Allie & Micah

The next dawn arrived with a shy sun reaching between hills and peaks like a hesitant lover until its rays reached the trio of travelers. Gaillard was first up, especially sensitive to the sun’s siren call, and then Allie, groggily eating bread and cold vegetables from the night before, and finally Micah.

Allie rubbed her aching heels as she ate, dreading putting her shoes back on. Gaillard noticed and passed a wrinkled hand over them, healing the open blisters as he went. She thanked him sincerely, feeling much more ready to depart.

They stamped and covered the burnt-out corpse of the previous night’s fire, re-packed their belongings in carry-sacks, donned their cloaks, and moved on.

Gaillard seemed to be getting impatient and moved faster than the day before, while Allie and Micah followed behind. Micah was still awestruck by the environment, and Allie focused persistently on practicing magic without much luck.

Feigning intense interest in the nearby trees, Micah watched her from the corner of his eye. Periodically she would actually get a fingertip or two to pulse with a weak light, but managing this would cause agitation and consequently she would lose the glow.

She managed to hold the light steady for almost five seconds, but then she continually became more nervous as she maintained it, until her hands shook so much that the glow blinked out, and she began cursing in English. Gaillard turned his head to look at her, his face lightly amused but otherwise inscrutable as he watched her try again.

“Can you teach me magic?” asked Micah, seeing an opportunity while the mage was not outpacing them. He slowed a bit, though he was still going faster than was believable for his aged disguise.

“I can certainly teach you about magic,” Gaillard said, “but if you are hoping to learn it, I’m not sure humans are able.”

Though the mage’s words seemed truthful, Micah suspected that Gaillard was skeptical of him, and wary of imparting any powerful or dangerous skills. He couldn’t blame him, really, so instead he latched on to what was offered and asked, “Can you tell me more about magicepts?”

Gaillard gazed at him for a second, thoughtful, and then turned his attention back to their trek, which was now winding through a series of tree-dotted dales whose valleys contained layered rivers of fiery orange leaves.

Finally, he said, “Magicepts are the basis of most magic in Sidhe. Do you know much about concepts or percepts?”

“I know the words, but I don’t think I know what they mean in this context.”

The mage seemed to appreciate the human’s candor.

“When you pick up anything with your senses, you form a percept -- literally, the result of your perception. It is the rawest, most bare form of knowledge. When you begin learning about something, or experiencing it, or making yourself familiar in some way, you add to your precept and it becomes a concept. A concept is the sum of your perceptions, combined with your new familiarity, filtered through your personal experience and knowledge of the world. Do you understand?”

Micah nodded.

“A magicept is a concept that has been developed even further. In order to cast or perform magic, a magicept, its core concept, must be known to the user, as intimately as possible, through education or practice or both.”

Micah had to keep a quick pace to keep alongside Gaillard, leaving Allie trailing as she focused on her fingers.

They climbed out of the deepest ravine of one of the dales, careful not to slip on the leaves, and used the sloping bank to summit a hill overlooking a wide valley.

“So…if concepts are filtered through our own personal lenses, then the resulting magicept is never completely uniform?”

The mage smiled.

“Good catch. Yes,” he answered as he began descending the hill’s slope along a well-worn but uneven trail, its steps formed by exposed tree roots. “Any magicept is unique to the individual who forms it, influenced by their experiences, their emotions, and mindset at the time of casting, so their magic can and usually does change over time. Depending on the circumstances, especially in intense and transformative moments, a magicept may be invoked that will never be seen or replicated again.”

Micah was silent for a moment, considering the mage’s words intently.

“That’s incredible,” he said finally. “But humans can’t form magicepts?”

Gaillard gave a sidelong look at the human, who didn’t notice as his attention was focused on navigating his feet over a particularly knotty section of a downed tree.

“In the spirit of honesty, I don’t know. There are some who would say definitively not. Sidheans were given most forms of magic by the gods, and so far as I’m aware, a human has never used intrinsic magics like these. But I do not know these things as fact, and when others spout them, they are little more than dogma.”

This did not deter Micah much in his line of questions, and the pair continued talking of magic as they walked.

That night, after many hours of walking and an evening spent much like the one before, Micah woke suddenly, startled to consciousness.

