Chapter 2 #2
Malice’s green eyes trace Sorrow’s tits and cunt in platonic camaraderie, his expression the equivalent of a fist bump that congratulates her on being the most creative combatant here. As though everyone else is pathetic for being dressed at all.
Andrew is on par with Merry, glancing away sans the blush. Instead, the snarky human might chuckle if he weren’t holding a fatal weapon.
Love shakes her head, tossing out a silent question. Where the hell were you? What have you been doing?
In response, Sorrow jerks her chin toward Envy’s tree. What do you think?
Arguing, bickering, fighting. With her ex-fuck toy, this has become their new mating ritual. Minus the actual mating.
Each crew member aims in a different direction, covering all vantage points.
Until now, they’d breached this land without detection, leaving no evidence of their presence.
As a connoisseur of research, Malice had concocted an ancient mixture called Asterra Flora, derived from a seed and flower, which had enabled the crew to cross realms surreptitiously.
So how in the everlasting fuck—
A twig snaps from twenty paces away. Sorrow’s ears perk.
She pictures Merry’s pink eyes and the lavender hem of her dress swishing against the breeze. The grind of Anger’s teeth, his windswept hair affixed to the back of his scalp, and the sharp rays in his graphite irises.
The maniacal glint in Malice’s eyes, with a touch of kamikaze flair. Only a touch though, since he’s got someone to live for. Namely Wonder, who’s inverted above with a curious expression as luminescent as the wildflowers she’s been picking nonstop during this quest.
Love, aiming two iron arrows at once. Andrew, balancing one mortal arrow and withholding a string of expletives.
Sorrow envisions Envy… not at all. She refuses to envision him at all.
Regarding that god, her eyes take a literal approach. They flit toward the branch bearing his weight. Just as she finds him, his gaze cuts away from her.
Another twig cracks. Bracing her longbow, Sorrow hunts for the source, inspecting the mist lacing through the forest, a network of brooks carving across the earth, some as narrow as strings, others as inflated as Envy’s head.
As the group leader, Anger disarms momentarily and raises his flat palm, indicating for them to hold their fire. With a frown deeper than a canyon, he resumes his stance, nocking his bow in slow motion while scouring the arcade of trees stretching from the glade’s entrance.
After a minute, he catches Merry’s gaze, who nods and mouths an instruction to Andrew, who gestures with an index finger to Love, who juts her knobby chin at Wonder, who signals to Envy with a jerk of her longbow, indicating a massive hedge behind Sorrow.
Despite the distance and shadows, the ferocious contraction of Envy’s face is evident. He twists, seeking out Sorrow as if she’s a moron who needs to be told.
Mutely, she hisses, “I know.”
Eventide grows quieter than a catacomb. Sorrow’s finger tightens around the bowstring. She licks her lips, her pulse tapping against her chest.
Another crack. Then the harsh flapping of plumes, which don’t belong to Love.
Sorrow swerves and looses her ice arrow, which misses a raptor that appears out of nowhere, its slender beak glistening like a blue sword. Since a number of raptors thrive in this realm, including dragonflies and solar moths, this isn’t unusual. Except this particular species is rarely spotted.
A lunar heron.
The avian whips around her, then sweeps past the other archers, who follow its trajectory in confusion.
As the creature soars away, realization snares Sorrow by the throat.
Lunar herons travel in packs. That one had been alone, probably on the way to reunite with its kin, because it had gotten separated, because something must have lured its attention, because that something might have wanted it to fly in a certain direction.
Because it’s a decoy.
A bowstring twangs. Sorrow and her crewmates whip around as a projectile slices through the air, heading for the space between her eyes.
A turbulent male growl skewers through the air. Then a glass arrow intercepts the attack, the collision sundering both weapons. Sparks of light blast apart, illuminating the woods in a glaring explosion before the weapons vanish.
Sorrow whips toward Envy, who lowers his bow. Savagery flares in his pupils, an instant before the glint ebbs like an illusion.
She hesitates, then tosses Envy a cursory look of gratitude, then promptly looses her own arrow, which dices through the environment and blocks the shaft heading for Envy’s sternum. The impact causes him to reel backward, his frame slamming into the trunk.
More arrows rain from the arcade. Sorrow spins out of a shaft’s path, its tip stabbing a bough and flashing on impact, disappearing before she can get a close look at its element.
