Chapter 24 #2
Nor could he imagine either of their lives being cut short. He literally couldn’t, or he would shatter. Then he would drag himself back together and tear every inch of the world apart. He would have no choice. It was simply what would happen.
“We’ll find them, I promise,” Mal interrupted Clayton’s small mental breakdown.
He took Clayton’s face in both hands and touched their foreheads together.
Clayton didn’t know how Mal knew what he was upset about since he couldn’t hear half the conversation Clayton was having, but it was Mal, so obviously, he knew.
“We have to, Mal. I can’t lose them. I know I complain, but…” Of course Clayton complained. It was his love language.
“You won’t lose them. I’m here, I want them back, and I always get what I want.” Mal’s eyes told Clayton he meant so much more than wanting to rescue their kids.
“How old are your children?” the woman asked.
“Merry is six, and Tommy is four,” Clayton said.
“Merry and Tommy?” The woman exchanged glances with the man. “Have you always had them? Are they your birth children?” She gestured between Mal and Clayton.
Clayton pushed Mal away harder than he intended.
He knew nightmares didn’t reproduce the usual way, but nothing about Mal was normal, so he didn’t put it past him to defy reality and knock Clayton up if he wanted.
“No, absolutely not. They’re our kids because we found them and take care of them, but I didn’t give birth to them, nor will I give birth to any other children. Ever.”
Mal held up his hands in surrender. “I don’t know what she just said, but I’ve got no plans to get you pregnant, I swear.”
“And you keep it that way,” Clayton hissed.
The woman raised her hand in a soothing gesture.
“I’m sorry if I said something to upset you.
I only asked because we lost two other children in our care to kidnappers during the same battle we lost our Carwyn.
Their names are Merribell and Tomanthus.
They’re forty and sixty, though, and were only lost a few hours ago, along with our son. ”
“We did have to rescue our children from some shady people, but we’ve had Tommy and Merry for around six weeks now, so they couldn’t be the same.”
The woman’s eyes lit up. “It’s still possible. The spell that took the children away was unstable. They could have been scattered through time as well as through dimensions.”
“Care to translate?” Marshall asked. It seemed as though he was finally coming out of his existential crisis. He’d stopped pacing and had fixed his hair. Maybe now, he’d start doing his job.
Clayton relayed everything he’d learned so far to both Mal and Marshall, happy to not be the only mind sorting through the situation.
Thank Vis. It was unnerving to see such a strong man like Marshall acting so powerless. Though Clayton was beginning to think it was possible he and the rest of the Other had put Marshall on an impossible pedestal.
Clayton had never seen Marshall work in the field. He’d only seen the before and after parts. Seeing Marshall now, stripped of his power and his teammates… It was almost like he was a normal man, much like Clayton. A normal, stressed-out, fallible man.
Having caught his team up, Clayton dove back into the conversation with the strangers and asked, “Can you tell me what happened?” He seriously doubted Merry and Tommy were fae children decades older than he was, but there still seemed to be the possibility of a connection, considering both parties were missing children.
“In our realm, it’s against our goddess’s wishes for us to travel between dimensions, but it still happens.
On occasion, children come from such trespasses, and while travelers are normally frowned on by society, children are more important than anything to our people, so we treasure these families. ”
Clayton was a sucker for a good story, so while he was in a hurry, he couldn’t bring himself to urge the woman to get to the point. Instead, he had a powerful desire for popcorn and a comfy chair to settle into.
The woman continued. “Recently, we were made aware that children of these unions were being stolen, specifically the ones with parents from the Real.
Our queen and king ordered everyone with mixed heritage to come to the castle for protection, but as my husband, Naerith, and I were on our way, our convoy was attacked.
“There was a terrible battle. Our people were falling faster than any of us could have imagined. The child traffickers had clearly been planning for the attack for a long time, because they knew exactly when to strike and where to do the most damage. Our strongest guards were taken out first while we rested. Naerith and I were pulled from reverie only moments before we had to fight to keep them from taking our son. There was a drug in the air… We couldn’t fight.
You have to understand, we were horribly outnumbered.
I thought we were going to die. I never would have cast the spell as incoherent as I was if I’d had another choice. ”
“It’s okay,” Clayton soothed. “No one here is going to judge you. It sounds like you were in an impossible situation. We’re just gathering all the facts right now.”
The woman took a deep breath to calm herself and continued, “When we realized we could no longer protect the children, we circled the last of us, and while our remaining forces held off the traffickers, I cast a spell to send the children away. I didn’t have time to do more than gather power and make a wish.
I told the magic to send them somewhere safe.
I couldn’t have known the king and queen had sent reinforcements that would arrive moments later. ”
“Even if you had waited, we still would have lost them, Elena,” the man Clayton assumed was Naerith soothed.