The fire had burned down to embers, lighting only a few feet around it; outside of its ring of dim light, he could see nothing. He could remember hearing something in his dream that caused him to wake, but now that he lay on the cloth-pack, half-conscious, he could not remember what it was and was no longer sure it hadn’t been part of the dream itself.

Gaillard lay asleep on the other side of the fire, mouth open and snoring lightly. Allie, hunched in a ball close to the fire’s warmth, looked troubled in her sleep.

As he watched the embers smolder, close to falling back asleep, he heard the sound again and quickly returned to the surface of wakefulness. He strained his eyes, looking out into the darkness, but was rewarded with nothing.

The sound came again, a soft, laughing yip that reminded him absurdly of a hyena. He squinted and in the dark saw two glinting pinpricks of light — by the fading firelight he saw they were eyes, belonging to a mid-size, dog-like creature.

It yipped at him again, and he whistled softly to it. Another dog stepped forward into sight, made bold by the first’s approach. Micah could now see the eyeshines of three or four more, slightly further back.

A pack of wild dogs? he thought as he heard shuffling to his left, coming from Allie.

Her eyes were open and locked upon the dogs, and then they darted to Micah as he started to sit up. She stayed still and instructed quietly, “Don’t move.”

He froze but lifted his eyebrows at her in an expression that communicated his bemusement.

“Gaillard,” she whispered to the mage, and he turned over. The movement caused the two visible dogs’ ears to perk up as they regarded him.

“Gaillard,” she hissed, more fiercely, and one of the dogs turned its attention to her. Gaillard turned back over and opened his eyes, mumbling as he focused on Allie slowly. Grogginess disappeared quickly as he saw the expression on her face, and then the wild dogs, who were now moving as a pack into the light. His lips tightened as he counted them.

The dogs watched them, yipping softly between themselves.

Micah shifted slightly and the first dog looked back to him, and he saw a glint of its teeth as the canine seemed to grin.

A strange thing happened then -- the canine’s neck began to elongate, the cricks and cracks of the bones inside popping like knuckles as it grew. The flesh seemed to stretch out of many folds of fur on its neck, until the dog’s head was swaying on a long stalk, focused on Micah’s frozen form.

He swallowed. The dog chose that moment to strike. It leapt the distance between them to tackle and pin Micah. It stank of filthy fur and mange. It was the size of a Rottweiler but seemed weak from hunger, and its head bobbed in and out of his reach, as if trying to strike at him like a serpent.

The other creatures extended their hideously long necks, readying themselves to attack his companions.

Micah felt the weight of the dog lifted off of him as Gaillard attacked the beast with his staff, swinging it like a golf club and bringing it up into the dog’s emaciated ribcage. It yelped in pain and backed off, circling the pair.

Micah rose into a crouch as Gaillard used the staff to ward off more dogs who circled them, looking for a vulnerable spot.

Allie drew her sword and brandished it at another pair of canines, who seemed wary of the weapon enough to not attack directly, but they darted around her instead, attempting to nip at her. Finally, the most impatient of the canines pounced, and she brought the sword up, slicing into its belly. Immediately she had to withdraw the blade and dodge to avoid the other beast’s snapping jaws. She fumbled and dropped the blade.

Micah grabbed the only thing on hand that would potentially cause damage: a large branch whose end had been in the dying fire, the last foot of it burning deep red. He waved it threateningly at a dog who had been approaching him, and the arc of ugly red sparks it flung caused it to jump back and snarl at him.

He turned his head briefly to check on Allie and Gaillard, and it took the opportunity to leap at him. He swung the branch like a baseball bat, the glowing-hot end catching the beast in its patchy face. A sharp bark of pain issued as he hit it in the eye, and, unwilling to let it circle back and attack again, Micah sprung forward after it and thrust the stick down. There was a bit of resistance against the branch's sharp, hot point, but then a sickening pop as it pierced skin. The smell of sizzling fur and flesh made Micah cringe. The dog howled.

The remaining four dogs drew back from them and paused, their heads swaying on their neck-stalks, assessing their downed packmates with the logic of animal instincts more than a little colored by hunger.

Gaillard lifted his head and sucked in a massive breath of air. He brought his hand to his mouth in a cone and blew an enormous gout of fire at the canines, like a tsunami of flame. They yelped and screeched, their heads retreating closer to their bodies, and then they fled into the darkness, singed tails between their legs, yipping angrily.

Allie breathed a sigh of relief, feeling adrenaline course through her body. She leaned down to pick up her sword and wipe dark blood onto the grass.

