Chapter 141

Almost immediately, vines and roots surged up and tore me away from the others. They wrapped tight - twisting and dragging me off my feet. Thorns bit into my hands, my face - anywhere they could find bare skin.

Behind me, the others shouted - sharp, startled - but the sound was already fading. I strained against their grip, fighting to break free, but the vines wouldn’t give. They only pulled harder and faster - carrying me deeper until the voices disappeared entirely.

My women. My children. Lilae. The reason we were here. All of it slipping away.

“We should never have brought him,” Mirri’s voice said, somewhere just beyond sight. “I told you we couldn’t trust him with this.”

“He can’t even follow a simple path,” Ashlara muttered. “Why can’t he do anything right?”

“It’s not worth it,” Serah said, cold and distant. “Leave him. We’ll find Lilae ourselves.”

“Lilae needs a father,” Thae added, quiet but cutting. “And all she has is you.”

“Tansy needs one too,” Vel said. “She needs direction. But all you do is yell and feel sorry for yourself.”

Nim’s grunt of approval was all he needed.

“Stop making things worse,” Tansy snapped. “Just leave us alone.”

Moss sighed with disappointment.

“I’m bored,” Clo said. “Why are we still talking about this? We have a job. Let’s just go.”

“No,” I said, my voice breaking - thin and useless.

“Yeah,” Mirri agreed. “Let’s go.”

Footsteps faded. They were leaving.

I struggled harder and the vines tightened in response, dragging me farther into the dull red glow.

I’d done it again. Everything I’d tried to build was falling apart. Everyone I cared about was walking away.

And it was my fault. It always was. I should’ve tried harder. Should’ve held it together. Should’ve made better choices.

Why was I so angry when I had everything I’d ever wanted? Why couldn’t I just be satisfied? Why did I keep ruining it?

Maybe I didn’t deserve any of this. Maybe they were better off without me.

The thought crept in, quiet and convincing. Stop fighting. Just give up. Let them go if that’s what they wanted.

But Lilae.

How were they going to find her without me?

They didn’t know that world. Didn’t know roads, or phones, or computers. Didn’t know how to contact the police. Didn’t know where to start.

And without my Faith - they couldn’t find her beacon.

That was our only chance. She could be anywhere. Across a city. Across a country. Across the world.

If I gave up… she was gone.

“No,” I said again, stronger this time.

I had to help. For her. If they didn’t want me after that… fine. We’d deal with it later. But right now, I had to get free.

I fought harder. Pulled. Twisted. Bit down on a vine and tore at it with my teeth.

If I couldn’t break them, maybe I could make them work against each other.

I grabbed a vine ahead of me and yanked. It snapped tight around my arm like a striking serpent and pulled. Another wrapped around my other arm.

Now they were fighting. Pulling in opposite directions. Tearing at me. Threatening to rip me apart.

But the ones behind me started to slip and lose their hold.

I reached for more vines. More tension. More conflict.

My hands were shredded - skin torn open, blood slick across my fingers. My face burned with a hundred shallow cuts.

It should have bothered me, but I barely felt it. It was just pressure, a tugging feeling as the thorns pierced my flesh.

All I cared about was grabbing more. Pulling harder. Forcing them to fight each other instead of dragging me away.

Ahead was darkness. A gap where the dull red light didn’t reach. An opening.

I reached for it, the vines dragging me forward greedily as they drank more of my blood and tore at my skin.

When I was close enough, I put everything into one last heave. The tension snapped. The vines tore free.

And I pitched forward through the darkness, slamming hard into cold, damp ground.

* * *

Officer Jenkins’s car was one of the larger ones - rounded and heavy, shaped a bit like a pear. It was white, with a diagonal stripe of blue and yellow along the side. A coat of arms was painted on the door that said ‘Philadelphia Police’.

He opened the back door, and I had to climb up into it. The seat inside was wide and covered in black leather that clung slightly to my skin. He closed the door behind me, then walked around and got in the front.

A metal lattice separated us.

I leaned forward, studying it. “Is this a cage?”

“No,” he said with a chuckle. “Not a cage. But sometimes we put criminals back there. The grate just keeps everyone safe.”

