Pew, pew, pew, pew, pew.
Five arrows, five dead crows. One for each beat of my heart.
"How are you this good?" I groaned as Fee casually nocked another arrow. She was racking up birds like it was a carnival game. Seventy down. Probably more by now.
She winked. "I'm just built different."
"Elves," I muttered. "Cheating."
"I'm an elf, you're a human," she said, loosing another shot with one hand. "Try to keep up."
I was sitting at a solid thirteen. Leil at seventeen. Fee? I lost count.
"Why are elves so good at this?" Leil grumbled, half to herself.
"Elf ears," Fee called back, not even looking our way. "I can hear your grumbling from two rooftops over."
Right. Sensitive hearing. Great for combat. Terrible for venting.
"Don't make so much noise!" I shouted. Then I realized shouting was noise. Brilliant, Lessa.
"Slow down, already!" Leil wheezed. "Some of us weren't born with springs for legs!"
We weren't even shooting anymore—we were too busy gathering the crows Fee had dropped. At this rate, they'd stop flying over us completely. I swear, even the birds were developing trauma responses to that elf's bow.
"Fine, fine, okay" Fee yelled back again for us who didn't have super-duper special elf ears. "I was starting to break a sweat anyways. Let's eat."
Fee sat down cross-legged on the brown-tiled roof of one of the few houses untouched by the slime. Well, partially untouched. The entire front of the house was gone, some segments broken off, some dissolved, but its columns managed to withstand the damage, and now it tilted in balance, barely holding together. . .
"Like the whole kingdom" Leil completed my thoughts.
"How do you always do that?" I laughed, taken aback. "It's like you can read my thoughts!"
"You're very predictable." She shrugged, bouncing off after picking up the last dead crow and unto the roof Fee was on.
"What's that supposed to mean?!" I yelled, and she yelled the same exact thing as I, proving my predictability. Ugh.
"Y'all lovebirds should hurry up. I'm hungry." Fee exclaimed, rubbing her belly too prove her point.
Leil blushed and averted her eyes, but she didn't say anything.
We landed on the rooftop, the scaffold wobbling to support our weight. Fee was already preparing a small fire with some dried branches in her knapsack. So resourceful!
"You can get rid of the feathers, right?" I asked, holding up one of the dead birds.
"Sure, I'll flay them with my knife." She said, pulling out a small dagger from her shoe. Why is she so resourceful?!
I looked closer at the dagger. Its blade seemed to be normal steel, double-edged, but it's hilt. . .
Carvings of vines and leaves were engraved on its surface, and symbols I didn't recognize were inscribed on it. They kind of looked like the runes Bolton and Mage worked with.
It looked really worn-out, but it did the job as Fee quickly flayed the skin of the crows and gutted it, sprinkling some herbs,spices and berry juices she brought out from her pocket (seriously, how can one person be so resourceful?!) and impaled it again with a wooden stick and set it above the low fire, slowly cooking it.
"That smells kind of nice." Leil mumbled as she closed her eyes and sniffed the scent from the cooking meat. And at the same time her stomach grumbled. "Oops." She giggled.
It felt funny, but it really wasn't. She had become way thinner from when I'd met her for the first time when I enlisted in the PrideFall military. Her cheeks were gaunt, her ribs more prominent, her once vibrant skin now pale even under the afternoon sun.
And even though I'd never say it to her face, her breath kind of stinked.
"You sound hungry," Fee chuckled as she tore out the bird's thigh and held it towards Leil. "Here you go."
"You sure it's done? It was barely there for five minutes." Leil said, gingerly holding the leg and tearing into it. "Mmm. It's softer than I expected, though a little stringy."
"You can't have it all." Fee shrug as she gave me a wing. It was still pretty hot, but it had a far more unique taste to it than I've never eaten. Bordering on a little too salty, tangy and sharp, but my teeth also dug into it pretty easily and my stomach growled in protest for more.
"How is this so freaking good!" I proclaimed between steamy breaths. "How did a couple of forest stuff sprinkled on crow meat taste better than any pheasant I've had in restuarants?"
