Chapter Fifteen: Grand Theft Jerky

  "Half a day," Mira grits out after what feels like an eternity but is probably ten minutes. The words sound like an accusation. "That's what you said."

  "Half a day if we can walk," Lyra replies without looking back, her tail thumping against the forest floor in annoyance.

  "I'm walking," Mira insists, her pride apparently held together with spite and denial.

  "Technically," I say, because my mouth is a traitor that cracks jokes when I'm terrified, "you're being transported like a very angry piece of furniture."

  Mira makes a sound that might be a laugh if it weren't disguised as a threat. “One more joke and I'll give you another training session, maybe more.”

  “Ooh, maybe you’ll kiss this time.” Kaela says, bouncing on her heels as she takes care to stay outside Mira's reach.

  “Not funny!” Mira and I both say at the same time.

  “I'd win anyway,” I say, ensuring that the smugness of my tone carries across to further drive the taunt home. “I can apparently open portals now so who knows, maybe I can redirect your punches or something?”

  “You don't even know how you did it. You said the first time you got hit by a fireball, and this time you crushed a sack of runemarks. You got lucky both times. . . It won't work in the middle of a fight.” Mira says, readjusting her lean against Lyra.

  “Well I'm apparently a magical girl so maybe all I need is the power of friendship and a catch phrase?” I say.

  “Sounds unrealistic,” Mira says.

  “A magical girl?” Kaela says, turning to look at me. “Is that a kind of hero from earth?”

  “Not really,” I say, shrugging my shoulders. “Some heroes call themselves that, but it's from a bunch of books and shows.”

  “That's strange,” Kaela says, kicking a root and jumping over it in a motion that almost lands her on the ground. "Wait! Look, mushrooms," she says, wobbling but staying upright.

  I stare. "...mushrooms?"

  Kaela leans in, squinting like the forest has presented her with a philosophical dilemma. "Cute mushrooms, the best kind. Don't you know food tastes better if it's adorable?”

  "They're not cute," Mira says flatly. "They're fungus."

  "Fungus can be cute," Kaela argues, and the fact that we're having this conversation while being actively hunted feels like proof that my life is a cosmic joke someone's telling badly. I'm in the middle of another world, traveling with aliens. . . Or fantasy creatures. . . Or whatever. . . Being hunted by knights. . . And now apparently talking about cute mushrooms.

  Kaela crouches, pokes the edge of one with the care of a doctor performing surgery, then stands. "They feel safe. We can eat them!" Kaela taps her temple like she’s explaining basic math. “It’s a vibe thing. My tail doesn’t lie.”

  “They. . . Feel safe?" I say, blinking hard in disbelief and accidentally activating mana blizzard vision again. The world around me explodes into different colors of mana. Most of the forest was red, but there were a few spots of differing colors that contrasted wildly against the red backdrop. One in particular was the mushroom, which, to my surprise, had almost no mana clinging to it. Unlike the other plants which were coated in red or a mixture of different colors, I saw only a few particles of mana clinging to the mushroom. Most of it was red, dotting the mushroom randomly like someone had sneezed under a blacklight, however, there were dots of black mana clinging to the mushroom. I would have missed the black mana if not for Kaela picking the mushroom and a few particles falling off like dust. The black specks don’t drift like the rest. They cling with purpose, like they’re waiting.

  “Yes! Kaela responds, holding the mushroom with two hands like a prize won at a carnival, “I got the entire thing, stem and all!”

  "I do not need emergency forest mushrooms," Mira snaps.

  “Maybe we should save it for later?” Lyra says, opening her pack.

  “Umm. . .?” I mutter, trying to interpret what I'm seeing.

  Mira looks my way, her eyes widening as she sees my eyes have returned to being runes. “Did you forget how to get your eyes back to normal already?” She says, sighing.

  “No. . . No” I say, looking at the mushroom in Kaela's hand. “What mana is black?”

  “Black?” Lyra says, noticing my eyes, tilting her head. “Why? What are you seeing?”

  I take a step closer to Kaela and point at the mushroom. “That has black mana all over it.” I say, pointing to the mushroom.

  Kaela drops the mushroom, wiping her hands on her shirt.

  Mira doesn't look surprised, sighing like she expected it.