Micah pulled the extinguished branch from the dead canine and looked down at the corpse in the light of the former fire, which Gaillard was trying to coax back to life. The body was fascinating in a morbid way, its unretracted neck curled unnaturally, while the rest of the body could have fooled Micah into thinking it was a domestic dog.

“They have no digestive tract, the gwyll,” Gaillard remarked, noticing him studying the dead animal. “They expand their necks and swallow their prey in large chunks, allowing it to sit in their throats and decompose into nutrients they can use. They are supposed to be scavengers, though, like--” He searched for a suitable analogy, which Allie supplied, “Hyenas.”

“Ah. Hy-nas. You’ll forgive me, I hope, in that it has been many years since I made my way to the Overworld,” the mage said, flashing his crinkly-eyed smile.

They moved the bodies well away from their campsite, wary of other predators who might smell the dead.

Too alert now to sleep, they cooked an early breakfast over the resurrected fire, the last of the meat and vegetables making a good meal, and then stamped out the flames and cleaned up their camp.

They moved on as soon as the sun began to climb the peaks of the distant mountains.

It was still another six hours’ walk before Gaillard broke their silence to point at a larger hill ahead and said, “When we reach the top of that hill, you will see the edge of Atlantis.”

They picked up the pace and were able to reach it within another twenty minutes, and, on its crest, Micah finally saw the city that had once been Allie’s home.

In its past, Atlantis had been beautiful, like a lovely woman who had nonetheless lived a hard and weathered life. Micah could see that many of the older, larger buildings had elegant spirals and arches and had possibly once been a gleaming ivory. Now, they were various shades of grey, stained with soot that saturated the polluted air rising out of the city like a caricature of the Industrial Age.

The original borders of Atlantis contained these tarnished structures, but the bulk of the city had expanded beyond them into dark slums crowded with unkempt hovels, so that she was a city divided into distinct outer and inner rings.

He could see the remains of a forest in a great semi-circle around the city, but from the base of their hill all the way to the tall, hideous wall that comprised the new border, the trees had been clear-cut, ugly black stumps squatting in the dirt.

Distantly, off to either side of the slums, Micah could see what looked like crop fields, sprawling and dark.

The whole view was something of a damper on the spirit, a wretched polis far-fallen from grace.

Gaillard didn’t let them linger over the disheartening sight for too long, instead starting down the right side of the hill, away from the walls.

“The entrance to the compound is over here,” he said, and they followed him down and behind another knoll, onto a path tucked snugly between several tall rocks. It dead-ended at the base of a steep cliff.

Gaillard kicked a stone and it hit the cliff wall, which sounded solid and not like an entrance at all.

The mage approached and rapped on the surface of the stone, and then pushed his body up against it, as if he meant to move the whole hill in an inappropriate way. He knelt and stretched on tiptoe, poking and prodding at the wall and muttering to it, until finally he stepped back and raised his hand to it.

He whispered softly to the wall, and it rumbled back at him from deep within the stone. A thick, square door swung inwards, revealing a dark tunnel twisting down into the ground.

“How did you do that?” asked Micah.

“The stone told me the answer,” Gaillard replied, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “It changes the entry word frequently, but you just have to be civil to it.”

Gaillard beckoned them forward to follow him into the passage. As they passed the threshold, the stone door shut behind them with the same rumble. In the darkness, Micah heard the tap of wood on rock, and a reddish light illuminated the path before them, emanating from Gaillard’s staff, which was cherried like a cigarette on the end.

Into the passage they went, along the smooth-hewn path that sloped down, down, until Micah could make out a light and the sounds of a public space ahead: indistinct voices and sounds of metal on metal, blended together into a general buzz of noise.

As they grew closer to the entrance, a dark silhouette stepped in sight, blocking their way.

“Who is that?” came a gruff voice, and Gaillard raised his staff, saluting the fay.

“Just me. Where is Danica?”

“Training some of the soldiers. Who have you brought?”

The fay stepped aside as the trio entered the cavern, finding themselves suddenly surrounded by people and activity.

The cavern was wide and stretched like a great hall, with other tunnels and passages branching off of it, filled with a flux of people entering and exiting, training and talking.

