Villainous Fae

CHAPTER SEVEN

"Don't step on that!" Leslie yelled as Raina shrieked in horror. Leslie had got to stop doing that to her. It was the umpteenth time she had said something like that since they crossed the portal to her realm.

The portal, as Raina saw, was not those blinding colourful wormhole you jump into to get to another world. Definitely not. The portal was a wall covered with rustled dry leaves which could be mistaken for an abandoned place if Raina didn't walk right through it to find herself in a grassy but vast land, so vast that Raina was looking at an horizon. She felt she was imagining it. Since when did her life get so bizarre? She couldn't pinpoint.

Raina tugged on her jacket, relieved that she had brought one with her. Well, she always had one with her because of her supposed kryptonite, iron. Besides that, the atmosphere was becoming cooler by the second despite the fact that the sun thought it was doing anything meaningful.

"Where are we?" Raina had to ask. They had been on the same place, well, they were moving, but it felt like they were not going anywhere. The more they walked, the more the journey seemed to stretch longer and longer. She wouldn't want to sound like a nagging teenager but it was frustrating.

"In a safe place," Leslie began explaining. She was in washed jeans and a sleeved t-shirt with a jacket tied around her waist. Her blonde hair danced around her shoulders as she walked elegantly. "My mom and I discovered this place. I'm certain no one knows about here, so they don't come here."

Raina had not failed to notice how Leslie's voice had faltered when she spoke of her mother. "How long till we get to Tritia?"

Tritia, as she had learnt from Leslie, was the place where the sun never set and also where the faerie and ferrate realms converge.

Leslie's face was expressionless. A facial expression that Raina had noticed Leslie wore almost everytime. "We're almost there." Her eyes turn to me, "In case you don't mind me asking but how do you know of Tritia? I don't recalling ever mentioning it to you in our rendezvous."

She hadn't really spoken of Arion and his partner's visit. Heck, she didn't think she would ever need them until them.

"Sources, I guess."

She didn't owe Leslie an explanation. Leslie was not doing her a favour bringing her here. She was trying to make things up with her.

After a few more minutes of silence, signs of life came into view.

*

"I'm not sure we're in Tritia," Raina frowned as she breathed in the view of where she was. She was in a building, more like a government building. People, ehem, faeries were tripping in and out. Some queued up in front of a stand for something, bracelet, she guessed. At another side of the hall was a door to a room that people go and come out after sometime like nothing happened .

"I'm not also sure you'd know Tritia if you see it. Well, we're not in Tritia." Leslie gestured towards the door of the room people entered. "We're in the Fae Emporium."

"And we're here to do what exactly?"

"We're here to get you cleared," Leslie explained. "Ever since the war began, we, faes, have encountered impostors claiming to be one of us to get inside information or most of the time, abduct one of us."

Leslie, not giving a chance for Raina to ask a question, continued, "The bracelet stand over there, gives you a bracelet. The bracelet is more like an ID. Allows you go through any gate. But before you get handed a bracelet, you've got to be scanned which is why we're going through that door."

Raina had questions. Who wouldn't? But she would till after whatever business they came here for.

Leslie knocked on the door and was replied with a "come in". The entered and shut the door behind them.

Before them sat and old man, probably in his seventies, Raina guessed. The room was small, few items hung on a shelf resting on the wall, besides that, nothing else.

"If it isn't Miss Hale," the old man let out a laugh, revealing his incomplete set of teeth, until it turned into a chest exploding cough, then stopped. Leslie's expressionless face melted into a smile, the genuine type.

"Long time, Magus," she replied with a curt nod. "Well, I'd like you to meet someone. Raina, Magus. Magus, Raina, your customer." Leslie said as she proceeded to the door. "I'll be right outside if you need me."

Leslie left, leaving Raina and Magus alone.

"It's obvious you have somewhere to be at. I'll try and make this quick," Magus gestured for her to give him her hand. He stared at her palm and let out a gasp, dropping her hand.

"What? What did you see in my palm?" Raina asked but did not get a reply as Magus appeared to be too lost for words.

"Please, tell me," Raina begged as fear made its way into her. He was an old man and elders felt like they had seen all so what could possibly make Magus gasp like that?

"What did you see?"

"I-I've never s-seen anything like it before. It's almost like a cross between... No. It's not possible."

He hurriedly scribbled something in a piece of paper which he had fished out from beside him.

"Here," he handed the paper over to her. "You can leave now." Raina realised that he was trying his best to sound polite. "Maybe if you happen to visit next time, I may have an explanation."

She left and joined the queue for the bracelet and got a metal bracelet around her wrist. The iron was beginning to hurt her.

"Are we going to Tritia now or are you gonna drag me off to someplace?" Raina asked as they stepped out of Fae Emporium.

"Tritia, it is," Leslie said, not looking at Raina. "But be warned, Tritia is not a place to be at. I wonder why you are so desperate to go there."

Raina shrugged. "I need to meet someone there, okay?"

"Whatever."