Part 8

Down they walked. Past the darkened hub that was their home, they clambered down the opposite side of the mountain the carriage had dumped them on, heading straight for Hamsen.

The gray stone of the craggy path beneath them was worn smooth from hikers and travelers of old.

Without meaning to, Lis had directed the carriage through the paths of ancient witches. Its colorful rainbow self had clambered after the footsteps weaved into the history of the road. 

It was halfway down the gray mountain that they found the first bodies.

Horror struck through Ammie’s chest, and she tried to turn her mind blank.

Is this what the Hero was dealing with all on his own down in Hamsen?

“Dear lord,” Five breathed. He held his long arms out to both sides, a futile attempt at keeping the girls from witnessing the gruesome sight.

“Ah!” Juliette flew back on her own, and Ammie froze in place.

Only Lis could walk up to them, her ears unmoved and gentle as always, as she crouched before the lumps of flesh discarded against a tree stump.

“Did they die because their faces were taken off?” Lis questioned, looking back at her terrified friends calmly.

“Oh, heavens, get away from there, Lis. This could be a demonic spell that only activates when someone comes near them. Like you are right now!” Juliette’s blue ears were pressed flat to her head. In the cloud-covered night, the change made the witch look like a regular human. 

Lis raised one unimpressed brow. “Demons? You think they’re demons?” She shook her head, turning back to the two faceless bodies on the ground. “Not with Pokemon pajamas and banana socks.”

Ammie tried to gain clarity. Her vision was tinged with a strange red color. She looked down, half-expecting a crystal in her hand that she’d unintentionally asked for red sight, but no. 

Red was brightening the dark clouds, and it was Ammie herself that was doing it.

“They were human?” She asked, voice low.

Five’s hand came to wrap around her upper arm again, noting the change in her voice. As if she would just take off running, and he had to hold her in place to stop it.

Ammie nearly snorted. His concern was unnecessary. 

For now.

“They still are human, Ammie,” Lis spoke softly, rearranging the corpses’ clunky arms into a more peaceful position. 

“Face-stealers,” Juliette whispered. “We’re dealing with face-stealers.”

“But if there was a face-stealer, one of the clans would have reported it,” Five whooshed his breath, his white ears flipping back at the movement. “Nobody messes around with clan politics when it comes to a forbidden art.”

“They didn’t know…” Ammie said slowly, remembering what Crystal Quartz had said.

“How could they not know?” Five wrinkled his nose. “You can smell bad magic in the air and the land it was practiced in. It’s not something that can be hidden.”

“They didn’t know…” Ammie stepped toward the corpses, flashing her hand to her backpack quickly and unearthing two golden pebbles, “…because he’s not a witch.”

“Not a witch?” Five repeated as Juliette said, “He?”

“Crystal Quartz thought it might be a man named Lommeil that was corroding Hamsen. A human man.”

Silence answered her statement.

Five ran a frustrated hand through his hair, his thick brows twitching inward. “And why is now the first we’re hearing about this?”

“Why keep it a secret?” Juliette seconded. 

Ammie didn’t look at her friend. She felt that if she did, the perceptive Juliette may see the red instead of gray in her irises. 

Instead, her eyes focused on the caveman. Without meaning to, Ammie let her gaze roam over his face.

Had she looked at him this closely in the two years since he’d become an adult? In Ammie’s mind, part of her still saw the impish troublemaker always hanging around her brother as kids. 

Long, unkempt hair. Always covered in dirt. Horrible manners. 

La Ville had treated Quincey like a street rat, and he’d responded to the challenge.

Guilt twisted in Ammie’s heart, and the red in her vision abated somewhat. She breathed out--one long, refreshing distraction.

“I didn’t mean to hide it,” Ammie glanced at Juliette, calmed enough that she wasn’t afraid her friend would pull the plug on their little mission right away. “Let’s just go.”