Observing the other beings-- people, beings? How do they refer to themselves? he wondered -- he felt as if he had wandered into the cantina in Star Wars. The humanoid fae had a diverse palette in their array of colors and physical features, but they hardly made up the entire demographic, or even the most surreal, Micah realized, as he gawped at a tall creature with disproportionately long forelimbs and a horse-like face as it conversed with a golden-skinned fay with close-cropped hair.

There were several wild-looking fae with olive-green skin and serious faces, the same species as the river girl Micah had glimpsed near Gaillard’s farm.

Everyone seemed intent upon their activity or task or conversation, appearing to be discussing things of great and grim importance, if one were to judge by the severity of their expressions.

The burly fay speaking to Gaillard was shorter than the mage, with abundant, wooly hair on his jaw but none on top of his head. He had stern, pale yellow eyes and a crooked nose, and his stocky frame was clad in dark-hued, rough clothes identical to the ones Gaillard had loaned Allie and Micah. They were apparently standard issue.

His expression was one of unhidden suspicion as he scrutinized the newcomers. He looked over Micah, appraising his build and strength, and then he turned his attention to Allie. Confusion and then recognition dawned on his face, heavy eyebrows shooting toward his nonexistent hairline.

“Is that--?” he got out, and Gaillard gestured grandly to her, saying nothing.

“Rodull’s flamey beard. Your Majesty,” he stammered, bowing curtly. “How--?”

“Please,” she said, awkwardly laying a hand on his shoulder until he drew up, “There’s no need. I’ve no more right to that throne than the one on it.”

“You are the rightful alberich, lady,” the fay said stiffly, and the mage raised a hand to interrupt them.

“Geir, for now it's best we keep her identity quiet,” said Gaillard.

The other nodded.

“I understand. Do you wish to see Dani?”

Gaillard shrugged in response.

“I can see her any time, whenever she’s free. They came to see the city.”

A dark cloud came over Geir’s face, and he replied, “Things are worse than when you left. We have tried, but--”

Gaillard shook his head to interrupt the other, an action which did not escape Allie’s notice.

“They will need to keep their heads down and make it a quick trip,” Geir advised, leaving it at that.

“I will accompany them and ensure their safety,” the other answered, just as a female fay stepped into their midst.

“Gaillard,” she exclaimed, hands out in welcome as she drew him into a brief hug.

She matched the mage in height, but had him beat in wiry muscle, easily visible in the hard lines of her arms and shoulders. She had steely eyes of gold like a caffeinated hawk, set in a proud face whose most notable feature was the pale scar that marred its surface, circling the underside of her left eye in a crescent, its tail continuing on to cross the bridge of her nose. She had a long, dark braid over one shoulder, which she tossed carelessly out of her way as she put her hands on her hips and evaluated them. She was intimidating, but there was considerable charm in her quick smile and glinting eyes.

“Dani,” Gaillard acknowledged her and smiled warmly.

“Is this fresh meat for me to tenderize?”

"Not quite,” Geir replied, and she frowned, her gaze returning to them for only a cursory, unimpressed glance, as if to confirm what she had already observed — these two were no warriors.

“Hm,” she said, underscoring her underwhelm. Then, on the second pass, she looked more closely at Allie, bright eyes squinting. Disbelief clouded her features, but recognition cleared the storm and brought out the sun of a full-fledged grin as she studied the other female.

“It's you. I can't believe it. We’d been hoping for you,” Danica declared, echoing Gaillard’s earlier sentiment, but stronger. “You were just a bitty thing last I saw you, but now--”

“I’m not… I’m sorry, Dani,” Allie protested, her smile replaced with concern. Suddenly pressure was on her, and she stumbled under the unexpected weight.

“What are you sorry for?” Dani asked, and Gaillard chose that particular moment to explain in a soft aside to Micah, "This is Danica, the captain of the former kingsguard. She’d be the first to admit that she’s not much for magic, but you’d be hard pressed to find a better fighter.”

Micah missed Allie’s reply, but caught the look of anger and disappointment on Danica’s face as she turned away from them.

Allie’s expression was no less than crushed.

“The temple or bar entrances are open for you to use,” Dani said briskly to Gaillard as she strode off on long legs, her demeanor changed from winsome cheer to wintery chill within the space of a moment.

“She’s only disappointed,” Geir said apologetically, and Gaillard grimaced.

“Her disappointment could quell the fires of Hades’ hair,” he replied, then said, “Well, I suppose we should head up.”

