We splint her wrist as best we know how, bracing her palm and forearm firmly between two thick slabs of bark, tied tightly together by the twill from Iren’s bag. Looking down at her, more comfortable now with her wrist not moving quite as much, I wish I had learned stronger healing spells, but the best I can heal is a large cut and disinfect wounds.

We all sit for many moments, catching our breath, each one somehow becoming harder as we delay in getting to Masy and Wey

Surly they wouldn’t harm them, right?

It feels ludicrous to thing that with Ebony sitting in pain right in front of me, though I suppose it could be argued that it was an accident.

The amount of force they are putting into this is much more that expected, especially with them immediately using inuriagi so openly.

It was frightening knowing that this is nothing like what they would have done.

How much longer do we have left? How much did these few spells drain them of their being?

How much longer can they last, is the correct question I suppose, with us being the ones trying to save them.

Iren breaks the silence with the rustle of her shirt as she brings her hands up to rub her face, her hands lingering as she holds her head.

“What the fuck,” she says, “do we do now? Ebony can barely move, and we can’t leave her, we need to make sure Wey and Masy are safe, and we need to get the fuck out of here likes the lives of the spirits and sprites depends on it.” she sucks in a breath. “Which, seeing how everything touched by inuriagi is, they do.”

My eyes widen as I remember that part of the history. A large reason of why it was banned was because of its destructive nature, killing anything touched by it and thus harming the land sprites. If it continues, and the entire forest becomes infected and, more or less, killed off, that will kill the spirits.

“Go.”

Iren and I look in confusion at Ebony as she speaks.

“First things first. Go make sure that Masy and Wey are alright, then we can figure out what to do.” Seeing our protesting faces in the moonlight, she continues, “I am high enough that I cannot be seen and can just sit still for the time being. Also, the person down there will have expected us to run, not hide in the trees above him.” She laughs at the end, but quickly quiets herself as it moves her wrist, likely sending waves of pain up her arm.

I look towards Iren, unsure, and after a moment, she looks reluctantly back at me and nods.

I turn a worried look to Ebony, but she just ushers me on as Iren starts to climb back to the middle of the tree where the branches intersect more.

“I’ll be okay.”

Hesitantly, I nod. I follow Iren down the twisting branches, every creak reminding me of the sudden snap of the branch beneath Ebony. We make our way through the trees again, stopping once we finally come to a point where we cannot reach the next tree.

“Time to be on the ground again,” Iren says unenthusiastic ally. We listen for a minute before carefully climbing down and looking around extensively before touching the ground. Iren leads, I with an unwilling yet necessary hand on her shoulder so that I could give her more power to search the ground for any biomass that would make sound and remove or step around it. I have noticed on our… climb here, I suppose, that there is very little animal sounds around. Few crickets, no birds, no owls…

Iren stops dead, head tilted, and we once again hear the wolves gain a master.

She turns and we share a look of terror.

Ebony!

She is about to go running back, but I grip her shoulder even more firmly, revulsion springing through me at the touch, and shake my head.

We most likely would have lead them away with our sent trail closer to the ground, and she was right about being practically invisible from the ground.

She seems to understand, and we move faster through the thinning trees and finally we reach the edge of the coven. We quickly crouch in bushes, listening again for any signs of life, advancing from bush to bush, tree to tree, around the coven until we finally reach the Namays side of the coven. We will need to pass into the center of the cluster to get to their house, but it is our best bet of finding them that we could think of. It was at least a place to start.

Iren is about to make a run for it, but she thinks better of it.

“One of us should stay hidden so at least one- two of us have a chance.” I shake my head, not wanting her to give up going together yet, but she makes a point, so I stay hidden in the bushes as instructed, watching her make the short run to Wey and Masy’s window.

I cant help but notice with much worry how tired her face looked as she turned, and how fatigued her body moves.

