Edited✔️✔️

Chapter 17

"Pixie Hollow," Tink said. "They're keeping Mia there. They drove all the Fairies into hiding. They killed Mab, and Titania..."

Tink began coughing and grasped her chest, interrupting her mindless and worried ranting. Pan walked over and helped escort her back down onto his bed that he was planning to let her have until she got well enough to stand without looking like she'd pass out at any second.

And by the unnatural thrumming in her veins that he felt when he'd touched her, he knew that it wouldn't be anytime soon.

"You've been infected," Pan told her, not taking the fairy by surprise in the slightest. She'd figured that out already but had been too scared and occupied by everything else to admit it.

"I'm dying," she corrected him and let out a pitiful cough that made a wave of pain rake slowly and torturously through her body.

Being infected by dark magic was rare and only a few beings have been known to have it and nonetheless to have survived it. It was called Magant, a disease that ate a person from the inside out. Everyone who got it, died a sufferable death that varied from lasting just a few hours to months at a time.

It usually spread through cuts that were deep enough so dark magic could wedge its way through the skin and settle inside the being's tissue like some sort of parasite. It would then proceed to damage the person's tissue and spread to their organs and eventually the heart and brain. But what made the infection very special was that—since dark magic (like any magic) is an energy—it attacked the person's very soul and typically put them in a zombie-like state in the last moments of his or her life.

"Is there any chance that you have it?" Pan asked, although he already knew the answer. He had only felt that horrendous thrumming of life clashing against death in a person's body once. There was no mistaking it.

Tink looked down at her still bleeding cut up arms and legs and gave Pan a hard look, as if asking "Really?"

"No..." she drawled sarcastically with as much bite as she could muster. "What made you come up with that assumption?"

Pan rolled his eyes. Even when dying, Tink's infuriating sense of humor stayed put. He ruffled his sandy blond hair and pinched the bridge of his nose. Frustration was starting to consume him as it did usually, but this time it was more urgent.

A horn echoed outside which caused a harmony of shouts of arguing boys and Pan groaned. "What now?" he asked aloud in annoyance and gave Tink a look that told her to stay where she was.

She have him a sarcastic thumbs up with a mocking smile before flipping him off. Pan growled under his breath and walked out. This is exactly why I don't help people, he thought.

"Andrew, what's going on?" Pan shouted as he marched to the center of camp. "Where's Thomas?"

The chubby boy looked frightened and taken aback by Pan's sudden presence. He was one out of only five of the boys not joining the large crowd who were verbally fighting one another.

"T-Thomas hasn't b-b-been here si-ince Tink arrived, sir," the red headed lost boy replied with a stutter, scared absolutely shitless of what his leader would do to him. "Three boys have been found dead, Pan-sir, near the creek!"

"What?" Pan snapped and the boy jumped back.

Pan could feel his anger rising and his ears began ringing. Thunder struck not too far from the camp, the Neversea's waves began clashing together much like his mangled thoughts, and the wind howled his rage.

He wanted to kill someone.

His eyes went to Andrew almost instantly.

"Three boys were killed—"

"I heard that part, idiot!" he shouted exasperatedly in Andrew's face and grabbed him by the collar, lifting him onto his toss. "By who, boy?"

"Hook, sir!"

Pan let go of a now frightened Andrew who then scrambled to his feet and ran for Hangman's Tree to hide inside.

Pan sauntered over to the group of boys and pushed passed them to see what they were all crowding around, already having a large hunch of what it—or rather, they—could be.

All of the boys, like a wave of silence washing over them, quieted when they noticed his solemn form. Some of them looked scared and others looked angry. There were only a few who looked neither.

The three corpses were lied side by side bruised and all covered in each others' blood. Their eyes had been gauged out, their faces barely recognizable if it weren't for their hair. Two brunettes and one striking bright blond.

All three of them were lacking their left hands which were nowhere to be found, according to a reliable source. Pan was shocked to see this. Hook, since losing his own, was always notorious for taking his victim's left hands as trophies and as a way of marking a claim on his victims. The one brunette boy in the middle had a bloodied note attached to his mutated head by his own dagger.

Pan pricked the note swiftly from the body without even removing the weapon, not wanting to bring distress to the body.

Thought I'd give you an example of what you and your boys will look like in a couple days. -Hook

PS: I'll let Mia know you say hi.

Pan crumbled up the note in his hands and could feel the parchment catch on fire as his rage now boiled in his abdomen. The thunder from before now seemed like child's play as another one echoed in the background. Pan knew that he needed to calm himself down but all he could see was red. Blood red. As red as the blood of his three fallen Lost Boys.

"What now?" a younger lost boy asked in a soft and almost innocent voice. Pan knew they were scared. Even prepubescent jerks could feel fear.

He responded as his fist shook with anger and the ashes from the paper fell between his fingers, "I think it's about time we remind some people who exactly is in charge of Neverland." Pan smirked, seeing a few heads bob up and down with solemn agreement. "Daniel," he said to the boy in the front with a black eye, "go get Andrew's lazy ass out from Hangman's Tree. You two need to go round up the Red Skins and tell them what has occurred here. As for the rest of you," he continued, "we're going to prepare for war."