  “It's death,” Lyra says, looking at the mushroom on the ground. “Black mana. . . Is death. It's found in battlefields, graveyards, and other places where people died or places where people are likely to die.”

  “So if we ate that mushroom. . .” I say

  “We'd likely die,” Mira says.

  “But I poked it, it felt safe. . .” Kaela says. “Can I at least hold onto it?” She said. “I'll be extra careful and wrap it in cloth.”

  “No!” Mira says, thumping her tail on the ground. “You'll forget it's deadly and eat it when we're not watching. . . Like the last time where the healers had to make you vomit.”

  “Kaela strangely makes a good point.” Lyra says, her stomach rumbling. “We should sit down and eat something.”

  “I make points. . .” Kaela says, kicking the mushroom.

  “Maybe away from the magic murdershroom” I said, taking a step away from the dropped mushroom. I could see the particles of black mana still clinging to it, a few of them littering the ground around it.

  “Fine,” Kaela says, her tail drooping. “I guess not all cute food is delicious.”

  I close my eyes tightly, returning my vision to normal after a few seconds.

  “Maybe you're useful after all?” Mira says, sounding honestly impressed.

  “You mean besides saving your life by sending a giant squid through a portal?” I say.

  “Fine. . . Besides that,” she says.

  We settle in what generously could be called a clearing, really just a spot where the trees have decided to be slightly less clingy. The ground is damp and studded with ferns and moss that squelches under my boots. There's a fallen trunk nearby, half-devoured by time and insects, its wood soft and spongy like wet bread. Somewhere above us, something chirps. Probably a forest creature judging us.

  Kaela drops her pack and starts rummaging like she's searching for the meaning of life in dried rations.

  "I have bread," she announces triumphantly, holding up a lumpy loaf that looks like it was baked by someone who hates joy.

  "Is that bread," I say, "or a weapon?"

  "Both," Kaela says proudly. "It's Multifunctional."

  Mira slumps against the log, head tipped back, eyes half-lidded. For someone who insists she's fine, she looks like she's one stern breeze away from collapsing into a tragic poem.

  I lower myself onto the moss beside her and immediately regret it when the damp seeps through my skirt like the forest is trying to crawl into my bones.

  "Earth has better ground," I mutter.

  Kaela pauses mid-rummage. "Your ground is different?"

  "Our ground is... less moist," I say. "Usually. Unless you're in a swamp. Or Florida."

  Lyra's gaze flicks to me. "You keep saying that. That your world is different."

  "It is," I say, and the words come out sharper than I mean them to. I take a breath. "It's hard to explain how much, sometimes. Like describing air to a fish."

  Lyra reaches into her pack and pulls out a strip of dried fruit, dark and leathery and probably sweet. She breaks it in half and hands a piece to Mira without a word.

  Mira looks at it like it might be poisoned, then eats it anyway, as if accepting help is something she can only do when she pretends it isn't happening.

  Kaela finds something wrapped in cloth and produces it with a flourish. "Jerky," she says, grinning. "The good jerky."

  My eyes widen. "You have jerky?"

  Kaela's grin turns smug. "I am always prepared. . . Sometimes.”

  Mira makes a faint sound of approval that she immediately tries to pretend didn't happen.

  Kaela hands me a piece of the jerky, looking like mystery meat. It has a grey color and grainy texture that looked unlike any meat I had seen on earth. On a whim, since I'm getting used to having magical abilities, I shut my eyes and reopen them to the mana blizzard. Unlike the mushroom, I see nothing unordinary about the jerky. It was covered in the usual assortment of red and multicolored mana that made the piece of jerky look like someone dipped it in glitter.

  “What type of meat is this?” I say, closing my eyes again to shut off the mana vision.

  “Oh. . . Hmm. . . I think it's from a creature called a Flyder. They are hard to find now, but they apparently used to be a burden in the old empire capital.” Kaela says.

  “A Flyder?” I say the name, making me pause. “Can you describe it?”

  “Oh sure!” Kaela says, sitting down on the log next to me. “They're covered in feathers, have eight eyes, eight legs, and have thin membranes between their legs that let them glide around and attack prey from above. I have a plushie of one that I won at the academy festival last year, they're super cute.”

  “Oh. . .” I say, looking at the piece of jerky. I can't believe spiders are somehow worse. . . And. . . Can. . . Fly? I thought.

