we could be heroes [paisley and co]

Petra, Nils, Marisol and Paisley stood outside the walls of Deilig. They were prepared to enact their hastily slapped together plan to rescue the children who had been kidnapped from Redfern. It was a foggy day, which provided perfect cover for Marisol to fly over and find an area of the wall that was sparsely manned. The ideal, Petra said, would be an area with two or less soldiers stationed near by.

"We'll go under here then," Petra said, once Marisol had reported back. At first she hadn't been thrilled with the idea of this little schoolgirl joining them, but she'd already managed to prove herself more useful than Paisley. "You keep watch from above. Come let us know if you see more guards coming."

Marisol nodded and took off. As much as she wished she could just fly right in and find Skye herself, she wouldn't even know where to start. She knew they needed to work together if there was gonna be any hope of finding the Redfern students, and getting out alive.

From there, all that was left to do was tunnel under the wall. Nils took a deep breath and concentrated, using his eilemaiden to carve out a hole into the ground, large enough for them to move through. He'd be lying if he said he wasn't terrified to go into that hole and out into Deilig. But he was committed to this. Paisley needed him. He had to do this, he couldn't mess it up.

Once the tunnel was wide and deep enough, the three of them descended.

Paisley peeked her head out first, holding out her hand to the others so they'd stay hidden for a moment. She looked toward where Marisol said the guards were. Sure enough, two guards were talking a couple of meters away. They looked totally unsuspecting--they probably thought they had nothing to worry about here, on the inside of this wall.

Luckily the area was still heavily wooded on the inside. Paisley had a few vines drop from the trees and wind quickly around the soldiers. The vines wound around their heads first, gagging them both, before winding down their bodies and pinning their arms and legs together. Both soldiers fell to the ground, grunting. The vines tightened.

Paisley, Petra, and Nils climbed out of the tunnel just as the shadows of the guards came to life.

Ah, turns out Paisley could be useful too. "Not bad, Miss Overloridian," Petra said coolly, as the incapacitated guards' shadows sprang to life. Two man-shaped, one bear-shaped, and one tiger-shaped. "Distract them for me," she said to Nils. Before he could even register what she'd said, she shoved him towards the shadows.

There was no time to think when Petra shoved him right into the line of fire. Nils' old survival instinct, gained from his years on the run, kicked in just as the shadow beasts leapt at him. A spire of earth knocked one of the shadow beasts into the other. Meanwhile, Paisley had jumped into the fray and was taking on the human-shaped ones.

While they took care of that, Petra sprinted forward, bypassing the shadows completely. She withdrew water from a skin she kept on her, and formed it into two razor-sharp icicles. She loomed over the two soldiers, and held the icicles at their necks. "Call off the shadows. Three seconds."

As expected, the shadows sank back into the ground and away from Nils and Paisley. They were two minutes into this mission and Nils already looked and felt like he was about to have a heart attack. He didn't know whether he should feel angry at what Petra had just done or not, because it had worked out in the end. Out of breath, heart pounding out of his chest, he slowly approached Petra and the guards. "Just like the good old days, huh?" she asked him sarcastically.

Paisley and Nils kept the shadows at bay while Petra threatened the lives of the soldiers. The shadows sank into the ground like spilled ink and returned to their owners in the blink of an eye.

Well. This was going better than anticipated. It gave Paisley a bad feeling, and she stayed on edge, looking around. She knew Marisol was out there somewhere, keeping an eye out, but this felt too easy so far.

Paisley could tell Nils was on edge, and she couldn't say she was happy about the stunt Petra had pulled, but she didn't have time to rebuke her. She reached out and squeezed Nils' hand for a moment before letting go and crouching down where Petra was still holding the icicles to the guards' throats.

"Where are you keeping the children?" Paisley demanded. "And why?" It still didn't make sense--why kidnap a hundred unsettled kids?

"We're not telling you anything," one of the guards spat.

Petra shoved the icicle into his neck and slit his throat. They really only needed one of the guards to tell them where the kids were, and this would be a good way to show the surviving one that they weren't fucking around.

Nils squeezed his eyes shut and turned away, feeling sick. Why had he thought he could do this? Keep it together, Tanith told him, leaning up against him for comfort. There was no turning back now.

"You got a different answer for us?" Petra asked the remaining guard, who was staring at his partner's lifeless body open-mouthed.

"Th-they're in a compound a few miles north of here," the guard stuttered out. Well, that was easier than Petra had expected. "The-the overloridian, he wanted the kids to settle as Deilig, to increase his numbers. There's dozens of guards with them, Deilig, Solas and Adhbhar."

