Shades of Grey

THE HUNTER’S UNDERGROUND— JANUARY 1844

I awoke early the next morning with a thick gasp, sweating as I searched for a stable breath, once again recovering from a ghastly nightmare. Ryder heard me and quickly flew towards me, placing a glass of cool water in my hands. I downed it easily in one gulp.

“What happened?” he whispered. “What did you dream?”

I took a moment after drinking, trying to assimilate the dark images that had played in my sleep and find the appropriate words to describe them.

“I dreamt that I awoke to a fire in my room. For a moment, I thought it was Commencement night again, until Liam ran inside and held out his hand to me, begging me to go with him. So I did and he led me through the worst part of the flames and we escaped into the forest until I realised that Forma was not with me. I asked him where she was and he said she had not made it out. I fought with him to get back inside but he held me back, telling me that she was dangerous. I fought with all my strength to back to her but the flames were so large... I then heard a pained, furious roar and I knew that she had…”

My breath was hushed. I could barely say the word or even think about that fateful cycle and when it would occur… I took in a breath and continued, the guilt of Macbeth weighing on me.

“I heard crashing sounds as Forma tried to escape. I looked around for help, but no one seemed to care. The flames began to engulf her… I remember collapsing to the ground and watching as my parents emerged from the flames, looking gentle and happy in the light of the fire... They reached their hands out towards me and beckoned me to go with them. I cried out only for Forma and they told me she was dead. When I asked why I wasn’t growing any older as the magic would have ensured, they said I was a Vanguard now… that every Hunter was now dead and the Creatures would be free to take the world!”

My façade of cool strength faded as I had revealed more of my dream. Ryder’s calm, empathetic eyes countered my terror and his grip on my shoulders became tighter.

“Relax, it was all a dream. It’s over now. Let’s begin training and see if that calms you down at all.”

I nodded and stood, following him over to the ring with a cloud of suspicious melancholy hanging over my sleepless mind.

A month passed in a similar fashion: I did not sleep at all due to both my recurring dreams and my continued failure in the ring. In an effort to still my restless mind, I worked harder to hone my combat skills. This strategy seemed to work for a while, suppressing the intensity of the dreams, until for some reason I grew too distracted and everything Ryder had taught me flew out of my mind. In the ring, I became nothing more than a practice dummy for Naomi.

After a particularly awful string of failures I emerged one night from the showers on the third level, feeling slightly more at ease about my dreams and all the more frustrated at my lack of progress in the ring, when a sudden voice behind me caused me to jump.

“Grey?”

I turned around sharply and saw Liam standing before me.

“Yes, Liam?” I said, recovering from the scare he had given me.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“It’s fine. What is it?”

“I never got to say happy birthday,” he replied, handing me a small box.

I took the box, having completely forgotten that my nineteenth birthday had been a few weeks ago. Had I really been out in the world for a year already?

“My birthday…”

I remembered the last one: Forma’s overzealous congratulations, her fervent pleas to leave the school and begin our adventure, the apprehension I felt as I held my Flamesword for the first time, the fear that gripped me as I rode away from a burning school into a world that held so many unknown possibilities…

“Damn my birthday…” I snarled.

“Before you do that,” Liam said calmly, as if expecting such a negative reaction. “I think you should open your present.”

I looked down to the little box and opened it. Inside sat a rose with silver petals.

“I painted it to match your eyes.”

I looked up at him trying my best to appear receptive, but sleep was the only thought on my mind and it was a difficult thought to ignore.

“Thank you, Liam. It’s lovely.”

He grinned widely.

“Well, I’ll let you get back to bed. Goodnight, Grey.”

He lingered a little too long before turning and leaving. I narrowed my eyes, deciding for the moment to ignore how suspicious he seemed. Sleep was clawing at my eyelids.

The next day, after yet another sleepless night, I made my way towards the breakfast tables for yet another helping of unidentifiable yet supposedly nutritious slop. I took my ceremonial place next to Naomi and Giselle.

“Good morning, Grey,” Giselle greeted.

