A Tide of War

by Bella Forrest

  Tejus nodded. “During the day.”

  “He was completely himself,” Hazel added. “And confused about what he’d done the night before—he could remember certain bits, but not the full picture.”

  “It would be interesting to see if Jenus is affected the same way,” I replied. “If he had moments of lucidity, it might mean that the entity is weak at that point.”

  “That could be the case,” Tejus replied slowly, “but judging by what Benedict and the others saw at the cove, and Jenus’s power, I wonder if this change is more permanent.”

  I was worried that Tejus was right, that the seemingly unbeatable strength and resilience of his brother couldn’t be compromised in any way—not even with our weapons. The only saving grace was that they were at least effective against his armies…but even then, there seemed to be an unlimited supply of ashen-faced forms that had emerged from the black mists.

  “Do you know anything that might be able to help us?” my grandfather, Aiden, growled at the Impartial Ministers, who were seated silently at the table, their eyes downcast as if they wished they could disappear.

  One of them looked up, shaking his head.

  “All we know is that whatever those creatures are, they were the first to inhabit Nevertide. Nothing more is said of them in our history books—we have searched, but each time it’s proven to be fruitless.”

  I sighed inwardly, frustrated by the inability of the old men to come up with answers. It was looking like our only hope was my adopted son Field, my nephew Benedict, and the others—their success in finding the jinni or jinn they sought out, the only creatures of this land who would know anything.

  “We need to see what’s beyond Nevertide’s waters,” I announced. “There might be other supernatural communities that are familiar with the history of this land.” I looked at Tejus, who was frowning. Queen Memenion was shaking her head—clearly she too was under the impression that Nevertide was alone in this dimension. That they were so isolated from the rest of the supernatural world that they’d never come across any of our kind before amazed me.

  “I know you say there’s nothing out there, but that can’t possibly be true. We’re in the supernatural dimension. Nevertide must somehow be connected to other lands. They might be at some distance, but we need to search.”

  After a brief pause, Tejus nodded his agreement, raking a palm across his brow. I respected the sentry, I understood that he—like most rulers or commanders—was proud, but he went up in my estimation in admitting that his world view might have been incorrect. It wasn’t an easy admission to make.

  “I agree,” Ibrahim replied. “Corrine and I, along with some other witches, will investigate the waters. I presume there are safer ways to reach the borders of this land than the cove?”

  “I would suggest heading to the Seraq kingdom. The rest of the coves are surrounded by forest,” Tejus replied. “The palace is empty; I think her people have scattered. Take a few sentry guards with you to show you the way. The palace overlooks a cliff edge, down into the waters.”

  Ibrahim thanked him.

  “We’ll help secure the borders around the palace and then be on our way,” the warlock informed us.

  “We also need to find a way to close the portal,” Sherus announced. “The entity and the shadow haven’t left that location—there must be a reason. Perhaps it’s the most convenient way for them to get to Earth? I don’t know—what I do know is that the portal is important to them. When I left the battlefield, the shadow was hovering over the portal. Whether it was more of the creatures coming in, or them leaving, I couldn’t be sure…but at the moment, we’re leaving Earth exposed to attack.”

  The Impartial Ministers grumbled, no doubt more concerned with the fate of Nevertide than Earth. I really disliked those guys. Ignoring them, I turned to my father.

  “I agree,” he replied. “But first we need to ensure that we’re safe here—then we’ll send out a group to see if we can close it.”

  The fae king looked as if he was about to protest. I knew that he believed if the creatures could get to Earth, then they would also find a way to the In-Between.

  My father silenced him with a raised hand. “Sherus, we lost many men today. We can’t send more down to the cove till they’ve had time to recuperate. Let’s hope that the entity is more intent on destroying us than anything else—so far that seems to be the case.”

  Lidera, Sherus’s sister, placed a hand over her brother’s.

