In all the years of Jin’s existence, he’d never once thought of having even a single toe step off the mountain. But when he felt Mei leaving, he’d stretched out a singular strand of his spirit and bound it to her. It was a tiny bit of him, all he dared send outside the mountains.

With anyone else, this probably wouldn’t have worked. The strand didn’t even hold .005% of his power, it was so weak and fragile. But Mei already had a great deal of his energy swirling within her. The strand was able to sync with his existing energy in her body and become just strong enough that it wouldn’t break.

As the pain of the poison ebbed away and he removed the last of the arrow, the uncomfortable feeling of exposure increased ten fold. Not only was his “little shield” gone, a part of him was off the mountain and vulnerable. He sat up and looked in the direction he knew his wife had been dragged towards, feeling agonizingly helpless.

He didn’t dare go any further. Leaving the mountains was not an option. These mountains had once had two spirits, now it was down to one and dangerously unstable because of it. Instinct told him that leaving would cause something catastrophic to happen. And since these mountains could basically destroy half the planet’s surface, and thus Mei, he was stuck.

Frustrated, he slammed his fists onto the already broken ground, causing two new craters to form.

“F-father.” Came a timid voice behind him.

“What?” Jin spoke in a harsh, bitter voice.

The little boy shook under his father’s fiery glare. Lifting his hands up, the little boy spoke through his fear. “Uncle Ye is hurt Father.”

Jin glanced at Ye apathetically. The leaf fairy was a wilted brown color and had passed out. He did not care. If Mei was not here, nothing mattered.

“And?”

“C-can you fix him?”

“Why should I?” Came the cold response. The fairy had not protected Mei. In that moment Jin could only feel bitter, not just at Ye but also at himself. Just as he couldn’t forgive himself for his failure, he couldn’t forgive Ye.

Lu Shao looked at his Father, stunned. While his Father and Uncle Ye fought frequently, they were still family. His Mother had always pressed the importance of family, how they loved and helped each other even if they didn’t always get along. Even though he was scared his Father might hit him again, he was also angry at him for being so callous.

He dared to argue back, “Y-you know! You know Father—! Uncle Ye is family! Mommy loves Uncle Ye. If— if he were to be hurt she’d be REALLY sad! And angry!!”

All the Fairy Princes knew their Mother was Jin’s weak spot. When he got stubborn, bringing Mother up was the only way to get through to him.

Lu Shao raised his little hands that carried his Fairy Uncle up, as if to force his burden on his Father.

There was a long pause from Jin before he finally grabbed the fairy. A single index finger traced around the fairy’s head and lifted. As it did, a stream of toxic black poison was dragged along with it. Jin flicked the poison and it landed with a “shhhh” on the ground. Jin then tossed the fairy back to his youngest son.

With the poison gone, Ye immediately started feeling better, his vibrant green color returning. Lu Shao hugged the little fairy to his chest in relief.

“Old Man!” Came a familiar call.

The eldest son, Shan Hui, had arrived. He’d flown in too, though quieter and at a higher altitude. He’d landed softly, just a few feet from Lu Shao and Jin.

“What’s going on?” He asked anxiously.

Even though Shan Hui had been far to the south, he’d felt the ripple (or perhaps tidal wave) of his Father’s rage. There weren’t many things that could make his Old Man that angry, so he’d come to investigate.

Jin was currently sitting in a pocketed crater, broken arrows and strange steaming holes surrounding him. His clothes were shredded and his skin had strange white blotches on it, as if it were new skin. Shan Hui saw all this and his alarm grew exponentially.

But more than that, Lu Shao was alone and in a strange place. Shan Hui looked around and noticed someone important was missing.

“Where’s Mother?”

Jin face went black as death.

“Someone kidnapped her.”

“WHAT. WHO?”

“I don’t know.”

“WHY?”

“I don’t know that either.”

“Than what do you know?!”

“That she is alive and she is…” He looked around for a moment before pointing. “…in that direction.”

Shan Hui couldn’t sense his Mother at all in the direction Jin was pointing. His face paled.

“She… she’s not in mountain territory?”

“Correct.”

“How could that happen without you noticing?!”

“Do I look like I let her go willingly?! She was dragged out! They——” His voice choked at the image of his broken wife’s body. His hands forming shaking fists. “——they hurt her, Shan Hui. They hurt her. I can feel it even now.”

“It was well planned.” Ye spoke up from Lu Shao’s embrace, finally recovered enough to have his wits back. “The mountains here are low and barren, but the terrain around them has lots of places to hide. All their attacks were long distance and seemed to appear out of nowhere. They can’t be normal people, since I didn’t sense their ill-intent and their weapons were laced with some powerful poison that works against fairies and even Jin.”

Shan Hui felt a wave of wrath bubble up from within but immediately smothered it. Anger would not bring his Mother back, it would not save her. And Jin was angry enough for both of them. What was needed at this moment was level headed thinking.

