A thought came to me. “It’s magic related, right?”
They all looked over at me.
Sorrel glanced at his dad, shrugged, then looked back at me. “I presume so? It felt like a magic attack, and how tired I’m feeling isn’t normal, so I guess it’s related to that. We do need magic to summon our wings like other supernaturals need magic to shift into various forms, so…yes?”
“Then wouldn’t your brother-in-law be helpful?” My statement earned startled looks from the other three fairies, but I focused on Sorrel. “He can see magic, could he tell if yours is permanently gone?”
Sorrel’s eyes snapped back to his father. “She’s right, Riven could see the wings gone on some of the victims. He might be able to tell.”
“We need to call them anyway,” Adair murmured. “They’ll want to know what happened. Honey, can you call them?”
I had a feeling he had her call them because she’d be calmer than his wife, but also because he didn’t want to leave his son’s side, either.
Then Adair looked at me, curiosity in his eyes. “You know about Riven?”
“I told her,” Sorrel explained, his eyes slowly looking more exhausted. “It – well, actually, she partially figured it out, too. She used to be a spy – on our side – and she’s smart about figuring out things. She’s the one who suggested setting up the markers to try to serve as alarms.”
That got a startled look from Violet, but a more thoughtful one from Adair.
“Your training helped, I assume, with fighting the construct?” He asked.
I nodded once. “I have been trained to fight both with magic and physical combat. I recognized that I could not hear the construct itself, but I could hear ice crack under it if I listened closely enough, so I was able to determine where to attack it. I believe it left once it realized there was an actual risk of it being damaged by fighting me – that risk would not be worth the potential reward of killing a single fairy.”
“Ice?” Adair asked.
“Snow leopard familiar,” Sorrel filled in for me just as Honey returned to the room.
“They’re on their way,” she announced. “Also, snow leopard? Snow leopards are gorgeous!” Then she seemed to remember what she was there for and hurried to rejoin her father in helping Sorrel.
By the time Sorrel’s brother and brother-in-law arrived, Adair and Honey had finished healing Sorrel’s physical wounds, but he still seemed abnormally exhausted and couldn’t summon his wings. I was pretty sure we were all hoping that somehow Sorrel’s brother-in-law would have a good answer for us.
The new fairy male who entered looked a lot like Sorrel and Adair, but slightly shorter than Sorrel, and probably a little more handsome in the traditional sense, plus his hair was cut shorter. He immediately headed for Sorrel, his face concerned, asking him how he was doing.
But it was the second male who caught my attention. He was shorter than the fairies, slender built, with gray eyes and a turtleneck which I noticed didn’t entirely hide the scars on his neck when he turned to look at me. There was just a flash in his eyes as they glanced ever so slightly at the top of my head and behind me, and I realized he wasn’t human. Yes, he looked human, but he wasn’t – not if he could see my leopard ears and tail.
This must be Riven, the Vist/unicorn hybrid.
“Ren, Riven, this is Elizabeth, a friend of mine who just saved my life,” Sorrel apparently felt he had to introduce me to them even though I could figure out who they were by process of elimination, “and Elizabeth, this is my younger brother Ren and his husband, Riven. Um, Riven, she knows about you, sorry.”
Riven’s eyes widened ever so slightly and he sent a glance my way before turning back to Sorrel. “You trust her and she’s a friend of yours, so that’s okay with me. But are you okay? You really got attacked by the construct?”
“Yes,” Sorrel huffed, laying his head back on the pillow. “But I can’t fly now, plus I tried to do some magic back there and it just – fizzled.”
“We were hoping you might be able to help us figure out what is going on,” Adair explained to Riven. He didn’t say it, but it was written all over their faces.
They wanted to know if this was permanent.
Riven glanced once more at me, then closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and opened them again and stared at Sorrel. I was quite startled to see that his eyes had changed from gray to purple, with white irises, but externally I looked entirely undisturbed.
After a few moments, Riven switched back to his regular eyes. “His magic level is really low, but…I think he actually got lucky. He still has some magic, I think it just will take time to regenerate after that, because it looks like it was badly damaged but isn’t completely gone. Not like the dead fairies.”
“Lucky?” Adair pressed.
“Yeah, this amount of damage – most of it was absorbed by your protection mark, actually. Well, not absorbed, exactly, but the magic attack could only eat so much fairy magic, and your mark was first, so it destroyed that before getting to Sorrel’s magic. If you hadn’t protected him…yeah, I think the effect would be permanent.” Riven blinked, switching back to the purple eyes, then blinked again, his eyes going back to normal.
They all sort of stared at him, then at Adair, who actually looked so emotional he covered his mouth with one hand while staring at Sorrel with tears in his eyes.
“Okay, enough,” Honey suddenly announced. “We’re all emotional idiots at the moment, obviously, we almost lost Sorrel, Sorrel almost lost his magic, but he didn’t and we didn’t so let’s just be happy about that. Sorrel needs to rest and recover and why don’t we all just go upstairs, have dinner like normal, and just try to not turn into blubbering messes for the evening? Elizabeth, you’re staying, of course?” She looked at me as if there was no other option but to agree.
I didn’t particularly mind. Besides, I had something to discuss with them.
“I am free, I have no problems staying. But I think I may have useful information for you about the construct.”
This got their attention, Adair starting to regain control of himself as he looked at me.
“How so?” Ren demanded.
