I don’t know why, don’t know where, but somewhere down to my very marrow I know my witch is in trouble.
Unlike what I felt earlier, this urgency is tinged with fear, with danger, with a cry for help. It burns any thought of the office I just left or the responsibilities waiting for me to ash.
By the time I recover enough to have my wits about me again, I’m already moving.
Through a portal, then another, one more, until I’m standing at the threshold of the Veil. Hand laid to stone, I close my eyes and beseech the Goddess.
“Take me to her.”
13
Seren
I wish this hunt had brought me anywhere but back to Faerie.
The rolling hills of the Middle. The sharp, craggy peaks of the demon realm. Hell, even a lonely glacier somewhere deep in the frost realm would be preferable.
Anything to get me out of this cursed forest.
I’ve been picking my way through it for hours, head ducked low and invisibility spell tucked tightly around me as I venture deeper and deeper into the fae queen’s territory. I’ve paused a dozen times to reconnect with the pulse of magick that brought me here, to check and double-check that I’m not imagining the way in fans out inside of me, in front of me, dragging me forward.
The damn thing hasn’t wavered once.
Like I’m a fish on a line, the pull’s only gotten stronger the further I go. And every time I check, hoping like hell it will steer me back toward the Veil, it tugs me forward.
At least I haven’t run into any fae.
But… maybe that’s not as fortunate as I want to believe it is.
Maybe they know something about this cursed track of woods that I don’t, or maybe their magick and their tie to this realm is strong enough to sense how bad it really is.
I’m fully human, and evenIcan sense it.
The magick here is wrong.
Thick and cloying, it coats the trees, the rocks, the ground beneath my feet, the air I breathe into my lungs, in a thick skin of rancid rot.
The woods around me are dead. Not a single speck of green, not one leaf or blade of grass, nothing but gnarled, blackened wood covered in colorless lichen and bulbous mushrooms in shades of gray and brown and black. Skeletal limbs reach phantom fingers toward the burnt sky, bony sentinels watching me pass.
Silence hangs between the trees, just as heavy as the magick. Still, tense, waiting, like it could shatter at any moment.
Or maybe that’s just me projecting my own anxiety.
It’s hard not to be anxious in a forest filled with death.
And yet, when I pause to catch my breath, down a swig of water from the canteen in my pack, and take a closer look, I find signs of life.
The leaves on the trees—just as blackened as the trunks and branches—still seem to be growing. When I lay my hand on the rough bark, it pulses gently, an echo of its stubborn determination to survive in this hellscape.
A shiver runs down my spine.
It’s worse, I think, that this forest is alive.
Dead I could deal with. Living death? Not so much.
Putting the canteen away, I close my eyes and find the pulse. Stronger now, a flashing beacon shouting me on, pushing me forward.
I’m getting close.
