Damien sat back at that, clicking his tongue and rolling his eyes.
“Damien is from this plane—he’s a mage,” Amma said, hoping the explanation was enough. “Are you an earth mage?”
For the first time, the woman smiled, albeit derisively. She brought the bud of a flower out of her bag, tightly wrapped petals the color of a late evening sky. There was a scratch up Amma’s forearm she hadn’t noticed until the woman pressed the bud against it. A gooey paste squeezed out, and the woman ran a hand over the goop, hardening it with a pulse of arcana. Then she extended an arm, and from the ground a root shot upward with a twist, forming a staff that placed itself just into her hand.
It was impressive, but it told Amma very little. “So, that’s a yes to the earth mage thing?”
“Amma, this is who we’ve been looking for. One of them anyway.” Damien gestured to her vaguely, his upset still palpable. “Witch, this is Lady Ammalie, and I would advise you to answer her questions.”
Amma’s eyes widened, but the woman didn’t appear bothered. In fact, she snickered as she stood. Her muscled midsection was uncovered, a band of faded, blue cloth wrapped around her chest that crossed over her shoulders. Amma could tell from the stitching that it had been something else once but repurposed as a top. From her hips hung a long skirt, its intricate pattern hand-painted on a thick fabric. “You were summoned here just as I was once, so you tell me what I am.” She extended a hand, and her firm, callused grip pulled Amma right up onto her feet.
She wavered a moment. “I don’t know if I was actually summoned—”
“Yes, you do. Come on, I’ll take you where you want to be.”
Damien was quick to get to his feet too, but the witch swung her staff and connected with his chest. “No touching.”
He grunted, and Amma held her breath, but he only glared at the woman he’d called a witch. Readjusting Amma’s crossbow over his own shoulder, he straightened and rubbed the spot she struck. “No touching,” he mocked under his breath.
The big cat rolled up onto her massive paws too, following silently at the stranger’s side. Amma hesitated, but Damien gestured for her to go ahead, leaving space to walk further behind, and Kaz, still in his imp form, scurried up Damien’s back to ride on his uninjured shoulder.
Amma caught up to the woman. “Hey, hello, sorry about all this, but I really don’t know ifsummonedis the word for how we got here. I wastoldabout you guys by a vampire who said she felt some old magic inside me, which I’m also not sure is completely accurate, but sometimes doors unlock around me, and I might be able to talk to trees, so I wanted to see if you could help me figure out how to, well, not pass out like I did back there.”
The woman quirked a brow at her. “Told, brought, followed your instinct—it’s all the same. This place showed itself to you, and you’re here.” There was a tree that the woman tapped her staff against, and Amma felt the forest around her wobble.
“The elves do that,” she said in a hushed whisper, remembering how they had quickly stepped through the Gloomweald.
“And they learned it from us.”
“Who’d you learn it from?”
Another tap, another wobble. “Now, that’s a good question.” The woman used her staff to push aside the torso-sized leaves that hung before them and revealed a stone structure that rose up out of the earth. Two columns of stacked blocks, it stood twice Amma’s height, and at their top was suspended a single, long piece of stone. The structure was draped in vines, thick moss in patches at its base and corners, just showing symbols carved all along it that had been worn away over many years, the language indecipherable.
“Whoever built this,” said the woman, taking just a moment to glance up at it before passing underneath. “But then the gods threw a tantrum, and this place was razed to the ground. Though it hardly matters, someone did it before them too, and someone will long after we’re gone.”
Through the archway, a clearing was laid out, the forest floor replaced with massive slabs of stone, cracked long ago so that moss grew between them. Columns had once existed here and there, but were broken and crumbling, taken back by the earth and serving as planters and pools of water in which brightly-colored birds bathed. A furry creature with long arms and a curling tail skittered down from the remnants of a wall and came to a stop just before them, looking up. The size of a squirrel, it had a nearly human face surrounded by a halo of ruddy fur, and when it pulled back its lips in a smile, it revealed long fangs like something infernal.
The woman invited it closer, and it scurried up her arm to land on her shoulder, wrapping itself around her neck and peering from behind her braids to watch the rest of them with eyes that didn’t blink. From Damien’s shoulder, Kaz leaned toward it, and then in a puff of red smoke, he looked identical save for his jutting underbite.
“Oh, good, you found her!”
Amma hadn’t seen her appear, but an aged woman was standing amongst the columns then. She carried a similar staff, but was actually using it to hold herself up as she took a hobbling step toward them. Greying hair was bundled into long coils atop her bent head, and she was grinning so that the lines all over her face deepened.
“I don’t know what help she’ll be,” said their host, taking a long, put-upon breath and scratching under the chin of the monkey on her shoulder. She gestured for Amma to come closer. “She did bring a problem with her though.”
The older woman chuckled, meeting the two of them in the center of the ruins. “The trees said she’dbringhelp, Kalani, not that she’d necessarily be it.”
Amma’s stomach twisted at that, but the distraction of a small girl sprinting down the notches of one of the trees stole her attention. Dressed in clothing Amma would have expected to see back in Faebarrow but barefoot, she moved like an animal, jumping from branch to hollow until she was on the ground. Just behind her, a pair of older girls walked out of the leafy forest, identical and lanky with the pointed ears of elves. None of them spoke, but they looked at one another and waited. Amma’s stomach twisted again. “The trees told you about me?”
“Well, they said someone would come who needed us as much as we would need them.” The elder woman leaned fully on her staff, flowers sprouting off of it, and when Amma looked closer, they were sprouting off of the woman too. “We’re to provide you with some assistance, and in turn, you will give us something too.” Her gauzy eyes shifted to where Damien stood, leaning against the arch at a safe enough distance to avoid another thwack of the staff.
“Oh, I didn’t bring him here to give away,” Amma said quickly.
“We don’t want him,” the woman called Kalani scoffed.
“Well, good, because you can’t have him.” Amma had been louder then, catching Kalani’s eye, and the woman was taken aback only a moment, her surprised turning into delighted approval.
“Only to borrow.” The old woman chuckled. “Come on, let’s make a bargain, shall we?”
