For a while, Bain's cigarette is the only light in the ashy, murky dusk of the library, which did nothing to quell the fear quickly rising in me. Yeah. Fear. Long time no see, buddy. Well, I did almost died to a wraith about an hour prior (please kill me, I sound just like Asher), but besides that I can't remember any time in most of my professional career things had gone this haywire. I take a deep breath. You'd think in a place like the Academy, they'd tell you that fear was for cowards or something equally stereotypical, but the most valuable thing I've learned there (from Sheryl, specifically) is that bravery isn't the absence of fear, but the act of overcoming it.

     There is an utter absence of noise in the deepest heart of the library.

     Something moves behind us.

    I swing around with the integral, causing the rod to light up and illuminate the area, but there's nothing there but books. "Bain. Three shots at the exit, now," I command.

     I hear a grunt, but she does what I say. Nothing falls over in the dark, dead, which is disappointing, but she was firing blind and I was securing an exit. "Care to explain?" she asks.

    "Just a wild guess. You have a lot of bullets?" I ask.

    "Not enough to start wasting them with poppycock, just in case you're about to ask," she says, the gun clenched tight to her side. Agitation is etched into her brow, in the dying light of my little stunt. Soon we're back to the cigarette, and then to total blackness. Through it sounds a soft, heavy heaving, which lights up my vision red with electric fear.

     "Asher," I whisper. I run forwards, hitting a wall, jump off it and hit the wheelies. Bain falls far into the background, breaking the first rule of adventuring (don't split the party) and I pull up to a door. I can smell, faintly, blood and the sick scent of broken foliage. My hand hits the wall, almost numb, and I feel my whole body tremble as I finally click the switch.

     The lights flicker on, like two unwilling eyes opening. The room is filled with scattered books, many of which have been knocked off the shelves, a bloated, decayed human body that makes the entire air fearsomely rancid, and curled up by its side, in the center of the room, is Asher beside a massive sprout, which is soaked in blood. The sharp edges of it taper off to his still body.

     I run to him, my hands hitting bloodsoaked cashmere and my stomach twisting like I've swallowed glass. I take in a deep breath and yell, "Sheryl!" before remembering that she's not with me. "Bain, get Sheryl," I try.

     Bain watches like an ornery cat, her face slowly caving in from coolness to desperation. "Someone tried to rip the tree out of him. We need to stop the bleeding."

     I nod, rip off my shirt, and begin bandaging his abdomen. Bain takes off her own jacket, takes off her undershirt, and ties that around mine. She then seals the jacket around it. I raise a hand to make a comment, but without the Academy here, without even Sheryl, all the jokes I could make seem hollow. I lower my hand, crunched over the body, and say, "Dryad?"

     "Looks like it's gnome or sylph allegiance, so I'd reckon. Asher's fought dryads, though. With..."

     "Conway," I finish. "I know. I get it."

     "Aye," Bain says. "Go get adults."

     I take off into the darkness. The sound of my wheelies on the wood makes a scraping noise that follows me down the hallways, through the tunnel of the library's interiors into the gray light of the English countryside, and the town flies past me with the click of stone beneath my wheels. Sheryl is the first to respond when I burst the doors down, accompanied by Ms. and Mr. Northcott, both of whose defeated, placid expressions slowly morph into terror, just like Bain's. It's amazing how quickly it slaps the apathy out of their faces. It's amazing how raw my throat is right now. I hear fae bells, a distant, shrill, ringing, and I put a hand to my ears.

     "Shock," Sheryl says. "It's shock. You should stay here."

     "Stop talking to me. I'm not the one who's hurt," I say, frustrated. "Hurry."

     "They're gone already," Sheryl grabs my hand. I clutch it, my integral hot in my other, clammy hand, and as I'm pulled up I glimpse her eyes to see a cold, distant darkness peering back into me. "This might be our chance to finally corner the will-o-wisp, or this... 'brother' Asher speaks of. I wouldn't hesitate to place either of them as the perpetrator."

     "Civilians out of the way first," I say. "Civilian casualties averted, civilian damage minimized."

    "He's not a civilian," Sheryl says. "If you run into Fenrir's jaws, you get bitten. If you harpoon a dragon at sea, your ship ends up at the bottom of the ocean."