Geir led them through the long hall, winding around people, towards a smaller offshoot of the caverns.

Micah and Allie received many looks, some of simple curiosity and a few of suspicion, while a few fae raised hands to greet Gaillard, who signaled back cheerily. Upon passing Allie, some did bewildered double-takes, as if recognition had knocked at the door but not yet introduced itself.

Micah glanced at Allie. Her wild, pale strawberry tresses and green eyes didn’t appear to be rare among the lyosalfar, whose physical appearances ran in a range of golds and greens and auburns, but her specific characteristics -- delicate, pixieish features and the bloom of crumpled scar-flesh on her neck -- were the kind that stuck in your head. He supposed it was entirely possible some of them recognized her.

She felt the attention and dipped her head slightly to let her hair fall forward, covering most of her face and all of her scar.

Gaillard noticed and halted, ceasing walking for a moment as he said, “Hold still. It’s unlikely you’d be recognized, but just in case.”

He swept a hand over her face without touching her, muttering as he concentrated, and when he had pulled away, Micah couldn't tell it was her without looking closely. Her eyes were a dull, muddy sort of gold, the same flat color as her coarse hair, and her sharp elfin face had been molded into something softer, not so defined. It was as though Gaillard had averaged out and smoothed away everything that made her unique.

He seemed satisfied with his magical glamor, so they continued into the next cavern, a dining hall that was occupied by a couple dozen people in small groups, eating and talking solemnly at crude wooden tables.

Beyond that was a much smaller room with a tall staircase winding up to a trapdoor set in the stone ceiling. Geir led them up the steps and through the trapdoor into a cramped space which appeared to be the back of a bar. The bartender, a young, malnourished-looking fay with shifty eyes, leaned against the bar while his only customer brooded with a glass of something clear on the other side.

Geir crossed to them and spoke to them both quietly, and the bigger fay on the barstool leaned back to give Allie and Micah a wary gaze.

Gaillard turned and beckoned to the pair to follow him.

The trio walked from behind the bar and into the mess of mismatched tables and chairs, making their way toward the door, whose streaked window was one of the main sources of light in the place.

“It’s important to blend in here -- imitate the expressions of the people around you, be as dead-eyed as possible, try not to look healthy and exuberant, you get it,” instructed the mage. “No matter what you see.”

Allie pulled up her hood. Gaillard gave a dismissive wave and said, “Leave it down. Hoods will only draw more attention to you.”

Allie nodded her head, admitting his point, and so they met the stifling, muggy air of the street with exposed faces. They went from the nearly-empty, gloomy bar, leaving Geir talking to its occupants, to a bustling street in the slums that they had seen from the hilltop.

A market was laid out along the narrow avenue. Micah peeked curiously at the products available for purchase and saw ugly, misshapen fruits with odd-colored blemishes, cuts of meat that were spoiled and rancid, and holding them were people that seemed not to see the food at all as they purchased it. Everything was a peculiar shade of purple, and he had to keep himself from grimacing as he observed the vile commodities.

Gaillard led them through the Atlantean citizens, ensuring that Allie and Micah got an eyeful of them as they passed. Their faces were hollowed and tired, and they seemed so beaten down that none made eye contact with any member of the trio. Most citizens kept their faces turned toward the ground, as if they didn't have the strength to even lift their gazes. Their expressions were flat and mostly unaware, nothing like the bright, sharp gazes Micah had seen in Dani and the rest of those below ground.

In between the adults, who seemed to at least have a place to trudge to, there were children here and there, looking aimless and unkempt and starved. They wore the same haggard expressions as the adults, but their gazes were lifted upward, watching the tall figures with desperation in the shadows beneath their cheekbones. A few eyed the foul food in the stalls, as if working out a desperate ploy to steal from the merchants, who seemed to be in little better shape than their customers.

Among the dark, ash-stained clothing of the locals were conspicuous uniforms of bright white, clean and pressed and worn by fae who carried black tonfa and an air of authority. They wore full-face helmets with only a slot of tinted glass over their eyes.They stuck out in the grimy slums like white chess pieces among an ebony enemy, and the citizens gave them a wide berth, as pawns would knights.

Gaillard seemed to be going somewhere, but he was going slowly enough that they were able to keep close without effort, and Micah noticed him looking back at Allie periodically, as if he were trying to get an idea of her reaction to the city.

