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An adrenaline surge threw me into a time distortion; my awareness heightened and my mental processing speed increased. It felt like time slowed as I considered my options. I could use fire magic, probably better than he could, so I could just snuff the fire out. But I was only a Green here, so while I could technically get away with weaker use of magical affinities in the blue-green-purple spectrum, fire was not on that menu. Water was the obvious affinity I could use to combat fire and keep my Green label pristine, but the water I used would have to come from somewhere. I had a small amount of spaghetti water, but not enough. If I pulled too much water from the trees and ground, I would likely damage or even kill them. Since I was connected to them, I’d suffer with them, and most Greens would choose almost anything else. Ice magic had the same limitation. All that was good if I had a witness and needed to stay Green.
The other option was to do something to take out this boy using whatever magic I had to. I could probably counter anything he threw at me if I didn’t care about showing my own magic. I wasn’t against killing, but I didn’t want to do that unless it was a last resort. Especially someone so young. And it hadn’t escaped me that he was dressed in all black, so he was likely some kind of Enforcement trainee. The rumor was that all prism mages were broken and put into special duty Enforcement units. I couldn’t guarantee that I’d beat him, and I wasn’t that desperate yet.
Time sped back up. I raised my hand and threw magic threads of pure terror at him. I don’t think he was expecting it, because he covered his face and screamed as they landed. I opened the jar and splashed him with a small amount of spaghetti water while he had his face covered. I wiped my stinging eyes and used my own fire magic to put the fire out. The water helped clear the burning and I could think clearly. I reached down and touched the ground. The trees were alarmed but not seriously impacted.
Yet.
The boy uncovered his face and screamed again, his face contorted with rage as he swiped at the water and blinked. The spaghetti water seemed to burn his eyes. Teddy ran past him and out of sight.
“You think you can summon enough water to keep my fire down? I can hold you in my snowglobe until you burn!” he yelled, taking a step back and still scrubbing at his face. I wondered if Lucy’s spaghetti water was supposed to burn when it had the opposite effect on me.
“What kind of creepy person threatens to keep someone in a snowglobe? This was supposed to be about mushrooms!” I yelled back. I used my connection to warn the trees about this boy, trying to get them to understand fire and danger. I needed them to be willing to act.
He laughed. I pulled a thread of terror and tossed it at him again. While he was distracted with sidestepping, I tugged a purple thread of doubt loose and floated it his way. He focused on me again. “Oh, there are mushrooms, Green. These are my own special brand. Maybe I can be just a Green, too.” He kicked the ground by his feet and the sweet smell clotted the air again.
I tried not to choke on it. From behind him, sounds came crashing through the underbrush. He turned as Teddy streaked toward me, bumping into the boy on his way by. I threw more self-doubt at the boy and charged forward. He swung his head around to me again and stumbled back against a tree when he saw how close I was. The earth beneath him shivered and he slipped, sliding to the ground as tiny tendrils of vines and roots curled around his limbs. He fought to clear them, but I kept feeding the tree and fungal network images of fire and death and then pushing my own power into them.
The fire he had thrown had woken the trees, and they were afraid.
He threw another burst of fire. I kicked his stomach to distract him while I sucked the oxygen away from the fires near me and dampened them. This fire had been even smaller than his first volley. Fire wasn’t his strongest power.
“You can’t take me!” he screamed as he twisted and squirmed, trying to break free from the roots.
But I could take him. I threw my wrist cord at the boy. It flashed visibly as it landed on his shoulder. “Disable, please. Don’t kill,” I called. The boy was focused on the plant tendrils and didn’t notice as my cord wrapped around his throat. As it tightened, he suddenly couldn’t suck in more air. His face turned red and I put out the last of the fires as I walked over to him. He was still struggling to rip the cord off as it blocked blood flow to his brain. His eyes glossed over and I put one hand to his wrist. He still had a pulse. I used my own magic to assess his health and metabolic rate and used a somewhat larger than necessary crimson thread of body magic to keep him sleeping while the roots continued to grow around him and lock him down. As long as he didn’t wake up, he couldn’t burn his way out of the plants that held him.
