Mei Ruan May 23rd,20XX

Galen groaned under me as I pushed the immature fluttermoth to its limits, trying my best to catch up to the queen. We reached the witch capital about an hour or two after Heloise did but the actual queen was nowhere to be seen. I followed the trail of debris and tried my best to navigate around the crumbling buildings.

Just looking at the damage Heloise had caused while passing through was enough to send shivers down my spine. She couldn’t have spent longer than a few seconds at each place, but to replicate this much damage I would have to lead an entire army of fairies about as strong of myself. And even then it would take a lot longer than a few seconds to accomplish.

The only royal I’d ever met was Cai, so seeing a ‘real’ fairy royal was off-putting and scary. Thinking about it in more depth, Cai was only seventeen, he still leaked magic in his sleep for goodness sake. There wasn’t much of a comparison to be made.

Or so I wanted to think, but honestly, I knew that if Cai wanted to cause this much damage in a short amount of time, he would be able too, even if it wasn’t in the same way that Heloise had done so.

Terrifying people they were.

“Mei, Give me the reins and go find Heloise. I’m sure she’s found that grandson of hers by now so there must be a reason she hasn’t brought him back yet.”

He was right, but I was reluctant to leave him alone.

He couldn’t use very much magic, and he couldn’t fly to safety if the need arose. Heloise had left him in my protection, even if she hadn’t verbally said so and as much as I wanted to go after the queen and track Cai down, I couldn’t abandon my post.

“I won't be much more efficient on my own than I am here. Try to keep a track on her magic.”

A large boulder crumbled off of the building to our left and I tried to tug Galen away, but it was moving too fast for the immature Fluttermoth to avoid. I grabbed my want out and blasted it to pieces, then created a sheet of magic to protect us.

While I couldn’t quite replicate the Cai’s talent at creating shields and barriers of magic, I had enough experience to protect us.

Milo had brought out a weapon of sorts that resembled a cannon, but was much, much smaller than any I’d seen and sat comfortably in the palm of his hand. He took to shooting blasts of magic at any piece of debris that my shield couldn’t cover but would hit Galen.

The Fluttermoth didn’t need much guidance from me and was almost blindly following his owner’s scent. All I needed to do was to guide him away from large obstructions that the young beast was tempted to barge through.

Witches and goblins bounced around the ground, engaging with and aiding each other. I mostly ignored them, only taking note of their presence to report to the castle when I got back. But from the corner of my eye, I spotted a familiar face. It was so familiar that if not for the hair and the horn that protruded from its forehead, I would have sworn that was the one I was looking for. I decided to ignore it for now and focus on finding the actual person I was looking for.

We were going quickly, but not quickly enough for my liking.

I quietly egged Galen on. If he was hurt, or anything worse had happened to him, I didn’t know how I would be able to make it up to him.

Finley Cai Aies Hall May 23rd,20XX

One would think I would be used to pain by now considering I had experienced a lot of it in rather close intervals of time. I tried to convince myself that it wasn’t that bad but this felt different than the others, holding just enough difference to disable my attempt to get used to it, but retaining enough similarity to the other times that I could recognize it as pain.

My left side was cold, like I was being stabbed by a million and ten ice needles, each targeting a singular pore on my skin and drilling in viciously as they could. My right side felt hot like molten lava was being poured over my skin.

It was uncomfortable but I couldn’t dismiss the weird feelings of familiarity that suddenly blossomed within me. I tried to focus and put a pin on it in the hopes that it could distract me from the pain.

It didn’t work.

The two opposing pains on either side of my body steadily poured energy into me and strengthened the magics that fought within me. I could barely take my mind off what I was doing for fear that I would lose control, but the extra energy somehow managed to make what I was doing a bit easier.

They were foreign but they merged so perfectly with my magic that I could barely differentiate them. That added to the distracting but comforting feeling of familiarity.

I focused on restraining the two forces that battled inside me. My Fairy powers aggressively attacked my Goblin powers, and when I managed to restrain it, the opposite would happen. The extra energy made it easier to differentiate the two and make up for how much was lost through every clash.

I needed to get them to the same strength before I could force them together. There wasn’t any sort of measuring tool that could tell me exactly when they were at the same strength so I could only rely on my intuition to make the call.

As I bided time and tried to get them to balance out, the two foreign energies suddenly strengthened in intensity and I felt it.

The moment I’d been waiting for finally came.

I fought through the overwhelming panic I’d suddenly developed and smashed the two opposing sides together. Taking either in hand, despite them being much too large to fit in a single palm and pushed them together.

It hurt. A lot. But I had to push through it and didn’t let myself get swept up in the unpleasant feelings of wrongness. Unconsciousness beckoned me like a siren and promised me the chance to escape the pain. But I resisted it as best as I could and ignored its calls.

My goblin side was the first to revolt, and anxiously tried to absorb the fairy magic, but the foreign power intervened again and strengthened it. That encouraged the Fairy power to attempt to envelop the goblin magic, and steadily ate its way through it, but the foreign power strengthened the silver energy and the balance returned.

I crushed the large forms of energy into a small ball, trying to get them as compact as possible. The bright silver and intense gold momentarily refused to merge but I wouldn’t let my own magic get the best of me.

I increased my effort and squeezed them together, watching them become a single metallic colour. It was a silver-gold*, or a gold-like silver.

Whatever colour it was didn’t really matter. What did matter was that it was mine.

The new energy squeezed into a small ball and re entered my chest, leaving a warm and pleasant feeling. It was vaguely unfamiliar and somewhat uncomfortable. But that would fade with time.

I was tempted to go to sleep, but now wasn’t the time for that. I needed to wake up and get back home. I needed to make sure Jake and Sparrow got back safely.

I needed to tell Mei and Thedulus that I was okay.

There was also Will, and Aleka, the people at school and the ones at work. All the relations that I’d made both small and large. They were all worth returning to.