Exploration
TW: hanging, colonial gun violence
Jasper led the way through the woods of the Human Realm with his friends Dexter, Kirce, Archie, and Blythe behind him. Was he using this excursion as an excuse to show off?
Perhaps a little.
Out of the five of them, he had the most experience in the Human Realm. So when Kirce, the girl he had a massive crush on for the past six months, started talking about how much she wanted to visit, he had jumped on the opportunity to be a guide.
“It’s kind of creepy here, isn’t it?” Dexter said. He had been reluctant to agree to come in the first place, ever since people started going missing a few years ago rumors were circulating that the Human Realm was no longer safe.
“What do you mean?” asked Archie.
“I figured in the Human Realm we would see Humans.” Dexter said, “But we’ve been walking for at least a mile and I haven’t seen anything. It’s weird. It makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.”
“You can always go back if you’re too scared.” Blythe teased.
“I am not scared!” Dexter retorted quickly. “If anyone should be scared it should be you. You don’t even have a palisman yet.”
Blythe, who was Dexter’s younger sister turned red. “If you brag about that stupid thing one more time I’m going to shove the whole staff up your…”
Kirce’s palisman, Toadles jumped on Blythe’s head and croaked loudly.
“Knock it off,” Kirce said, “You two are worse than children.”
Jasper’s palisman, a blue jay named Elinor rolled her eyes. Jasper smiled at Kirce, to show that he agreed with her and was happy that at least the two of them were mature and reasonable. Kirce however wasn’t looking back at him, his heart sank a little.
“What was that?” She asked.
“What was what?” Jasper followed her line of sight, he couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary.
“I saw something move in the trees.” Kirce said.
“It was probably just an animal,” Jasper replied,
“There are a lot of them over here.” He hoped whatever she had seen was familiar to him, he would love to have the chance to impress her with his vast knowledge of Human Realm fauna.
“What if it’s a human?” Blythe asked excitedly. “I’ve always wanted to see one!”
“It could be a witch hunter.” Archie said, “OoooOOOOoooooOoo….”
He wiggled his fingers right behind Kirce’s ear. Kirce elbowed him in the stomach.
“Knock it off, it’s not funny!”
“Kirce, I have been coming here for years,” Jasper reminded her, “and I have never seen one of these so-called witch-hunters. Relax. Most humans will go out of the way to avoid you, and the ones who don’t are more curious than dangerous.”
“Hmm…” Kirce didn’t looked convinced. “Toadles, go check it out anyways.”
Blythe rolled her eyes. “Worry wart.” She said, “No offence, Toadles.”
Toadles responded with a croak, though Jasper did not know him well enough to tell whether or not he was offended.
What happened in the following few moments happened so fast that Jasper could hardly keep up. There was a loud cracking noise immediately drowned out by a scream of anguish as Kirce nearly collapsed onto the ground. Jasper rushed to her side as Dexter and Archie cast a plant spell to pull whoever was hiding out into the open. A human boy fumbled to hold onto his own strange looking staff as he was hoisted into the air by Dexter and Archie’s vines. He dangled by his ankles and the staff slipped from his hands and clattered down amongst the tree vines. It took Jasper a moment to realize that the boy’s staff was dripping in bright green magic. Palisman blood…
Kirce was nearly hysterical.
“You’re going to pay for that!” She screamed, summoning fire to her hands.
“Kirce, stop!” Jasper grabbed her arm.
“He killed Toadles!” Kirce screamed, “I’m going to kill him! I’M GOING TO KILL HIM!”
Dexter, Blythe, and Archie all turned to try and console Kirce, or restrain her. Jasper had heard it said that the pain of losing one's palisman was enough to drive a witch mad with anguish. Kirce wasn’t thinking straight. In the state she was in, she could easily lose control and end up hurting herself or one of them. Jasper was too preoccupied trying to calm her down that he didn’t even think of watching the human. The next thing anyone knew, the human had escaped.
Kirce ripped herself away from her friends’ restraint.
There was a loud bang that rattled Jasper’s eardrums.
He saw Kirce’s body fall back and hit the ground as if time had stopped moving properly.
“KIRCE!” He screamed, he fell to his knees beside her. Blood poured from a hole in her chest.
Her eyes stared blankly at nothing.
Jasper shook.
She was dead.
She was dead.
For a moment no one could move. No one could breathe. No one could think.
When thoughts returned to Jasper’s mind they all repeated the same thing.
He killed Kirce.
The human killed Kirce.
Fury filled Jasper’s mind and body.
