Drake

Drake was dead. Maybe. He was pretty sure he was dead. Reasonably sure. Being dead was nothing like what he expected. When he opened his eyes, nothing but bright emptiness filled his view. He was definitely dead. Well, probably. He had never paid much attention to Meena’s blathering about the afterlife, but he always had the nagging impression he would be forever walking through a fire pit or continuously rolling boulders. This place was fluffy and soft and painless.

He felt a sharp blow to his ear. Scratch painless.

“Stop it!” a voice snapped.

“He’s not a child at all,” the other answered despondently. “Well, he’s not her child, anyway. He’s barely more than a boy. And a filthy one at that.”

“All reasons to stop with the flicking. He clearly has big enough problems without being woken up by you assaulting him.”

“At least he’s awake,” the other muttered sullenly. “I thought you were going to melt him.”

“That was a distinct possibility,” the first voice sighed.

“What is he?”

“The Flifary don’t seem to like him, so that’s good enough for me. And back up. Your face is not the first thing anyone needs to see.”

Drake was still lying flat on his back. He tipped his head backwards to see two faces peering down at him. One was pale, gaunt, and framed by limp, dark hair. It was a face he expected to see in some sort of eternal torment afterlife. The other face was halfway familiar—the eyes at least. Green eyes were a Kianne oddity, and the coincidence seemed too great to be merely coincidence.

“Are you the High Sorceress?” he guessed.

She blew out a sharp breath and tossed her cropped hair out of her eyes. “Some days more than others. You can just call me Her Royal Highness Whose Feet are Too Sacred to Touch. Or Issabeth, I guess. For time’s sake.”

She stood and shifted to an angle appropriate to helping him stand. “Oh, I don’t think I’ll be able to—” he started to object, but she had already hauled him to his feet. He shifted weight from one leg to the other and clenched the fingers on both hands. Everything seemed to be in working order. A sizable, bloody slash split his pants below the knee. Using his fingers, he poked around under the tear. His skin was healed.

“Am I dead?” he asked.

The dark-haired woman cackled softly.

“Not dead,” Issabeth promised. “The pearl does nice work despite me. You were in pretty bad shape when they dropped you off, though.”

He was starting to piece things together, assuming he was not merely lying in the desert hallucinating.

“The Flifary?” he asked. “They brought me here?”

“Looks like.”

He tried harder to take in his surroundings with the knowledge he wasn’t dead, but he saw the same fluffy, floating ubiquitous white as before.

“Why?”

Issabeth sighed. “I was hoping you knew. Maybe you could fill me in on what you do know.”

He knew more than he thought he did: missing children, the search for Daniella, repeated Flifary attacks. He wasn’t sure how much he should be saying in front of the ominous woman who paced in slow circles like a shark, but she seemed out of touch with reality anyway.

Issabeth clapped her hands together decisively when he finished. “Sounds like we need to pop onto Flifary Island and put some crazies in their place. Home by dinner.”

“You can very well choose to get yourself killed,” whined the dark-haired woman, “but I’m not stranding myself on Flifary Island.”

“They might be ready for that kind of direct attack,” suggested Drake carefully. He was uncomfortable siding with the dark-haired crazy woman, but Issabeth’s frontal assault plan was alarming.

“Point taken,” the Sorceress admitted. “If we head for Crystal Palace, I can—”

“I can’t open a dark magic rift in the Glade,” Shrilynda interrupted.

“Plans are stupid anyway,” grumbled Issabeth. “What do you suggest, Drake?”

“Rosaliy is in Bayselle,” he offered, despite the sarcastic tone of the question, “and Daniella is headed there. They could both use help, and they know more than I do.”

“Hrmph,” sniffed Issabeth, grumpy to be facing so much disagreement. “Dee is headed straight for Rose? Yeah, I should probably do something about that. Fine, fine.” She heaved a sigh. “Do you have a knife on you, Drake? According to Shril, she needs some blood for this part.”