Flickering Creatures | ONC 2024 | ✔︎

(13) Loyalty

A cry tore from Bella's throat involuntarily. All fear of Wights abandoned, she launched herself from the tent. Bryony was already gone. Bella swooped in a circle, dodging Enigma Wights as she searched frantically for her keeper. There she was—already some distance into the forest, running towards the bog. Bella flew after her.

"Bryony! Bryony!"

The Witch didn't slow down. If anything, she ran faster, appearing and disappearing between the trees like a trick of the mist. The predawn gloom helped cloak her. Bella beat her wings to full power and streaked through the forest in pursuit. She should have caught up easily, but the Wight-mist warped her view, forcing her to pull up and search for the running figure again and again. This was why people feared the bog.

At last, the land cleared ahead of Bryony. Bella sprinted after her again, heart in her throat now for a different reason entirely. Bryony was headed directly towards the bog, her view of it obscured by a final, thick line of shrubs and trees. She'd be on it before she realized she was in danger.

"Stop!" cried Bella. "Bryony!"

Too late. Bryony plunged into the final line of shrubbery, then burst out its other side, straight into the bog.

She kept running.

Bella watched in horror as the figure sprinted over the bog's soggy, mist-choked surface. She didn't fall through. Her steps didn't even slow. No entity the size and weight of a human could run over the peat like that.

"Bryony" looked back over her shoulder. For a moment, a part of her dissolved into the mist, as the Wight maintaining the illusion found itself replicating too many motions at once. Bella's feathers rose as an electric energy crackled through the air. She folded her wings and dove. Lightning blazed through the spot she'd been flying moments before. Two Enigma Wights dropped after her, trying to flank her again. A third wafted up from below. Bella banked hard as electricity snapped between the new arrival and its companions.

Then she was back in the forest, plunging deep into the trees, Animata Wights scattering ahead of her with startled gusts of wind. Lumina Wights flickered with self-defensive illusions: an owl, a cat, a bird. The forest canopy was full of them. Bella dropped down to fly between the trunks instead, until she was far enough to feel safe pulling up on a jutting branch. Her aching wings drooped, feathers rattling against each other as her body trembled. Too close.

How had she fallen for that? She should have known. In that moment, Bella understood on a completely different level why Bryony said Wights were dangerous. How they could take down humans, even those who grew up in the forest and knew what Wight magic looked and felt like. What had Bryony's mother seen in the moments before the bog swallowed her? What had she been chasing? And how did the Wights know?

How did the Wights know?

No Wight could paint an illusion of something they'd never seen. Maybe these ones had come from Hyacinth, but Bryony's illusion had been wearing her coat and boots. It had also been crisp and well-controlled for something so large. The Wights had seen her recently. Which meant they'd almost certainly seen her here.

The fear from yesterday pulsed again. This time, there was nothing stopping Bella from acting on it. She took off on trembling wings. If Bryony's map did indeed lead to Baneberry Bog around Wightnight, she should be here now unless the bog had taken her. She'd left long enough ago to have arrived already. The only thing to do, then, was find her.

Bella made it only a fraction of the way around the bog before her own thoughts caught up to her. The forest here was dense, and the fog was only thickening, even with the sun about the break over the horizon. If she wanted to do this search justice, she would have to conduct it systematically, not fly helter-skelter through the forest in hopes of spotting Bryony. Bella forced herself to land and plot out her search path. Only then did she take flight once more. Her stomach growled, reminding her of the time since last night's dinner. She ignored it.