The next few minutes were spent in near silence. We passed by abandoned buildings, broken windows, and boarded doors. It was only once we were a few blocks away from Sana’s that Mina began to talk again.
“You,” she began with the cadence of someone taking a deep breath, working up the guts to say something they’ve been mulling over, “have a penchant for trouble.”
“Penchant. That’s a big word,” I said, my thoughts still on Greg and Ashley.
“Do you know what that was?”Mina asked.
“I’m assuming you’re talking about Sana,” I said honestly. “Then the answer is no.”
Mina’s eyes darted to the corners of the alleys, like she was afraid something might pop out.Her doing so set off a chain reaction where I did the same.Doing so sent a wave of fear sittling through me as well, like the physical act of looking out for danger was the same as acknowledging it.
“That thing,” Mina said, putting an emphasis on the word, “was a hero.”
“…a hero? Like bitten by a radioactive spider kind of hero?”
Mina picked up the pace, and I had to do the same. My ankle started aching immediately. If this place was indeed powering up my spells to a certain extent, that effect would fade once I left. That meant the pain now was only a fraction of what was to come. Fun.
“Heroes like in the old stories, my Practitioner,” Wol said, his voice taut with tension. “Hercules. Moses. Hong Kil-dong. Gilgamesh. Humans blessed with abilities beyond the ordinary.”
“Hold on a second here,” I said. “Did you just say Hercules? Like the greek-god?”
“Half-god,” Mina corrected. “And no one’s sure if he was actually half-god or not. The heroes are the only one who insists they’re actually descended from gods.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I said, waving my hands and slowing us to a walk to give this conversation the gravity it deserved. Certainly not to make it easier on my ankle. “How did we go from incantations to talking about superheroes?”
“They’re not superheroes, Hallow,” Mina said, matching my pace. “And you literally have a cat who claimed to have fished the moon out of a lake sitting on your shoulder. And you can’t believe that Hercules is real?”
“Because if Hercules is real, then so is the Nemean lion, and the Hydra, and Zeus, and Poseidon, and Hera,” I said. “Occult practices and incantations? Fine. I could get with that. But Zeus? A high and mighty being throwing around lightning? Gods of the seas and hells?”
“I don’t understand why you’re making a big deal about this,” Mina said, frowning.
“Because it’s a ridiculous concept!”
“Perhaps it’s easier to think of it this way. Zeus is just a name that practitioners have attached to the amalgmous being that’s thought of as Zeus,” Wol said. “Its true identity is much more complex.”
“If we’re going by thoughts here, then Zeus is an egregore. He’s a god of lightning because everyone agrees he’s a god of lightning,” I said. “But a god?”
“We’re getting off topic. You can do your research later,” Mina cut in. She had her staff out, and Seoul plodded in between her legs, eyes on the lookout. “The point is, the Ravoks are a house of heroes.”
“Okay, fine. Give me the rundown on heroes, then like one of those AI machines,” I said.
“Heroes are just that. Humans with extraordinary power. They’re not practitioners,” Mina said, answering the question before I could even ask. “But they’re not fully human either. They have an assortment of different abilities and powers. But there are a few defining features. They’re charismatic by nature. You know that feeling you get every time she talks?”
“Like she’s giving a pep talk at a rally, and I feel like energy drinks can actually give me wings?”
“That’s one of the tells of a hero,” Mina confirmed. “We’re hardwired to follow them. No one knows why. It’s… we think it’s a subset of enchantment.”
“Manipulating emotions. That’s enchantment. Makes sense,” I said, nodding.
“But it doesn’t feel like how an enchanter would do it, does it?” At my grunt of acknowledgement, she continued. “Either way, they’re really good at riling people up and getting them to follow them. A lot of the most prominent war-mongers throughout history were heroes.”
“Don’t tell me you’re about to give me a World War II lesson here,” I said. “And a lot of people would be offended if you called them heroes.”
“Heroes don’t necessarily mean they’re good. Heroes can be misguided or evil just as much as the next guy,” Mina said. “There’s more. A lot of them have supernatural abilities.”
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“Shooting lasers out of eyes? Superstrength? X-ray vision? Spidey-sense?” I listed off.
“You can be really annoying,” Mina huffed. We were getting near the exit now, and she picked up the pace again. “But you’re not far off. There’s a family of heroes in Korea that can reattach limbs by eating rice cakes.”
“The Hong Clan,” Wol casually mentioned.
Mina continued. “Listen, there’s a reason why I’m bringing this up.”
“Why’s that?”
She stopped walking. “Because since the moment we stepped foot in Sana’s Cafe, she never answered one of our questions about the Mother Tree.”
I stopped too.
I thought about it, replaying the events of the cafe. The seating arrangements, the tea, the questioning, and getting introduced to Greg and Ashley, then all of a sudden getting pointed in a direction where we might actually get a clue to what’s going on.
It all seemed…
It all seemed so easy.
“…Did we just get duped?” I asked.
Mina shrugged. “I don’t know. But I do know that I felt really excited when we walked out of there. Like we could—”
“Like we just won the trial even though we haven’t done anything yet,” I said. My mouth tasted bitter. “She… did she want us out of there?”
“I…” Mina shrugged. “I don’t know. I only started mentioning it because the feeling started to wear off, and I realized my emotions weren’t really what they were supposed to be.”
The fact that she had that tight a grasp on her emotions was a surprise. “Enchantor stuff?”
“Practitioner training,” Mina said. “Jain, I’m a classically trained Society Practitioner from a well-known family. And Sana sent us off without so much as trying to make small talk. That doesn’t strike you as weird?”