“Morning,” I said listlessly. I punctuated this with a lethargic rub of my temples. Neither Naomi nor Giselle had to ask: they both knew the reason for my exhaustion. I was pretty sure the entire Underground knew and would not have been surprised if the townspeople of Tournesol knew as well.

“Still not sleeping?” Giselle asked in concern.

“Not at all,” I groaned, picking at my breakfast.

“You know, Lord Duncan is here,” Naomi offered. “He could give you something to help you sleep if you wanted.”

“Who is Lord Duncan?” I asked in genuine confusion.

“The Health professor!” Giselle cried, alarmed that I could not remember.

It took a moment of the two of them staring at me before I remembered. Health class in year two: a freezing classroom at the top of one of the south turrets, a professor with triangular glasses and one long braid of thin white hair…

“I think I spent most of that class asleep…” I replied, the memories slowly coming back to me. Forma ended up taking most of the notes for me during that class.

“You did. You talked in your sleep too, if I remember correctly,” Naomi replied with a laugh.

“I did not!” I scoffed.

“Yes you did. I remember one specific episode where you called out several times for Michael to stop braiding your hair because he was tying it with spaghetti, not ribbon.”

Giselle burst out in hysterics, apparently remembering the incident as well.

“Michael Swann?” I inquired.

“Of course! Remember? You, Loria and I all had an unhealthy fascination with him?” Naomi prompted.

“Despite the fact that he was dumber than a herd of Traquas?” I said, recalling the handsome but witless face of Michael Swann. This sent Giselle and Naomi into hysterics.

“Yes, in spite of that,” Naomi stated.

“Is he here?” I asked, looking around for him.

“No, he left on a mission with his Maisling, Jarrett, about a month ago; something about phantoms haunting a town in the mountains.”

As the conversation waned for a moment, I asked the question I had been yearning to ask everyone in the Underground since I arrived.

“Naomi, what happened to you after Commencement?”

Naomi looked up with a strange expression of confusion at the seeming arbitrariness of my question.

“We came straight here with the rest of the school,” Naomi answered plainly. “Nothing particularly interesting. Giselle is teaching some of the younger Maislings the finer points of transformation and I’m training the younger Tyros in combat and weapons management.”

“You haven’t gone outside or anything yet?” I queried.

Giselle laughed a little in embarrassment.

“No, nothing quite as exciting as you’ve experienced.”

I could see the two of them aching to get out into the world, to experience what we had all trained for so long to do. They were growing restless.

“You don’t want what I’ve experienced,” I countered, picturing Naomi having to run through her crazed subconscious to save Giselle. No matter how I ran the scenario in my head, it never ended with Giselle becoming a werewolf. Naomi would not have been so shortsighted.

They both gave me sympathetic looks.

“You’ll get her back,” Naomi assured me. “The two of you are the fiercest pair in generations. There’s no way you’ll be separated for long.”

I gave her a half-hearted smile and nod of thanks, thinking about Forma’s biting words before she had been taken. She was angry with me on some level for allowing this to happen to her, I could feel it.

“I hope you’re right,” I replied.

“Of course I am!” she exclaimed, taking her now empty tray and standing. “Do you want to help me teach a class on the properties of handling a lit Flamesword to some Veterans later?”

I shook my head, still picking at my breakfast slop.

“No thank you. I’ll see you later though,” I offered.

“Alright. See you around.”

Naomi left to go deposit her tray in the window that led to the kitchens. Giselle gave me a knowing look.

“You know we’re always here if you want to talk, right?”

I smiled, grateful for her concern.

“I know. Thank you.”

Giselle nodded, still unconvinced that I was all right to be alone but willing to give me space nonetheless. She followed Naomi, leaving me with my thoughts.

