Part 10

The four witches raced over the mountain’s uneven pass at breakneck speed.

“They’re gaining,” Five shoved Ammie forward, and her skimmers used the momentum to glide far ahead and skim beside Juliette and Lis.

“Five,” Ammie twisted around to scold the man, but as soon as she’d gathered the balance to do so, he had already made it up to them. He bent lower to the ground, which took advantage of his size and bulk to turn into a human bullet.

“We have to hurry,” Five urged, and they skimmed on in silence.

After Five and Ammie had caught up to the other girls, Ammie had forgotten that skimming next to one person on a treacherous path was hard enough, let alone four.

They spun and whirled around one another, avoiding deep cracks in the stone mountain and debris from the old trees and other things that had found their way up to the pass.

After spinning widely, too widely, too widely--I’m going to fall, I’m going to fall--around a cluster of rocks lying in her path, Ammie glanced up to look at what was coming.

Faceless animals raced silently behind them, their hardened nails click-clacking on the stone. 

Ammie didn’t know what the ambiguously-shaped animals could have been when they weren’t faceless, nor why they hadn’t come after the motley crew the first time they’d traveled the path.

A sickening feeling was digging its way up through Ammie’s throat, ever since her unwilling conversation with Juliette. 

Tristian couldn’t be defeated, not by eighty faceless, nor even a hundred. 

But why were the faceless from Hamsen jammed inside the town hall and surrounding shops? Were they being hidden? If that was the case, then hidden from what? 

As far as Ammie could tell, no one was left in the historic part of Hamsen--they’d either been turned faceless or they’d gotten the hell out of there during the past week.

This served up another round of questions in Ammie’s mind.

Crystal Quartz had heard rumblings about Lommeil, yet even the greatest seer in La Ville hadn’t been able to glean a single thing about the man and had sent the Hero into unparalleled danger, a forbidden magic at work. Alone.

The twisted feeling in Ammie’s gut churned harder and harder.

“When we get home, I’ll go to the alarm crystal in my house. Lis, stay with Juliette after she performs the stair spell. She’s going to be out of magic for a while. And Five,” Ammie flew her black bangs out of her face, whipping her red hair behind her ears. Sweat clung to her temples and neck, and all she wanted was a hair-tie, “…wake up the strongest fighters there are.”

Five nodded. “The faster we move in the first five minutes, the more preparation we’ll have before the human horde shows up after the beasts.”

Lis shuddered. “Why do the faceless animals look so different from the human ones? They look like they morphed into demon creatures: tails, teeth, claws, and long bodies.”

“They look--” Juliette panted, “like cheetahs mixed with--hyenas.”

“Maybe they were the first attempts Lommeil made to try out the spell,” Ammie’s brain was moving faster than it ever had, but it still wasn’t enough. What was she missing?

“What am I missing?” She said out loud, and Juliette exhaled softly despite their rapid pace.

“About what?” Five asked, flying up a dead tree trunk stuck to the mountain ledge when the path got too narrow for all four of them to travel next to one another.

Ammie shook her head, spinning behind Lis and holding the girl at arm’s distance to avoid their skims colliding. “I don’t know. We walked into an ambush, but why do I get the feeling that they were going easy on us? None of us got hurt, and if that was all the damage they could do, then there’s no way Tristian could’ve--”

“What are you thinking?” Five asked gently.

The mountain path edged down, pushing their skims faster and faster, so that even the girls had to bend down to keep steady with the increase in speed.

“It felt like they were just trying to trap us. Stall us. Just like how the faceless animals didn’t attack us on our way into Hamsen, I think that…”

The group fell silent, one question weighing heavily on their minds: stalling for what?

Flintrock was still facing a power outage when the witches reached the heavy black gate.

Juliette wasted no time summoning the stairs from the moon’s rays. This time, though, her eyes never lit with the ethereal essence of the moon, and the stairs trembled ever so slightly like a hologram.

Five dashed ahead first, and Ammie followed.

Their mission was too important to stop now.

The faceless animals clunked headfirst into the wall, butting into it again and again, just like the human faceless did with the town hall door. Luckily, the wall was built with enough protection magic that it might alert the elders in time for Ammie to get to her house, activate her crystal, and explain it all.

Still dark, it was now the time in the morning when the early risers were making coffee and watching the early news. 

Ammie and Five dashed away from Lis, who helped an unconscious Juliette sit against the gate instead of keeling over onto the ground.

“Stay alert,” Ammie called back to her friend. 

Lis’s shadowy green eyes nodded, the girl’s face set in unusually serious lines. 

Juliette was nothing but a bent head floating in a sea of black at the base of the gate. Ammie’s heart twinged at the sight. She’d used far too much magic that night. It wouldn’t be a problem, necessarily, unless she kept using it. 

Then she would burn out, and Ammie would never forgive herself.

Why didn’t I say anything? She wasn’t trying to be mean.

Ammie shook her head. There would be plenty of time to apologize to Juliette later, but now, she needed to focus.

Besides. She knew something Juliette didn’t. 

Tristian was still alive.

Ammie had never felt more sure in all her life. The mark on her hand tingled, soothing like a supportive caress.

“I’ll see you,” Five raced to his darkened home, clipping over overgrown hydrangea shrubs and sending a flying poof of purple and blue flowers into the air at the impact. “I’m going to grab a few things first, so I don’t have to go back.”

“I’ll see you soon,” Ammie called to him, picking up her own pace. Why did her house have to be on the other side of the community?

Ms. Ferallis was plucking dead leaves from her mini garden in front of a dainty yellow-brick cottage when Ammie ran past.

“Ammie?” Her teacher startled. “What on earth are you doing out here? Why are you running?”

Ammie twisted back quickly, calling, “I’m sorry, Ms. Ferallis. I can’t explain right now. But you need to get ready. Combat spells, defensive spells, protection spells…anything. We’re under attack!”

Then Ammie rounded a bend, her house closing in fast. 

Hands trembling, she threw open the door, clunking it into the brick wall beside it with a grating crash.

Vaulting into the house, Ammie took off for her mother’s room, where the crystal that connected all of the houses to the village elders sat in its satin box on a skinny folding table in the corner.

Skidding into the wall of the cottage’s single hallway, Ammie raced down to the end where her mother’s door was cracked open. 

Strange, Ammie thought. She must have gotten up for something. Or maybe she just couldn’t get off the couch tonight.

“Ammie,” a voice called from the other side of the wall where the living room was.

Though her hands still trembled and her mind shouted hurry, hurry, hurry, Ammie froze in place.

Her hair whipped so hard behind her that it stung as it hit her other cheek. 

“Ammie, dear,” her mother added after the voice, emotion clogging her throat, “come here.”

With stilted steps, Ammie paused at the corner of the wall, still out of sight of the living room.

Heart thudding, one hand braced on the wall for support, Ammie edged out from the hallway.

Her mother sat on the couch, hands clutching her tearful face. For the first time this week, Ammie’s mother was crying tears filled with relief and happiness instead of confusion and loss.

Standing tall and proud in the living room, Tristian the Hero stood, hands on his hips, leaned into his stance so comfortably it was like he’d been standing there for hours.

“Ammie,” her brother smiled, and ice skittered down the back of Ammie’s neck, “I’m home.”