“Is it even possible?” Varga added.
I shook my head. “I don’t think it’s supposed to be.”
“Screw this,” Amelia said. She pressed the call button on her earpiece. “Draven, come in. Draven?”
Varga used his True Sight to scan our surroundings. We’d narrowly escaped death—or, more optimistically, a good ol’ fashioned maiming by… evil trees. This had to be the doing of earth fae, only, I couldn’t understand why they were engaging in such violent behavior. Then again, the water fae had been equally aggressive. Did someone know what we were up to? Had this cult spread far wider than we’d originally thought, perhaps?
Riza looked at me. “We need to get out of here,” she said. “If the portal is obviously down, we might as well head straight to Cerix.”
“Yeah, the sooner we figure this out, the better,” Raphael replied.
Draven’s voice came through our earphones. “I’m here, Amelia. What’s going on?”
“Have you heard from the water fae yet?” Amelia replied. She’d briefed him on Starlin’s death, and we were promised an investigation.
“I told you, we’re sending a team out. They should be on Akvo in approximately two hours, tops. They’re in the middle of prepping,” Draven said. “The fae officials told us there was an incident in one of the barracks, but they had no details. They agreed to have uniforms out by the portal, waiting for our people.”
“Oh, are we sure we want to trust them, after what happened?” I asked, pressing my earphone button to actively join the conversation.
“We don’t really have a choice. Besides, we shouldn’t blame the entire planet for the actions of a few rogues,” Draven replied.
“Okay, well, add another team to deal with the Emerald, too,” Amelia said. “We got attacked again. This time, however, earth fae were involved. The ground was shaking; they practically demolished the building we were in. Plus, the trees were all murdery.”
“What?!” Draven croaked. I could tell from the high pitch of his voice that he was both stunned and exasperated. He had every reason to feel this way.
“I’ll send a report as soon as we get a breathing moment,” Amelia said.
“Where are you now?” he asked.
“We’re at the Emerald portal, but it’s been destroyed,” I said.
A moment of silence followed. Draven was speechless.
“They took down the witches’ portal…” he mumbled, most likely wrapping his head around the entire concept.
“Yes. And we have another problem,” Varga interjected as he looked at me, his brows drawn into a deep frown. “Earth fae are coming here. From all directions. They’re circling in, and I don’t think they’re friendly.”
I briefly checked Herakles, noticing the color return to his cheeks. Eva’s blood was working. Thank goodness.
“Maybe they’re looking to finish what they started at the jade building,” Eva suggested.
“Did you find Cerix soil samples?” Draven replied.
“Yes. We’re about to head there now, interplanetary-spell style,” Riza said.
“Good. Do that, and I’ll alert GASP about the Emerald now. Keep your earpieces on, and we’ll talk again shortly,” Draven replied.
Riza opened her backpack and laid out the ingredients required for the interplanetary spell. Amelia added a fistful of orange dirt from Cerix to establish our destination. Eva drew the pentagram and symbols needed to activate it, while Varga kept an eye out, watching potentially hostile earth fae get closer with every minute that went by.
“They’re in no rush, I see,” he observed.
“They probably know the portal is down. They must be foolish enough to think that it was our only way off the planet,” Herakles replied.
We stepped inside the spell’s outer circle, as Riza murmured the chant. The ground started shaking again. Trees cracked and groaned, not far from where we stood. Varga cursed under his breath.
“They’re determined to kill us,” he said.
“They can suck it, as far as I’m concerned,” Eva shot back.
Light burst around us as the interplanetary spell was activated. The bubble swallowed us, then hovered a few inches above the cracking ground. The earthquake grew more intense, forcing some of the nearby trees down, their roots torn. I could see the silhouettes deeper in the woods. They were getting closer and amplifying their elemental influence.
Amelia gasped, her gaze fixed on one of them. Her vampire eyesight was better than mine, and she caught an interesting, though also infuriating, detail. “They’re wearing the same stuff as the fae who killed Starlin. Black silk and white porcelain masks.”
“This is taking creepy up to eleven,” Varga said.
“There’s a cult here, too, for sure,” Riza replied.
Fortunately for us, we were lifted higher into the air. The spell bubble was preparing to take off. It hummed louder, making my lungs vibrate. Looking down, the forest we’d just left seemed eerily peaceful. The crowns were no longer shaking, but the trees grew taller, incredibly fast.
“Jeez, they’re persistent,” I whispered, watching as the earth fae manipulated nature itself in order to nab us. We had swamp witch magic on our side, though. We weren’t going down so easily this time.
We shot through the night sky, then pierced the Emerald’s high-pressure atmosphere. My eardrums nearly burst in the process, but I breathed an audible sigh of relief once we left the planet behind. From afar, it was stunning. A perfectly round marble, covered in vast continents and endless forests, with ocean strips snaking in between. From up close, however, it had quickly turned into a nightmare, and I had no idea why.
When had this weird cult infiltrated Akvo and the Emerald? Were there such factions on my home planet, as well? Zephyr, too? I glanced at Amelia. She was already typing the report on her tablet.
“You should have GASP check the Fire Star and Zephyr for such cult members, too,” I said.
She smiled. “Way ahead of you on that one. It’s already at the top of my recommendations.”