The world seemed to turn red, red like the blood blossoming across Kirce’s dress.
Instantly, Elinor transformed into a staff in Jasper’s hand. This human was going to die. He was going to pay for Kirce’s death with his own blood.
Before they could act there was another boom, like the one that had killed Kirce. More humans rushed forward from the trees, several of them carrying the same staffs that the boy had. Others had various other weapons.
Outnumbered, Jasper mounted his staff and took to the air.
A moment too late he realized that Blythe did not have her own palisman yet.
He summoned shards of ice around her to try and fend off the humans, Dexter and Archie each summoned their own defenses, but there were too many humans.
“BLYTHE!” Dexter screamed, as his sister was pinned down by the mob of angry humans.
“We have to go!” Archie shouted.
“Not without Blythe!” Dexter insisted.
Jasper dove for his younger friend.
BANG!
Before his eyes, Elinor exploded from the front of his staff. He felt it in his chest.
One moment she was there, the next she was nothing but a spray of bright green magic.
One moment his heart was beating, the next it was shattered like the shards of palistrom wood that flew back to hit his face.
The world was spiraling.
There was no up, no down, no future, no past.
Just that moment of watching Elinor explode in front of him.
He felt an arm around him, but was too disoriented to realize it was Archie’s until they were almost back to the portal. They crossed the threshold and collapsed into the red grass on the other side.
“We have to go back!” Dexter shouted. “We have to go back!”
“Are you insane?” Archie asked, “They’ll kill us!”
“They have Blythe! They have my sister!”
“Did you see how fast they murdered Kirce? That human didn’t even draw a spell circle. Blythe is probably dead already.”
Dexter jumped on Archie and started punching him.
“She’s my sister!” he screamed, “She’s my little sister!”
Jasper was still in shock, still covered in the splatter of Elinor’s blood, but Dexter was right. They couldn’t leave Blythe.
He forced down his own grief and tried to keep his hands from shaking as he pulled out the vial of Titan’s Blood and re-opened the portal.
“You’re mad.” Archie said. “They’ll kill you, too.”
“If she’s still alive, we have to try.” Jasper said.
Dexter and Jasper returned to the Human Realm. They stumbled through the underbrush, trying to follow the sounds of shouting. Jasper felt half asleep. The world seemed like a blur of nightmare and reality.
They caught up with the crowd of humans. Dexter tried to run ahead, but Jasper held him back, evaluating the scene before moving. Jasper didn’t think there was anymore room in his mind for horror. Between seeing Kirce’s body lifeless on the ground and watching Elinor explode before his eyes, it seemed impossible for any more atrocities to take place within such a short amount of time.
Then he saw Blythe’s body.
She was hanging from her throat in the branches of a tree as the Humans gathered around. Her face was bloated and purple, blood seeped from her eyes which were bulging out of their sockets. Jasper had just enough sense left in him to body block Dexter before he could run out and expose them both. He put his hand over his friend’s mouth and wrestled him back deeper into the woods. They managed to make it back to the portal before Jasper vomited. Before he knew what was going on, Dexter was on top of him. Jasper didn’t even feel the first couple of punches. He wasn’t even fully aware of what was going on until Archie pulled Dexter off.
“You said it was safe!” Dexter shouted. “You told us the Human Realm was safe! You had been there dozens of times! You said there was nothing to worry about!”
Jasper tasted blood in his mouth. His brain still couldn’t quite connect the pain coming from his face with the blood pouring from his nose or the fists that just assaulted him.
“I…I thought…” He struggled to speak, “I…Nothing like this had ever happened before…”
“Blythe is dead!” Dexter screamed, “Kirce is dead!”
“I…” The world still didn’t make any sense. Jasper was shaking.
“It should have been you!” Dexter shouted, “You were the one who led us there! If anyone should have died, it should have been you!”
Jasper couldn’t disagree.
He was still in a daze when he stumbled home. Upon seeing the blood covering him, his mother ran to his side. His little sisters stared at him in terror. Both of them were still in their nightgowns, stuck in the house after catching the common mold at school. If they hadn’t been sick, surely, they would have gone with. Evelyn was older than Blythe by two years after all. What if they had been there? They would be dead now, too, just like Blythe and Kirce were.
Jasper couldn’t breathe. He broke down. None of the boys talked to each other again after that. None of them fully disclosed what they had seen. Jasper made a new palisman, and Blythe and Kirce’s deaths were chalked up to tragic accidents. But Jasper never forgot, and he made a vow to himself that he would never lose anyone else like that again.
