Here Be Dragons: The Protector

Chapter four: Escape

During Vaylerie's story, her mother had sat quietly. She had been very confused – it had shown clearly on her face – but she had been willing to listen anyway. It comforted Vaylerie that no matter how insane it all must sound, her mother would give her a chance. After she had finished, Mrs. Hart digested for a few minutes before pointing out "I'm not calling you a liar, but you understand this is difficult to believe? I feel like I've lived far too long to not notice if people exploded when they fell out of a tree." A nervous laugh later, she took in the disaster surrounding them and her expression grew thoughtful, "But... it would explain a few things; such as why Aybel can't find which barrel they stole or why you turned up naked last night – though your shoulder still doesn't make sense."

"I know it doesn't, but you are a great healer, maybe –" Vaylerie began, before her mother cut her off.
"Flattery will get you no-where, young lady; no amount of ointment and bandages can change the fact that wounds that size take a week to heal. Five days, minimum." Warily, she eyed the shoulder in question – as if it threatened to lash out at her at any moment. "Can I have a look, please?" Vaylerie undid the top few buttons of her blouse and bared her shoulder. Even now, Mrs. Hart couldn't quite stifle a gasp. It had healed perfectly – not even any redness to show that it had been recently irritated. She prodded it, lightly. "Does that hurt, Vayle?" Vaylerie shook her head, no.

As she did so, she noticed flashes of light coming from the ground below her; an object reflecting the late-afternoon Tollight. She pulled away from her mother so she could button up her blouse and drop to the ground. It was like a tiny puddle, but when she touched it, it was solid and smooth. She hooked her fingers underneath it and pulled. When it came free, she sat back with a triumphant "Aha!" and admired her prize. It was – or, at least, had been – a key. The hilt had melted in the fire, but the toothed end had been driven into the ground, where it had escaped the heat.
"What've you found, Vayle?" her mother was much more sensible about leaving the tree, choosing to clamber along and then down, rather than just swing out.
She hid the key behind her before answering with a question, "Firstly, how hot would you say the fire they described could get?"
She pondered before answering, "I don't know, not that hot, probably..."
"Hot enough to melt iron?"
She raised an eyebrow at that, "Certainly not. Why?"

In response, she simply held out the deformed key for her mother, who gasped, and started rummaging in her bag. Soon, she had found what she was looking for, and she held the key in her hand up next to the one in her daughter's. The teeth were identical. "That's... That's a key to our door."

Lukas heard a gasp as Sylas came back into the real world. "Lukas, I sense Turned. They're closing in on the sparks – there are so many; I've never seen such a large group in one place before. We must hurry." Sharing her partner's worry, Mistral increased their pace.

Down below, there was nothing – only wastes as far as Lukas could see. 'I hope they can run quickly, because we still have a long way to go.'

Mrs. Hart and her daughter had very different ways of processing difficult information: Vaylerie paced back and forth, eyes taking in every detail of her surroundings – as if she could carry the rebellious thought into her mind with a tsunami of images and emotions – whereas her mother appeared completely frozen in her position, hunched over her bag. Her eyes were still and unfocused – her gaze seemingly turned inwards on the gears working in her mind. Both methods tended to reach the same conclusion, but the younger woman's tactic sometimes clouded her mind with other problems. In this case, a niggling worry that she mistakenly attributed to her current predicament, when it was in fact due to the huge shadow on the horizon. A shadow that was marching in her direction.