     In my mind, Asher, clueless, angry, Asher, might as well be. I release myself from Sheryl's grip and begin winding my way back into the town, feeling the air buffet my chest. The winds rush over me as I skate back towards him, turning into the library, and meandering back down the dark halls. The air goes from fresh and alive to damp and musty, its stagnancy heavy as if the shelves had fallen in on me, and I keep going deeper.

---

     Patrolling without Asher kind of sucks.

     He's been in decent condition for a few days now, back at home, but he hasn't woken up more than twice. Aitamah has tried to bite my hand off several times now, so eventually I relented and left.

     Standing around the place listening to heavy, tense electronic (Nero's Day at Disneyland hours are sad, sad hours indeed, but sometimes I want to blow my eardrums out) and waiting to get mauled by a vengeful spirit isn't really up to snuff, so I ended up hitting the town instead. The townsfolk have reasonably different opinions on me now that they've seen me without my shirt on, which I guess is a social faux pas in Britain, or maybe just small, traditional towns. Maybe they couldn't handle my five chest hairs and finely sculpted body. It's not them I'm interested in anyways. I wheelie out to a place where I can wheelie no more, where cobblestone gives way to grass which gives way to crunchy forest foliage, and the dim skies overhead flicker with magic as I hit the second floor. From there I take the second gate, which I have to skate halfway across town to pin down, then the third, then I emerge out of the old railway station half-buried by woods into the fourth level. My integrals glow with more of their realized power, and I slam one against a tree. A host of spirits with the faces of barn owls alight from within, crying out with anger, and I brandish the integral menacingly.

     "That's right. Get out of here," I tell them. "You're, uh..." Geez, with this place, there's no way they're not doing something illegal. There's complicated rules to how close different spirits of different danger levels are allowed to be to human civilization, which is multiplied by gate level, but I've forgotten half of it just by being here, where not even the simple rules are enforced.

     "Lugh," whispers a voice in the trees. It does not have the resplendence of sirens or undines, nor the chirpy, beckoning quality of a sylph, but it doesn't have the grunt of gnomes or even the distinctive rasp of the lizardlike salamanders. It's fae, but at the same time, it's entirely alien, in a way that's... almost human.

     "Conway?" I ask the forest around me. I grab my integral in two hands. "You were the one who-- come out!" When I don't get a response, I begin pacing the clearing. "I don't care if you're his brother. I don't care what excuses he makes for you. Asher can be smart, but he can also be really, really stupid, and if you hurt him, I'm going to have to deal out some retributive justice." Yeah. That sounded sufficiently badass. I add a quick, intimidating gesture with the integrals.

     "Brother? I am a brother to no one." The voice sounds half amused. I open my mouth and an arrow hits the tree behind me. "And you are, if I am not mistaken, a friend to no creature."

    "I'm a pal to humans," I say, awaiting the next arrow with braced integrals and nerves of steal. "A comrade. Companion. Amigo. Chum."

    "Humans?" The voice laughs mirthfully. "Pray tell me this, what good is the friendship of a human to the likes of me?" A volley of arrows hit the tree behind me. I turn to run and one whizzes past my head, the shaft gently brushing the top of my hair.

     "I feel like we can work something out if you come out into the open," I say, still dashing for it. Another arrow hits a fae to the left of me, a pixie, and it is transfigured into a mouse in a puff of golden powder. We're dealing with high fae trickery here, likely from some kind of sylph court.

     I get a response in the form of several more arrows. There has to be some way I can at least get her so that I can see her, which gives me a better chance... in the distance, I spy a meadow, and I rush to it, breaking the tree line and ascending out into the warmth of midday. The knee-high field of wildflowers in reds, yellows, and blues, rustle fearfully around me as I hold the center of the field, isolated from all technology, all people, and any hopes of escape. We're so far out that it looks like the whole world is nothing but this.

     The figure's bushy hair flows out behind her in the wind, dyed with fae berries and a variety of dusts to make it look like fire. Her face is hidden behind a mask with long, pointed horns, the intricate patterns across them becoming visible as she steps forwards. It occurs to me now who the hunter is in all of this: I was flushed, like a rabbit, into the open. I lift my hands. "Don't shoot," I say. She docks another arrow, letting it fly true, and it grazes my face. Her hand shakes as she steps forwards, and she lets it fall to her side.