I thought of all the dream catchers made of bone in Sana’s Cafe, which, ironically, was built like an opium den. When I was in there, I felt excited and somewhat calm. But recalling the image painted a different picture. There had been spiderwebs in the corners, and the scent of something akin to iron. The floors had been stained with reddish nail marks.
Opium. Dream Catchers. Bone. Refuge. Running away from something. Refuse. Memory loss.
I swallowed. “Greg and Ashley aren’t making it out of there, are they?”
Mina must have had the same line of thought. She nodded. “I think they will. Just not in the way that we know.”
“She’ll take their memories of this whole thing,” I said bitterly.
Mina stirred, a small motion that I noticed only because of how still she’d been. She turned to me. “Hallow?”
I convulsed away from her movement, trying to control the raging tide of emotions that suddenly welled up from within me. My brain showed me photostill images of Ashley’s tears, her apologizing to me. More came still: Greg, talking to me like an equal. Like how he spoke to his friends. The startling realization swallowed up the feelings in one fell swoop: that I thought I’d made friends.
“Damn, I guess I won’t be getting that apology after all, huh?” I said, trying to sound cool. But my voice trembled a bit near the end.
“Oh, Jain,” Wol said from my shoulder.
Hwari came up from the shadows and affectionately headbutted my ankle.
It was a nice touchy-feely moment.
Until Mina opened her mouth. “Are you for real? Get serious, Hallow.”
I reeled like she’d slapped me, turning to face her. “What?” I asked dumbly.
Mina was scowling. “Are you seriously feeling sorry for yourself because your bullies at school are not going to say sorry after this is all over? Well, guess what? You’re a practitioner. If you didn’t get rid of their memories, you’d be in danger of them knowing your identity. And in case you haven’t figured it out yet, we don’t like it when mortals figure out about the supernatural world.”
The previously spinning tide of emotions rapidly turned from sorrow to annoyance. “What’s your problem?”
“My problem is that you’re in a trial to determine the successor of one of the greatest Shaman-Witches in the last two centuries, and you aren’t acting anything like it,” she snapped. “Jain. We’re on our way to find the murderer of a Mother Tree. And you’re sitting there, all ‘boo-hoo’, I’m not going to get my sorry. Do you honestly think your sorry is more important than that?”
“I—”
She sighed, stomping her boot on the ground. “Jain. Being kind has its limits. And we’re about to go charging into a possible temple-place of a bunch of cultists—”
“The Wickermen don’t sound like a cult,” I said angrily, trying to get back at her more than anything.
She rolled her eyes. “An egregore sets up camp in New York City, recruits corporate employees with promises of riches and success, then raises them as potential hosts to be its puppet. I bet you a hundred dollars that the rite is called some kind of ascension. Wrap it however you want, they’re cultists.”
I simmered, letting her finish.
“And to make it worse, some of those cultists are the parents of your classmates.” Mina took a step closer to me. She poked a finger in my chest. “Then man up.”
“I—” I stammered. “Where is this coming from?”
“Because,” she said, sighing. “The fact that you’re getting all touchy-feely at this point in time means you don’t understand what we’re walking into.”
I frowned. “What?”
“Jain, your friends said something followed the parents back. We don’t know what the heck it is, why it’s there, who sent it, or anything else about it. Not just that, but it’s a temple of cultists. Do you think we’re just going to stride in, take names, and kick ass?” Mina narrowed her eyes. “Jain, we’re walking into a trap. And I’m following you into it. Your familiars, everything. And you’re worried about having friends at school.”
Her putting it like that made my previous reaction silly. She was right. Somehow, seeing Greg and Ashley here had taken my mind off the supernatural aspect of things and back onto the social aspects of my life, specifically my academic life. I’m not going to lie and say I never fantasized about suddenly being the ‘cool kid’ at school someday. Yeah, of course I did. And seeing Greg and Ashley like that had…
Goddamit, Mina was right.
My head wasn’t in the game.
“Is it really that dangerous?” I asked.
Mina gave a pointed look at Wol.
“…it will be, Practitioner,” Wol said a little guiltily. “I was going to advise gathering allies for this particular endeavor.”
“Goddamit,” I said.
“Hallow,” Mina’s tone softened a bit. “I get it. You’re new to this. But you can be… really… frustrating,” she gritted out the last words through her teeth. “Being kind to the Inugami? Fine. We can chalk it up to a difference in style. But crying before a major work like this? That’s just… that’s just unprofessional.”
“Well, I’m not a classically trained practitioner like you,” I argued back, but the heart wasn’t in it.
“You understand why I got mad at you?” she asked, even more gently this time.
“Because I might get you killed?”
“No, if it looks like we’ll get killed, I’ll leave you behind and run,” Mina said without missing a beat. “Because you’re kind of a sad excuse for a practitioner.”
“…I’ve been at this for less than a week.”
“That’s true. But I think you could be a good one. Maybe that’s why I get mad,” Mina puffed out a long breath, and it seemed to deflate her somewhat. “Ok, you heard Wol. Any favors you could call in? Because I’m fresh out.”
“Maybe one person. Or two. I have to see,” I said. “Do you have a phone I could borrow?”
“No, practitioners don’t carry phones around. Government snipers can track us down with those, you know,” Mina said. “Especially if you have a bounty.”
“…What? You’re kidding, right?”
The heat from her tirade earlier had mostly faded, and as proof, Mina shot me a mysterious smile. She turned around without a word and continued towards the exit. I limped forward to catch up, feeling drained from the whole ordeal.
…Snipers? Really?