"What can I say? I'm a natural." Fee preened as she prepared another crow. And we dug in some more.
The sun was turning into a blazing orange as it slowly began setting on it's tenth arc. It washed over the ruined city in a beautiful golden haze.
"This place really is a dump." Fee commented. She was right. Slime clobbered over the city, the only places being untouched were streets like ours that had been blocked by flooding other blocks with water from the waterways, stopping the slime from extending it's path.
It was crude, but it worked. Too bad somepeople were drowned when they didn't agree with the rogues.
Was this city even saveble? Even though Lance and the mages didn't confirm it, I was pretty sure Ralph was correct. Their Royalties were gone. Most of the nobles were the first to go. Who would lead us even if we won?
Could we win? The other's were working on the cannon, but could it really fix everything? Or would it burn us with it? What could I even do?
All I could do was shoot an arrow, and not even that good. Fee could easily replace me and Leil. Come to think of it. . .
"Why are you even helping us, Fee?" Leil asked her, as if reading my thoughts.
"Why?" Fee asked incredulously, as if the answer should have been obvious, but it wasn't. Fee was an elf, something I had only heard from legends. Elves and Dwarves were only supposed to live in Tartarus, a volcanic mountain under the sea. On the other side of Alterra. How was one even here? And why would they care about human affairs? "Because you guys look like you could use it?"
"That's not a lie." I muttered. And even if Fee did have incredible skill with arrows, was amazingly resourceful and agile, even she couldn't do much against the kingdom wide threat of the slime. So why? "But, you could be in the forest. You said that's where you grew up, right? You could be there without any rules and just doing whatever you want."
"I could do that, though." Fee said as she put her finger to her chin. "But, the slime is creeping into the forest too. Eventually everything will be consumed by it. Or at least that's what I think.
"Besides, forest life can be a little boring. I just wanted to do something different, hunting trolls and crows and whatnot."
"That's your idea of fun?" I laughed, even though I was bitter inside. This wasn't fun. Entire families had been horribly erased, and she just saw this as a change of scenery?
"Hey, guys, look over there." Leil called towards us as we shifted our gazes.
A venom spider. The green variant of the giant spiders the size of dogs. They were horrible to deal with up close. Especially when you got bit. I reached to my back to grab an arrow before. . .
Thwack. It was already impaled by an arrow as green venom leaked from its mandibles. And it was dead.
"Come on! At least let us have some glory-" I started yelling, until I saw the look on Fee's face.
Pure anger. All the snarky and fun attitude-gone. And something else. Regret.
"What's wrong, Fee?" Leil asked as we jumped down, noticing her look too.
"Oh, it's uh, nothing." Fee answered, her gaze darkening.
I didn't think it was nothing, but I decided not to press further. "Let's at least collect the venom then."
"Collect the venom?" Fee asked cluelessly. "Why? To slick it on your arrow tips to poison your enemies?"
"No, not that. What, that's an incredible idea!" I exclaimed. I can't believe no one had thought of that. Why was Fee so freaking resourceful? "But that's not what we're using the venom for."
"Then what is it?" Fee asked, coming closer as Leil brought out one of those glass bottles Bolton had given us to collect venom.
"To make the antidote." Leil responded, scooping some of the liquid and pressing the dead spider's fang in the opening of the bottle to milk out all the venom, careful not to touch any of it herself. "Mage boils it, then adds some weird chemicals and does some magic, and voila! Antivenom."
"So she could have survived." Fee muttered as she clenched her fists, tears welling in her eyes. Then she turned in the opposite direction and jumped, darting between the roofs of the houses until she was out of sight.
"Was it something I said?" Leil asked nervously, her face painted in concern for Fee.
I don't know. I wasn't one to pry into other people's business. My gaze didn't track her all the way to wherever she was going, but it was in the direction of our hiding out tower, so it was probably in that direction.
The sun was already setting a little. If we didn't start roasting all the crows, they would go rotten overnight.
"Let's go for a second check-up with the refugees." I told Leil. "We'll give em some crows to eat. Then we'll meet up with her earlier."
