Chapter7
Captain Morgana Silversword
Gorlag the outlander and Yorick the bard, whether through bad luck or ineptitude, couldn’t seem to find a single path through the thick underbrush.
The party had finally found a portal to the fae realm, which transported them to a lush meadow in the middle of a dense forest, with seemingly no paths out. It was just the latest in a series of confounding hurdles since the adventurers had been tasked with fetching the legendary Supremacy Sphere so the Queen could prevent it falling into the wrong hands.
“Why would there be a portal here with no paths to it?” Calamity asked.
“There should almost certainly be animal tracks if nothing else,” Thrormir said, but Gorlag shook their head.
“None big enough for even the little guy here.”
“Hey,” Yorick said, smacking the side of Gorlag’s leg, which was as high as he came on the half-orc.
“You want animal tracks,” Gorlag said, “you find them.”
“Maybe I will,” Yorick said, turning his attention back to the perimeter of the meadow.
Morgana took the opportunity to look around at the trees, which looked to be completely wild; there were no straight lines or indications of pruning that might suggest intervention or maintenance. There were pockets of space towards the canopy where branches and leaves seemed to bend out of the way, but they were so high up that Morgana couldn’t imagine what creatures could have reached them. Creatures they would want to encounter, anyway.
“Thrormir, come have a look,” Morgana said, wondering if maybe he could detect any magical influence on the voids. The cleric of Chaius was one of the most useful of her companions, and the most even-tempered. He was also magically adept, like Calamity and Yorick.
But when he examined the space she pointed out, he just shook his head. “They’re not magical.”
“Look how the void continues,” Morgana said as she looked closer, pointing away from the grove. “They’re not just pockets. They’re tunnels.”
“Tunnels for what?” Thrormir asked, but Morgana just shrugged. She pictured all kinds of monsters and beasts, but none that would make a tunnel quite like that, so high up in the trees.
But then she thought about where they were. Maybe there were different beasts in the fae realm that she didn’t know about? Maybe there were…
That’s when it hit her.
“They’re for travel,” she said.
“How are we supposed to travel through those?”
But Morgana just shook her head, because they weren’t meant for them to travel through. They were meant for the people who lived here: the faeries.
They were flight paths. And one of them, she was almost certain, would lead them straight to Thelanoris.
Chapter8
Jack
When Monday came, we were all sat around the kitchen table for a too-early farewell breakfast. Seriously, what sort of rental made the guests vacate by nine?
We were all a bit worse for wear, but Phil had rallied us all for the 7am wake-up by promising us French toast. I was usually the rise-and-shine type, but even I needed bribery. And now, as I shovelled the fried, ricotta-stuffed goodness into my mouth, I suddenly felt capable of facing the drive home.
Morgan had fully, annoyingly wormed her way into my head. It hadn’t helped that I’d been shitting myself the entire time we’d been in the water, with her floating so close to me we were practically pressed together. And then on the rock, with our shoulders touching almost the entire time. I’d felt my guard go up so fast that I’d been surprised we’d been able to have a conversation at all.
But I couldn’t stop thinking about how she’d kept insinuating that my decision not to date anymore was some kind of emotional hangover. Was it nice to know she thought I could pull women if I wanted to? Sure. But I didn’t love the implication that it was all some post-Aria defence mechanism. I’d worked really hard to get over Aria, and to build the kind of life I wanted. The kind where I didn’t need relationships like that to feel fulfilled and accepted and supported. And the implication that I wasn’t emotionally self-aware because of it? Fuck that.
So why had I kept playing the conversation on repeat in my mind since then? I’d thought about Morgan and her emotional XP nonsense all over this stupid cottage, including:
When I was wedged against Phil in Chloe’s wardrobe for almost an hour during an intense game of hide-and-seek
At lunch, as I’d watched her build an absolute monstrosity of a sandwich – chicken, blue cheese, honey, and English mustard – and determined she had disgusting taste and I didn’t need to listen to her