I can see her more clearly at the window now because the moonlight, the source of which having made it way further down than I would like, shines more directly into the clearing without so many trees.

I see her looking around, obviously feeling as exposed as she looks, before peaking through the shutters, one eye pushed roughly up against the small slanted slit in them.

She looks at different angles before, glancing around the clearing again, jumping as the wolves howl in the distance, she tries to roughly push the shutters open. When that fails, she bites lightly on her finger as she bends down to grab a rock and pear through other shutters of the house. After presumably seeing no one, she goes back to the siblings and slams the rock into roughly where the latch would be on the other side. It is visibly opened slightly, but she does it again and it finally gives way.

I hear leaves rustle slightly to my side and yank my head sharply to check. A few yards away to the right, I see two people coming straight for where Iren is.

I almost jump up, but instead I shoot my hands down to the dirt, groping blindly for a plant as I watch them get closer. They are facing each other, but could turn their heads any moment, and finally I latch onto a root system, but it is isolated and fruitless. I turn to scrambling all to loudly for a rock and once I find one, I throw it as far into the forest as I can. It hits a tree at least four yards out, closer than I had intended, but catches their attention. I am decently hidden in the bush I crouch behind, a tree blocking me mostly from view of them, so I stand up, waving and pointing wildly as Iren turns her head to inspect the rocks noise too. Her eyes widen and she looks around for a place to hide. Seeing none, i see her stare at me for a second before she attempts to make a mad dash to the bush i am crouching behind, but it makes to much noise.

“There!” One of them shouts, and our heads turn together to see them crouching to the ground just as I had, but a faint white glow trails underneath the earth to Iren, who has paused in fear.

I shoot up and try to get to her first, but I knew it would be useless. By the time I had stepped out of the bush, she was swept up in the same white tar that had caught Masy and Wey and, remembering how Masy had been caught, I freeze where I am. I look around hopelessly for something that could be of use against this unknown thing, but I can think of nothing.

Iren, still struggling, looks right at me and says in a barely audible and strained voice- “Go!”

I look at her, not wanting to abandon her to, but as the people once again draw my attention by saying something I cannot make out and pointing to me, I attempt to force out at least one word, sorry, but I can only brokenly mouth the syllables before turning to run, once more, into the safety of the looming trees that surround our coven.

I can hear them following me, and I can feel my muscles starting to give out from all of the strain. They gain on me as I start to enter the thicker and taller parts of the woods, part of me wondering why they didn’t just catch me with the same spell that caught the others, for it is much faster than anyone on foot. They are almost on me when I finally find a good tree coming up, and I am barley able to use the last of my power that I didn’t even knew I had left to call a thick vine down, which I quickly latch onto before it springs back into the canopy. The fibers of the vine curl around my hands, as if helping me keep my weak grip, until I finally reach some of the top branches.

I collapse onto the thick branch besides me as the vine untangles from my hand, and I can hear the people below me hurriedly fiddling with a light ball.

I take a breath then, ignoring my screaming muscles for just a few more minutes at least, I make my way, slowly and all to loudly, from tree to tree. I am glad that I had made such a connection with the trees surrounding the coven because I recognize most of the ones I encounter, giving me an idea of where I am and where I need to go to get back to Ebony.

Finally, I make one last leap and almost miss the branch. I land with my lower torso swinging freely below the branch and in one last push I swing my legs over. I lye, face down, panting, exhausted. I hear the wolves getting closer and closer to my location, circling and springing out from where I had gotten up into the trees. As I lay there listening, I must be half dreaming because I could almost feel the branch below me pulsing and singing, and I can feel my fatigue being held at bay by some odd kick of energy that feels as though is leaching into my skin from the hard woods below me. I don’t know how long I had waited there for, being swooned by the indistinguishable whispers of the tree and eventually the trees around me, but eventually I use this renewed kick, not much but enough to get me back on my feet and moving, to continue making my way to Ebony, as if that will fix anything.