  “I agree with Derek,” she replied quietly. “Let us deal with the immediate danger and wait until we hear back from the witches and warlock. The more we know, the better prepared we’ll be to defeat the entity. At the moment, we’re at a disadvantage. We were defeated today,” she reminded him.

  Sherus didn’t say another word, but his face darkened. I felt compassion for the king—felt linked with him in a way that was hard to describe—and for his dimension. I worried about the fae kingdoms too. It was Sherus who had warned us of this threat, and I believed that the entity would come looking for the fae eventually—otherwise why would the king be the one to have experienced those omens? Still, Nevertide and the safety of GASP and the sentries had to be our priority. If we were defeated, then all hopes of Earth surviving an attack would be gone.

  “We have one defense that appears to be able to halt the entity,” I said, moving the discussion on as I turned to Hazel and Tejus. My niece looked worried for a moment.

  “I don’t know how we did it though, or even what it was,” she replied doubtfully. “I’m not entirely sure we’re going to be able to do it again.”

  “We can try,” Tejus replied, looking at Hazel only. “When you’re ready.”

  She nodded, her face still pale. I realized that her concern was the responsibility—if we all thought the barrier she and Tejus created was our only chance of survival, then a lot fell on their shoulders.

  My sister and mother both instantly understood her reticence.

  “Hazel, even if you can’t do it again, it’s fine. We’ll find other ways to protect ourselves. There’s usually more than one way to fight off a creature, no matter how powerful,” Rose said.

  Hazel bit her lip. “It’s not just that though, is it?” she replied. “A barrier is one thing, but if we can find a way to harness that energy, it would also become our most effective weapon.”

  I tried to hide a smile as a bubble of pride welled up inside of me. I caught Caleb’s eye. My niece was a born GASP member—a relatively short time spent in a supernatural dimension and she was already battle-strategizing like a pro.

  “Exactly,” my father replied, smiling at his granddaughter.

  The pressure on my niece and her boyfriend to deliver was back on.

  Julian

  We traveled through endless forest, seeing nothing but the gray and brown barks of huge, ancient trees and their leafy branches. I had started to wonder if we were making any progress at all. After the incident with the goblins, we hadn’t come across any other creatures, but a near-constant rustling in the undergrowth in the distance kept us all on edge.

  I kept plodding along, not really interested in joining Benedict and Yelena’s bickering. I supposed it kept them both distracted, but I couldn’t concentrate on much other than the battle. I was worried about my parents and Jenney—and Ruby, Ash and Hazel. All of them. Their faces kept flashing though my mind, quickly being replaced by my memories of the shadow and the ashen figures that appeared from it.

  I shuddered, trying to direct my focus on the journey.

  As we progressed, the land slowly started to become stranger. The trees remained a constant, but soon bizarre-looking plants appeared, and muddy bogs that burped and bubbled, making me think of quicksand. I side-stepped them carefully, warning the others to do the same.

  “How much further to the mountains?” Yelena grumbled.

  Some luck she’d have in the marines.

  “As long as it takes?” Benedict retorted irrita
bly. “I don’t know—Tejus didn’t exactly include measurements in this half-assed map.” He scrunched up the paper. It was pretty much redundant now anyway—none of the sentries had ventured this far into the forest. We’d just have to wait for the Hawk boys to come back and give us another vague ‘we’re almost there’ answer.

  “This is pixi-wagon!” I turned around at the sound of Aisha’s voice. She was bent over a brightly colored purple flower.

  “It’s what?” Benedict asked.

  “Pixi-wagon,” Aisha replied dreamily. “My grandma used to grow this. She made perfume from it.”

  “Is it helpful?” I asked.

  The jinni frowned at me.

  “No, it’s just nice. I haven’t seen it for years.” Suddenly she looked speculative, her fingers idly massaging the petal. “I had thought this mission was a babysitting job,” she mused, “but actually, perhaps there are jinn in this land. Our kind used to breed these flowers.”

  “Glad to have you on board,” Benedict replied grumpily.

