Rise of the Fomori: A Young Adult Urban Fantasy Adventure (Faerie Warriors Book 2)

by J. A. Curtis

  The charred remains of the manor were both a beacon of relief and dread. Had we arrived in time to do anything? What were we going to find?

  The grounds of the Haven were alarmingly quiet. As we angled to see around the manor, Thaya’s giant warrior woman came into view. She stood tall, Thaya on her shoulder, bow and arrow of light at the ready, guarding the entrance to the baby hut.

  “Thaya,” Arius said.

  Dread stole through me. I’d forgotten about Thaya and our deal. Had she attacked Dramian even as he tried to protect the queen?

  The pegasus brought us into a smooth cantering landing.

  Thaya observed us, arms folded. “It’s about time.”

  “Thaya, what’s going on?” I demanded, jumping down from the pegasus even before it stopped moving.

  “I came back to the Haven to find Docina and Arzon fallen and Dramian fighting Margus. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but I wasn’t going to let Margus have my revenge. But then Dramian claimed he was defending the queen, and if I didn’t help him, then we’d all be at Margus’s mercy. I couldn’t allow that, so I teamed up with Dramian against Margus. But then Margus became invisible and the only way to keep from falling ourselves was to take to the sky. Then I remembered the children and how easily Margus could get to them, so I guarded the children’s hut while Dramian attempted to use his dragon to smoke out Margus’s true location. When he was nowhere to be found, Dramian determined he must have gone into the woods after the queen and he charged off after him. And I’ve been standing guard since to make sure Margus doesn’t circle back around.”

  A spark of hope filled me. “You mean the queen might still be alive?”

  “Doubtful,” Thaya huffed. “They’ve been in there a long time. It’s more likely Margus took Dramian down, killed the queen, and took off without me noticing.”

  She looked upset, although I didn’t know if she was more upset over Margus taking Dramian down before she could or over the queen being killed.

  “There is a large enemy force headed our way,” Arius reminded me.

  Right. I turned to Thaya. “Is everyone in there?”

  Thaya nodded. “It’s cramped, but we got all the five-year-olds, the ten-year-olds and babies. Although I keep hearing new cries.” She shook her head. “I take it nothing went according to plan.”

  “It was a trap,” Arius said.

  “Is Kris in there?” I asked.

  “Who?” Thaya asked.

  That’s right. Thaya didn’t know about Kris. “Our age. Spunky, nose ring, a bob-style haircut. Human,” I described.

  “There’s no one our age in the hut. What is a human doing here?”

  Disappointment and fear crashed into me. I turned to Arius. “What if she’s hurt in one of the tents?”

  Arius moved to go check. But he paused at Thaya’s voice.

  “Nobody’s in the tents. The ten-year-olds did a sweep before hiding in the hut.”

  Then where was she? “Thaya, I want you to take the domovye, the babies, everyone—and any supplies you may need—and go hide in the mines.”

  Thaya jumped down from her faerie guardian’s shoulder. “That’s better than sitting out here in the open.”

  I reached into the pouch on my belt, pulled out the armband filled with gems, and laid it out on the grass. Careful not to touch the yellow stone, I unsheathed my sword and used it to pry the pink stone from its casing.

  “Take this.” I held it out to Thaya.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  I showed her how to use the stone to cast a protective barrier, practicing on the baby hut. Saying the words, I cast the barrier and then showed her how to bring the barrier down.

  “Don’t forget the words,” I said, pressing it into her hand.

  Thaya scowled. “I’m not doing this because you ordered me.”

  “I know,” I said. “Take care of them.”

  36

  Casualties

  Mina

  “Trust others to be there for you when you need them.”—Nana

  WE LEFT THAYA TO HER task and hurried around the manor toward the backwoods. I was glad Arius was with me. His super eyesight would be able to spot Margus even if he was invisible. Before we entered the woods, two lumps of gray caught my attention. A breeze blew, and the lumps shifted, tiny pieces drifting up from the piles and scattering in the wind. My breath caught.

  “Is that...”

  “Docina and Arzon,” Arius confirmed. “Their bodies turned to ash.”

