Being an Empath made it really hard to dislike everyone.
As Stina wore a rut in the ground, she met the eyes of those waiting nearby. They didn't know Fitz personally, probably only realized he was a Councillor, and they stood with casual worry. She met their eyes and stared into their souls and blamed each and every one of them. She needed someone to blame, and Maruca wasn't here to take up the torch.
Human reference, her brain instinctively supplied, but Maruca couldn't be annoyed when she was gone, and Fitz couldn't do that snort-laugh thing he did when he was amused but didn't want to show it because he was dying.
Her stomach did a flip-floppy thing she wasn't too fond of at the thought of Fitz. Would he ever smile again? Because if he didn't—
It's your fault, she accused a middle-aged human, fidgeting uncomfortably as he looked on the medical tent like everyone else.
Except she could feel the waves of confusion and even a tinge of worry wafting off him like steaming mallowmelt. And if he, a random person who either knew nothing or very little about Fitz, could find the emotional capacity to care, that meant he wasn't the bad guy, and he wasn't to blame.
Thus why being an Empath made it hard to dislike everybody.
"How long does it take for a stupid procedure?" she snapped at Belisia. "It's been ages."
The Ancient's eyes were far away. "I know what ages feel like, and this is not it."
"UGH! Can you just shut up and give me a straight answer for once?!"
The humans and elves nearby shifted awkwardly.
"I know what you're going through—" Belisia started, but Stina laughed mirthlessly, cutting her off.
"Actually, you don't."
Even Stina didn't know what she was "going through." Besides, that phrase sounded like she'd chosen this path, and no, that was Maruca and Fitz who'd wanted to be stupid and go ahead with the heist-plus-some-fun-backstabbing plot Jonathan and his gang had cooked up.
She could've blamed Maruca for pushing so hard, but at the end of the day, Stina had agreed to go along. Plus, it wasn't like either of them had shot Fitz. That was the gang's fault.
Except she needed to be mad at someone right now, and no gang member was here.
She opened her mouth to lash out at the Ancient again when the medical tent flap parted and any words her lips could have formed died as ideas. Dr. What's-His-Name's wrinkly face looked like it had an anchor attached to it, pulling all the flaps of skin downward. Stina had figured when she'd first met him that he didn't smile very much, but still, seeing his face made all the worst-case-scenarios gallop through her head like a herd of angry unicorns.
IS FITZ ALRIGHT?! she wanted to scream, but seeing as no words would come out, she hoped she conveyed it with her gaze.
"The procedure went better than expected," the doctor finally said. "He's alive for now—unless he takes a turn for the worse."
"See, that last part wasn't necessary," Belisia said flippantly, but she was clearly relieved. "We're going to have to have another discussion on pessimism in the workplace."
"Can I see him?" Stina managed.
Wrinkly Face eyed her with obvious disdain, but eventually he stepped aside. "For a little while. He's resting."
Stina shoved past him and ducked into the tent. The inside seemed smaller than she remembered, a bunch of machines she didn't know how to identify cluttering up the space—or maybe that was because her tunnel vision made it hard to focus on anything other than a cot and the pale boy lying on it. Fitz had always looked like he needed a good ten hours in the sun, but this... He was practically gray. His breathing, offset by the beep of some obstruction connected to him by creepy-looking tubes, filled the space with a fragile sound, and she was afraid to move in case she somehow broke it.
Eventually she summoned the courage to step by his side. "Uh... hi." Her voice warbled, but he wasn't awake to hear it, so she wasn't embarrassed. Instead, she felt panic, like she was on a timetable and once she left, she wouldn't be able to see him, and if she couldn't see him he'd somehow take a turn for the worse—
Breathe, she reminded herself, clenching the sheet and counting her inhales.
"Just so you know, this is not my fault."
Beep. Beep. Beep.
His eyelids stayed closed, and she pinched the bridge of her nose. "Ugh, can you just wake up so I'm not talking to myself like some psycho?"
"Good to know... you're more concerned about your reputation than me," he grunted, stirring.
She jumped. "Good grief, Fitzroy, were you awake the whole time?!"
He opened his eyes slowly, which was when she noticed the bags under them. "Maybe? I... feel like I have no energy. What... what happened?"
"You don't remember?"
"Kind of?" He moved to rub his head, then hissed. "I... got shot, didn't I? Is Elwin here?"