  Aisha rolled her eyes. “I didn’t mean that—I just meant there’s hope.”

  I was as annoyed as Benedict was at her admission that this was all a ruse to keep us away from harm, but I also took comfort from her words. If we could find the jinn or jinni who was behind the stones, then we would have a good chance of destroying the entity, or at least locking it up again for another eternity.

  I picked up the pace. A few minutes later, the Hawk boys and Ridan came flying back down.

  “This place is weird,” Sky remarked as soon as his feet hit the ground. “I mean, weirder than the rest of Nevertide… We need to be careful, the ground gets rockier and more unstable the closer we get to the mountain range.”

  “Which is how far?” Benedict asked.

  “Not that much further,” came Fly’s vague answer.

  “Okay, but can you give us an actual estimate?” Benedict pressed. “Like, how many miles? One, fifteen, hundreds?”

  The Hawk boys grinned, clearly amused by Benedict’s irritation. Field took pity on him, playfully punching Sky in the arm.

  “It’s about twenty miles, give or take.”

  Twenty miles?

  “We can carry you kids, if you like,” Field replied, looking at our outraged expressions.

  Aisha shook her head. “We don’t know for sure the jinn are in the mountains. We need to check the forest too—and the best way to do that is on foot. The trees are too dense to see anything clearly.”

  “But we can’t see more than a few feet into the forest anyway,” I argued. “They could be a mile in that direction”—I pointed to our left—“and we’d never know about it!”

  “Horatio and I would,” Aisha insisted, glancing at her husband, who was still eyeing the pixi-wagon with a frown. “We can sense our kind, but it’s more difficult if we’re shooting through the air. We need to take this slow—it’s the best chance we have of discovering them. I’ve got a feeling they’re not going to want to be found.”

  “Okay.” Benedict sighed. “I guess we keep walking then.”

  My shoulders slumped of their own accord. I was exhausted. The adrenaline surges over the past few days had been intense, and they had left me shattered.

  “We’ll return in a short while,” Ridan replied. “You humans should eat something soon, though.”

  The dragon was right. The only problem was the quality of the food. I knew that in my backpack there were sandwiches made by Jenney—even the thought of what might be contained between the lumpy bread made my stomach turn over.

  “We’ll eat soon,” Benedict replied, clearly no more eager than I was to discover the strange delights of Jenney’s cooking.

  We kept moving.

  Soon I could see more light up ahead, the trees becoming less densely packed together and the wild undergrowth becoming sparser. As we got closer, I realized we were approaching a meadow. I moved faster, eager for a change of scenery and to see how far we were from the mountain range with my own eyes.

  “Wow,” I breathed. I had scrambled up on a fallen log to see the view. It didn’t disappoint. No wonder the Hawk boys had described the land as ‘weird’—I’d never seen anything like this before.

  The meadow was huge, spreading for acres in each direction. I couldn’t see the trees in the distance as the land rose in the middle, creating a large hill. Everywhere I looked I could see brightly colored flowers, a million different hues of color, and bright—like they were lit up from the inside.

  I jumped down off the log and went to get a closer look. I could hear the others exclaiming as they followed me, then all racing down to the meadow.

  The flowers mostly resembled the shape of poppies. They each had four rounded petals, with the stamen a darker, more intense color than the petals, which was where the mysterious light seemed to be emanating from.

  “Careful!” Aisha called out. “Don’t touch them!”

  I drew back my hand. I’d been about to touch the center of the flower to see if the light was warm, or even real, but I realized the jinni was right. Touching flowers or any other plant in the supernatural world when you had no idea what it was wasn’t a good idea.

  “No, they’re safe!” Benedict cried out, clutching one in his hand.

  Of course, Benedict had gone ahead and picked one.

  He had been running back toward me, but he stopped, standing still in the field, intently looking down at the flower in his hand.

