“If we run, we can’t ward ourselves from the Warden,” I argued. “Wards don’t work that way. They’re stationery, so our wards are the only thing keeping him from finding us right now. Besides, we don’t know where the next key is, so why are we talking about leaving when we don’t know where we’re going next?”
“We’ve been here too long. We need to move to another isolated location,” Kallie argued. “Wards or not, the Warden will eventually track us down.”
“Okay, so let’s do that forever, so we can’t be found,” I said, completely serious.
“You can’t keep living your life only looking ahead for the next couple of days.”
“Why not? It’s worked before.”
“Look, you can sit around and convince yourself that running is the only way to survive, but we all know what will happen if we don’t find those keys,” Kallie said. “What happens when you die and you’re trapped in the in-between forever, just like all the other souls, because you never opened the Elven Gate? We can’t do nothing while the Warden is taking over the world. I know you like it here, Charlie. But you have to decide once and for all if you’re going to lie down and take it, or if you’re going to go after the keys.”
I rubbed my face. “We can’t go anywhere, anyway. Moving is risky without the anti-tracking potion, and Marcus hasn’t finished it.”
“I know we should wait, but I don’t think we can any longer,” Kallie insisted. “Not when it comes to their meds, at least. These two need some happy pills.”
I hated to even consider Kallie’s argument, because all I wanted to do was keep my friends safe behind our wards, never to face the Warden again. But they weren’t safe if they weren’t getting the medical care they needed. I turned my attention backto my wife. In the distance, I could hear her rifling through papers. She’d barely taken her eyes off the files we’d stolen from the Institute since we got here. We’d been studying what the Warden knew, so we could accurately predict where he was going and how to face him. It was a long, arduous task that I could tell was weighing on Ava-Marie. Even from here, I could hear the quiet moans of discomfort as she shifted in her chair.
A ripple of pain slipped through our bond, and it felt like someone had lit my spine aflame. I grabbed the trunk of the tree to keep from falling over. Ava usually shielded her injury from me, but the fact that she couldn’t anymore was telling. She was in far more discomfort than I could fathom, and the only reason she was getting by was because she was so used to being in pain.
“All right,” I agreed. “We need to come up with a plan.”
“Let’s go talk to the others,” Kallie suggested.
We approached the camp. Ava immediately slammed our bond shut when she heard us approaching. She hadn’t realized we’d been in the trees, or that I’d felt her pain only moments before. It wasn’t that she was trying to hide it from me. Rather, she didn’t want me suffering alongside her, because no matter how much of her pain I felt through our bond, I couldn’t take it away from her.
“How was the flight?” Ava asked, keeping her voice even.
“It was nice,” I said, but the high I’d felt had vanished. Now I was more worried than anything. To steady my hands, I approached Rishi, who was lounging on the picnic table atop the files Ava was studying. I stroked the cat’s fur, and he purred under my touch. Alette fluttered by and landed in my hand. Sprigs quickly joined her, tickling my fingers with his spindly legs. The sentient twig climbed atop the moth, and he gave a tiny cry before she took off, fluttering him around the campsite.
“The perimeter is clear,” Kallie reported. “How’s the research going?”
Ava shuffled papers around. “I found a file detailing the Warden’s experiments. He’s somewhat cryptic with his notes, almost like he was intentionally hiding details in case anyone came across them. But from what I can gather, stealing our powers and becoming a demigod himself is only the first step in his master plan. With enough power and inferichite, he should be able to make demigods out of anyone.”
“So he’s building a demigod army?” I asked roughly.
“In theory, hecould,” Ava said. “He’s limited by inferichite, though, because it takes so long to grow.”
“He’s got plenty,” I stated. “Now that the Institute is destroyed and we escaped, he has no reason to leave the inferichite perimeter around the property. He could’ve dug up all those crystals to reuse.”
“Yes, but now they’rehisweakness, too, since he’s a demigod like us,” Ava pointed out. “Just being around inferichite is going to slow him down.”
“Slowed down or not, he’s still got to be going through with the ceremonies,” Kallie said thoughtfully. “We already know he’s had demigods working for him for a while, though I think we can reason that Esther and Mad Dog are both natural-born demigods. How many more do you think he’s created by now?”
“Andwho?” I added.
Ava flipped through a few more papers. “I’m not sure. From what I can tell, the ceremony won’t work on justanyone. The subject has to be strong enough to withstand a demigod’s power. He killed a lot of people running his experiments, and he’s surely killing again. But whoever he’s recruiting, they surely have to be as loyal and crazy as Esther and Mad Dog?—”
A sizzling sound cut her off, and we all whirled toward the fire.
“No!” Marcus exploded. “No, no, no, no, no!”
His voice grew with intensity with each passing word. It sounded like his potion had boiled over. No one had quite forgotten how he’d gone psychotic the night we broke out of the Institute. We’d all been a bit on edge, hoping it wouldn’t happen again.
Kallie was right— he really needed his meds.
“Marcus, calm down,” Ava insisted. “I’ve got this.”
The temperature around us dropped, and the sizzling stopped. Ava had used her Fire magic to kill the campfire and stop the boiling.