"No. It takes a long time to get to the Lost Cities from the site—something about bureaucracy, Belisia said? I guess there's another reinstatement site that you leap to from here, then they log you in so they know who's going from here to there, then you have to wait, then you can go and get who you need, but then you have to go back and log in again. Besides, even if I had just leaped home, it would've taken too long to hail Elwin or Livvy, and... you were kind of bleeding out."
"At least I know human medicine isn't all bad—Sophie told me some horror stories."
"Oh. Yeah." Stina felt childish, but she couldn't help bristling at the mention of the Moonlark's name. She'd grown to respect Sophie as a leader and even as a person, but all those years of her mom constantly telling her to "be like Sophie Foster" hadn't exactly trained her for adoration—which was something she sometimes felt everyone in the universe had for Sophie, except for her.
"Where's Maruca?" asked Fitz.
Why does it matter? Stina wanted to snap, but that would officially bring her down to foal maturity-level. "She went to Everfalls, because of the painting and everything."
"Right. That makes sense."
"Are you disappointed?" Stina blurted, before she could get over herself. Why was she being so ridiculous?
"Disappointed? I don't know what you mean."
"You know... that I'm here, and she's not."
He squinted his teal eyes at her, which she couldn't seem to look away from. "Where is this coming from?"
"I don't know." A pause. "Okay, well, I do, and it's going to sound really stupid and I would be fine if you forgot about it or ignored it or whatever. But, um... Well, see, the thing is..." Ugh, grow UP, Stina! "The thing is," she repeated, a little louder, "I like you. Or—no—I think you're hot. Cute. Not hot. That's... weird. And not cute like you're-a-three-year-old kind of cute, but handsome. In a romantic way. Except it doesn't have to be romantic, because I can totally unfeel these... feelings. And... Ugh, that was humiliating."
He cough-laughed, grimaced, and settled with a smile. "That... was not what I was expecting."
"Okay, say no more!" she shouted, holding up her hands. "I don't really want to talk about this any further! Besides, Dr. Wrinkles-A-Lot said you need to rest, so I should probably let you do that."
Cheeks burning, she stumbled out of the tent and sucked in a gulp of fresh air. Except... was it acrid?
"What's going on?" she asked Belisia, who was standing farther from the tent than she'd been before. In fact, most of the people who'd been waiting were now gone.
Stina jogged over and peered into the empty blackness. It was the hour between night and day; somewhere around four or four-thirty. The sun wasn't shining, but she could still see light in the distance. Was that the road—were those cars?
But it couldn't be. She, Fitz, and Maruca had walked to the road when they'd scouted the city, and it had taken hours.
She inhaled another breath and choked on the unmistakable stench of smoke. Clarity dawned on her, and she stumbled back. "The gang's here—Jonathan wasn't lying!"
Belisia pivoted, her face ashen with a calmness Stina didn't really feel, and bellowed, "FIRE! Everyone to the center of the campsite—this is not a drill!"
"We're going to die," Stina said, tasting bile in the back of her throat. She hated to be the Maruca in the situation, but even she couldn't see a way out of this. There was no light to leap by; even the moon was covered by the trees.
"Don't give in to adolescent fears," chirped Belisia. "We'll think of something."
"Belisia!" a voice hollered, and a familiar elf barreled out of the shadows. It was Damel. "I opened my mind to human thoughts—it was hard to differentiate between those here and the gang's, but I'm certain we're surrounded. There's no way to escape through the forest."
"Report!" Belisia commanded a human as she ran up to them. Damel turned away and pressed his fingers to his temples, probably taking another reading of the gang's minds.
The human pushed up her glasses, which had slid down due to the sweat slicking her face. "Based on the density of this forest and basic projections, I'd say the fire's moving at anywhere from 5.5 to 5.8 miles per hour."
"How much time?"
"O-only a few minutes, maybe seven at most."
"Another thing, Belisia," said Damel, flinching from the mental voices that must have been screaming in his head. "It's hard to hear with everything going on, but... I think the fire is a symbol."
"Like the ones the Neverseen planted around Sophie's human home?" Stina inquired.
"Perhaps. All I heard was that the guy, presumably the leader, was proud of the idea he'd taken from the Neverseen. He thought it was one of the only good ones 'they'd' copied. Then the image he was trying to create popped into his mind, and I thought maybe I can project it."