“When I fought it,” I explained, “I learned about it. No sound from the construct itself, but you can use environmental aspects to hear it – like when it steps on ice, but it’s not stepping with the full weight of the thing, or every step would crack the ice. Instead, it’s only the slightest crack. When I knocked it into the building, it cracked the wall, but it didn’t leave an impact of the construct itself. I think in addition to the construct having cursed invisibility, it has some type of barrier around it that protects it from being able to make a significant impact on the world. A shield, almost, but not to protect itself – it would bring little benefit to the construct. I doubt this is something the witch would bother with. More likely, it is something the original designers of the constructs did. This magic doesn’t appear to be bound to the construct itself, because I think that it was actually that spell that was making the cracking in the ice. Therefore, it is not under the cursed invisibility spell since it wasn’t silent too. The point is, this magic could potentially be reversed. If so, I doubt the weight of the construct would be something easily hidden. While the construct itself would remain silent and unseen, it would start to leave an impact on the world.”
“Meaning it could be tracked,” Sorrel breathed, his eyes starting to show hope. “You think you can figure out how to reverse the magic?”
I felt very doubtful about that, but I also doubted that just a look at him would tell him as much. “My research extends to supernaturals and supernatural history – actually performing that kind of magic is outside my range of abilities. However, you mentioned witch friends? They may have more success.”
“Sophie’s a historian,” Riven volunteered suddenly, his bright eyes watching me curiously. “She’s a light witch, a friend of ours. She and you seem to share a love of history? Maybe together you could figure out what kind of magic was used, and Sophie could then figure out how to break it. I mean – well, if you don’t mind getting more involved.” He suddenly seemed a little concerned, like he felt bad for suggesting I do something without making sure to ask me first whether asking me was okay.
He seemed nice. Maybe a little too nice, but I could use too nice in my life. I’d spent too much time around not so nice.
“I do not mind assisting with research,” I agreed without hesitation, “and I have time to do so since I am currently not working – by choice.” It occurred to me that they might believe I needed help finding a job if they heard I was unemployed without context.
“Good, we can get you in contact with Sophie,” Ren seemed relieved that there was some plan in mind. “But I have to warn you, she gets a, uh, little crazy about history books.”
Sorrel laughed softly. “Oh, she and Elizabeth will get along great, trust me. Elizabeth has shelves of old books at her place. I bet Sophie would be jealous of her collection.”
This earned some interested looks by the others between the two of us, his family likely assuming we were close enough for him to visit my place on a regular basis.
I decided not to bother enlightening them for the moment since Sorrel’s parents were attempting to shepherd us upstairs into the open concept room where most of us ended up seated in the living room while Violet cooked dinner – apparently in an effort to have an outlet for her emotions since she practically chased anyone who tried to help out of the kitchen.
I ended up sitting at the end of the couch, next to Sorrel on the side where Claire was busily sucking on a small toy. She looked at me with wide eyes.
“Hello,” I greeted her, probably a bit formal for a child of less than a year, but I wasn’t particularly adept at dealing with children. Or, well, with anyone who required an emotional response.
Honey giggled slightly. “She doesn’t talk yet, she’s too young.”
As if in protest, Claire burst out with some baby gibberish while offering me her now-drooled-on toy.
“I mean,” Honey amended, “she doesn’t say words we can understand yet.”
I accepted the toy calmly, then offered her another one that Riven handed me surreptitiously, which she eagerly grabbed and tried to start chewing on.
“She’s teething,” Sorrel explained, looking over at me as he leaned back into the sofa. “Sorry about the drool.”
“It is fine,” I told him. “I’m fairly certain no one has died from a little drool.”
Honey kind of tilted her head, studying me like she couldn’t quite figure me out, but that was normal for people, so I ignored that and instead turned the attention back to Sorrel and to Adair, who seemed the de facto leader.
“I also noticed something else about the construct. It has a heart. Not a physical one,” I added when they all looked thunderstruck, “a magical one. There was a couple of times my ice hit it where I could hear the echo of its heart. I wouldn’t have heard that with a physical heart. I suspect the heart is what powers the construct, and while determining a way to destroy it, it may be useful to know that it has a heart because I dare say that destroying the heart would permanently destroy the construct.”
Adair leaned back in his chair, looking enlightened. “That was why they couldn’t destroy them fully in the past – some people tried, but they never could. The heart must be what the magic they use is written into. And without the heart being destroyed, it doesn’t matter what damage is done to the body. It will survive and rebuild its body as long as the heart exists.”
It was my turn to be curious, though of course neither my face nor voice revealed that. “You were not involved in the making of the constructs, although you were a powerful leader at the time? I thought the leaders of the world were the ones who imbued the magic.”
“I was not,” Adair sighed a bit. “I couldn’t agree with the idea of the constructs, so while they asked for me to help with the ones which needed light magic, I refused. If I had helped, perhaps I’d know more now about how to destroy them, but I cannot go back hundreds of years to undo a choice that I still think was the correct choice.”
In the dining room, Violet dropped a large serving platter onto the table. “Enough shop talk,” she announced. “Now we eat and just enjoy all being alive and well.”
Without another word, I joined Sorrel’s family at the table for dinner. This hadn’t been how I planned to end the day when I’d gotten up this morning – meeting Sorrel’s family and having dinner with them – but they seemed like reasonably nice people and hadn’t gotten completely frustrated with me, although possibly that was due to feeling grateful over me helping to protect Sorrel from the construct. Whatever the reason, I was hopeful that maybe I could have some more connections here, maybe some with the witch Sophie as well, maybe start to build a new life that was more than just business and empty contacts that couldn’t appreciate me despite my difficulties expressing myself.
Once again, I found myself thankful for deciding to move to Avenglade.
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