She, in turn, was mostly impassive, taking in the grey cobblestones and soot-covered, ramshackle buildings without so much as a quiver, but Micah could see in her eyes she was beginning to become overwhelmed by what she was seeing, a pinched line of distress appearing in between her eyebrows.

The smog in the air was so thick and cloying it seemed as though he could taste it; he guessed that the industrial byproduct was probably just as heavy in the Atlanteans’ lungs as it was on their faces and clothes.

In the distance he could see a complicated lattice of smokestacks that produced the polluted air, rising from factories painted against the somber, slate sky better than Sinclair could have described them.

Amongst the fae drudging about the toil of their daily lives, there were a few that had taken to sitting at random along the street, out of the way, staring off at things that weren’t there, their jaws slack or working at nonexistent words or food.

Micah had never seen more broken-looking people.

Gaillard turned into a narrower side-street with less foot traffic than the market street.

Allie stopped before an alleyway that branched off of their path, her face finally showing the distress that had been growing inside her as unquenchable empathy hijacked her emotional responses.

Micah paused, following her gaze to a child slumped in the refuse of the back causeway.

He wore little more than a dirty, shapeless tunic and pants that he had outgrown in height but could not fill, the clothes hanging from his emaciated frame. He smelled strongly of feces and garbage, even at a distance. His glassy eyes were focused on nothing at all, filthy hands listless at his sides.

Micah had the immediate impression that the boy would die soon.

Allie’s lips pressed together. She crossed to the boy and knelt, her hands faltering over him as she wasn’t sure how to help or comfort; some part of her realized he was too far gone to find any comfort except perhaps the company of another person in his final moments, if indeed he was conscious enough to register her presence.

A fleeting look of grim satisfaction came over Gaillard’s wizened face at seeing Allie so deeply affected. He had had a gut instinct that, if forced to face the city, Allie would not be able to turn her face away and live with herself. It nagged at him slightly to leverage the guilt he had already seen in her, but he also lived in the conviction that she needed to be there just as much as the Vanguard needed her.

Allie put a hand on the child’s bony shoulder and leaned down to whisper to him, eyes searching his face desperately for some sign that he could be saved. He was unresponsive for a stomach-sinking moment.

Finally he moved, tilting his head back and whispering something weakly back to her. One hand rose from the trash and gripped hers with surprising force, then slipped something into her palm and fell back limply to where it had started.

Then, as they watched, the boy’s chest rose up and fell in one last motion, and in the quiet murmur of people from the street, they heard a shuddery death rattle escape his slightly parted, cracked lips. His eyes stayed open, permanently locked on his own black-soled feet.

Allie made a small, tortured sound involuntarily.

Gaillard went to her side and put his hand on her arm, pulling her to her feet and leading her away from the body. She let him lead her, keeping her face turned downward and clenching in her hand whatever it was that the boy had given her.

The mage turned down another, even emptier, street, and waited for Allie to regain composure.

“What the hell -- I didn’t…” she sobbed softly to Gaillard, her hand covering her mouth. She couldn't seem to form full sentences.

“They are all addicted to scurf,” he said quietly to her. “It’s a potent anti-magical drug that keeps them controlled.”

She let out the same small sound.

“Oh god,” she started, tears starting to gather on her eyelashes, but Gaillard replied, “ It’s bad here, Allie. They produce unthinkable amounts of the drug in those damned factories, and it’s in all the food distributed in the city, in every district.”

“How could they--- even the kids?” More unfinished sentences tumbled out of her mouth in shock and grief, and the mage put a comforting arm around her.

“This is why I wanted you to come see,” he said, and his unspoken meaning was clear: this is why we are fighting. “We can continue talking back at the compound.”

Allie knuckled away the tears that had become too heavy for her eyelashes to bear. She looked down at her opened palm, where the boy had placed a coin — a single, bronze mark, a coin of the lowest value. Its face and tail, where the symbolic stag and leaf should have been, had been worn unrecognizable by desperate, grasping fingers. She felt its featureless surface under her fingertips, imagining what the coin had seen in its lifetime.

It’s the last one, the boy had whispered to her. I was saving it to feed my brother, but he is gone.

Allie clenched her fist around the metal, letting it bite into the flesh of her palm and relishing the pain.

