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I grabbed her by the arm and wrenched her back into darkness.
As soon as we rematerialized on one of the walkways above, she pushed away from me and ran to the parapet with a gasp. Terrin was already splitting his ball of water into a dozen pieces and hurtling them all at our attackers.
Cries rang out. Men fell.
No, not men, I realized with a jolt as I studied the nearest one a few dozen feet to our left, arms braced against the water spurting him in the face.
Faeries. Fully-matured faeries with pointed ears, which meant…
“They’ve got magic, too,” Dazmine breathed.
No sooner had she said it than the faerie cranked his head toward us with widened eyes, shouted at his companions in that same almost-Sorronian language, and strung his bow again.
As soon as he shot it, the arrow furled right in front of our eyes, curling in on itself and morphing into a brown, boulder-like ball.
Which thumped to our feet and detonated on impact.
Shards of shell and gelatinous white meat flew at us, slicing our arms as we covered our faces. Dazmine gasped, as if offended.
“Did that guy really just throw an exploding coconut at us?”
“Yep. An arrow-turned-exploding coconut,” I said grimly.
The one thing about innate faerie powers? They weren’t generic like the magic that Dyonisia Reeve reaped and gave to all her human citizens. They were incredibly unique, unpredictable, and all the more dangerous because of it. And apparently, these faeries had figured out how to coat their weapons in their own magic.
“Please try not to die,” I told Dazmine, turning to face the oncoming faerie. “Rayna would never forgive me.” And neither would Terrin, I didn’t bother to add out loud, noting that he’d ran out of water to fend off our attackers.
This was up to me.
Gripping the pommel of Old Veracious, I disappeared and rematerialized behind the nearest faerie, using my elbow to knock him out cold before he could turn around and throw another exploding coconut into my face.
More shouts rang out from behind. I whirled to face the other waterlogged fairies sprinting over an elegantly arched bridge toward me. There were only five of them left, manageable enough, but…
If Jagaros was here, there was a chance he knew these faeries somehow. We wouldn’t be off to a good start if I murdered all of his potential cohorts.
STOP. I threw the command into every mind with bone-wrenching force. We’re not here to fight. We don’t want to hurt you.
The faeries froze mid-step, but they quivered in place with their bows poised, eyes scanning me left and right as if the threads of my hold on them were already fraying. Once again, my weakened Mind Manipulating power couldn’t do what it had once done. I had minutes, maybe even seconds, before my command broke.
The decision wavered in front of me. I could knock them all out now while I had them restrained, or…
“Look.” I blinked into existence in the space right before all of them and lowered my sword. “We’re just here to search for a friend. Ny avi katio de choquana,” I repeated in Sorronian, hoping that they’d pick up the meaning better that way.
“Friend?” one of the faeries sputtered in a thick, flourishing accent. He had broad shoulders, an ochre skin tone, and electric-white hair with a stud pierced through each eyebrow. “Is that why you brought a weapon?”
Sweat gathered on my forehead in my effort to maintain a mental grip on them. “Well, yeah. The name of this place would suggest it’s too perilous to tread foot in, so I came prepared. But turns out, the most perilous part of it is you.”
The faerie scoffed. “You fell from the sky into our domain, and call us perilous?” He jerked against my hold. “What do you want?”
My control slipped even more, but I managed a few more quivering moments. “To speak with Jagaros.”
At that single name, every faerie’s expression morphed from fear to suspicion in an instant. The ripple of their thoughts told me that yes, they did know the tiger. More than I did, for sure. More, perhaps, than Rayna herself did.
“If Jagaros was truly a friend of yours,” the white-haired faerie spat, “then you would know he does not like to be called upon.”
And they broke free of my hold.
Arrows rained in my direction. I managed to evade them all, but where they struck the stone walkway around me, magic exploded in waves.