  “I think I'll stay with the dried fruit and bread.” I say, handing the jerky back to Kaela. Kaela promptly shrugs and sticks the piece of jerky in her mouth to chew on.

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  “Your loss, they're delicious,” Kaela says, handing me the dried fruit.

  As we eat and rest our feet, I glance around the clearing. The trees around us were wild and unmanaged, with broken branches and dried leaves littering the ground in all directions. Each gust of wind sent leaves flying, and branches rustling that made the forest sound like a complex orchestra gathered for the enjoyment of those held captive by its expanse.

  Luckily for us, those leaves provided an excellent early warning system should anything approach us. That's why, when we heard the telltale crunch of something stepping on a leaf, we all looked in the same direction.

  The crunch repeats, careful this time, like whatever it is noticed we can hear it.

  I look to see a shadow flashing between branches. A flicker of blue, too wrong against the green-brown world.

  My stomach drops, not from fear exactly, but from recognition. The kind of recognition that comes with a groan and the certainty that the universe is personally laughing at you.

  "No," I whisper.

  Kaela's tail twitches. "What?"

  The thing steps into view close enough for me to see it clearly.

  It's massive. Bigger than any squirrel has a right to be, unless squirrels on this planet have unionized and demanded better wages. Its fur is a deep, unnatural blue, like someone dipped it in a vat of sky. Its tail is thick and plush, curled like a question mark. Its front teeth are yellow and sharp and far too long for anything claiming to be herbivorous.

  It stares at us with black, bead-like eyes that contain only two emotions: hunger and the smug certainty that it could take all of us in a fight.

  Forest scurrier.

  Questionable squirrel.

  My eternal foe.

  It's come back for my lunch money.

  Kaela's face lights up like she's seeing a celebrity. "It's back!"

  Lyra's gaze narrows. "Do not feed it."

  The squirrel's nose twitches. Its gaze locks on the jerky in Kaela's hand.

  I watch its little paws flex like it's warming up for a heist.

  "Kaela," I say softly, "hold onto your food."

  Kaela looks down at the jerky, then up at me. "Why?"

  I open my mouth to answer.

  The squirrel launches.

  It's so fast it's almost a blur, a streak of blue that darts into the clearing, and rockets straight for Kaela's hands like it has an appointment with destiny.

  Kaela yelps and jerks the jerky up, but the squirrel doesn't care. It swerves, dives, and in one horrifyingly smooth motion, snatches the cloth bundle holding the rest of the jerky and bolts.

  "HEY!" Kaela shouts, springing to her feet.

  Mira tries to stand and immediately regrets it, swaying dangerously, but her hand still flashes toward her sword. "I will kill it," she growls.

  Lyra's hand shoots out and grips Mira's sleeve, steadying her. "Do not," she says, sharp now. "It's just an animal."

  "It's a criminal," Kaela says, already sprinting after it.

  I'm up, following after Kaela.

  "Fey," Lyra calls, warning in her voice.

  "I'm not letting it take our food!" I call back, and then I'm running, because apparently this is my life now, escaping knights, opening portals, and getting robbed by blue squirrels.

  The squirrel darts between ferns and roots like it's been practicing this exact escape route. Kaela barrels after it like a cannonball with a vendetta, all righteous fury and chaotic energy. I follow, lungs burning, boots slipping on damp leaves.

  "Stop!" Kaela yells. "That's ours!”

  The squirrel chitters, an awful sound, like laughter filtered through teeth, and leaps onto a fallen log, shaking its tail at us with the sheer audacity of a bank robber yelling “See ya later coppers,” before fleeing the scene of the crime.

  Kaela skids to a stop a few feet from the massive blue squirrel, crouching down and staring at it. “We have to surround it.” Kaela says, turning oddly serious. “You run left, I'll run right, then we corner it.”

  However, as we plan, the creature, with the slow, deliberate cruelty of something that has never paid a consequence in its life, begins to eat.

  Not the whole bundle. It's too big for that. It tears a strip free, stuffs it into its mouth, and chews while making direct, unwavering eye contact.

  Kaela makes a strangled sound, her face actually gaining some color as her cheeks flushed red. “It's. . . It's! It's eating in front of us.” She stammers, forgetting all semblance of the plan as she stands and points at the squirrel like she's accusing it in court. "You thief, stop!”