  When faeries fell, their bodies disintegrated into ash. But I’d never seen the aftermath before. I shivered, trying not to think about how those were faeries who had fallen because of me and, averting my gaze, hurried toward the trees.

  “Wait,” Arius said. His eyes scanned across the edge of the woods. “This way.”

  Arius observed his surroundings before heading forward with confidence. I followed. “You can track them?”

  “Dramian and Margus? No. But Chels has the stealth of a charging troll. Do you have something that will help us move faster?”

  I released my faerie guardian as a white stag. We both climbed on, and I followed Arius’s instructions as we hurried through the trees. That Arius could track from the back of a stag moving swiftly through the forest impressed me. Of course, he always impressed me.

  He held me close against him. He was being gentler with me than I was used to. I should have gotten some sort of reaming by now. I’d gone against the plan, tried to trick him, and as a result, I hadn’t been there when the faeries needed me. And Docina, who I had been trying to protect, had fallen anyway.

  “Arius,” I muttered, “I’m sorry. I should have listened to you.”

  His arms tightened around me in a squeeze before relaxing. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there all those times you needed me. I saw the effect it had on you, I just—couldn’t get past what she did to me.”

  I’d been so worried about whether he would be there for me. I shook my head. He was always there when things got dangerous. I should’ve worried more about being there for him.

  “We work together from now on,” I said. “I’ll stop making reckless decisions on my own, and you promise to be all in.”

  A breeze blew through the trees, tangling my hair in front of my face at the same moment Arius’s lips grazed the back of my neck. A warm shiver ran through me.

  “I’m all in, Mina,” he murmured.

  ARIUS TRACED THE TRACKS to a wide, shallow stream. It flowed lazily as Arius dismounted and stepped up to the stream's edge.

  “It looks like she may have stayed in the water to hide her tracks,” Arius said.

  Chels was a prissy not-get-her-hands-dirty type of girl who probably hadn’t gone camping a day in her life. How did she know to do that?

  A loud roar broke the stillness, and a stream of fire shot into the air from upstream.

  “Get on the stag,” I said.

  Arius leapt onto the antlered deer, and we raced along the stream bank. With the stag’s feet cracking against the loose stone and gravel, I clutched its neck as it moved with a steady swiftness.

  We rounded a large bend in the stream, and the scene came into view.

  Margus’s wyvern had Dramian’s dragon pinned on its stomach against the stream bed. The wyvern’s claws dug into the scales on the dragon’s back. Its teeth sank deep into the dragon’s neck, forcing the fiery creature’s head down under the water. The stream cascaded over and around them, blood from Dramian’s dragon spreading into the current, swirling past their forms.

  In a sturdy, leafy tree nearby, huddled a terrified Chels along with a worn and weakened Dramian. And in the tree, her arms wrapped around Dramian to keep him from tumbling out of the branches, sat Kris.

  Thank God. Kris was alive.

  Wolpertinger dropped out from between two branches and dive-bombed toward the wyvern. He ducked his head, his antlers pointed at Margus’s faerie guardian. The small pointed antlers struck the side of the
wyvern’s head. It released its hold on the dragon’s neck, letting out a roaring shriek of pain. Wolpertinger flapped his wings furiously, coming in on the other side and ramming into the wyvern’s head, the points of the antlers striking right into the wyvern’s eye.

  The wyvern roared again and turned its large crushing jaws on Wolpertinger, but the small, winged bunny dodged the flashing teeth by flapping up behind the wyvern’s head, his little fluffy tail a flurry of white.

  I watched in utter amazement. It was an ingenious attack. Not only did Wolpertinger’s attack hurt the wyvern, but it hurt Margus too, wherever he was. The wyvern released Dramian’s dragon altogether. Its tail whipped up and caught Wolpertinger from behind, flinging the smaller creature down to the ground. Wolpertinger lay there, unmoving.

  Arius’s golem rose, charging into the fight. The huge rock monster bowled into the wyvern, knocking it the rest of the way off Dramian’s dragon.

  “Margus is invisible, and he’s scaling the tree to get to Chels,” Arius said to me, pointing.