However, from what she can tell, none of these weapons are crafted of moonstone.
Therefore, these aren’t the weapons of The Fate Court.
Arrows fly, vanishing after every hit and reappearing in quivers.
It’s a free-for-all, with the rapid fire of Anger and Love’s iron, and the lash of Malice’s wooden bow as he flings himself into the fray.
Like a gymnast, Wonder loops in and out of the bracken while taking shots.
Love vaults into the canopy faster than a missile, shooting and dodging strikes while airborne.
Andrew plasters himself to a pillar while firing and seething, “Motherfuck!”
Yet it’s nothing compared to the rage that skewers across his features when he notices Love in trouble, his crossbow stymieing a shaft barreling for her heart.
Distracted by that, he fails to notice an arrow slicing his way until the last moment.
At Love and Sorrow’s combined shout, Andrew flings himself sideways and rolls across the ground.
Sitting upright, his pewter eyes narrow as another projectile rips through the leaves, hell bent on his cranium.
Love drops from her vigil. Her booted feet smack the ground as she lands in front of her mate and swings her forearm, slapping the arrow out of the way. Andrew lunges upright, his irises glinting as she gives him a sidelong wink.
Merry’s neon bow gleams through the murk, aiding in visibility. Anger wrests arrow after arrow from his quiver, the motions harsh enough to dislocate a shoulder.
Sorrow catapults to the right, leaping as an arrow whizzes beneath her. Mid-jump, she fires into the beeches. Seconds later, the ice shaft emerges back in her quiver.
There’s no telling if her nemesis is down.
There’s still no telling who the nemesis is.
Not until a figure hops from the bushes. At which point, Sorrow’s reaction is immediate. Her fingers stall, her jaw plummets, and she’s pretty sure her allies have similar responses.
The enemy is small and male. The enemy is leering. The enemy is a fucking child.
Another youth pops out from behind the first. Then another one emerges, prancing from the underbrush like a faerie. Then another, and another.
Five archers who can’t be more than fifty years old. Two males, three females.
Of the latter, one mini-goddess has metallic hair, another exhibits shimmering tinsel irises, and another bears a cluster of stardusted freckles.
Of the male set, one has bronze skin and a defined jaw that will someday rival Envy’s.
Whereas the other wears a velvet robe and possesses lilac eyes with a serum threading along his lashes, akin to liquid eyeliner.
The buoyant little shits brandish arrows wrought of gems, copper, and other things Sorrow’s too dumbstruck to recognize.
Clearly, none of the crew had registered the shafts’ diminutive sizes, a rookie mistake that will humble them later.
A collective pause ensues. It’s the reaction these children are hoping for. And shit. This is why Sorrow detected laughter by the pond.
Are these children fucking playing?
A very big maybe. She hasn’t forgotten the distinctions between mortal youths and immortal ones. To say the least, her kind are sturdier during their upbringing, and their definition of fun has a sharper edge than that of humans.
It explains why Sorrow and her crew have been spotted so quickly. This part of the forest is tedious to traverse through, not to mention accessible from only a few paths. That’s why it’s unfrequented. And that’s why their crew chose it.
It seems the children had been exploring. Sorrow doesn’t recognize the group and can’t tell what root emotions they represent. Not that everyone knows everyone personally in The Dark Fates.
In any case, it’s possible the runts have no inkling they’re facing eight outlawed archers. It’s also possible that if they do know, they consider it a thrill rather than a dilemma. Or they don’t give a shit either way.
The youths twirl like disks and leap back into the brush with more agility than a flock of gazelles, their creepy, menacing laughter trickling behind them. Echoes of mirth flit through the boughs, the silvery reverberation akin to wind chimes.
One. Two. Three.
Everyone disarms with a collective sigh.
Okay, not all of them disarm. And not all of them sigh.
Anger growls. Malice hisses. Andrew curses. And Envy does whatever the fuck Envy does.
In short, the males fail to pull themselves together, while the females inspect the vicinity with their weapons braced.
Anger’s hoop earrings flash as he slams down his longbow, a sign that he’s fuming beyond his quota.
The rage god strides over to Merry and yanks her against him, clasping the goddess with a strength that would shatter mortal bones, but only causes his mate to gasp and drop her archery.
She winds her arms around him, and they remain like that, Anger’s territorial expression implying how hard he’ll be snapping his cock into Merry later.