  The squirrel chews slower, like it's savoring both the jerky and our suffering.

  Lyra arrives a moment later, breathing slightly harder than usual. She looks up at the squirrel, then at Kaela's empty hands. "How important is the jerky?"

  "It's morale," Kaela says immediately.

  Lyra's eyes narrow at the squirrel. "We can't catch it.”

  "It's drunk on power,” I say.

  The squirrel shifts its paws, tail flicking. Another piece of jerky disappears into its mouth.

  Kaela looks like she might cry.

  Lyra exhales slowly. "We’ll retrieve it."

  Kaela snaps her head toward Lyra. "How?"

  Lyra looks around the forest, eyes tracking branches, shadows, the distance between tree and ground. Then she reaches into her pocket and pulls a piece of chalk, or a rock, or maybe just the broken bit of something she's been carrying since we left the academy.

  She kneels and draws a couple runes on the bark of a nearby tree.

  It's quick. Clean. Efficient. Like writing a signature you've practiced a thousand times.

  Lyra presses two fingers to the rune.

  Nothing happens for a heartbeat.

  Then a soft flicker of illumination pulses out from the bark, no brighter than a firefly, but sudden enough to catch attention.

  The squirrel startles. It jerks its head toward the spark, ears twitching.

  Kaela inhales sharply. "Do it again!"

  Lyra does, and this time the spark flickers towards the squirrel. The squirrel's eyes follow it, hypnotized.

  "Now," Lyra says quietly.

  Kaela doesn't hesitate. She's halfway to the squirrel's before it realizes it's being outplayed.

  The squirrel shrieks and tries to leap away, but Kaela is already reaching.

  She snatches the cloth bundle right out of its paws.

  The squirrel lunges.

  "Fey!" Lyra snaps, but I'm already committed.

  The squirrel clamps its teeth onto the edge of the cloth and tugs, hard.

  Kaela growls. "Let go."

  The squirrel tugs harder.

  Kaela's tail lashes wildly.

  My shoulders burn as I grip Kaela's shoulders and try to anchor her.

  Lyra's rune flickers again, a pulse of light right in the squirrel's face. It startles, releasing for a split second.

  Kaela uses that moment to yank the bundle free and scramble backwards.

  The squirrel screeches in fury and runs away, retreating into the forest with the dignity of a defeated tyrant.

  Lyra watches it go, expression unreadable. Then she looks at Kaela. "Do not leave food unattended again."

  Kaela huffs. "It wasn't unattended. I was holding it."

  Lyra's gaze flicks to the place where the squirrel had snatched the bundle. "It was held. Not guarded."

  "That's insulting," Kaela says, and then her face crumples into a grin. "But fair."

  I exhale, shaky, and realize my heart is pounding like I just fought a dragon instead of a giant blue rodent with attitude problems.

  Kaela thrusts the bundle toward me. "We got it back!"

  "We got most of it back," I say, because I can see a torn strip missing.

  "Congratulations," I tell her.

  Kaela jumps up, her tail thrashing with excitement as she spreads her arms wide and wraps me into a hug. “Thank you, Fey!” she says.

  “It was all you,” I say, letting out a chuckle.

  We start heading back toward the clearing we left Mira in, because leaving an injured person alone in a forest is how you end up in a cautionary tale. The forest feels quieter now, the adrenaline of the squirrel chase fading into the background hum of insects and rustling leaves. Then the smell hits me.

  Burnt meat. Charred fabric. Something chemical and wrong, like melted plastic mixed with barbecue gone horribly, catastrophically bad.

  My stomach turns.

  "What is that?" Kaela says, her nose wrinkling.

  Before I can answer, there's a rustling behind us, followed by the unmistakable sound of someone trying very hard not to sound like they're in pain.

  "What's taking you so long?" Mira's voice cuts through the trees, sharp with irritation. She limps into view, one hand braced against a tree trunk, the other clutching her side. Her face is pale, jaw tight.

  Mira follows my gaze. Her expression hardens.

  We find it in a small depression between two massive trees, half-hidden by ferns that have started to wilt from proximity. The ground around it is scorched, blackened in patches like someone took a blowtorch to the earth itself.

  A body.