  My fingers drew into fists. I hated that Margus could go invisible.

  “I got it,” I said.

  My stag changed into a griffin and sank its claws into the dry, loose dirt lining the stream. Dirt rained down on us in a steady cascade as it flew toward the tree. The griffin’s right wing dipped, and it flew to the side as its claws opened and clumps of dirt sprayed into the tree, slapping the trunk and pouring to the earth below. A light outline of Margus’s form came into view. He was inches from Chels’s branch.

  Chels let out a shriek and reached for the next branch up, but Margus’s hand closed around her ankle. I pulled my faerie guardian back and re-released it into the branches of the tree as Other Mina. She lunged onto Margus’s back, locking her arms around his throat. Margus growled but didn’t let go of Chels. Keeping one arm locked around his neck, Other Mina karate chopped Margus’s arm twice, so hard that he cried out and released Chels. He scrambled for a different handhold to keep himself from tumbling out of the tree, Other Mina’s arm still clutching his neck.

  “Chels, use your faerie guardian! Get out of here!” I shouted.

  She turned large frightened eyes on me but nodded as if just realizing this was an option. Climbing to the top of the tree, Chels balanced on two separate branches. She released her faerie guardian. The griffin flapped its wings and reached down with a claw, snatching Chels up into its grasp.

  Other Mina crawled off Margus and made her way to a branch above the one Kris and Dramian rested on. Dramian looked better and was sitting up on his own. A check on the battle against the wyvern showed that his dragon was up on all fours and taking part in the fight.

  “Margus,” Dramian growled, going for his sword as he watched Margus’s descent out of the tree.

  “Are you crazy? A minute ago, you were too weak to even move!” Kris protested.

  “I’ll be fine.” Dramian insisted. He dropped from the branch, swinging down to the ground.

  Margus, his body partially visible from the dirt covering him, faced Dramian. I was worried Dramian wouldn’t be able to see Margus’s sword until I saw Arius closing in on him as well, his sword drawn. Dramian reached down and sprang back up with a clod of dirt. His arm reared back, ready to fling more loose soil onto Margus.

  Kris huddled on a branch, watching Dramian with concern in her eyes. Other Mina climbed down next to her.

  “Let’s get you out of here,” Other Mina said.

  Kris nodded, her gaze never leaving Dramian. Other Mina grabbed Kris’s arm and hauled her to her feet.

  “This is going to feel strange, but you’re going to have to trust me,” Other Mina said. And with that, she wrapped an arm around Kris’s waist and shoved her off the branch.

  Kris screamed as the two tumbled out of the tree. Other Mina transformed mid-air, changing into a griffin with Kris clutched in its claw. The griffin flew toward me where I waited on the other side of the stream. I raised my arms, and the griffin snatched me up in the other claw. We rose into the sky, following Chels and her griffin, who were making their escape ahead of us.

  “What happened?” I asked Kris.

  It took a moment for Kris to shake the dazed look from her expression. “We were ambushed,” she said. “Docina and Arzon tried to protect us, but Margus he... he took them down. I thought that was it, but then Dramian showed up and Wolpertinger led Chels and me into the forest. But that woman was tracking us, so Wolpertinger guided us into the stream and up the tree. We were able to hide from her. Then Dramian found us, but so did Margus.”

  Alarm struck me. “What woman?”

  A black inky substance flew into the sky from the forest. It rose, soaring toward Chels and her griffin, like a flash of dark lightning. It struck her. It entered her.

  The griffin froze mid-flap. The giant bird-lion careened to the side, flipping onto its back, and plummeted to the earth below, Chels still clutched in its claws.

  “Chels!” I cried.

  Keera. It had to be Keera and her crazy, not-entirely-corporal, faerie guardian that could take over other people’s bodies like she had done to Arius during our fight at the garage.

  The griffin struck the trees and branches, but still, it fell until it slammed into the earth. Neither Chels nor the griffin had moved from the moment the inky black substance had entered her. I could see the blackness pouring out of Chels, from her eyes, her mouth, her fingertips.

  My griffin dove for the ground. Keera was approaching from the stream. Her arm hung in a sling, the only leftover sign of her injuries due to the car hitting her.