The crowd then crowed and hollered, their fear diminishing as they thought of the battle they knew would come. Everyone ran in their own separate ways to do what they needed to prepare although one in particular stayed behind.

The boy who stayed, the young one from before, hesitantly walked up to Pan and looked up at him with tears in his eyes. He looked young—no older than ten and probably Pan's youngest recruit at the time. "Pan," the boy began while sniffling, "he was my brother." The lad pointed at the unrecognizable body in the middle with the dagger still in his head.

Pan placed his hand on the lad's shoulder, seeing himself slightly in his eyes—when he was still a young, naive child who loved his older brother with all his heart. "We'll give him a proper burial, I promise," Pan told him softly. "Why don't you go with some other boys to get ready."

The boy nodded and walked off with his head hanging low and his feet dragging against the dirt.

Pan knew the boy would never survive the fight.

But at that desperate time, he needed everyone he could get.

So, with that final thought, Pan walked back to tend to the dying fairy currently in his tent.

⋆✶

Daniel and Andrew ran as fast as they could. They both knew that angering Pan further would be a bad idea.

They dodged branches and jumped over fallen trees and roots. Even though they were out of breath (especially Andrew) and their legs hurt, they never stopped. Pan's camp was a good few miles away from Red Skin territory, but they wouldn't allow themselves to rest even once.

Once they reached their destination, the first thing Daniel noticed was that the usual sentries that stood at the entrance weren't there and his eyes instantly went to the unusual amount of grey smoke in the air. The sounds of screams filled the sky and somehow the boy's legs carried them faster until they were inside the camp's walls.

Red Skin women were running and screaming while holding their children protectively to their chests. Most men had spears, bow and arrows, and gunstock war clubs along with many more handcrafted weapons.

Some Red Skins noticed the two Lost Boys and hesitated to go near them while others just simply didn't care. They all knew about the agreement between Pan and Big Chief and knew that the two Lost Boys wouldn't try anything. But some of them still remained hesitant and fearful towards them, mostly due to the fact they were just attacked and their military force was wounded.

All the tents were emitting smoke, covered in a layer of thick char or just merely skeletons of the structures they once were. Wounded warriors laid scattered on the ash-covered ground, some dead while others were fatally wounded. It looked as if the entire camp had been set in fire, the people covered in a layer of black dust as well with all of their wounds looking like burns.

One warrior who looked the least injured of everyone and was covered in tribal tattoos with bone jewelry ran up to the two Lost Boys almost as soon as he saw them.

"We were attacked," he explained, his rough voice even more raspy from the smoke and panic. "Some of our men are dead."

"So were we," Andrew said, still panting like a wounded dog but finally growing a pair. "Three of our boys were martyred by Hook. Was this done by Rufio?"

The warrior shook his head with a frown, running a hand along his bald, tattooed head. "It was no man," was all he said, looking horrified as he recalled the memory. Without another word, he ran off to the other side of the camp to attend to his fellow warriors.

The two boys looked at each other, confused and worried.

Just a few heartbeats later, they were greeted by yet another warrior who was a little more friendly or at least as friendly as a Red Skin could get. Gauze was strapped to his one side, blood already seeping through.

"Do you wish to speak with Chief?" the warrior asked, clasping his wound.

"Yes, it's urgent," Daniel said and the warrior nodded, signaling with his free arm for them to follow him.

As they walked, Andrew leaned over. "You know I was third in command before all this so technically I'm Head Lost Boy now." Daniel rolled his eyes which went unnoticed. "So, you need to listen to me and let me do all the talking from now on, ok?"

Daniel held back what he really wanted to say. "Whatever you say, Andrew. Whatever you say."

Big Chief's tent was covered in char and, of course, was the most in tacked tent in the entire camp with people outside already tending its burns and holes.

They eyed them as they pulled back the flaps to enter the large tent, the duo almost coughing instantly when their lungs filled with smoke again.

"What is it your leader wishes to speak to me about?" the chief asked in his deep and scratchy voice while smoking a long pipe that filled the room with more smoke than there was outside.

Daniel coughed while Andrew began to stutter, looking for words to say. "Uh, Daniel," Andrew nudged him on the shoulder with his elbow, "would you like to explain?"

Daniel wanted to strangle Andrew. "But, Andrew, as Head Lost Boy shouldn't you be the one to have the rights of telling Big Chief Pan's message. I mean, I would of course, but it's too great of an honor for a simple ol' lost boy like me to do it."

Andrew looked nervous and regretful as Daniel used his own words against him. "Well, you see, we were attacked by what we believe to be the same people. Hook killed three of our boys today under the orders of what he and Rufio call their 'Master'. Pan would like for our agreement to take place now. The Lost Boys are preparing for war as we speak." Andrew began a coughing fit once he was done, wheezing in between each bone-racking cough that left him.

The chief looked between the two boys and nodded. "I accept."

The boys lightened up and looked at each other with smiles. It was never that easy to make an agreement but the attack on the chief's village made it easy. They knew Pan would be pleased, despite the dour situation.

Nobody could deny it anymore. Neverland was at war.

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||AN|| Thanks for reading. And again, sorry for not being active recently. I'm now officially back though. :)