“Am I in trouble?” I asked, narrowing my eyes. I was fairly sure I could tear the metal apart if I needed to. If not, I could break the window. Or incinerate him.

“No, Lilae,” he said gently. “You’re not in trouble. We’re just going somewhere safe until we find your parents.”

“I know where my parents are,” I told him. “I just need Tansy to open the tree again so I can go home.”

“Well,” he said, adjusting something I couldn’t see, “my friends are already looking for Tansy. We’ll bring her to you as soon as we find her.”

The car rumbled to life beneath me, vibrating loudly.

“You’re not going to find her if she doesn’t want to be found,” I said.

“Why’s that?” he asked, turning the wheel in front of him.

It reminded me of steering a ship.

“Because she’s the goddess of **** without restraint.”

He let out a short laugh. “Well, hopefully she can show a little restraint until we find her.”

“Yeah, right,” I said. “She and thren argue all the time because she doesn’t follow the rules.”

“So who is this Thren?”

“He’s my father.”

“And he and Tansy argue a lot?”

“Yeah,” I admitted, a little sheepish.

“Does he ever… hit you?” His voice was careful now.

“He would never hit me,” I said quickly. “But we don’t argue.”

“What about Tansy?”

“Sometimes they fight,” I said. “It’s scary when they do. One time she stabbed him with a knife. Another time he choked her.”

The car went quiet after that.

I watched the city slide past the window for a while before speaking again. “What are the black metal things people keep looking at?”

“Black metal things?”

“The ones that glow on top,” I said. “Like the one in your belt.”

I heard him shift. “You mean this?” He held one up. It wasn’t glowing right now.

I leaned forward. “Yeah. What is that? Everyone seems obsessed with them.”

“You’ve never seen a phone before?”

I shook my head. “No. We don’t have those in my world. What’s so interesting about it? And why is yours broken?”

He chuckled. “Yeah, I dropped it. Screen’s cracked, but it still works.” He glanced at me in the mirror.

“So what’s so important about… fones?”

“Well, you can talk to people with them,” he said. “Look things up. Play games. All kinds of stuff.”

“What do you mean talk to people?” I asked. “Can’t you just look at them and talk, like we are?”

He laughed. “I mean people who aren’t nearby.”

“Like down the street?”

“Like on the other side of the world,” he said, grinning. “You can even see them if they turn on their camera.”

“What’s a camera?”

“You don’t know what a camera is?”

“No,” I said. “In my world we have magic. We don’t have fones and cameras and cars. We have horses with enchanted shoes that can run from one end of Arvellia to the other in a single day.” I paused. “Wait - do you know what a horse is?”

He laughed again. “Yeah, I know what a horse is. Magical shoes, huh? Like slippers?”

I rolled my eyes. “That’s stupid. Horses can’t walk in slippers. They’re horseshoes. Metal. Shaped like a ‘U.’”

“Got it,” he said, still smiling. “So what else do you have in your world?”

“Books,” I said. “Elise has a huge library. Do you have libraries here?”

“We do,” he said. “Some pretty big ones, too.”

“Can we go to one after we find Tansy?”

“Sure,” he said. “We can go to a library.” He glanced at me again. “What else do you have?”

“Wizards, knights, queens, dragons, orcs, elves, dwarves, naga, bloodchildren…” I kept going, listing everything that came to mind. “Castles, hills, mountains, oceans… We have towers, too, but none of them are as big as these.”

“The skyscrapers?”

“That’s a good word for them,” I said. “What else do you have?”

“Hmm… TV?”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a box that shows moving pictures.”

“Pictures of what?”

“All kinds of things,” he said. “You can watch plays. Documentaries. Sports-”

“What’s a documentary?”

“It’s a show that teaches you something,” he said, glancing at me again in the mirror.

* * *

Feet - bare, sunburnt, each toe tipped with a claw. That was the first thing I saw.

Vel stood over me, looking down with an expression I couldn’t read.

Soft groans filtered in around the edges of my hearing. Mirri. Ashlara. Serah. They were sprawled across the same cold, damp grass as me, scratched up but alive. They pushed themselves up slowly, unsteady, while I stayed where I’d fallen, staring at my hands and willing them to heal - anything to dull the raw sting of torn skin.