“We’d already lost so many, and your spell distracted our attackers long enough to hold them off til help arrived.
The traffickers have portal magic and were snatching the children away right under our noses,” Naerith explained to Clayton.
“It’s not something commonly used among our people, so we don’t know how to counter it.
They would have taken all the children, Elena.
You gave our child a chance. You gave all of them a chance. ”
“You said Merribelle and Tomathus are sixty and forty, but my Merry and Tommy are only six and four…” Clayton tapped his chin in thought and continued to think aloud.
“But neither Tommy nor Merry remembers their lives before several months ago. The people of Boston Below just assumed their ages… I’m guessing that fae children age slowly?
” Clayton directed the question at Elena because she seemed to be the one in charge.
“Some do, and some don’t. If they are mixed with another race, they can take on those traits. Both Naerith and I are part human. It isn’t much, so we present as full fae, but there is a chance our son won’t. He didn’t have our ears when he was born.” Elena touched a delicately pointed ear tip.
Clayton, remembering to be a good translator, filled his team in on what he knew so far.
“I might be able to help with finding their son,” Marshall said, but then he winced. “I mean, I could have. My magic doesn’t work properly here for some reason. I still have it inside me, but it won’t do anything. Can you ask our new friends here if they know why?”
Clayton conveyed the question to Elena, who proceeded to give him a response that had his curious mind positively gagging to write it all down.
“Magic across realms often doesn’t work the way it would in the user’s home realm. And even if it did, dreamwalkers have no power here because our goddess doesn’t like them. Witch magic is similarly hampered because its power still comes from the source of creation.
“In this realm, our magic comes from the universe itself. Chaos energy. In your realm, our magic doesn’t work well either. It’s one of the reasons travel between realms is prohibited.”
Clayton relayed her reply.
“My magic works fine,” Mal said, utterly failing to give a shit whether a (usually) powerful dreamwalker remembered what he was, thus foiling Clayton’s plan of distracting Marshall from Mal’s species forever.
Marshall’s eyebrows drew together in thought. “How could you possibly be able to use magic if I can’t? It comes from the same place.” Instead of getting upset, Marshall’s eyes had taken on a gleam of interest Clayton could empathize with.
Learning new things was his passion, and since Mal seemed to present Clayton with something new to investigate every five minutes, he couldn’t help but feel excited about what the future held for them. Terrified, yes, but also absolutely pants-wettingly eager to see what else he would learn.
“I wonder,” Clayton began, stroking his nonexistent beard, “if it could be the difference between an electric car and a gasoline-powered car. They both perform the same function, but how they do it is entirely different.”
If Clayton had been speaking to anyone else from the Other, he wouldn’t have bothered using the analogy, but he knew Marshall would be able to follow him.
Clayton studied Other technology because he didn’t use magic, which meant he didn’t randomly destroy tech. It allowed him closer access than most Other magic users could get.
Marshall, on the other hand, was a master Crafter with a capital C. He was able to do something most dreamwalkers could only fantasize about. He could create things in the ‘Scape and drag them out into the Real.
He was known throughout Other society for the tricked-out truck he’d crafted and then driven through a dream portal.
It was a perfect blend of magic and technology and was the most beautiful thing Clayton had ever seen.
Marshall admitted to him once that it had nearly killed him to do and that he wasn’t likely to try again, but the fact that he’d managed it at all was mind-boggling.
“That would suggest fear and dream magic don’t derive from the same source, which counters everything we know about nightmares. Though this one does that simply by existing.” Marshall jerked his chin toward Mal, not bothering to look at him.
“Maybe fear magic is more universal than dream magic, so it’s able to slot into other magic systems easier?” Clayton suggested.
:Not quite, little traveler. You’re correct that fear is universal, but the source of creation is as well.
However, fae creatures don’t dream in my realm; they enter a state of reverie.
A few hybrid sentients can dream, but not enough for it to make a difference.
Because dream magic is weak here, magic evolved differently.
Your dreamwalker can’t access his magic because he has no conduit for it.
I block all dreamwalkers who make it here from using their essence to create magic because they have no way to replenish it.
They would fade, and nothing could be done about it. :
“Fascinating. Thank you, Astraea. Marshall, don’t—”
:Don’t bother telling him. He’s about to leave, so it won’t matter.:
“What? Why is he leaving?”
:His friend is throwing an absolute tantrum, and I’m bored with it.:
“His friend? Do you mean Jack?” Throwing a tantrum didn’t sound like something the easy-going man Clayton knew would do.
Marshall got an odd look on his face, like he was focusing inward and didn’t like what he found, and then, with a pop, he vanished.