"Get him paper," Belisia ordered the human girl.
While she was carrying that out, Stina looked at Damel. "How does Jonathan's gang know about the Neverseen and those fires? Did you implant that information in the humans' minds?"
"No! We only implant the basics—that the Lost Cities exist and that the elves have abilities. It's not like we formulate an elaborate history to place in their minds; that would be way too overwhelming. He could've found out by eavesdropping, though, or maybe one of his members went to the Lost Cities and read some books—I don't know."
"That's fine—but who's 'they'? His gang?"
"I assume?"
Just then the human returned with paper, interrupting Stina's deliberation momentarily as she watched Damel stare intently at the sheaf like he thought it held the answers to the meaning of life or something. Finally, he took the pencil the girl had also brought and copied his memory onto the page. It did look like a symbol, but it meant nothing to Stina:
氵
"The left side is where Jonathan's gang is at," Damel explained. "At each point—see, there are three—one of them started an individual fire. We're on the right; the fires are coming toward us diagonally. But I don't know how they projected what direction the fires would go..."
The human thought for a moment. "They could be using gasoline. The fire would still spread everywhere, but the general shape of this would be intact—for a few seconds at least."
"Are you familiar with this symbol?" Belisia pushed.
"Uh... yeah, I kind of remember studying it. It's a simplified, three-stroke version of the Kangxi radical eighty-five. Its primary definition is 'water,' which is actually kind of ironic considering they're making it out of fire... Or, wait, maybe..."
Belisia leaned in. "Maybe what?"
"I dunno. It seems kind of far-fetched, but also too much of a coincidence." When Belisia repeated her question—"What?"—the girl finally bit her lip. "Okay, don't freak out or anything, because I could totally be wrong, but water is commonly used to symbolize things like fluidity, wisdom, power, music, and... um, purity."
Stina was too mentally exhausted with this whole I'm-Totally-Smarter-Than-You bucko to be snarky, so she decided to speak what they were all thinking and save them some time: "You're saying Jonathan's gang is the Purities?"
"Gangs commonly use symbols to represent them, and when they kill you, they like to show those symbols off so you know who's at fault."
"Delightful."
"Speaking of killing, how are we going to get out of here?" Damel butted in with a cough. His was accompanied by a dozen more from the people around them who had gathered together.
"The simple campfires are too weak to carry anyone a long distance, much less the Lost Cities," the human supplied. "That also means you can forget about flashlights or carlights or, well, any portable device that produces light."
"What about someone that controls light?" Stina jumped in, shooting the girl a smile as if to say, HA—I can be smart too!
"You mean a Flasher?" Belisia murmured. Suddenly she snapped her fingers, producing a small ball of light. "I haven't practiced in a long while, but perhaps we can try."
"Good idea!" the human said, and Stina scowled. Being difficult was so much more fun when there was someone like Maruca, who'd actually take the bait.
"What about Fitz?" Stina asked as Belisia called elves to pair with humans. She'd been so focused on Damel's revelation that she had forgotten Fitz's injuries, just for a moment. "Can he light leap?"
"I don't know much about it," Dr. Squishy-Face said from the circle of people now linking arms, "but from what I do, I'd say a light leap would, at the very best, cause permanent damage."
"I'm not leaving him!" Stina argued, though no one had really suggested that. But she wasn't stupid; even if they hadn't spoken it out loud, they had to be thinking it.
"Stina—" Belisia started, but she ignored her and stomped toward the medical tent. As soon as she got close she heard hacking—and then she was sprinting the rest of the way.
"Fitz?" she gasped, then immediately gagged. The heat was inescapable now, pressing so fast and intimate she felt like her head was about to explode.
"I can't leap, can I?" he said huskily. "You should go, Stina. It's okay."
"No need to get all serious here, Chandelier Head—I have an idea." She paused to cough, then added, "It's definitely a good one—better than what Maruca would come up with, that's for sure. Not that that was unexpected by anyone, but—"
"Stina," Fitz moaned.
"Okay, okay!" She turned and made for the tent flap.
"Wait, where are you going?"
Already running for the group of people slowly shrinking—hoping she wasn't too late—she only had time to shout over her shoulder: "Getting Damel—we're going to need his help!"