My nightmares the previous night still hung stagnant in the forefront of my attention. They were the same twisted images of a captive Forma and my fruitless attempts to save her. The specific image last night had been that of a rotten tree. Forma was trapped inside the trunk and I was trying to get to her, but the twisted branches kept slamming the ground in front of me, blocking my path. I had tried to slice them in half with my Flamesword, but every time I did, two more branches grew back in its place like the heads of a decapitated Hydra. Liam, Ryder, Giselle and Naomi had then appeared in my dreams, offering to help slay the tree and free Forma. However, their attempts were thwarted when other trees swallowed them up. I continued trying to fight to the trunks, but the trees then caught fire and burned before my eyes…

“Why are you sitting alone?”

Liam’s sudden voice brought me back to the cave with a raucous gasp of surprise. He jumped as well, taken aback by my reaction.

“Because I’m a nutter, that’s why,” I dismissed as I ran my fingers through my hair.

Liam laughed and sat across from me.

“You’re not a nutter, you’re just worried. It’s perfectly natural. Trust me, I’ve been there,” he assured me, happily eating his breakfast slop.

I studied him as he ate, noticing his battle scars for the first time — each of them varying in length and thickness. A particularly large line across the left side of his exposed chest intrigued me.

“Liam, what happened to you after Commencement?” I asked carefully.

He looked up briefly with an expression of similar confusion that Naomi had adopted when I asked her of her past.

“Well,” he began with a sigh. “Ryder and I stayed with the others for two months before we left on a witch-hunting mission in Germany. We soon found ourselves in a city haunted by victims of a terrible werewolf attack in the early 18th century, so Ryder called them out for me and together we managed to trap and dispose of them.”

“How many were there?” I asked, recalling my trip to Automne de Fleure.

“Oh, I don’t know, dozens, I suspect. Enough to exhaust Ryder into a coma for two weeks,” he said.

“Really?” I asked empathetically.

“Yes. The battle was quite long, but it was what I needed. You remember how juvenile I was during school. I needed to experience what Hunting was really about, I needed to Hunt something out in the world. After saving real lives, not just passing a simulation, I saw that what we do really does matter. It showed me that I had more responsibility than I knew what to do with.”

“What happened after the ghosts?” I asked.

“After we fought the ghosts, Ryder and I were taken captive by a clan of hostile Fire Sprites. Ryder was always better at language than I was so I let him do all of the negotiating and we found out that this particular clan of Sprites was under a centuries old contract binding them in service to the Tyragnon — a tribe of deformed Nemorosa who took the entire species and placed them in a mountain on some unknown island.”

My mouth hung open in shock.

“The Tyragnon?” I whispered.

“Yes. Grey, what is it?” Liam asked. “You look pale.”

I blinked once to regain my composure.

“Nothing, er, go on Liam. What happened next?”

“Well, apparently Terre Sprites roamed the island as well. As you may remember, Nemorosa and Terre Sprites have never been able to coexist. So, Ryder was taken to the ward where they kept the rebellious Fairies and I was tortured for three days and nights in their dungeons. I still have no idea how he did it and he won’t tell me, but Ryder found some way to escape his bonds and he found his way down to me. We killed the leader of the Tyragnon and stole one of the escape boats.”

Liam held his necklace out for me to see and he fingered several large Tyragnon teeth. I fingered the similar teeth on my own necklace.

“Where did you go next?”

“Ryder and I sailed for three months before taking port in the Orient. Japan, to be precise.”

“Wow, what was it like?” I asked,

“Ryder and I docked our boat and came upon a very small and very quaint village somewhere close to Mt Fuji. It was certainly an experience being the tallest person in the entire community.”

I laughed politely, which he seemed to appreciate.

“While in the village, I came across a vicious band of assassins known to the people as The Thirteen Kings. Through several local eyewitness accounts, Ryder and I learned that they were moving through the country in search of a golden statue of a Dragon, part of a set of thirteen that they had been collecting for many years. They had already stolen twelve statues and upon their apprehension of the thirteenth, their power would increase tenfold, giving them the ability to take over all of Japan and give them a gateway to taking over the world.

“So, Ryder and I came up with a strategy and we waited for the Thirteen Kings to reach the village and attack the temple that housed the statue. Now, I was not particularly optimistic about the odds of two against thirteen, especially since we were the ones standing between them and ultimate power.”