“Thanks, Zephyr Blue,” I said as I picked up my cord and put it back on my wrist. It was a silly name, but my usually rope-shaped friend had chosen it with the help of one of my favorite songs, and I wasn’t going to argue. The rope tightened once on my wrist and I patted it.
“Let’s find those mushrooms and get out of here, shall we?” Teddy sank into a play bow and wagged his tail, then let out a happy back when I moved to follow his lead. He scampered ahead, running back to nudge me on.
Chapter Five
We hadn’t walked for more than a minute through the trees when I came to a small clearing and saw 6 bodies on the ground, lined up like matchsticks. As I got closer, I couldn’t help but sputter. It was so clichéd.
“Really? A fairy ring?”
Fairies were stories told in the times before the Dust. There was never any proof of anything like fairies, and with the development and understanding of real magic, belief in fairies had dwindled. I liked to read old books, so I knew that rings of mushrooms, also called fairy rings, were never a good place for humans. I also read science texts and had been recently fixated on mushrooms, so I knew that the ring was actually the visible part of a fungus that grew underground. The mycelium sprouted from the ground around the edges of the buried fungus, and that was the part that people saw.
But no one inside the ring of mushrooms was moving. I couldn’t even see their chests rise or fall. Teddy sat at the edge of the ring and whined. I approached cautiously, waiting for another collision with an invisible force. I made it right up to the mushrooms before a sharp bark from Teddy stopped me. He was panting and tense as a bowstring drawn taut. Nothing about this seemed right.
I slipped the backpack off my back and dropped to my belly to examine the mushrooms. They were pale, moist, and tiny. The earthy scent of mushrooms and forest rose, and Teddy yipped at me and crowded close. I felt my head spin again, so I pulled back to my knees and immediately felt better. Since I was alone, I could relax my hold on my magic. I blew out a breath and waited, and all the magic in the area lit up.
The trees and plants barely had a green luminescence in my magic sight—just the bare hint of what connected a Green with plants. The people in the circle didn’t glow with magic at all.
Not a good sign.
I looked at the mushrooms. They were a livid, angry green. Then I had to breathe in, and the magic sight dropped, but I kept looking at the fairy ring. These were magic mushrooms, and not the fun, trippy kind. I opened my backpack and grabbed a small glass specimen jar and forceps before getting close to the mushrooms again. This close, I could see clusters of tiny, translucent mushrooms poking their caps through the mycelial mat, catching rays of sunlight and reflecting opalescent colors. Holding my breath, I plucked a pair of the gossamer thin stems and tucked them into my jar, screwing the lids on tight. This time, I didn’t feel lightheaded.
Before I could tuck the sample away, a loud crack came from everywhere all at once and I winced, rolling away from the mushrooms and into a ball to protect myself. Next to me, Teddy shivered and stood when I did. I couldn’t identify the source of the sound, but the air felt different. I repacked my bag, including the little sample jar of mushroom, and shouldered it. I was about to walk back and check on my captive when the scent of smoke assaulted my nostrils.
“No!” I yelled, running toward where I’d left the boy sleeping. The scent of smoke was stronger now, and I heard yelling. I burst through the trees with Teddy at my heels and found a horde of black clothed people in the forest where it had been sealed off. The ward must have fallen.
Two Enforcement people were using their own magic to tamp small fires. Several more held the boy between them as he kicked and lunged. His eyes were open, his pupils tiny pinpricks, and he was spitting with rage. One of the men in black tapped the back of the boy’s neck and he went limp as they carted him in the direction of the road.
Lucy ran and launched herself at me. I braced and nearly went down myself, especially with Teddy’s joyous help, but I managed to keep my feet. “What happened?” she asked. “I was doing Green stuff with the tree and then you just disappeared.”
“Doing Green stuff, huh?” I smiled as I let go and Lucy stood next to me, shaking a finger at me. “I just walked a few feet further in and suddenly, you couldn’t hear me and I couldn’t come back out.”
Officer Smith appeared at my side. “We’ll need to debrief you, of course. What kept you from the rest of us?”
