Recklessness

The naiads encircled Eyna, bodies like glass statues in the moonlight waters. Their transparent figures blended with the dark. Tiny, polyp-like creatures drew close, bursting with blue bioluminescence with every pump of their tiny limbs. They alighted on the swimming naiads, creating ethereal silhouettes of ghostly bodies.

There was always at least one naiad brushing against Eyna. For so long as a naiad did so, Eyna was safe within the water’s embrace. The naiads coaxed the water to reject her presence, leaving her dry and breathing unimpeded.

The naiads were determined to drag Eyna to the bottom of the lake. The deepest point, within which they carried all their captured denizens, holding them there. Until Father prevailed, and Mother awakened.

Eyna half considered letting them. She wasn’t reckless without purpose. She didn’t disobey because she enjoyed being disobedient. There was always a reason.

Tonight that reason burned more fiercely than the fires consuming her home.

The distant waters lit up. Pulses like explosions in the depths, visions as if dying ships sinking in the endless inky black. Massive shapes were briefly illuminated, glimpses of other things afforded in confusing moments. Vast tendrils and tentacles shifting, a great rolling eye in the depths, a great serpentine spine rippled, all fierce and fathomless things that moved in inhuman ways.

The beings of the lake were fighting back, in their own way. 

Eyna was determined to, also.

Kicking her feet, Eyna pushed away the naiads. Her hands slid over their slippery bodies, passing into the darkness of the lake waters. She was immediately soaked and deprived of air. The pressure of the water crushed against her skin, chilled and overwhelming. Flooded, drowned, underwater.

A naiad wrapped around her, and the chill was gone. Her clothes and hair and skin were still soaked, but she could breathe.

Eyna pushed them away again. The water rushed in.

The naiads circled her, keening their concern. They murmured words like smooth stones falling into clear waters, stressed by Eyna’s insistence. She shook her head, cheeks puffed, as she clawed her way up towards the light of moons just barely visible beneath the waters. Any further down and she’d have no idea of which way was up or down in the darkness.

Eyna broke the surface of the water with a gasp. Her hair clung, long and dark, to her skin. She paddled to shore, cutting through the waters as fast as she could. She dragged herself to the shore, rushing through reeds and lily-pads until she felt soft soil and stones underfoot.

The distant forest burned like embers in a hearth. Through the dark trees she could just barely make out the sacred springs Father had barred her and Sthuna from. He’d be angry. Furious, even, at her disobedience.

Naiads bobbed in the waters behind her, clicking and crying out. Dozens of faces, ebbing between pale and transparent in the moonlight. It pained her a little, but Eyna forced herself to ignore their calls.

The shores of the lake were eerily quiet, a stark contrast to the panic as the wildfire had first surged. The waters lapped against the shore, soft as silk.

Eyna hoped that meant that most of the Heartsprings had found places to hide.

She had to find Sthuna. And Pepper and Saffron - though the little ones were more likely to have found tiny spaces she couldn’t enter. But she had to make sure everyone was okay. She couldn’t accept an outcome where she just waited in the safety of the lake, doing nothing.

The faesilk dress dried against her skin, even as her hair remained dark and damp.

Eyna picked a direction at random. And she ran. Her legs carried her deep into the silence of the forest, where not even fireflies broke the unnatural still. The roar of the flames was a distant thing, a tide of fear rising into the night, but it was one that she ran back to.

She called into the night. The names of friends. Of family. Her hands sought purchase, eyes wide as she searched. But there was something strange about the woods. Like a painting stripped of color, it… Lacked. The sense became an eerie, ever present thing. Trees, even in the dark, absent of climbing lichen and moss. Soft earth under her bare feet without the brilliant glow of mushrooms or moondancers. The homes of the little fae, usually clustered in tree branches and deep root formations, simply not there at all.

A strange dread of a thing she could not name filled her stomach. Her instincts told her something was terribly wrong - but what, she didn’t know. There weren’t any burn marks. No hungry flames in this part of the forest. No evidence that any outsiders had trespassed this far into the Heartsprings. As far as she was aware, the fires were still primarily in the sacred springs. Things were just… Gone.

Everyone’s just hiding, that’s all. They’re in the lake, or in the gardens, or the fields, or…

Eyna pushed the unease down as best as she should.

It’s going to slaughter everyone.

She swallowed down the eerie words Sthuna had left with her earlier that night, focusing on her hands and her feet. The tangible, the immediate, the things that she could see and feel and hear. And save.

There was a soft squeak.

Eyna whipped her head around, searching for the source of the sound. It came again, weak and pleading. She traced it to a thick knot of black maple roots. Eyna raced over, pulling back leaf litter and stones until she found the source.

A silkfluff. The size of a mouse, the moth-like creature was curled up, plush white fur covered in sticks and dirt. Eyna gently pulled them away, scooping the tiny creature up. The feathery antennae brushed against her fingers, round eyes looking sorrowfully up at her. It’s little paws grasped for purchase weakly.

“What happened? Are you alright?” Eyna’s voice was tinged with fear. She couldn’t see any obvious signs of injury on the silkfluff.

The creature didn’t answer. He gave a tiny squeak, before going silent. Just shivering. She could feel his heart pounding beneath his fur. Silkfluff could speak, if in stilted sentences. But whatever this little one was going through, it rendered speech impossible.

She opened her pocket and gingerly placed the silkfluff inside. She couldn’t leave him alone here. Not with… Whatever it was that was happening. The strange hollowness that lingered in the woods, and all around them.

Eyna’s legs carried her back to the springs, to where everything had begun. But as she broke into the gardens that surrounded the springs, now charred remains, nothing made sense.

Father was nowhere to be seen. But all around the sacred springs, the fire was swirling through the air, as if a dragon itself. Great columns whipped out, their blistering heat and reaching tendrils in pursuit of something swift and winged.

“Sthuna!”

He darted through the sky as a fish through clear waters. A silver arrowhead, dancing just out of reach of the fire.

There was another figure in the springs. The shape of a person, crafted of flame, burning from the inside. As the figure moved, hands curled like claws to the sky, the fire burned fiercely, white hot and locked on Sthuna.

The wave of fire encircled the dragon. A deadly coil that grew tighter and tighter until it lit up his scales.

Eyna didn’t have to know the specifics to see that the burning figure was the one targeting Sthuna.

The recklessness was burning in her blood. She didn't think twice. Eyna charged into the fray. She could feel sparks biting into her bare feet, but she ignored them. She had one goal and one goal only.

In a typical fashion, the figure did not realize she was charging. No one ever noticed Eyna until it was too late. She bulldozed the figure, sending them both toppling to the ground. Pain burned through her hands, but she kept at it.

The moment the figure hit the ground, the hurricane of fire stopped. A wall of flame roared to life around them. Eyna didn’t stop. She brought up her hands. And leveled a devastating punch right across the face. The wall of flame flickered and faltered for a moment, reeling in tandem with the burning figure beneath her.

Eyna realized too late the flames were closing in around her. The writhing being was determined to burn them both.

“Eyna!”

It was Sthuna’s turn to cry out, diving for her as the flames threatened to eat her alive.