The guards shot me glowers, turning to mutter with one another and I ignored them, so used to being treated like that now that it didn’t even massively register to me anymore.
We made it beyond the boundary and the Lion Shifter took out a pouch of stardust as he turned to us.
“You’ve got a whole pouch?” Caleb asked him in shock.
“I kept it for a rainy day, and my Lion senses tell me it’s gonna rain really hard today,” Leon said and I glanced up at the clear blue sky, the songbirds dancing across it and the sun which burned so brightly a raincloud had zero hope of forming under its gaze.
“Yeah, looks like it,” Seth agreed conspiratorially. “So where are we going?”
“To my hometown,” Leon said. “Alestria.” He tossed the stardust over us and we were dragged away, transported through the stars and deposited in a dark alley where the scent of piss hung thickly in the air.
“Ergh, are we in hell?” Caleb muttered, stepping closer to me like I might be able to ward off the stench. “Oh my stars, is that a shit? Like a Fae fucking turd, right there by that dumpster?” He pulled his shirt up over his nose and I couldn’t really blame him.
“It’s the magic of Alestria,” Leon cooed. “Between the grime, the piss and the shits that hobos do in alleys, there’s something really special about this place.”
“I think I like it,” Seth whispered and Caleb and I shared a look.
Leon walked over to a drain, dropping down to his knees and casting some spell, his hand weaving back and forth above the metal before it began to shimmer. He took hold of it, pulling it up to reveal a ladder leading away into the dark.
“You know, I think I’d rather go back to The Burrows and have a scalding shower that’ll burn a layer of my skin off,” Caleb said, backing up but I pressed a hand to a shoulder and pushed him forward.
“Come on, princess, you can handle a little dirt,” I taunted and Seth looked back at us, nodding eagerly.
“We can tick it off our bucket list, Cal,” he called.
“I don’t have ‘crawl into a shit pit on my bucket list,” Caleb said, shaking his head but he let me guide him over there all the same.
“It’ll be one of those tales we tell for years to come,” Seth encouraged. “Like that time I was on the moon and I stuck my dick in a crater.”
“You did?” Leon asked, looking at him in awe as Seth nodded proudly. “Holy shit, tell me everything. What did it feel like? Did you get magical dick powers after?”
I groaned as Seth jumped on the opportunity to tell someone new his moon stories and I worked to zone him out as Leon led the way down into the sewer and Caleb reluctantly followed.
I cast a Faelight as I stepped off of the rungs at the bottom and looked around at the dank tunnel we were in, a river of water rushing along beside us. We followed Leon down the narrow path beside it, his and Seth’s voices echoing around us as they laughed and shared stories, and I walked with Caleb as he worked hard not to touch anything and muttered promises to burn all the clothes he was wearing the moment we got back to The Burrows.
As Leon and Seth turned down a tunnel to the right up ahead, I lost sight of them and realised Caleb wasn’t beside me anymore. I glanced back, finding his head and one arm tangled in a thick cobweb that hung down from the ceiling.
“Fucking, argh,” he grunted, trying to burn it off of him, but only getting himself caught in more of it as he nearly burnt off his own eyebrows.
I jogged back to him as I went to help, casting an ice blade in my hand.
“Hold still, Cal,” I encouraged and he did, grimacing as I carved through the sticky web and shuddering full bodily as he jerked away from it, peeling the last of it from his hair and flicking it off of his hand.
I examined the web for a second, not liking the size of it or the way it disappeared into a wide hole in the wall above us. It could have belonged to a harmless weaving spider, but my gut clenched at the other possibility. Gnarla spiders were rare as hell, but their webs were notoriously sticky and a place like this was perfect for something that size. I just prayed to the fucking stars I was wrong about that assessment though.
“Let’s keep moving,” I urged, the sound of Leon and Seth’s voices lost to us now and I didn’t think we should be apart, not when every cop in the kingdom was hunting for us.
We used a burst of Vampire speed to chase after the others, turning into the tunnel they’d taken but finding it empty.
I slowed to a halt and Caleb spat a curse as he stopped beside me and his foot sank into a murky puddle, shaking his leg out and using fire magic to dry it off.