Ammie dropped a pebble onto each of the humans’ laps, then began walking back down the mountain. Peace of mind may not be necessary for the dead, but it was all Ammie could do for them now.

She didn’t look back to see if her friends followed. And she pretended not to care when Five’s hand moved from her upper arm to grab her hand loosely.

The city would be in sight soon, Ammie knew, having traveled the ancient paths multiple times for school field trips. 

Once the mountain ended, the city began. The hub was built into the indomitable structure and ballooned out from it in a strange, tilted oval.

Lommeil was real, then. Ammie hadn’t been sure Crystal understood the difference between humans and monsters. The crystal spirit had only ever known witches, so how could she?

The invisibility goddess must have a larger network than I’d thought, Ammie smiled grudgingly. I wonder if there are quartz deposits in the mountain facing Hamsen.

“I didn’t know you thought a lot about the previous successions in Team of Legend history,” Five said casually.

“Hm?” One of Ammie’s red ears twitched. “I didn’t, really.”

“You came up with these theories in the week he’s been gone?” Five whistled. “That’s--well, I’m not going to say what I think of that because then you’ll get mad at me.”

Ammie shook her hair out from inside her hoodie. The length was just long enough that her strands could get caught under the neckline of the bulky fabric. “I didn’t come up with anything, though. Like I said, I never thought about the succession history before.”

She kicked aside a stray root on the path. “I never thought I’d need the knowledge.”

“Then who?” Five started, then turned to Juliette pulling her hood carefully over her fluffy ears. “So it was you.”

Lis trudged behind them, weaving around in a simple dance only she could understand. She hummed a sad tune under her breath, her airy voice giving Ammie uncomfortable chills.

“I remembered a story my mother had told me when I was little about the differences in the successions. It got me thinking, so I consulted the ancient law books before the Hero had even been created, and started from there. 

“I found a council of protectors, a class of warrior witches. One taken from each of seven prominent families, and they would protect the clan from wild animals and human wars.”

“I didn’t know that,” Five said, and Ammie silently agreed with him.

“From there, the families started dying out--this was during the series of Great Wars that nearly destroyed the continent, so it was a dangerous time. The need for an extra-powerful hero was born, and the remaining elders tried to cast a spell to the heavens and ask for god-like blessings for their children.

“The request was granted, but the god-like powers were only blessed onto one child. The first Hero. No rites of succession existed in those initial documents, which makes me think that our ancestors weren’t very direct in asking for godly help. They had either believed that the Hero would continue down the line or--well, I can’t think of another reason why they didn’t cement down all the rules of the Hero and their successors in the beginning.”

“So when did those rules come into play?” Ammie asked.

“I don’t know,” Juliette huffed a long-suffering sigh. “The truth is, a lot of the documents from the next two-hundred years of La Ville history are long gone. Something must have destroyed them all in one fell swoop. All I know is, two hundred years later, our current law book was created. In it were the laws of succession. Without a heavy memory or time-trance spell, we’ll never know the answers.”

Ammie sighed, let down by the anticlimax. “Of course, they’re all gone.”

The humming stopped, and Lis piped in, “Which god was it that granted the Hero powers?”

Juliette paused. “The Goddess of War.”

“Goddess?” Five blanched. “I thought there was just a God of War. Who’s the Goddess?”

Juliette smiled an ethereal, secretive grin. “An inherited goddess.”

“O-kay,” Five said slowly. “It’s amazing you remembered a little story your mom told you and were able to come up with all of this.”

“Well, she left for a different country a short time later, so it’s not like I have too many stories to remember,” Juliette shrugged. “It helped us now, and that’s all that matters.”

The path became steeper and littered with enough stray pebbles that their pace slowed considerably for fear of falling straight to the bottom. 

Five let go of Ammie’s hand to push his fallen locks out of his eyes. When he was done, he didn’t immediately grab for it again.

Ammie casually bumped her hand into his, careful to keep her eyes trained on the dark clouds and vague tree silhouettes in the distance. 

Without a word, he took it back.