As usual, she didn't argue. She put the venom in her satchel and I packed up the crows in a bag.
And we walked on alert for anything that might try to attack us.
Just the two of us.
"How was the reconnaissance?" Mage asked in a sultry voice as we met at the base of the tower.
"Ugh, it obviously wasn't anything as fancy as that." I replied trudgingly. We were at the entrance of the tower and Fee wasn't here yet. I thought that was where she had run off to. If not here, then where?
"Have you seen Fee around?" Leil asked Mage.
"Yeah, my day was pretty okay too. Thanks for asking. Just strolled around with Lancelot." Mage yawned sarcastically. Lancelot stood silently at her side, not saying a single thing. As usual, I guess.
I wouldn't make much noise if I had failed to save a kingdom.
"Come on, don't be like that." Leil groaned wearily as Mage opened the portal to the interior of the base of the tower.
"And no, I haven't seen Fee." Mage said back. "What's up with her?"
"Oh, it's nothing really. At least I hope so." I muttered as the portal was closed behind us and we started making our way up the winding stairs.
The stairwell of the Mage Tower echoed with our footsteps, each clang of our boots a whisper into the growing tension.
We hadn't said a word since Mage opened the portal and let us in. The silence hung awkwardly, like an itch none of us could scratch.
Fee was still gone.
Hogan was the first one we saw when we stepped into the workshop. His sleeves were rolled up, a smear of black soot across his cheek, one hand holding a vial with orange liquid, the same vial Bolton had snatched from that little girl, while the other hand sorted through a pile of iron scraps.
"Welcome back, guys!" he said without looking up. "Cannon's half built. Maybe three-quarters. Your brother's being annoying."
"I am not being annoying," Bolton snapped from behind a pile of metal coils. "I'm being precise. Which is something that eludes you completely."
"Yeah, well, your precise backsides just mismeasured the glyph ring diameter by two millimeters. We've got bigger things to worry about than your ego."
"Stop trolling! You just got here! You don't even know the dimensions I'm working with!
"Guys." I cut in, breaking the banter. "Fee's not back yet."
Both of them froze.
Bolton finally looked up, squinting. "She didn't come back with you?"
"No," Leil answered, setting her bow down. "She killed a venom spider and went quiet. She bolted after that."
Bolton exchanged a glance with Mage.
"Something hit her," I added. "She was fine one second, then... broken. Like something old clawed its way up."
"She lost someone," Mage murmured.
"How do you know?" Leil asked.
"She has those eyes." Mage chuckled darkly. I wondered if she was thinking about her mom.
"I should go after her," I said, already turning toward the exit.
"No." Lancelot's voice cut across the room like a blade. He was sitting in the corner, still cleaning his sword. "You'll only distract her. She'll come back when she's ready."
"You sound awfully certain."
"She's not the kind of person who runs. She's the kind that burns. Just give her time." Mage replied back.
"You're an awfully good judge of character, huh?" I asked.
"It's something I've acquired over the years." She said as she flicked her long, brown hair.
That... kind of made sense. Still, my stomach twisted.
I sat on the edge of one of the low tables, picking up a canteen and taking a long sip. The metallic taste of stale water grounded me.
Bolton sighed and turned back to his work. "We need to finish the blueprint integration tonight. Hogan, pass me the fire glyph sheet."
"Got it."
The two of them resumed their work, clinking and sparking metal, while Mage walked to the corridor of the tower. Probably to meditate—or whatever it was Mages and Wizards did in their free time. maybe just to avoid the conversation she didn't want to have.
Lancelot cleaned his blade in silence. The tower was quiet again, save for the whisper of fire and the scratch of metal.
"Found her."
The glass doors of the top tower floor to the corridors opened, and Fee was there on the balcony, arms on the railing, gazing peacefully at the stars, as if we weren't all worried sick for her.
"How in Elara's moon did you get there?" I yelled, stomping towards her. The rubble blocked the entrance to the tower. The door to the top was locked. There was no way for her to enter before Mage did. Unless. . .
"Easy. I climbed." Fee responded, not facing us.