He shuddered in memory; the images burnt into his brain: of glowing eyes, of red stained mouths, of strength that had allowed the monsters to rip people apart with their bare hands, as if they were paper. Or to drain them of life until they were nothing but a husk, a used-up shell. He had wondered why the monsters had even brought swords—and those were merely the foot soldiers. Their captain…

Ah, yes.

He was a different story all together.

I was jolted awake again by the embrace of something that wasn’t flesh twining around my body. Something as big as an anaconda, but harder, and covered with pieces too woody to be scales. It was a tree root, I realized, blinking my eyes open. A huge old thing, half clad in brown bark and half in a sickly, skin-like hue from being long buried in the ground. It was almost thicker around than the body it was currently trying to consume—my body, I realized, as it began dragging me backwards.

I didn’t scream—I wasn’t aware enough for that—but I didn’t need to. My gasp of shock was more than enough, with a party of fey not six feet away, who had been arguing about something. The arguing abruptly stopped, and the next moment, half a dozen hands were grabbing onto me.

Never had I been so glad to be captured by the fey!

But somebody else disagreed.

“Leave the witch!” one of the guards spat. He looked like all the rest, except that half his hair was singed almost down to the skull, as if he’d fallen into a campfire. “Let the trees have her!”

“The king said all,” another one panted, tugging on me. “Do you want to explain why we left one to die?”

“He doesn’t have to know—”

“He does, and I’ll tell him!” another fey said. He was hacking away at the root with a sword, but not making much progress. “Like I’ll tell him the other witch surprised you—”

“She didn’t!”

“Then what happened to your hair?”

“The same thing that’s going to happen to her,” the fey said viciously. “Just as soon as—”

“Stop arguing and help us!” the first fey snapped, cutting in. “Or I’ll report the both of you!”

The bald fey cursed. But a second after that, a spell sizzled past me, close enough to blacken the top of the prickly bush, and to curl up its leaves. But it did worse to the tree.