As I watched, however, the body didn’t fall to the ground as it should have. It quivered for a second, for long enough that I wondered if Silas was wrong, and I’d missed the target completely.
A beat later, the entire beast snapped into a cloud of smoke. Vanished completely, leaving behind nothing but a plume of black ash.
“What in the world?” I started to run forward to inspect the area where the beast had been shot. “Silas, what was that?”
“Alessia, wait. Stop—I need to explain.”
I slowed at the apology present again in his voice. “Explain what?”
“The beast wasn’t technically real. I mean, itwasreal, but it wasn’t a threat.”
“What are you saying?”
“The Rangers use these types of dummies for training practices. They’re called Smoke Stacks: creatures that feel real, act real, have a real footprint on the world—both magical and otherwise, but they’re really made solely of smoke.”
“I could feel it,” I argued. “There was a darkness to it.”
“I know. The Rangers know that too. That’s why they’ve created these illusions. They’re more than illusions. Everything about them is real until they’re not.”
“But… why?”
“You needed to believe that you were actually hunting,” Silas said. “If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have gotten your adrenaline running, you wouldn’t have accessed your magic.”
“Why not actually hunt something real?”
“You were very vocal about not wanting to kill something. I would never force you to do something like that, Alessia. I understand you want to learn your magic, but I knew of another way—a safer way—that I hoped could achieve the same result. I had to lie to you to a certain degree, but I hope you understand why.”
“Of course. I guess, thank you?” I paused. “So there’s nothing ominous in The Forest tonight? The beast you were talking about, that was nothing more than a Smoke Stack?”
“There’s no beast, no.” Silas paused, then shook his head. “But I don’t have anything to do with the voices, I swear. Do you still hear them?”
“To be clear, that was not a Ranger training trick?”
“No.”
“I don’t hear them anymore,” I said. “They faded away like the ley lines.”