"Thanks," Petra said, and she killed him too. Couldn't have him escaping and running off to sound the alarm, after all.

Paisley had never watched anyone die before, much less be killed in front of her, but she didn't have time to dwell on the sinking feeling she felt in her stomach. The drive to find her brother and the rest of the children was much too strong to waste time thinking about their kidnappers.

She pushed the sick feeling away and stood up.

"Let's go," she said simply.

And away they went, headed north.

Petra was pleasantly surprised that Paisley didn't balk at her killing of the guards. The sickeningly sweet overloridian was just full of surprises today. Now that they knew where they were going, the trio set off, with Marisol continuing to scout from the sky. She returned to the ground a few times to tell them when they needed to change course to avoid more guards and soldiers. With her scouting ahead for them, they were able to make it without incident.

Nils didn't say a word the entire time they walked. He kept it hidden as much as he could, for Paisley's sake, but on the inside he was struggling. He kept slipping mentally into the past, and having to remind himself that despite the similar situations, this was not the same thing. He had to keep it together for Paisley, and Max, and all those kids. Keep it together...just focus. Stay focused.

Eventually they came across what could only be the makeshift prison for the children. It was mysteriously shrouded in darkness, though from a distance they could make out a few more guards up ahead. They wouldn't be able to avoid these ones, they'd have to fight once again to get in order to the kids.

The trio (or quartet if Marisol returned to the ground, now) paused for a minute to make a plan. From what they could see, there were at least three guards, but the mysterious shroud of darkness made it impossible to tell what lay inside.

"I've never seen a Deilig make it all dark like that," Paisley said. "I wonder if they lost concentration if it would go away."

"Nils," she said, turning to him. "Is there anyway you could move the ground under their feet?" If they were just able to propel them or knock them over away from the darkness (which most likely held the children) that could disrupt the shroud. "I'll go to the other side and take out the clio over there with vines or something."

Hopefully it was the children on the inside, and not just more soldiers. "Then we just have to adjust based on whatever happens next." She, Nils, Petra, and Marisol would basically have to make decisions immediately after incapacitating the visible guards.

"How much water do you have on you?" Paisley asked Petra. Petra was obviously skilled in other methods of fighting, but water wouldn't hurt. "I was thinking we could work together to extract some water out of some of these plants before we attack."

Paisley wrote:"Nils, is there anyway you could move the ground under their feet?"

Tanith had to nudge Nils to snap him out of his "focus." "What? Oh, yeah, I-I think so," he said quickly. Moving the ground wasn't hard. He could do that. He swallowed the lump in his throat. I can do this.

Paisley wrote:"How much water do you have on you? I was thinking we could work together to extract some water out of some of these plants before we attack."

Petra drew the water out. There were little wisps of red and pink suspended in it. Blood from those guards. "Oh, a liter maybe," she said. Plenty for her to use to deadly effect, but more never hurt. Her and Paisley worked together (now there was something she never thought would happen) to pull water from the forest brush surrounding them, leaving the plants brown, shriveled and dead. When all was said and done Petra had about twice as much water as she'd started with, so she couldn't store it all. It floated lazily around her.

Marisol was a little frightened. Somewhere in all that horrible darkness was Skye, suffering who knows what horrible things. If this didn't work...she didn't even want to think about it. Couldn't let herself think about it. It would work, they were going to save Skye and the others.

Nils took a deep breath again and focused his eilemaiden. It was harder this time, than when he'd made the tunnel. It took him significantly longer to get a good grasp on the earth this time, and he could practically feel Petra's impatience and annoyance behind him. Finally he was able to concentrate enough to send a large tremor from where they stood to the guards. He could hear them yell out in surprise as they were knocked off their feet, and the darkness receded.

After she and Petra had gathered water from the underbrush Paisley made her way around the circle. There was a guard on the other side of the circle. After the agreed upon amount of time, Nils took out the guards on their side of the darkness while Paisley used her vines to take out hers, much like she'd done earlier.

She still hid in the woods, so the shadows that sprang from the ground didn't pose an immediate threat...yet.

As the darkness dissipated Paisley stifled a scream. She really hoped Marisol would be able to keep herself in check over on the other side.

Scores of children sat huddled on the ground. Even from this distance, Paisley could tell how malnourished they were. And they all sat silently. None of them even flinched when the darkness went away. They stared blankly ahead, completely immobile. But that was not the worst of it. Bodies lay on the ground among them. Dead children. How many hadn't made it? How many had they been too late to save? Paisley searched desperately for Max before catching movement with her eye.