Gaillard looked at Micah, who was focused on his distraught friend. He knew Allie better than the mage, and he knew for a fact what the mage had suspected: Allie would ultimately feel responsible for both the citizens’ current state and their rescue. He knew then that this was what Gaillard had wanted, for Allie to consent to becoming the leader of the Vanguard, because, without having seen it, she could disconnect and deny.

Now, it could not be ignored. Gaillard had forced her to see.

Micah looked at the mage, and in their exchanged look they both understood this implicitly. Micah said nothing.

Allie recomposed her face into careful blankness -- though its cracks were apparent to Micah -- and they began moving toward a huge wall at the end of the streets, where the slums ended and the old city would start.

“Past the wall are the Middling districts, but they are mostly empty. Most of the citizens -- and almost our entire base of operations -- are based here, out of the Lows,” said Gaillard to them quietly. “Come, we’ve already strayed further from the bar than I meant to.”

Gaillard led them back through the streets a different way, avoiding the alley with the child, back to the bar, where Geir and the bartender were waiting. Geir also studied Allie to surmise her reaction to what she had seen, but she turned away from him as the mage led them through the trapdoor and down into the compound.

Down the twisting staircase and back into the dining hall they went, where Gaillard and Geir entered into quiet, urgent conversation, which Allie joined after a moment’s silence. Micah kept his distance, feeling as if his presence at this point was extraneous.

Danica appeared at his side without warning, and she asked without looking at him, “Did Gaillard get what he wanted?”

Micah nodded.

“I think so.”

“Good,” she answered tightly, and Micah turned his face to her. Her skin was pulled taut over a ghastly grimace that was attempting to be a smile.

“I suppose you’ll be staying, as well?” she asked, and finally her eyes moved from Allie to him. They were softer now.

“Don’t pity me,” he muttered, turning away from her, and her eyebrows rose toward her hairline.

“It’s not pity. It’s sympathy, for you might find it very difficult here. Allie herself will have a hard time fitting in, and I predict she won’t have a lot of time available, taking on the duties of leader. You may find yourself stranded emotionally among strangers. Plus… as a human…” She trailed off, letting the implication speak for itself.

Micah’s face darkened.

There are some moments in life that have the ability to change our lives completely, drastically, for its entirety. These moments often come in the form of decisions, but there are few and far between those that are obvious in their potential to alter one’s destiny. Micah was faced with one of these now.

Danica let him think for a minute, quiet.

Micah could see his path diverge in two directions: the first, to stay here in Sidhe and learn and embark on tantalizing, unknowable adventure and danger. He recognized that he would struggle, for the reasons Dani mentioned and from the boundless culture shock, and probably others. It would not be an easy path, by far.

The second, he saw himself going back to the Overworld, back to Rex, back to medical school, back to dissatisfying normalcy. He imagined himself back in a classroom, attempting to learn, but knowing, in the back of his mind, that Sidhe existed, and that he had passed it up. That thought would remain there in his mind forever.

Allie would be gone, too. She would be here, taking on the world by herself, and I would have Rex.

His face twisted as his heart did. He could not differentiate the blended edges of his sense of obligation, of responsibility, of love, of guilt.

Rex. What would become of him if I disappeared?

I would never get this place out of my head.

I could maybe actually make a difference here.

…I’ve already thought this. I can’t tie my life to someone who refuses to help himself. I can’t be obligated into taking care of him.

Micah looked up, having reached the conclusive last stop of his train of thought.

Danica still stood next to him, watching a group of nearby fighters as they sparred in one of the training areas. She looked at him as he straightened.

“I’m staying,” he said firmly, feeling a determination that would abandon him and return many times over the coming months, and the fay smiled, patting him on the back.

“That’s what I like to hear.”

She left.

Glancing over at the others, he noticed the grim set to Allie’s features as she listened to something Gaillard was saying. Her face only grew more intense as he continued, but the tears she had cried on the street were gone, and for the second time that day, Micah saw resolve in her eyes.

I wonder how this will change us.

Allie caught his eye and broke away from the others, walking over to him and leaning on the cavern wall next to him.

“If you want to go back, you can,” she said, watching him and trying to gauge his reaction to her suggestion. “You don’t have to stay here.”

“Pre-med wasn’t really doing it for me,” he replied, masking his very real apprehension with nonchalance.

Her green eyes were sad, but she smiled at him. She looked out at the cavern, full of fae, and she took his hand and gripped it hard.