  “Benedict?” I was instantly worried. He could be such a reckless id—

  He looked up and beamed at me. “These are like the stones!” he exclaimed. I stared at him in bewilderment. That admission didn’t exactly make me feel comfortable.

  “Put it down!” Yelena called out, her face horrified.

  “No, you don’t understand. I think they have energy in them,” he called back, waving the flower about in excitement. “They’re giving me the same feeling the stones did, like power entering my body.”

  He started to run toward us, and I bent down to inspect them more closely. I held my hand over the stamen, not wanting to touch it. After a while, I could see what he meant. It was like nothing I’d ever felt before—something strong and forceful moving up from my palm into the rest of me, making every nerve feel more awake somehow.

  “See!” Benedict burst out jubilantly.

  I looked around at the others. They were all starting to realize it too.

  “I’ve never come across anything like this,” Horatio muttered, still looking doubtful as to the safety of the plants. “They are powerful though… I can sense that.”

  Simultaneously, he and Aisha raised their hands over the bed of flowers nearest to them, falling silent, their eyes closed. We watched, waiting for their verdict.

  Eventually, Aisha turned to us. She shrugged.

  “They seem safe… The energy is pure, natural, and I can’t detect the magic of any other supernatural creature on them.”

  “Me neither,” Horatio replied.

  I heard the flapping of wings above us, and the Hawk boys landed in the field along with Ridan.

  “Isn’t it crazy?” Fly grinned. “This place must look amazing at night. I wonder why the sentries never knew it was here?”

  “We don’t know that they didn’t—they might know all about it,” I replied.

  Benedict looked doubtful. “An entire field of energy-providing plants? They would have mentioned it—every contender in the trials would have been up here. And,” he continued, pacing the meadow in excitement, “we’d see them everywhere—they would have planted more.”

  “Then this is great!” Yelena cried gleefully. “We can send these back to them. All the sentries can get help healing after the battle!”

  The energy levels of Benedict and Yelena seemed to be skyrocketing. They were the only two holding the plants.

  “Guys, put them down,” I interjected, “you’re getting hyper. We don’t know what exposure to these plants would do to humans.�
�� I’d seen Benedict get like this before in Hawaii, when he’d downed six Coca-Colas in a row as a dare.

  Benedict went red, and dropped the flower.

  “But the idea is great,” I continued hastily. “We should get the flowers to the sentries—as quickly as we can. Either it’s going to help heal the wounded, or it’s going to help them while they battle.”

  Aisha nodded. “Ridan, Field, Fly, and Sky; you should help Horatio and me pick as many as we can.” She turned to the three of us humans. “You avoid them and start making your way to the other edge of the meadow. Horatio and I will meet you there when we’re done. The Hawks can deliver them.”

  “Yeah,” Benedict said, “good idea, Aisha.”

  We made our way across the meadow, and I smiled to myself for the first time in a while. I hoped that the flowers we’d found here might make a difference to the outcome of the battle, or at least help the sentries when they returned. Not only that, it would help GASP too. Derek had been astounded when Tejus and Ash had told him he just needed to wait after syphoning for his energy to return…these flowers could change all that. The sentries could syphon off the GASP members as much as they liked, and it wouldn’t make a difference.

  I glanced over at Benedict. He was grinning from ear to ear.

  “We’re going to be heroes, right?” I said, nudging him.

  “Heck, yeah.”

  “Even more so if we find the jinn,” I added.

  “They’ll probably make us honorable dignitaries of Nevertide or something,” Benedict replied.

  “Or we’d get statues.”

  “Maybe we’d get our own vultures?” he mused, his eyes gleaming.

  “Kingdoms even—it’s not like they have many rulers left!”

  Yelena tutted and rolled her eyes in disgust.

  Ruby

  Ash climbed out of the pool first. When I approached the side to do the same, I was surprised when he gripped my waist, lifting me out easily. Clearly it wasn’t just Ash’s wound that was healed—his whole body appeared to have been infused with energy, just like the weapons had been.