There were, indeed, more guards. Three or four she could see, their shadows already corporeal and on the move. "Who's there?" "Don't move!" "What the fuck?" the guards were all calling out to each other. Paisley barely registered it.

Paisley was not a violent woman, but today she wasn't Paisley. Seeing the dead children had broken something inside of her. The vines that were wrapped around the first guard squeezed around his neck until the man couldn't breathe. Her heart pounded as she watched him struggle, and then stop. His shadows, both his own and that of his daemon, sank into the ground.

When the darkness vanished, Nils was treated to a distressingly familiar scene. Kids. Dead kids, hurt kids, catatonic kids. Though even he had never seen it on such a huge scale like this before. Somewhere vaguely off in the distance he thought he heard a scream, but it seemed very far away. Like he was hearing it from the end of a long tunnel. He stood, shock-still, as one of the guards advanced on him.

He snapped out of it just in time to see the attack coming. It all happened very fast. The guard was upon him, he felt a sort of stinging sensation in his side. All of the sudden the guard's head was encased in an orb of water. He staggered back, struggling, clawing ineffectively at the water. Then he went limp and Petra dropped him to the ground.

Nils looked down at the red stain slowly spreading on his shirt. Put pressure on the wound, he thought. That's what Henri would tell him to do if he were here. He pressed his hands into his side where the guard had stabbed him.

"If you freeze up like that again, I won't save you a second time," Petra warned him. She glanced down at his wound and then back at his face.

"I-I think I'm okay," he managed. It wasn't the first time he'd been stabbed, and he'd survived before, right?

Meanwhile, Marisol was running through the horror show of captive children. "Skye!" she screamed. "Skyler!" Her fear and anger coursed through her, making her feel powerful, invisible. With her eilemaiden, she effortlessly blasted away any guard that so much as looked her way. Then she saw her. Her twin sat impassively among the other kids, pale, thin, disheveled. Marisol rushed to her side.

"Skye, Skye, look at me Skye, you're okay now, we're getting you out of here," she said, kneeling to Skye's side and running her hands through her matted hair. Skye was alive, but she looked back at Marisol with dead eyes. "It's okay. Say something. You're gonna be okay, I promise. I'm here. I'm here."

As Marisol sprinted into the group of children screaming wildly for her sister Paisley's heart pounded. She stormed into the open and two guards caught sight of her. They both took aim at her, wielding their shadows along. A bear and a wild cat charged at her, but instead of focusing on them she had branches bend down from the trees overhead and knock the soldiers off their feet.

The shadows staggered, but kept up their charge. A swing of vines came down and lifted Paisley off the ground, swinging her over the children and dropping her into a free spot. Thorny bramble ripped out of the ground near her and wound itself around the guard closest to her. He cried out in pain before collapsing to the ground, unable to free itself from the viney branches.

From across the children, Paisley could make out Nils holding his side. Was he okay? She was about to call out to him when a shadow man grabbed her from behind. She screamed in shock, feeling her arms get bound behind her by his hands.

Paisley couldn't see his clio, couldn't tell what to attack. She thrashed around violently, trying to release herself. There! Chevron screamed. To your right!

From above them vines dropped like great slithering snakes. Paisley whipped her head to look right and had the vines start sliding up the man.



Inside the fray, Skylar felt someone shaking her. Their voice sounded so familiar. Almost like her own. "Skye?" she rasped. "Skye?"

Nils heard another scream. Closer this time, sharper, on the same level as him. He whipped his head around and felt his stomach tighten up like a vice when he saw Paisley thrashing wildly against a shadow clio. "Paisley!" he staggered towards her, the stinging in his side flaring up into a wildfire.

Another guard stepped into his path. "You look like you're half-dead already," he said with a sneer, holding up a hand that was crackling with electricity. "Guess I'll finish the job."

Paisley, Nils thought wildly, instinct kicking in again. The ground beneath the guard softened to the consistency of quicksand. The guard looked down in shock as he sank till he was up to his knees in earth, before it re-solidified around him. Nils half-ran, half-limped past him, but by the time he did he saw that Paisley had already defeated her attackers.

Petra had been finishing off one of the few remaining guards, when she turned around and saw what Nils had done. She also noticed something else. The few children near by who were at least a little bit lucid seemed to shy away fearfully from this guard in particular. She narrowed her eyes and approached him as he struggled to free himself from the ground. Most of the guards were now dead or incapacitated. She could take her time with this one.

She forced her water into his nose and mouth, down his throat and into his lungs. Then before he could pass out, she pulled it back out. She did it again. And again, and again, until he was dead.

