Page 156 of Keldori By Daybreak

My vision shifted again, and I was back behind my own eyes and in my own head. The sea stars were gone, and my chest heaved as I tried to make sense of it.

“Did you see them?” Ciarán hissed.

“I did.” The pieces locked into place, and the way Ciarán squeezed my hand, I knew he’d beat me there. “Linsey isn’t here. Neither are the sea stars. The spores—they’re not poisonous. They’re hallucinogenic.”

“Back to Una. Now.”

We spun back towards Una, then stumbled to an immediate stop.

Ferrin stood between us and the onchú, his body malformed and bursting from his leather in a mash of man and monster. His goggles made him look like a misshapen insect, but his grin showed off canines worthy of a wolf.

He raised his hands ahead of him, and bile rose in my throat.

He held a decapitated head by a fistful of hair in each hand, one man and one woman, both with jaws slack and eyes rolled back.

Even in the gloom of the spores and in the state she was in, Ciarán really did look so much like his mother.

“It’s not real,” I said automatically, but my voice shook. It can’t have been my hallucination. I hadn’t known what Ciarán’s parents looked like, but our minds were tethered, and now his nightmares were bleeding into mine. “Ciarán, it’s the spores.”

“I know.” He said through a wavering rasp of pain and disbelief. “I know, Wren.”

His shaking hand found mine, and we took a careful, shuffling step forward together.

It wasn’t real. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t real.

Two figures stepped out of the gloom beyond Una to stalk forward and join Ferrin. Their dark armor and cloaks resembled Ciarán’s, but their cowls hung loose at their necks as they had no heads to wear them on. An orange bo staff lit in the hands of the man, while the woman’s body armed itself with a humming longbow of orange, an arrow already nocked.

“No!” Orange scythes ignited in Ciarán’s fists, and he launched towards the hallucinations with a howl.

“Ciarán! Stop!” I grabbed him by his collar and pulled him back before he attacked Una by mistake.

He staggered backwards and fell on his backside in the loam. Tears streaked down his cheeks, but he let his scythes dissipate.

“I’m sorry,” he croaked. “I know, I know. It’s not real, but—”

The dull thunk of the arrow burying itself in my back cut him off. I lurched with the hit and looked down at the orange arrowhead protruding beneath my collarbone.

“Oh.” The taste of blood washed over my tongue, and I staggered back around to face the grisly apparitions of Ferrin and Ciarán’s parents. For a hallucination, the hole in my chest felt hellishly real. “Ciarán—”

I fell backwards into his arms just a second arrow split through my shin.

33. Advanced Mycology

The hallucinations were real, as were the holes the arrows left in my leg and chest after they dissipated into orange steam.

Ciarán left me in the dirt and screamed in fury as he charged at the apparitions of his parents. His orange scythes met their weapons, and the air turned electric with the hum of magick.

I gasped against the pain, and Skal-laden spores filled my lungs. I jammed my hand against the bleeding gash in my chest. I could fix it. I had fixed worse.

Heat welled in my hand and the pain in my shoulder amplified. Magick burned as muscle and sinew knit back together at my bidding. Nerves tingled along my shoulder and down my arm.

Una snarled and lunged to join the fight between Ciarán and his parents, but the Ferrin apparition morphed into a beast with a size and claws to match Una’s. Ferrin’s head sat between those of Ciarán’s parents on his monstrous shoulders, and he tackled Una around the middle.

Ciarán’s mother fired another arrow my way when she saw me watching, and I paused in my healing to form a blue shield.

“Get out of here, Wren!” Ciarán bellowed back at me, then took his father’s bo staff to the gut. He doubled over and grunted with the force of the blow.

“Ciarán!” I screamed, but when I tried to stagger to my feet and run to him, the hole in my leg screamed back in protest.