  The hazmat suit is yellow, or it was once. Now it's a patchwork of char and melted fabric, the bright color reduced to sickly, mottled patches. The material has bubbled and fused in places, creating grotesque textures that make my skin crawl. The suit is torn open in three places, long diagonal slashes that cut from shoulder to hip, from ribs to waist, from neck to sternum. The edges of each slash are blackened and melted, the fabric curled inward like burned paper.

  The body is sprawled on its back, one arm flung out to the side, the other clutched across its chest as if trying to hold something in. The gloves are shredded, fingers visible through the tears, blackened and curled. The boots are intact but scorched, laces melted into the eyelets.

  The helmet is cracked, a spiderweb of fractures spreading from a central impact point on the left side. The visor is shattered, shards of plastic scattered on the ground nearby. Through the broken visor, I can see inside.

  A face. Or what's left of one.

  Human.

  Like me.

  The skin is burned, blistered, but I can still make out features. A nose. A jaw. Closed eyes, thank god, because I don't think I could handle it if they were open.

  "Yellowman," Lyra says quietly, and the word lands like a stone in my chest.

  Kaela takes a step back, hand over her mouth. "Is it... is it dead?"

  Mira makes a sound that might be a laugh if it weren't so bitter. "What do you think?"

  The cuts are too clean to be claws, too straight to be teeth.

  "Burned," Lyra says, kneeling carefully, her eyes scanning the body. "Sword strikes. Three of them, at least." She points to the slashes, tracing the air above them without touching. "Knights."

  My throat tightens. Knights. They did this.

  Then I see it.

  Lying in the dirt near the outstretched hand, partially hidden by a clump of dead ferns.

  A gun.

  It's black, compact, angular in a way that screams industrial design and human engineering. The grip is textured, the barrel short. There's a trigger guard, a magazine well, a slide. It's scratched and dirty, but intact.

  Probably a handgun. I don’t know what kind. I just know the shape from what Eve described.

  "What is that?" Kaela asks, pointing.

  "It's... it's a weapon. From Earth." I say

  Mira's eyes lock onto it immediately, her expression sharpening. "A weapon?"

  "Yeah. It's called a gun."

  Mira stares at the gun, then at me. "And humans use these?"

  "Yeah," I say, "A lot."

  "We should take it," Mira says.

  I snap my head toward her. "What?"

  "We should take it," she repeats, her tone pragmatic, almost cold. "We could use it against the knights. They're hunting us. We need every advantage."

  "No," I say immediately.

  "It's practical," Mira insists. "They don't need it anymore."

  "I don't care," I say, and I'm surprised by how firm my voice sounds. "I'm not doing it."

  Mira opens her mouth to argue, but Lyra raises a hand.

  "Fey is right," Lyra says quietly. "We don't take from the dead. Not like this." Lyra steps closer to the body. She kneels beside it, careful not to disturb anything, and bows her head as she starts to speak.

  "Return to the roots," she says. "Return to the embrace of the World Tree. Your journey in this form is ended. May you find peace in the tree that feeds all life. May you know rest."

  Still gave them respect.

  Mira looks like she wants to argue more, but she just exhales sharply and looks away.

  Kaela shifts uncomfortably. "Maybe we should just... keep moving?"

  "Wait," I say, because my brain is doing that thing where it makes terrible decisions. I close my eyes and open them to mana vision.

  The world explodes into color.

  The body is a mess of black mana, thick and clinging like oil. Death. Lots of it. It coats the suit, pools in the slashes, clings to the ground around the body like a stain that won't wash out. I can see traces of red mana too, faint and fading, the remnants of fire magic. The slashes glow faintly with it, the burned edges still holding onto the heat that killed this person.

  I can't stop looking at the body. At the melted yellow suit. At the shattered visor.

  This person came from Earth.

  Just like me.

  And they died alone in a forest, burned and broken, cut down by flaming swords.

  "We need to move," Lyra says, standing. "If there was a fight here, there might be others nearby. Knights. Yellowmen."

  Kaela lingers, looking at me with something like concern. "Fey?"

  "I'm fine," I say, closing my eyes and returning my vision to normal.

  She doesn't look convinced, but she nods anyway.

  Mira is already turning away, limping back toward the clearing. "Let's go," she says, her voice flat.

  I take one last look at the body. At the yellow suit. At the gun lying in the dirt. At the proof that humans have been here before me, and it didn't end well for them.

  Then I turn away.