“What did you do?” I asked.

“What else could we do? We fought!” he laughed. “Ryder and I fought as hard and as long as we possibly could and finally, after at least twelve hours of moving throughout the entire community, we finally managed to subdue the entire group. After Ryder and I rested for a good month, we travelled again for a long while and found ourselves facing an attack of the citizen soldiers of Tournesol, much like you did. Lord Daryn intervened before we could do too much harm and filled us in on what had happened. Now here we are.”

Liam finished with a flourish of his hand and continued to eat his slop in silence. He then looked up at me.

“What happened to you?”

I frowned, recalling after a moment that he had not been with me at the table when Naomi and Giselle had requested to hear my story. Reluctantly, I took him through everything I had been through before arriving at the Underground. His eyes were just as understandably wide when I revealed some of my stops.

“You were on the island as well?!” he exclaimed. I nodded. “Wow…it’s a wonder we never found each other. If we had, we probably could’ve overtaken the Tyragnon together.”

My stomach churned, recalling the Terre Sprites I had promised I would save.

“Probably…”

Just as I thought of it, my body suddenly tensed as a familiar pain ripped through my head: my link to Forma.

“What’s wrong? Is it like before?” Liam asked pointedly.

I didn’t respond as I waited for the pain to pass. With slight relief, I realised that it was only my ears that were linking. I waited a few more seconds before a chilling conversation came through.

“Is your Hunter as strong as you are?” inquired Verrilius.

“Shut up. Don’t you talk about her!” Forma snapped bravely, though I could hear how exhausted and worn she was.

“I’ll take that as a no,” murmured Verrilius with a sneer of condescencion. I heard the crack of impact as he brought his weapon across her jaw, followed by the sound of her spitting out blood.

“She’s ready,” Forma said solidly. “She’ll come and she’ll kill you when she realizes what you’ve done.”

“Oh I don’t think she’ll even come close to me.”

The connection faltered as Forma gave a loud scream of pain that echoed inside of my own head as well. I gripped my temples and fell out of my chair, unaware that I had been screaming as well. I looked up and saw that Liam had flown around the table to my side and Ryder had appeared suddenly behind him, wild concern in his eyes.

“I seem to have a knack for creating a scene, don’t I?” I remarked, noting that every eye in the vicinity had locked onto me. Liam and Ryder chuckled lightly and helped me back into my chair as the rest of the Hunters and Maislings began to slowly return to their own conversations.

“What did you hear?” Ryder asked as they both sat down across from me. I shook my head and then held it with my hands, exhaustion weighing on me.

“I have to get her out.” I looked up at them with stern resolve in my face. “I’m leaving tomorrow.”

Neither of them looked as shocked as I had thought they would. In fact, they both looked at each other and nodded.

“We’re going with you.”

“What?” I cried. “No, I can’t ask you to do that!”

“You’re not asking, we’re insisting,” Liam replied, taking a swig of water. “As they always taught us in school, an alliance can be most helpful. God knows three is better than one.”

I turned to Ryder, who only wore a quiet look of determination. I then realised exactly why he wanted to go and cursed myself for not seeing it earlier.

“How long?” I asked quietly.

Ryder gave a half smile, the sort one gives when a secret has been unearthed.

“Since year three,” he responded quietly.

My eyes widened.

“What?! How come you never told me? How come Forma never told me?!”

Liam looked confused.

“What? Told you what?”

I kept my eyes on Ryder as I answered.

“That Forma and Ryder fancy each other.”

I saw Liam’s eyes widened exactly as mine had.

“What?! Why didn’t I know about this?”

“Because neither of you would’ve kept it a secret,” Ryder answered simply.

“Why was it a secret?” I asked. “I think it’s brilliant!”

Ryder looked up, pleased at my elation.

“You do?”

“Of course! I wish I’d known about it before, now everything makes so much more sense…”

Ryder gave me a wide smile, which I returned before I stood to clear my dishes, curtseying dramatically to the duo.

“Tomorrow, then, gentlemen,” I said.

“Tomorrow,” they both responded.