The ferals were already standing. Not a mark on them.

Vel’s gaze lingered on me, heavy, measuring. Clo looked vaguely confused. Nim stood still, scanning our surroundings with quiet focus. Moss chewed a wad of birch pitch, bored. Tansy… looked almost guilty.

Mirri staggered over and dropped beside me. “Hold still, stud. I’ll fix you up.”

I didn’t have the strength to argue. Didn’t have the strength to move. It took everything I had just to keep the tears from spilling over as I watched her kneel there - again - cleaning up my mess. Watching me fall short. Watching me slow them down.

Her hands began to glow, soft and warm as my flesh knit itself back together under her touch. Sensation returned in waves. Pain first, then warmth, then something like normal.

“Good as new,” she said, wiping the last of the blood from my face.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Why?”

I turned my head away, swallowing hard as tears slipped free anyway. I wiped them off with rough, angry passes of my hand, sniffed, and cleared my throat.

When I looked back, Mirri was watching me with something I couldn’t stand to see. Pity. Disappointment.

After a moment, she turned and went to the others, her hands lighting again as she mended their wounds.

“I thought you said magic didn’t work here,” she said as Ashlara’s cuts closed.

“I don’t know,” I admitted, my voice thinner than I wanted. “Magic doesn’t exist here. Maybe it’s just… there’s no mana. Maybe we’re running on whatever we brought with us.”

The world rushed in around me. Traffic. Horns. Sirens. It hit me all at once - a wave of sound and memory.

The air smelled like home. Pollen and exhaust. Fallen leaves and street food. A faint undercurrent of garbage just starting to turn. All of it wrapped in that sharp, biting cold of late autumn.

I looked up.

Night. But not like home. The clouds above were a dull, glowing gray, lit from below. Trees rose around us, their leaves just starting to turn yellow.

Ahead, a straight paved path cut through the park. A bronze lion stood watch beyond it. Behind us, a curved path lined with benches disappeared into the dark.

And beyond the trees -

A glass tower, its arched crown lit sharp against the sky.

I knew this place. I’d lived here. Philadelphia. Rittenhouse Square.

“What is that smell?” Ashlara asked, wrinkling her nose.

“It’s… weird,” Mirri added. “Like rotten food and dust?”

Serah said nothing, just frowned faintly.

The ferals took it all in without a word.

Two women passed by with dogs. They glanced at us briefly, barely curious - and kept walking like we didn’t matter.

“What are those?” Mirri blurted as a group of cyclists rolled past, their tires humming softly against the pavement.

I couldn’t help the small smile that slipped through. For a second, everything else fell away - the anger, the guilt, the things they’d said, the things I’d been thinking.

“Bicycles,” I said. “People ride them for fun.”

“How do they stay up on two wheels?”

“Practice,” I said. “Maybe I’ll teach you sometime.”

And then it all came rushing back.

I turned away before it could settle too deep and reached inward, opening myself to my Faith-scape.

At home, it felt like a lake at night - dark water, thousands of lights - fireflies and stars. Some bright, some dim, with no real sense of distance. Just intuition and guesswork and hope you didn’t step somewhere you shouldn’t.

Here it was empty. Dark and hollow. Not a lake. Not even a sky. Just absence.

Three handfuls of faint lights around me - dim and washed out. Most of them my family. It made my skin crawl.

But I found it. Lilae’s beacon. Gold, flecked with blue.

Faint. Too faint. For a second, panic flared - worried she might be dying. But the others were just as dim. Everything here was muted.

“Gather around,” I said. “We’ll go get her.”

They closed in, linking hands.

I stepped-

And nothing happened.

My foot hit the ground. The world didn’t shift. Didn’t bend. Didn’t move.

I frowned, let go of Mirri’s hand, and tried again.

Still nothing.

I reached for the demesne. Nothing.

“I can’t step,” I said quietly. “I can’t reach the demesne.”

The ferals exchanged a look, tension flickering through them.

“We can’t reach ours either,” Vel said.

I exhaled sharply, forcing the frustration down before it could take hold. “Then we do this the hard way,” I said. I turned, fixing on the faint pull of Lilae’s beacon. “She’s that way.”