“When have humans gotten so powerful that they could harm those under the mountain’s protection?”

“This is new to me too.” Ye tugged on his hair anxiously. “Most people don’t know about, much less believe in, fairies. We have those yearly parties, but the adults only see us thanks to the masks. And those are Merchants. They don’t make poison, they sell them at best. Even if they do make a poison, they don’t interact with us fairies enough to know how to kill us. MeiMei is the only person in hundreds of years to be close enough to fairies to understand how we work, and she’d never make anything to hurt us.”

“Does it matter how they did it?!” Jin clasped the air in front of him, as if strangling an invisible foe. “Just let me get my hands on them, I’ll tear them to pieces!”

“Of course it matters! If they’ve got a poison for fairies, who knows what else they’ve got? Our ignorance is their tactical advantage!” Ye huffed.

“Old Man, what’s this?” Shan Hui interrupted, pointing at the long thread-like object coming out of Jin’s hands.

Jin blinked. “It’s a bit of me, I attached it to Mei. It’s how I can tell where she is.”

Shan Hui picked up the thread and rubbed it between his fingers, looking thoughtful. Jin gave a shiver and smacked his son’s hand away, glaring at him in annoyance. It felt weird to Jin to be touched so directly by his son and he didn’t like it.

“Ah, the twins.” Ye announced, turning to watch them arrive.

Sure enough, Yan Li and Shi Ji could be seen running towards them at breakneck speeds. When they reached Jin and Shan Hui, the collapsed in exhaustion. They’d been training in the North and had come the moment they’d felt Jin’s terrible rage.

“Took you long enough.” Shan Hui commented dryly.

Yan Li glared at him, still gasping for air. “We can’t… fly long distances… like you guys…”

Shi Ji could only nod in wheezing agreement.

Unlike Shan Hui, the twins had to work for their strength. They’d started learning martial arts around eight, cultivating their powers more every year, and under other circumstances their progress would have had them counted as prodigies. But with Jin as their father and Shan Hui as their elder brother, they were considered ordinary instead.

As if to add insult to injury, Shan Hui was short like their Mother and looked like a teenager despite being in his twenties. The twins meanwhile had sprouted tall like their father and looked like very handsome young adults even though they were still in their midteens. Having someone with Shan Hui’s looks talk down to them secretly vexed both the twins, particularly Yan Li.

“Where’s… Mother?” Shi Ji asked after several large gulps of air.

Ye explained the situation glumly. Yan Li and Shi Ji both had an ugly expression on their face when he was done.

Yan Li growled like a beast and furiously stomped his foot into the ground leaving a foot shaped indent behind.

“Why would someone do this?” Shi Ji asked, hands clenched in distress. “Mother has no enemies, not that I know of… so what benefit could there be in kidnapping her?”

Shan Hui who’d been staring at Jin’s string as if he wanted to touch it again suddenly looked up and said, “The only reason you kidnap someone is for ransom or revenge.”

“Did they ask for ransom then?”

“You heard that they shot and dragged her away, when would they have had the time? And frankly speaking, only an idiot would take our Mother as a hostage to get riches. Everyone knows that the Old Man loves her and that anyone who hurt her would get chopped into pieces. And that’s just the Old Man, it doesn’t account for what we would do to them. Threatening Mother won’t get you ransom, it’d get you dead.”

Jin nodded in agreement.

“That leaves revenge.” Shi Ji said, tilting his head. “But for what reason?”

“…well, there have been times in the past where the Old Man has angered people by denying them entrance.”

“What you implying?” Jin’s eyes narrowed.

“Calm down, I’m not blaming you. We only come in contact with Merchants. The ones you offended were Merchants. The rare times they hired someone to take us out, they were so weak Mother could have dealt with them. There’s never been a single attack from a Merchant that’s succeeded.” Shan Hui furrowed his brow. “I don’t think this was done by Merchants. It’s seems much more complex and well thought out. So… someone more powerful than a Merchant yet with better connections… hrm… the only people that comes to mind are nobles or government officials…”

“…we don’t know any nobles or officials though.” Yan Li looked bewildered.

“Yes, exactly, which leaves me at a loss. Someone very powerful is angry at us, but to what end I don’t know. If they can make arrows appear from thin air and poison fairies, surely they could have killed Mother, and even Lu Shao, instantly. Yet they didn’t. They targeted Mother specifically and dragged her away… like they wanted us to follow…”

Shi Ji snapped his fingers and pointed at Shan Hui.

“Ah! A trap?”

“It does seem like one, doesn’t it? Is it the Old Man they’re after, one of us, all of us? Do they not realize the Old Man can’t leave the mountains perhaps? But as for us sons,” Shan Hui put his hands behind his back and tilted his head, his eyes cold as ice, “if it’s us they’re after, I think we should give them what they want.”