   "The Sword of Lugh," she says. She points to my integral.

     "No, I'm from America. We don't use the Sword in our integrals. This is fae iron and the teeth of a high Spirit, but we get 'em from all over," I say, drawing it to me like a crab as she approaches. "Don't come too close. I'll use it."

     She looks at her own bow. Its string hums like that of a violin, teeming with energy. She runs a finger down it and it falls silent. "I lost many arrows in pursuit of you. My tribe will not be happy to find I've come home out with the loud blond quarry who has trampled our homelands and let forth awful roars into our countryside."

     "Electronic music," I say. "Can you hear me through the headphones?"

    "My kind are the Kept. When two people speak to each other as lovers, we hear the things no others were meant to here. When a secret is given to the ground, hissed in the dead of night, it comes to us like a butterfly to the fields. When a juvenile crosses the land, seeking blood, and his headphones whisper anger to him..." she trails off. "We have heard your 'music'. It is degenerate."

    "That's offensive." I cross my arms, placing my integral at my side. She attaches her own bow to the side of her plain outfit, which is somewhat akin to a more practical dress. It's a tunic of sorts, all in brown, and it complements her dusty skin. "Can you let me go, now? I didn't take your sword. I haven't taken anything that belongs to you."

     "You don't know the way back home from this meadow," she says. "It does not exist on the third level. You have not been up here without the other gatekeeper before."

     "I-- wait, have you been watching me?" I ask.

     "You are a menace."

   I shake my head. "In my country, fae live by rules and humans live by rules."

     "Voluntarily?"

     "Humans die here. Mismanagement isn't a joke."

     "Why should fae behave on behalf of humans, who have made the mistakes? We have established the rules, and you choose to break them." She looks at me and I swear, there's light in her blue eyes, which glint with a distinctly human kind of warmth. "Look closer at this field."

     It's flowers for a quarter mile in any direction, but coming up from the ground are ruins, gray stone covered by ivy just peeking from below the earth like exposed bones.

   "This is a battle between humans and humans you are seeing, where fae fought on both sides. There was a time where we were not so different, and yet still humans were the cause of all the problems. I come here often for reflection."

    "And to murder bystanders?"

    "You are no bystander," she says, and I think of Sheryl. "Leave this place in peace and we will have no more quarrel. I give you your life and a means home; in return, you tell no one, lest the wrath of the Kept fall on your head."

    "Thanks," I say, already thinking of the report I'll write up. Somehow, my hand slackens, hesitates, upon looking over the ruins again. "Was the Sword... yours?"

    "Nothing in this world has ever belonged to me. Does water belong to any pebble in the river, as it passes over?" she asks. "The most valuable things have no owner, certainly. For example, stories... well. I will say that there is a greedy stone that dams the river, and the sword has been dashed on it a long time ago."

     "You wouldn't be able to handle the integrals," I say. "Tough break."

    She looks down at her own bow. "I suppose I would not."

    We meander through the forest until we hit the gate, where I stop, suddenly. "Can anyone perform botanokinesis?'

    "What?" she asks, head tilted askew, like a dog.

    "Can anyone... manipulate trees." I correct myself, trying not to cringe as the image of Asher's bloodied body washes over me.

    "That is a power afforded to some changelings and dryads, but there is dryad blood in my court," she says.

    "Can you talk to them?"

    "The next time I see you, it will likely be me viewing your insolent corpse dragged into my court for your many trespasses against the natural order."

    "Your court. As in it belongs to you?"

    "I believe the 'electronic' music has addled your mind."

     That's a 'no'. I nod to her, she nods back, and as soon as I'm back, I hit the ground running. This is one for everyone back at the Academy to hear about, but when I get home, I swing straight for my room (though I haven't slept in it in a few days, I've been on the ground in Sheryl's room) and rap on the door before entering anyways. Asher is still asleep, totally swathed in bandages and resting besides a hot (piping hot, as the British might say) bowl of soup. I feel my face drop, but I'm not waking him up.

    "Asher, buddy, I've got something to tell you when you wake up," I say.

     No answer. I tilt my feet back to let the wheels roll out and I skate out of the room, into the empty house.

______________________

Written by ChronaLilly