intended timeline. The end result was Jules retrieving her sword from a bunker in Germany about an hour after I stole it.
Clones. Annoying at times, it was true, but useful for situations like this.
"I still say we could have played with him," she said to Wolf with a one-shouldered shrug, ignoring me. "Terrans are so funny when they think they're about to die."
"So are you," Wolf shot back.
Her smile disappeared, her eyes flashing dangerously. But other than making faces, Jules did nothing to retaliate. It was a rare thing to watch Jules resist being snarky. Have to say I enjoyed her rueful look just a little bit.
I glanced between Wolf and Jules before venturing to talk again. "So...that whole ‘poisonous thorn’ threat was just a bold-faced lie."
Wolf flashed me a mischievous, pointy-toothed grin. "Maybe."
In the Trickster’s handbook, ‘maybe’ actually means ‘yes but I’m not going to admit it.’ I gave a theatrical sigh as I muttered, "I hate this family.”
"Get used to it," Jake said, the blacksmith standing rigidly to one side. “This is what they do.”
I turned to face him, not quite sure why he wasn't trying to slug me in the face right about now.
His brown mess of hair still had a pair of copper-framed goggles nesting in them, scratched-up face still as square and as un-amused at the prospect of looking at me. His muddy eyes glittered with unspoken anger, frustrated energy surrounding him like a mob of angry bees. His resentment at my existence echoed into his body, appearing in a set of crossed arms, puffed chest, clenched jaw and a wide stance.
I suppose I couldn’t blame him for hating me. The last time we met, I sort of threatened to drag his ward into the fray of a brewing marwolaeth scuffle, and he responded by kicking me out of his smithy.
Large sooty boot-prints are surprisingly hard to clean.
But he made no move towards me, violent or otherwise. I was somewhat grateful, but curious as to why. I was also curious as to why he was in Koanni, since he was a human known for hating the use of magic and all things alien.
"Jake," I said, in an attempt at a greeting. "You look good for someone that's maintained a steady diet of paranoia and hatred."
He glowered.
Alright, so we weren't exactly best friends.
"Listen," he said, stepping up to me. His knuckles were white from how hard he was restraining his fists from meeting my face. "The only reason I'm not trying to rearrange your teeth right now is because there's something bigger than our feud going on. Since you're here, I can only assume you're going to do something responsible for a change and help us win this war."
"That's assuming a bit much, don't you think?" I said, shrugging off his dramatics. "After all, I'm only here to finish the scavenger hunt Wolf sent me on."
“I’ll tell you my secrets if you tell me yours,” Wolf responded, crossing his arms. “How did you get here?”
I opened my mouth to answer, then closed it again. “The bow,” I muttered, looking around. “Where’s the bow?”
“The bow?” Wolf asked, brown eyes flicking towards Jake. “The Bismuth bow?”
I grunted an affirmation, searching the grass for her. My hand brushed up against smooth wood, the bow easily pulled free from the grass. As soon as the grip caught the purple light she flared and half blinded me. Again. I was really beginning to hate this game of hers.
When the gritty rainbow glare finally dimmed, the full image of Lyra stood in between us, eyes trained on Wolf. Her image was the same as the one she had shown me after dragging me into her contained reality.
“I brought him here,” she said, her voice now deepened into a mature authority. “He wasn’t responding rationally.”
“Yeah...I don’t generally respond ‘rationally’ to creepy ghost children that speak in riddles.” I said.
Her head slowly turned, eyes shifting to pitch-black as she stared. “You would prefer I continue my tricks?” Her high, adolescent voice returned as she smiled gleefully and her head continued turning, her neck became a translucent screw. “I can keep doing tricks. You wanna see? You wanna!?”
“Bismuth!” Wolf thundered. “You dishonor a great Lady. Stop it now!”
With a snap, Lyra righted her form. She gave a slight mocking bow. “Apologies, Lord,” she sneered, adult voice returning. “I did not realize you had such a weak stomach.”
“Did you pop out just to scare us,” Jules asked with a disinterested sigh, arms crossed and voice flat with boredom, “or did you actually have something to say?”
“I brought the thief here,” Lyra repeated, refusing to look at Jules. “He can help us win the war. And he will. Someone he loves is caught between the lines. He has no choice but to fight.”
Wolf held a hand up. “Enough,” he stated. “I didn’t ask for a report. The only thing I need from you is why you forced him here.”
“He can help win the war,” Lyra repeated. “We need him.”
Wolf nodded, rubbing at the bridge of his nose as he thought. “Fine,” he eventually said. “Get back in your bottle. We’ll take it from here.”
She stared at him, refusing to move.
His brown eyes flashed dangerously. “Get. Back. In the bow.”
Her form evaporated with a lingering, unsettling giggle as her wisps drifted away.
Wolf gently shook his head and looked towards Jake. The blacksmith gave a slight shiver. “Don’t look at me,” he said. “She came out of the forge that way.”
I broke the moment of thick tension, saying, “anyway. You were about to tell me a secret?”
My voice seemed to break Wolf from a bout of deep concentration. His feral brown eyes stared at me for an uncomfortably long time before finally switching to Jules. The witch was intensely focused on her nails, her attention drawn away after Wolf gave an obnoxiously loud cough. She glanced up at him disinterestedly, looked around the forest, and shook her head. “No one’s coming, darlings.” She waved a dismissive hand. “Go on and tell him your expositious tale.”
Turning back to me, he shifted his weight and crossed his arms. “One more question, then. What’s a war to a magical thief other than scam central?”
“Nothing, really,” I responded with a slight shrug. “But I’m more than a thief.” The comment drew a snort from Jake. I ignored him. “It’s not actually the war I’m interested in. It’s the ones that will be drawn into it. The ones it puts at risk.”
“Suddenly so protective,” Jake commented. “Can you really be in love again after last time?”
There was a seething note in the last few words that drew a glare from me. “I don’t love anyone. Love gets you trapped. Love gets you killed. I have someone I have to protect, same as you. If she gets drawn into this war and dies, I’ll never have my freedom returned.” I looked back to Wolf. “That’s why I’m interested.”
Wolf seemed to accept this. He nodded. "Alright, then. The rest of the story. I’d better make it a good one."
He casually drew his sword, the blood-red stone glinting in the blue moonlight. “One has to wonder where to start,” he mused. “It’s such a long tale.”
With blinding speed, Wolf charged me. Pain set in after I looked down. After I realized he ran me through. “Better yet,” Wolf said with a chilling calm, “one of you had better tell Suma to do her own dirty work. I don’t make deals with clones.”
With a sharp twist of his blade and a surge of electric magic, my body burst into mist.