  “You gotta hit her hard,” Kris said.

  Kris had hit Keera with the car. That had worked in freeing Arius. I re-angled my griffin’s descent toward Keera. If the force of my griffin hitting Keera ended up killing her, then so be it. It was the only way to defend Chels.

  “Brace yourself. I’m going to drop us,” I said as the ground came up at us in a rush.

  Kris looked terrified but nodded. Keera’s eyes widened as she noticed my griffin’s approach. My griffin’s claws opened, and we fell, hitting the water of the stream with a splash. We both went down.

  Everything went black. It was like the sun, moon, and all the light of day suddenly switched off. Some horrible creature had swallowed me, holding me so tight that I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. There was the vague feeling of a stinging wetness on my face and of hands tugging on my arms. The distant sounds of someone shouting scratched at my ears. But none of it mattered compared to the complete and utter blackness that held me hostage.

  And then the blackness released me. I tried to gasp but ended up with a mouthful of water. Refracted light and dirt and a murky haze filled my vision. Smooth stones slid under my hands as I shoved them down into the slimy bottom of the stream and broke the surface, heaving up water. Kris squatted next to me, tears sliding from frightened eyes. She looked about ready to hug me... or beat me.

  But instead, she swung a finger toward the trees. “She’s going to kill Chels!”

  Keera had somehow made it around my griffin’s attack, and I heard her shrill laughter from across the stream.

  My faerie guardian lay on the stream bank, a long divot in the earth where it had skidded to a stop. Pain, like I’d been dragged across cement, filled my side, a deep fatigue blanketing my body. I wasn’t sure if it was from the force of my unmoving griffin sliding across the earth or from being taken over by Keera’s inky black faerie guardian. I tried to coax the griffin to its feet, and it came slowly.

  But not fast enough. Keera’s faerie guardian had taken on a semi-corporeal form with tusks and horns. It stood on two legs, its hands clutching a long black sword. It stood in front of Chels, who had dropped to the ground next to her own griffin, looking pale and beaten. It raised the sword over her head.

  My griffin limped forward, but there was no way it would get there in time. I watched in horror as the sword came down.

  There was a flash of lig
ht. It appeared as its own form of lightning, slashing through the creature’s arm that held the sword and splitting the earth just beyond.

  Keera gasped and bent, gripping her arm. Another streak of light flashed from the sky, and Keera’s faerie guardian jerked back out of the way right before it struck. The ground split again, directly in front of Chels.

  I raised my eyes, a smile cutting across my face. A warrior woman with wings and a bow hovered in the sky. An arrow of light notched in the bow, aimed down at the scene below.

  Thaya.

  It was so nice not to see those arrows aimed at me for once.

  “If you want to take down Mina, that’s fine by me. But the queen is off limits,” Thaya called down to Keera.

  My smile faded. Typical Thaya.

  Keera glared up at the girl sitting on her faerie warrior woman’s shoulder. “Or I can take you down.”

  The inky black substance shot forward. It struck Thaya full in the face, and she froze. She tipped forward off her faerie guardian, and I flinched as her body bounced off a tree and onto the ground. Her faerie guardian followed with a loud crash.

  Strength was returning, the slow, awkward movements of my faerie guardian fading. I changed my griffin into a dragon, and it crushed the bushes as it stomped toward Keera.

  “You’re outnumbered, Keera,” I said.

  The blackness consumed me again, locking me in place.

  “And you’re a pretty terrible fighter. Look at you, can’t even defeat a couple of children,” Thaya’s voice was distant and worn, but I heard the usual baiting in her tone.

  “You think you measure up to me?” Even with the horrible freezing blackness coursing through me, I could hear the outrage in Keera’s voice. “Either of you? See what I’ve done? I’ve dropped both of you in a matter of seconds.”

  And then the blackness was gone. Kris caught my falling body, trying to keep me from splashing back under the water.

  The blackness had gathered in front of Chels again, who still hadn’t worked up the strength to move. Thaya lay on the ground next to her faerie guardian, not in a position to attack. My dragon had dropped to the ground with as little strength as I felt.