Skyler

"Skye? Skye?"

Marisol looked at her sister with fresh fear in her heart. "It's me, it's your sister," she said softly. She gently coaxed Skye to her feet and held her up. "C'mon. We're going home." She looked around. How many of these kids would be able to walk? She could only carry maybe two...

Paisley was breathing heavily as she was released from the shadow's hold. She immediately turned to look where Nils was limping over to her.

"Are you okay?" she asked him, looking to his side. It was bloodied, red soaking through his clothes. "Oh Gods, are you okay?" Nils' face was pale and he seemed weak on his feet. She wanted to comfort him, needed to help him, but Max was out here somewhere.

She refused to picture Max as one of the bodies laying lifeless, had to imagine him as one of the many that were grouped together. The living children had started moving, started mumbling quietly. They were coming to, startled by the noise and commotion.

"Max!" Paisley screamed. She looked around wildly, trying to find him in the children. As she searched she saw a final guard standing, sending a daemon after Marisol, who had apparently found her sister. Paisley used a fallen branch to knock the guard over and pin him to the ground.

She reached down and put her hands over Nils' on the wound. Gods, there was so much blood. "It's going to be okay, you're going to be okay." She tried to keep her voice calm, but even she could hear her own desperation.

"Petra!" she screamed. "Please!" Paisley's voice was shrill. "I need you to stop this, to stop his bleeding!" Was it possible? Could an Ughdarras help redirect the blood flow? Probably not without training, but Paisley was in shambles. There had to be other soldiers on the way by now, other clio who had heard the yelling.

"I need you to be okay," she told Nils. "I need to go look for Max."

As she spoke to him, a dark shadow flew overhead. Instantly fearing the worst, Paisley looked upward. A Cuir zeppelin floated in the sky above them. Twenty or so clio dropped from the sky, their daemons in tow.

It was Cuir. Cuir had come to save them.

Nils looked down at his injury and winced. "I'm okay," he mumbled to Paisley. The words rang pretty hollow. He was starting to feel dizzy. He looked around and realized they had beaten all of the guards. That meant he could rest, right?

No, Tanith said, her voice sounding distant in his head. Stay awake.

Paisley wrote:"Petra! Please! I need you to stop this, to stop his bleeding!"

Petra approached from where she had left the last guard's body, his legs still absurdly stuck in the ground. "Do I look like a fucking doctor to you?" she asked, scowling. It was Nils' own damn fault he got stabbed.

"'m okay," Nils said again, slowly sinking to his knees. Gods he was tired. Paisley was so warm. "Go find Max."

Petra looked up with Paisley when the shadow flew over. A huge zeppelin, bigger than any Petra had ever seen, hovered above them. The symbol of Cuir was on its side. Cuir clio in military uniforms were descending all around them. A few of them looked at Petra, Paisley and Nils in bewilderment. "We did the hard part for you assholes," Petra told them. She nodded at Nils. "He needs a medic."

Marisol could have cried with happiness when she saw the Cuir zeppelin. Liam, she thought. Liam saved us! She even recognized some of the soldiers as Liam's personal security team, who rushed to her and Skye's aid. She was extremely reluctant to hand her sister over, but she knew she needed medical help. As soon as Skye was in safe hands, Marisol hugged the nearest Cuir soldier as tightly as she could.

Relief washed over Paisley like a cool shower. The Cuir air force was here. They would save Nils, they would stitch him up and help him be okay. She kissed him as a Cuir soldier came to help him up to the air ship. "I love you, I promise I will be right behind you," she told him. "I love you." She watched only for a moment as the Cuir woman lifted Nils into the sky before she turned back to the crowd of children.

The kids were now standing around, listening to orders given to them by the soldiers. Whatever sedative they'd been given, it had been a strong one. Paisley ran through them, looking desperately for Max. Each step she took made her more desperate.

Finally, she saw him. "Max!" She wanted to fall to her knees and thank every single god that could have been watching over them. A sob broke from her chest as she raced to him, pulling him into a hug. His body was limp in her arms, but he was alive. "Oh, gods, Max, oh," she cried onto his shoulder. He was taller than her, her little brother. He was alive. He was alive. He was alive.

She hadn't been aware how afraid she was that he was among the children that still lay splayed on the ground, their daemons gone, until just now. But he was alive.

The Cuir rescue team made quick work of transporting the children into the balloon, and then Paisley and Petra followed. They'd be transported to Cuir where the wounded would be treated. Paisley cried with relief. Max and Nils would be okay. It was going to be okay.